My academic life in a nutshell

Nemyslím si, že tohle je úplně fér vůči autorovi, který uznává to, že faktory, které udáváte, hrají roli. Netvrdí, že změny, které s porodností podle něj souvisí, jsou špatné. Fenomény jako porodnost jsou multifaktorové a i změny, které jsou pozitivní, mohou mít důsledky, které by nikdo nedomyslel.

Jasně - metalingvistický kontext jde, ale kdybychom byli opravdu velmi pedantičtí, tak by tam muselo být uvedeno 'rožnout'. Jinak já samozřejmě taky rožínám a nerozsvěcím (fuj)!

Můžeme opravdu tvrdit, že 'rožnout' je v jakémkoli kontextu nespisovné? I když je uvedeno ve starém textu, kdy se třeba mluví o rožínání svíce nebo louče ve smyslu zapálení?

Mám trochu pocit, že jejich nejvyšší nadřízený neboli vrchní velitel ozbrojených sil neboli prezident republiky s rozhovorem asi souhlasil...

Dva týdny do uzávěrky zasílání příspěvků na Bienále! Sběr se uzavírá 30. dubna 🚨 Posílejte nám svůj výzkum skrze OpenReview zde 👇 openreview.net/group?id=BCL...

Two weeks until submissions close! The conference call for the Biennial is closing on April 30 🚨 Keep sending us your research through our OpenReview page here 👇 openreview.net/group?id=BCL...

How citations ruined science The making and breaking of scientific life

Appreciated this history of citation indices, though of course the alternative history where citation indices were never introduced does not seem non-ruinous.
open.substack.com/pub/davidoks...

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition finally assigned our paper an issue, which is as good a reason as any to plug it here again! 🇨🇿 speakers show standard attraction effects in L2 English but not in the translation-equivalent L1 Czech sentences! And only when they did the English experiment first!

Made it to Boston 🇺🇸 yesterday! Excited to present my work at #HSP2026 starting on Thursday - look forward to new NPI (and NCI) illusion findings! Also, if anyone wants to hang out pre-conference-style today, ping me a message!

I would love submit to a journal like eLife if one existed in my field but I know I could not - I work in Czechia 🇨🇿 where impact factor and journal reputation (WoS or Scopus quartiles) still matter a great deal for researchers personally, but crucially also for their departments in budgetary terms.

Angelika Kiss and I organize a workshop on word order within this Biennial. There are so many factors competing for being expressed by word order. How does word order handle this request overload? See the workshop webpage for more information and, of course, submit! sites.google.com/view/bclword...

What do you do if a darling construct (conversational alignment) falls flat on psychometric reliability?

1) you examine the operationalization. Could you do better? We used common aggregated measures of similarity between utterances: 1/

Germany does not lack talent, and it does not lack funding. But we are trapping 21st-century minds inside 19th-century academic hierarchies. We are asking brilliant young scientists to build the future of the German economy, but refusing to give them the lab space, the job security, or the scientific independence to actually do it. If we want to reclaim our place as an industrial superpower, we have to stop the rat race of trying to keep every technology and structure alive that made us successful in the 20th century. Instead, we must fix our system that pushes our most ambitious scientists away. The money is there. The talent can be there. Now, we also need the courage to fix what’s broken.

“we are trapping 21st-century minds inside 19th-century academic hierarchies.” This essay gets a lot right about problems with German science. I would add that the hierarchies and precarious contracts lead also to systemic abuse and scientific misconduct. open.substack.com/pub/realimag...

Bohužel v Česku ještě není běžné, aby se podobné zkoušky hodnotily anonymně. V kontextu střední či základní školy to je samozřejmě těžké, ale na vysoké škole to jde a snažím se to vždy dělat.

We have opened abstract submissions to the Biennial! We're looking forward to getting your abstract in our submission box 📮 on OpenReview. You can send us your abstracts until April 30. openreview.net/group?id=BCL...

Spustili jsme odesílání příspěvků na Bienále! Očekáváme Vaše abstrakty v naší schránce 📮 na portálu OpenReview. Své příspěvky nám můžete zasílat až do 30. dubna! openreview.net/group?id=BCL...

Not to mention that when some "linguistics" is introduced in Czech class, it's almost always done so with a prescriptive aim. Nobody ever tells you that linguistics is a science!

Thank you to my coauthor Mojmír Dočekal!

Why is sentential negation effective in Czech but fails in English? We think it's because Czech syntax has negation high up in NegP. English on the other hand, has negation low in the structure. Within feature percolation accounts, this difference in embedding allows us to explain this pattern. 2/2

Illusion alert 🚨 We looked at NPI and NCI illusions in 🇨🇿. We aimed to distinguish between them by using negation. In English, it can't cause NPI illusions, but with NCIs it might, because those are licensed in the syntax. Surprisingly, we found strong illusions with both! 1/2 osf.io/preprints/ps...

It looks like a house from a not-quite finished city-building video game, like the developers haven't yet had time to add grass.

When I did my PhD in Germany, I would often wait as long as half a year to get reimbursement. Needless to say that none of the forms were digital and God forbid if you forgot a single receipt.

✅️ 🐋 have vowels
✅️ 🐣 have bouba/Kiki prefs
❓️ 🫎 pass Wug test
❓️ 🦙 do center embedding
❓️ 🐌 experience garden paths

#linguistics

We're happy to announce our Call for Papers! You may submit to (1) one of the thematic workshops, (2) the general poster session, which is thematically unrestricted and (3) the student poster session which will also feature the Best Student Poster Award.

Submissions open from March 2 to April 30.

S radostí oznamujeme výzvu k zaslání příspěvků na naše Bienále! Příspěvky bude možno zasílat do 1) tematických panelů, 2) obecné posterové sekce a 3) studentské posterové sekce, která bude spojena s Cenou za nejlepší poster.

Portál OpenReview se otevře 2. března a sběr příspěvků uzavřeme 30. dubna.

This will include a word order workshop organized by Angelika Kiss and me, featuring an invited talk by Marieke Schouwstra (@uva.nl). We’re hoping for a rich and diverse program, the call will follow soon

Confs: Biennial of Czech Linguistics 2026 From 18 to 20 November 2026, the second Biennial of Czech Linguistics will take place at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno. The aim of the Biennial is to cover Czech linguistics in its full methodological and thematic breadth. We welcome contributions and participants from all linguistic disciplines and philologies, representing a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The conference is structured around thematic workshops and will also include a general pos

Confs: Biennial of Czech Linguistics 2026

I recently got this highly relevant invitation to submit a paper!

Vím, že platím jim, je to průběžný systém, ale přesto je zde nějaká společenská smlouva, že když člověk celý život do systému platí, tak má pak ve stáří nárok, aby jej stát též zajistil. Bohužel kvůli demografickému vývoji této země to nebude udržitelné.