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Linguistic corpora have been a vital resource for understanding not only how we use language, but also how we process words and sentences. In order to better understand language processing, researchers have recently been creating corpora that integrate both traditional text annotations as well as behavioural measurements collected from human participants. In this paper we introduce the HeCz Corpus, which to our knowledge is the largest such example of a behavioural corpus, containing 1,919 newspaper headlines taken from a Czech language news website. The sample consisted of 1,872 participants, each reading approximately 120 headlines. Each headline was read using a self-paced reading, meaning that every word in the corpus can be analyzed for reading time. After reading each headline, each participant answered a question relating to a specific information contained within the headline, providing a measurement of comprehension. To facilitate better understanding of participant level variation in how the headlines are processed, we collected data on the participant's mood state immediately prior to their participation, along with other basic demographic information. We also collected data from a subset of participants who read the stimuli in the initial testing round, but also completed the same experiment in a second round after a one-month gap, which can provide new insights into how texts are processed and understood when being re-read. In order to highlight the practical uses of the corpus, our analyses focus on how reading times are modulated by i) headline length in words, ii) trial order, and iii) testing round, in addition to examining the role of targeted information location in comprehension accuracy. HeCz thus provides a unique and novel resource that can be used by psycholinguists and cognitive scientists more generally, in order to gain new insights into how real-world language is processed and understood.

Number agreement attraction in comprehension is a phenomenon that has been documented in various typologically diverse languages. This evidence has led to claims about the cross-linguistic uniformity of agreement attraction effects and its independence from the grammatical features of a particular language. However, recent research has shown that in Czech, number agreement attraction effects are either absent or negligible in size. This directly contradicts the cross-linguistic uniformity hypothesis. The current paper aims to further corroborate this finding and presents a direct experimental comparison of Czech and English. Two comparable self-paced reading experiments were conducted using stimuli that were translation equivalents in Czech and English. Our analyses demonstrate a preference for the null model in Czech (no agreement attraction), unlike in English, where an interaction between verb number and attractor number was preferred. Moreover, when we compare the data from the two experiments directly, we find that the interaction between language and attraction was also preferred. In sum, we provide evidence against the cross-linguistic uniformity hypothesis for agreement attraction effects and suggest that processing patterns may differ between languages even for almost identical structures, such as agreement relations.

Number agreement attraction in comprehension has been extensively studied in various languages and it has been claimed that attraction effects are generally present across languages. In this paper, four experiments on Czech are presented, each examining a different structure. The Bayesian hierarchical models and Bayes factor analysis pointed towards no agreement attraction effects in three of the experiments. Only in one experiment an effect interpretable as signaling agreement attraction was observed. Its size, however, was so small that it did not translate into a clear preference for models with agreement attraction. The data from the four experiments were further compared to available data from several other languages (English, Armenian, Arabic, and Spanish). The emerging picture is that in Czech, agreement attraction effects are negligible in size if they appear at all. This presents a serious challenge to current theoretical explanations of agreement attraction effects.

The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.

Self-paced reading has been a widely used experimental method for study of the processing of sentences and texts. In this paper, we introduce the method to the Czech audience. We summarize its advantages and limitations and provide practical suggestions on stimuli construction and data pro-cessing. We also present different variants of the method, we discuss its ecological validity, and we summarize the experimental evidence showing that reaction times collected in self-paced reading can be linked to processing demands people might experience during reading. Finally, we present three examples of the application of the method: an experiment on agreement attraction in Czech, an experiment on garden-path sentences in Czech and an experiment studying the processing of short discourses in English. We also briefly discuss new trends that connect corpus linguistics with psycholinguistic discourse processing research and lead to the development of reading-time corpora.

Agreement attraction (i.e. facilitatory interference manifested by sped-up reading times) observed in establishing subject-verb number agreement by comprehenders when reading ungrammatical sentences with number-matching attractor nouns, has been long-established and cross-linguistically validated. For languages with rich inflectional morphology, case syncretism has been suggested to play a role in the phenomenon. In the present self-paced reading study on Czech, we show that unlike in other languages, facilitatory interference is not observed and that not even case syncretism is sufficient for its appearance. We put forward several possible explanations for this anomaly exhibited by Czech compared to other languages. We propose that the lack of semantic agreement in the language could be one of these. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for the models of long-distance dependency resolution in comprehension.

Agreement attraction (i.e. facilitatory interference manifested by sped-up reading times) observed in establishing subject-verb number agreement by comprehenders when reading ungrammatical sentences with number-matching attractor nouns, has been long-established and cross-linguistically validated. For languages with rich inflectional morphology, case syncretism has been suggested to play a role in the phenomenon. In the present self-paced reading study on Czech, we show that unlike in other languages, facilitatory interference is not observed and that not even case syncretism is sufficient for its appearance. We put forward several possible explanations for this anomaly exhibited by Czech compared to other languages. We propose that the lack of semantic agreement in the language could be one of these. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for the models of long-distance dependency resolution in comprehension.

The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.

The paper addresses both issues of first language (L1) attrition and second language (L2) acquisition in the context of two mutually intelligible languages from a psycholinguistic perspective. It summarises results of a study examining how native speakers of Slovak living long-term in Czechia process and produce Slovak and Czech cognates and noncognates. Two experimental sessions consisting of lexical decision task and picture naming task were conducted once with Slovak stimuli and once with Czech stimuli. The results showed that Slovak noncognates were processed and produced more slowly by Slovaks who use their L1 less, and their L2 more. Analogically, this subgroup processed and produced Czech noncognates relatively faster. Thus, the experiments give evidence of (a) L1 attrition (online processing difficulties), and (b) the shift towards L2 patterns depending on the amount of L1 and L2 use even in speakers of two very close and mutually intelligible languages.

The paper addresses both issues of first language (L1) attrition and second language (L2) acquisition in the context of two mutually intelligible languages from a psycholinguistic perspective. It summarises results of a study examining how native speakers of Slovak living long-term in Czechia process and produce Slovak and Czech cognates and noncognates. Two experimental sessions consisting of lexical decision task and picture naming task were conducted once with Slovak stimuli and once with Czech stimuli. The results showed that Slovak noncognates were processed and produced more slowly by Slovaks who use their L1 less, and their L2 more. Analogically, this subgroup processed and produced Czech noncognates relatively faster. Thus, the experiments give evidence of (a) L1 attrition (online processing difficulties), and (b) the shift towards L2 patterns depending on the amount of L1 and L2 use even in speakers of two very close and mutually intelligible languages.

Making use of quality human resources, including managers at all levels of management, is one way to gain a competitive advantage for a hotel or a hotel chain regarding its competitors. The authors of this article surveyed views on selected management principles that influence the quality of their work in meeting the organization's goals. The method of research was a questionnaire survey conducted between hotel and hotel chain managers. The research dealt with the assessment of their opinions on the importance of selected management principles. In the cases of key variables, statistical methods of dependency testing have been applied to allow validation or disproving of the established hypotheses. The research results show that hotel and hotel chain managers in the Czech Republic determined "customer orientation" and "result orientation" as the most important managerial principles. The "fairness and commitment to ethical values" and the "commitment to a company " were considered as the least important principles. The research confirmed that good relationships and loyalty of customers, alternatively loyalty to a hotel or hotel chain, bring results indirectly. The "dependence of assessment the significance of managerial principles on management level, age, and expertise of managers" was confirmed. No dependence was proven in the "gender and attained education attainment of managers, as well as in the "classification and size" of the hotel or hotel chain in which the managers work.

Making use of quality human resources, including managers at all levels of management, is one way to gain a competitive advantage for a hotel or a hotel chain regarding its competitors. The authors of this article surveyed views on selected management principles that influence the quality of their work in meeting the organization's goals. The method of research was a questionnaire survey conducted between hotel and hotel chain managers. The research dealt with the assessment of their opinions on the importance of selected management principles. In the cases of key variables, statistical methods of dependency testing have been applied to allow validation or disproving of the established hypotheses. The research results show that hotel and hotel chain managers in the Czech Republic determined "customer orientation" and "result orientation" as the most important managerial principles. The "fairness and commitment to ethical values" and the "commitment to a company " were considered as the least important principles. The research confirmed that good relationships and loyalty of customers, alternatively loyalty to a hotel or hotel chain, bring results indirectly. The "dependence of assessment the significance of managerial principles on management level, age, and expertise of managers" was confirmed. No dependence was proven in the "gender and attained education attainment of managers, as well as in the "classification and size" of the hotel or hotel chain in which the managers work.

The ILRB has been created by two cooperating teams - by the team of the Institute of Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences and the team of the NLP Centre at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University (2004-2008). The tool consists of two sections: wordlist and reference (explanatory) one. Comments and remarks are welcome and should be send to the address poradna@ujc.cas.cz. 1. Wordlist section It contains more than 60 000 dictionary entries and is based on the glossary of the School Rules of Czech Orthography, the Dictionary of the Literary Czech and selected entries from the New Dictionary of Words of Foreign Origin and Dictionary of Neologisms. The entries typically include information that is asked about frequently by the users. Also inflectional forms of the particular words forms are offered in the form of tables thanks to the morphological analyzer ajka created at the Faculty of Informatics, MU. The dictionary part is linked to the explanatory one through the hypertext links. 2. Reference section It comprises the explanations about linguistic phenomena described in the Rules of Czech Orthography and contemporary Czech grammars, frequently and repeatedly asked by the users turning to the Linguistic Advisory Line in the Institute of Czech Language. In the offered explanations some typical spelling problems are dealt with including the appropriate recommendations. The ILRB is regularly updated and completed, new expressions are added and made more precise., Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in project 1ET200610406 and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in projects LM2010013, LC536 and 2C06009.

Práce se zabývá regionální politikou Rakouska, zaměřuje se také na vyčlenění finančních podpor ze strukturálních fondů určených pro Rakousko na léta 2000-2006 a obsahuje komparaci spolkových zemí pomocí statistických metod., Ústav veřejné správy a práva, Dokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobou

Práce se zavývá hospodařením tří domovů důchodců, a to ve Ždírci, Telči a Jihlavě - Lesnov v letech 1998 - 2001. Charakterizuje zde domovy důchodců, sleduje jejich hospodaření a analyzuje jednotlivé složky příjmů a výdajů. Popisuje další perspektivy rozvoje domovů důchodců, nejen z ekonomického hlediska., Dokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobou

The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of particular value to psycholinguists and other interested researchers. The dataset has been made freely available.