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In 2020, the Czech Republic commemorated an anniversary of a significant humanistic thinker, writer, and theologist, whose importance has exceeded the borders of the Czech lands. Jan Amos Comenius (28 March 1592 - 15 November 1670) is a leading representative of the Czech culture of the 17th century, and he became famous, especially as an author of didactic works, which represented a breakthrough in the field of education and inspired the way to modern educational methods. These works were based on Comenius' tireless effort to look for didactic means to spread the knowledge he managed to gather. Thanks to these innovations, he became known as the teacher of nations. The aim of this paper is to present some of his most significant works in this area. The following part of the paper will focus on another aspect of his versatile activities in connection with the difficulties experienced by the Czech nation during the tragic and turbulent times after the Battle of White Mountain and the ban on non-Catholic religions. At that time, many Czech scholars emigrated. A substantial part of Comenius' work is devoted to expressing his feelings concerning the destiny of his nation and looking for ways to comfort and encourage those living in exile. In this respect, this paper will analyse one of his most significant works, the allegory The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. The paper will also deal with Comenius' activities related to the Unity of the Brethren, which published the Kralice Bible - an important achievement for the Czech language and culture. In the midst of turbulent and wartime times, Comenius, in the spirit of his humanistic mission, realised that to improve conditions in the world, the spiritual renewal of humanity was necessary, and he devoted his life to searching for ways of ennobling man's life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a part of a research project which is aimed at the creation of corpusdriven semantic field of the concept of "empire" in Russian, English and Czech languages. The result will be a lexical semantic net (thesaurus) with frequency characteristics and usage examples for lexical units. This paper presents results of automatic creation of the semantic field in Russian. Achievement of the goal is provided with the solution of a number of tasks, in particular, the corpus research of semantic relations of the word "empire" with other words based on distributional and statistical methods. The main tool of the study is Sketch Engine system. Text material is represented by corpora of Russian texts of XVIII-XX centuries. The major thematic content is history, literature, journalism, and philosophy. Results obtained show that usage of text corpora and corpus tools makes it possible to detect syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations in the automated mode and to create broader and more adequate filling of the lexical-semantic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors would like to focus on the importance of the translation of the Kralice Bible (named after the village of Kralice nad Oslavou in Moravia where it was printed), whose third and most famous edition was published in 1613, for the development of the Czech language and culture at the time of the Renaissance. The first part of the paper outlines the situation in Europe in the 16th century, during the Humanism and Renaissance period, when the emphasis was put on the importance of translating the Bible from the original languages (Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) rather than relying on the Latin Vulgate (dated from the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries AD). In this respect, special attention is devoted to the territory of present-day Germany. The next part will explain the conditions under which the new translation of the Bible into Czech was created, the importance of this translation for the cultural development of the area, as well as the development of the Czech language, and the follow-up tradition of translating the Bible in the Czech lands. The paper will also point out some aspects of the demanding work of the translator dealing with these ancient texts, like using good judgement in order to select words in the target language that best represent the ideas of the text in the original language, rather than translating strictly word for word (as suggested by some scholars who argue that this word-for-word approach would be a way to prevent shifting the original meaning); in fact, no modern language provides exact equivalent of the vocabulary and grammar of Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, so word-for-word translation would not be clear for readers and could even lead to wrong interpretations. On the other hand, paraphrasing the text too freely would also lead to misinterpretation. The authors of the Kralice Bible took into account the need to maintain the original meaning of the Scriptures while trying to create a translation comprehensible for the contemporary reader. Thus, it was possible to create a work that became a model for the standard Czech language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the use and description of quantitative analysis of texts for the processing of Czech verbal communication within psycholinguistic disciplines. It focuses on the application of a computer-assisted procedure, which aims to classify and quantify formal characteristics (FPT) of recorded texts. This system enables the analysis of vast amounts of content data as well as facilitates the comparison of the results with other data, in particular with information about the communicators, such as their personal characteristics. The paper also briefly presents the research QPA-FPT, which is carried out in 2013-2016 at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice (Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, CZ) as a pilot study for the CPACT research. The research aims to enrich the current state of knowledge of the psycholinguistic analysis of texts, to enhance computer-assisted methods of text analysis, and to provide data for a possible application of the procedure within diagnostic and psychological disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]