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Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics


Charles University, Czech Republic
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics

ÚFAL
Šárka Zikánová

Šárka Zikánová Lešnerová

office
423
email
sarka.zikanova@mff.cuni.cz
phone
+420 951 554 224

Main Research Interests

I am a research associate at the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics (Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Prague, Czech Republic). My research interests evolved from the word order in Older Czech (position of the clitic se, position of a verb, information structure, Latin influences) to the information structure and discourse relations in new Czech, compared to other languages. I am especially interested in the interplay of syntax, information structure, discourse relations and coreference. I took part in the development of the Prague Dependency Treebank, the Prague Discourse Treebank, the Czech RST Discourse Treebank and other corpora. My specific research area is implicit discourse relations. Nowadays, I am turning my attention to the psycholinguistic studies of discourse and other coherence phenomena.

Projects

Currently, I am a PI of the grant project Disagreement in corpus annotation and variation in human understanding of text (HVar, no. 24-11132S,  Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, 2024–2026) [Neshoda v korpusové anotaci ve vztahu k víceznačnosti textu].

Past projects – Principal Investigator

  • Implicit discourse relations in Czech (no. 17-03461S, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, 2017–2019) [Implicitní diskurzní vztahy v češtině]
  • Multilingual Corpus Annotation as a Support for Language Technologies (no. LH14011, Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 2014–16) [Vícejazyčná korpusová anotace jako podpora jazykových technologií] – bilateral cooperation with the Penn Discourse Treebank in Philadelphia, USA
  • Coreference, discourse relations and information structure in a contrastive perspective (no. P406/12/0658, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, 2012–2015) [Koreference, diskurs a aktuální členění v kontrastivním pohledu]

Projects – Team Member

I have been taking part in many projects carried out at the Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, related to computational and corpus linguistics, Czech studies and Latin.

  • 2022–2026 RES-Q+ Comprehensive solutions of healthcare improvement based on the global Registry of Stroke Care Quality (101057603, Horizon Europe)
  • 2020 – 2024 LUSyD: Language Understanding: from Syntax to Discourse (EXPRO, GX20-16819X, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)
  • 2020 – 2022 Global Coherence of Czech Texts in the Corpus-Based Perspective (20-09853S, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)
  • 2019 – 2022 Digital Research Infrastructure for Language Technologies, Arts and Humanities (LM2018101; Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports)
  • 2015 – 2018 Linguistic Subjects in the specialization “Mathematical Linguistics” [Lingvistické předměty v oboru Matematická lingvistika] (MFF, Charles University)
  • 2015 – 2017 TextLink: Structuring Discourse in Multilingual Europe (COST, LD15052, Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports)
  • 2013 – 2017 PARSEME: Parsing and Multiword Expressions (IC1207; EC FP6)
  • 2010 – 2015 LINDAT – Clarin: Establishing and Operating the Czech Node of Pan-European Infrastructure for Research (LM2010013; Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports)
  • 2010 – 2012 Towards a Computational Analysis of Text Structure (KONTAKT, ME10018; Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports)
  • 2009 – 2011 From the Structure of a Sentence to Textual Relationships  (GA ČR 405/09/0729; Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)
  • 2009 – 2011 Linguistic Analysis of Czech Texts from the Period of Humanism [Lingvistická analýza českých humanistických textů] (GAUK 168/2009, Grant Agency of the Charles University)
  • 2005 – 2011 Modern Methods, Structures, and Systems of Computer Science (MSM0021620838, Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports)
  • 2005 – 2009 Language as a Human Activity, its Product and Factor [Jazyk jako lidská činnost, její produkt a factor] (MSM–0021620825; Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports)
  • 2005 – 2007 Preparation and Publication of "the Repertory of 17th and 18th Century manuscripts from Museum Collections in Bohemia II (K–O)" [Příprava a vydání Repertoria rukopisů 17. a 18. století z muzejních sbírek v Čechách II (K–O)] (405/05/0449, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)
  • 2003 – 2006 Languages, Literature and Culture in the Czech Lands from Late Humanism to the Enlightenment [Jazyky, literatura a kultura v českých zemích od pozdního humanismu po osvícení] (405/03/H052, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)
  • 2003 – 2005 Large Language Corpora and their Automatic Analysis [Velké jazykové korpusy a jejich automatická analýza] (405/03/0913, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)

Curriculum Vitae

Professional history

Since 2004: Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics (Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics) – annotation and research on information structure and discourse in Czech and other languages, teaching, supervisor of PhD. students

2002–2015 Institute of the Czech Language and the Theory of Communication (Charles University, Faculty of Arts) – teaching, supervisor of Bc., MA. and PhD. students

2002 Universität Leipzig, Philologische Fakultät, Institut für Slavistik

1998–2001 Institute for the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences, Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography

1998–2000 Centre for Classical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Department of Medieval Lexicography

 

Studies

2001–2006: PhD studies at the Institute of the Czech Language and the Theory of Communication, Charles University, Faculty of Arts. Specialization: Czech Language. PhD thesis: Word order in late Old Czech (1500-1620): location of a synthetic predicate in the main clause. [Slovosled ve starší češtině (1500-1620): postavení syntetického přísudku ve větě hlavní] https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/5291

1995–2001 MA studies at the Charles University, Faculty of Arts. Specialization: Czech Language and Literature – Latin – Pedagogical Supplement. Master thesis: The Position of the Clitic SE in Kryštof Harant's text The Journey from the Kingdom of Bohemia to the Holy Land. [Postavení příklonky se v textu Kryštofa Haranta Cesta z Království českého do Země svaté]

 

Organizational activities

2024    The 24th Conference Information Technologies – Applications and Theory (ITAT 2024); Workshop on Automata, Formal and  Natural Languages (WAFNL), (Drienica, Čergov, Slovakia) – chairing the panel

2023    PsychoComp 2023: Workshop on Psycholinguistics and Computational Linguistics Cooperation (Hejnice, Czech Republic)

2018    2e Journée d’études franco-tchèque: Text Structure and Corpus Linguistics (Prague, Czech Republic) – cooperation Prague – Metz – České Budějovice

2016    Discourse Relations in Multilingual Context (Prague, Czech Republic)

2011    Prague Workshop on Discourse Annotation (Prague, Czech Republic) – cooperation Charles University, Prague – University of Pennsylvania, USA

 

Membership in scientific societies

2009–2014 Czech Slavistic Committee

2010–2014 Grammar commission of the Czech Slavistic Committee

 

Popularization

2004–2007 Committee of the Olympics in the Czech Language

 

Awards

2011 Award in the Competition of High-Quality Monographs of the Charles University: for the book Zikánová Šárka: The Position of the Verbal Predicate in Older Czech (1500–1620). Karolinum, Prague, ISBN 978-80-246-1381-9, 234 pp., 2009.

Teaching

Currently

NPFL082 – Information Structure of Sentences and Discourse Structure

NPFL141 – Linguistics

 

Current students

PhD

Mgr. Mariia Anisimova

 

Former students

PhD

Zuzanna Bedřichová

Kateřina Rysová

 

MA

František Martínek

Kateřina Rysová

Magdaléna Rysová

Pavlína Jiranová

Lydie Boháčová

 

Bc

Magdaléna Rysová

 

Subjects taught in the past

Faculty of Mathematics and Physics:

NPFL115 – Reading in Pragmatics and Semantics

NPFL100 – Variability of Languages in Time and Space

NPFL121 – Vybrané kapitoly z české gramatiky [Selected Chapters in Czech Grammar]

 

Faculty of Arts:

Syntax

Slavistika [Slavistics]

Slovenština [Slovak Language]

Vývoj jazyka a historická mluvnice I, II [Development of the Czech Language and Its Historical Grammar I, II]

Vývoj jazyka a historická mluvnice pro cizince [Development of the Czech Language and Its Historical Grammar for Foreign Students]

Čtení odborných lingvistických textů ve dvou slovanských jazycích [Reading of scientific linguistic texts in two Slavic languages]

Úvod do práce s Pražským závislostním korpusem [Introduction to Work with the Prague Dependency Treebank]

Čeština ve světle Pražského závislostního korpusu [Czech Language in the Light of the Prague Dependency Treebank]

Selected Bibliography

Books:

Zikánová, Šárka. 2021. Implicitní diskurzní vztahy v češtině. [Implicit Discourse Relations in Czech.] Prague: Charles University, ISBN 9788088132127, 192 pp.

Zikánová, Šárka. 2009. Postavení slovesného přísudku ve starší češtině (1500–1620). [The Position of the Verbal Predicate in Older Czech (1500–1620).] Prague: Karolinum, ISBN 978-80-246-1381-9, 234 pp.

Zikánová, Šárka – Hajičová, Eva – Hladká Barbora – Jínová Pavlína – Mírovský Jiří – Nedoluzhko Anna – Poláková Lucie – Rysová Kateřina – Rysová Magdaléna – Václ Jan. 2015. Discourse and Coherence. From the Sentence Structure to Relations in Text. Prague: Charles University, ISBN 978-80-904571-8-8, 274 pp.

 

Articles:

Zikánová, Šárka – Mírovský, Jiří – Synková, Pavlína. Explicit and Implicit Discourse Relations in the Prague Discourse Treebank. 2019. In Ekštein, Karel (ed.). Text, Speech, and Dialogue: 22nd International Conference, TSD 2019, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 11–13, 2019, Proceedings. Cham / Heidelberg / New York / Dordrecht / London: Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-030-27946-2, ISSN 0302-9743, pp. 236-248

Zikánová, Šárka – Mladová, Lucie – Mírovský, Jiří – Jínová, Pavlína. 2010. Typical Cases of Annotators’ Disagreement in Discourse Annotations in Prague Dependency Treebank. In: Calzolari, Nicoletta – Choukri Khalid – Maegaard Bente – Mariani Joseph – Odijk Jan – Piperidis Stelios – Rosner Mike – Tapias Daniel (eds.). Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2010). Valletta, Malta: European Language Resources Association, ISBN 2-9517408-6-7, pp. 2002–2006. http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/index.html

Zikánová, Šárka – Týnovský, Miroslav. 2009. Identification of Topic and Focus in Czech: Comparative Evaluation on Prague Dependency Treebank. In: Zybatow, Gerhild – Junghanns, Uwe – Lenertová, Denisa – Biskup, Petr (eds.). Studies in Formal Slavic Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics and Information Structure. Formal Description of Slavic Languages 7. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, ISBN 978-3-631-57788-2, ISSN 1436-6150, pp. 343–353.

Zikánová, Šárka – Malink, Marko. 2008. Clitic Climbing and Theta-Roles in Upper Sorbian and Czech. In: Meyer, Roland – Zybatow, Gerhild – Szucsich, Luka – Junghanns, Uwe (eds.). Formal Description of Slavic Languages: The Fifth Conference, Leipzig 2003. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, ISBN 978-3-631-55160-8, ISSN 1436-6150, pp. 396–407.

Lešnerová-Zikánová, Šárka – Oliva, Karel. 2004. Česká vztažná souvětí s nestandardní strukturou. [Czech relative compound sentences with a non-standard structure.] Slovo a slovesnost, 64, 4, pp. 241–252, ISSN 0037-7031.