Research
Projects
Title: Grammatical tinnitus and its role in the perception of foreign language accent. A comparison of German and Polish (Project GRANITUS)
Funding: Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung
Project coordinators: Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin; PD Dr. Marzena Żygis, PI Germany; Sarah Wesolek, MA, University of Wrocław; Prof. Dr hab. Joanna Błaszczak, PI Poland, Dr Piotr Gulgowski
Aims: Our project has the overarching goal of gaining more insight into the perception processes of foreign language accents. We aim to show that perception is not only based on the linguistic signal, but is a much more complex phenomenon. In our study we will examine factors that relate to (i) the signal, (ii) the speaker, and (iii) the listener in the German-Polish context. Of particular importance are the following questions:
Question 1: If both phonetic and grammatical features influence the perception of foreign language accent, are there differences in their weighting? Are we more sensitive to phonetic peculiarities and do we turn a deaf ear to grammatical mistakes?
Question 2: To what extent does the attitude of the listener towards the speaker play a role in the perception of the foreign language accent? Does the information about the speaker's origin also influence perception?
Question 3: What role does the linguistic background of the listener play in the perception of the foreign language accent? Is there a difference between mono- and multilingual listeners?
To answer these questions, we are planning a series of perception and event-related potentials (ERP) experiments.
More information: https://www.leibniz-zas.de/en/research/research-areas/laboratory-phonology/granitus/
Dates: 02.03.2020-02.08.2020
Title: Ecopoetic Entanglements: Children’s Poetry Mobilizing John Clare’s Artistic Legacy
Funding: This project has received funding from the Bekker Programme of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange
Project coordinators: Dr Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (University of Wrocław), Prof. Eugene Giddens (Anglia Ruskin University)
Aims: 'Ecopoetic Entanglements: Children’s Poetry Mobilizing John Clare’s Artistic Legacy' argues for the contemporary significance of Clare’s output by exploring the corpus of ecopoetry written since 2012 by pupils of John Clare Primary school in Helpston, Clare’s birthplace. Every year, all children write poems on a topic selected by the John Clare Society. These poems are not only writing exercises, but also children’s literature authored by children. As they address questions of environmental ethics, they express children’s bio-social imagination responding to environmental problems. The project relies on new materialism, post-qualitative inquiry and child-adult collaborations to explore Clare’s poems and the children’s ecopoetry as instantiating an embodied ecology of reciprocal affectivity. The realization of the project will provide examples of discipline-shifting new materialist, post-qualitative and participatory methodologies.
Dates: 02.03.2020-02.08.2020
Title: University for Seniors – an innovative approach to adult education (I place in the competition of projects for universities - POWR.03.01.00-IP.08-00-3MU/18 - Program Operacyjny Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój)
Funding: National Centre for Research and Development; agreement no: POWR.03.01.00-00-T214/18
Project coordinator: Bogna Bartosz (PhD) – Institute of Psychology, Wrocław University
Coordinator of the “Language competence” team: Małgorzata Baran-Łucarz (PhD) – Institute of English Studies, Wrocław University
“Language competence” team: Agata Słowik-Krogulec (MA) - Institute of English Studies, Wrocław University; Magdalena Dziurzyńska (MA) – graduate of English philology, Institute of English Studies, Wrocław University; Julia Bartosz (MA) – graduate of culture studies and psychogerontology, Wrocław University.
Aims: The project aims at developing selected four key competencies of seniors, suggested by the UE as part of Life-Long Learning, i.e., competences in English, IT, social skills and learning skills. The main objectives of the project are: developing syllabi/programmes for 50-hour courses on each of the four competencies, designing teaching/learning materials (coursebooks) and teaching methodology handbooks for teachers/educators, testing the effectiveness and suitability of the programmes and materials, and finally, training those who wish to work with seniors.
Dates: October 2018 – June 2021
Title: The perception and processing of foreign accent from a German-Polish perspective
Project coordinators: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak (University of Wrocław) and Dr Marzena Żygis PD (Leibniz-ZAS & Humboldt University of Berlin)
Participants (of the Polish part of the project): Hanna Kędzierska, MA (University of Wrocław), Piotr Gulgowski, MA (University of Wrocław), students of the ETHEL Master programme in linguistics (“Empirical and Theoretical Linguistics”)
Funding institution: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) and MNiSW (PPP – Programme for Project-Related Personal)
Aims: The goal of this project is to investigate the perception and neural processing of foreign accented speech by making use of a novel combination of experimental methods (perceptual tests based on Likert scale, EEG experiments, interviews, questionnaires). In particular, the project investigates how Polish native speakers perceive and process the German accent in Polish speech and, conversely, how German native speakers perceive and process the Polish accent in German speech. The aim of this study is to gain more insight into the role of a listener’s attitude towards other speaker groups. We are particularly interested in determining the extent to which a speaker’s background information shapes his/her perception and processing of a foreign accent (to this end we shall consider stereotypes about the ancestry of the speaker). Our study aims to clarify a possible discrepancy between perception and brain reactions to foreign accents (objective component), on the one hand, and subjective attitudes towards foreign accents (subjective component), on the other.
Dates: 01.01.2018-31.12.2019
Title: Motivational trajectories of former language assistants abroad
Funding: National Science Centre (Miniatura 1)
Project coordinator: Anna Czura, PhD
Aims: The project aims to observe the motivational trajectories of future language teachers, distinguish factors affecting teacher motivation at different stages of professional development, and analyse the impact of a teaching period abroad on this construct.
Dates: 19.09.2017-18.09.2018
Title: Grammatical exponents of valence in the languages of Eastern and Central Europe
Scholarship holder: Dr Jerzy Gaszewski
Supervisor: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Funding institution: National Science Centre (FUGA 5)
Dates: 01.11.2016-31.10.2019
Title: Linguistic predictions in context: Collocations and selection from a psycholinguistic and corpus linguistic perspective
Project coordinators: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak (University of Wrocław) and Prof. Roland Meyer (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Participants (of the Polish part of the project): Dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (University of Wrocław), Hanna Kędzierska, MA (University of Wrocław), Paula Liczbańska (University of Wrocław), Piotr Gulgowski, MA (University of Wrocław), Dr Jerzy Gaszewski (University of Wrocław), Dr Wojciech Witkowski (University of Wrocław)
Funding institution: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) and MNiSW (PPP – Programme for Project-Related Personal)
Aims: This project aims – by investigating corpora and conducting psycholinguistic experiments – to answer the following research question: How strong is the relation between regular cooccurrences in large text corpora on the one hand, and psycho-/neurolinguistic measures of collocation and selectional restrictions on the other? Answers to this question will have strong implications for the more general issue of whether textual corpus data actually mirror our "thinking", i.e., our psycholinguistic reality.
Dates: 01.01.2017-31.12.2018
Title: Psycholinguistic investigations into number and quantification in natural language
Project coordinator: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Participants: Dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (University of Wrocław), Piotr Gulgowski, MA (University of Wrocław), Dr Barbara Tomaszewicz (University of Cologne)
Funding institution: National Science Centre (OPUS 5)
Aims: The overarching goal of the project is to provide detailed insights into the nature of the processing of number and quantification in natural language through a series of psycholinguistic experiments investigating three specific research problems: (i) number interpretation of nouns and verbs based on morphology, context and lexical semantics (using the technique of reaction time measuring in a variant of a Stroop test), (ii) the interpretation of imperfective aspect with a special focus on the composition of its iterative (plural) and progressive (single-event) readings (using the techniques of lexical decision, cross-modal study, self-paced reading, eyetracking during reading), (iii) the mental representation of lexical properties of quantifier terms (using the technique of eyetracking – the visual-world paradigm).
Dates: 28.03.2014-27.03.2018
More information: http://www.ifa.uni.wroc.pl/opus/
Title: Decomposing categories in the brain: Focus on linguistic categories expressing eventualities
Project coordinator: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Participants: Dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (University of Wrocław), Piotr Gulgowski, MA (University of Wrocław), Dr Anna Czypionka (University of Konstanz), Dr Barbara Tomaszewicz (University of Cologne)
Funding institution: Foundation for Polish Science (FOCUS)
Aims: i) processing the grammatical categories of noun and verb with a special focus on nominalizations (using the technique of event-related potentials); ii) processing perfective and imperfective verbal aspect with a particular focus on context-driven aspectual coercion (using the technique of event-related potentials); iii) processing German verbs with separable prefixes (particles) and the role of such prefixes in selecting for the Genitive case (using the techniques of event-related potentials, self-paced reading, acceptability test (based on Magnitude Estimation), sentence completion task); iv) selectional restrictions of verbs including the phenomenon of complement coercion (using the technique of self-paced reading); v) relations between the category of number in the nominal domain and the category of aspect in the verbal domain (using acceptability questionnaires); mechanisms of morphological decomposition in nouns and verbs (using the technique of priming).
Dates: 01.01.2014-31.03.2016
More information: http://www.ifa.uni.wroc.pl/focus/
Title: Understanding linguistic categories: Temporal relations at the interfaces
Project coordinator: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Participants: Dr Patrycja Jabłońska (University of Wrocław), Dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (University of Wrocław), Dr Krzysztof Migdalski (University of Wrocław)
Funding institution: Foundation for Polish Science (FOCUS)
Aims: The project investigates the phenomenon of temporality in connection with relations between the main components of the language system.
The project consists of three sub-projects, each investigating a separate relation:
- Sub-project 1 “Breaking down temporality to its building blocks: Tense, Aspect and Modality”; research subject: syntax-semantics relation; secondary discipline: linguistic typology
- Sub-project 2 “Tense changes over time”;research subject: syntax-phonology relation; secondary discipline: diachronic linguistics
- Sub-project 3 “Temporal relations across sentences and languages: A case study of temporal converbs”; research subject: syntax-morphology relation; secondary discipline: psycholinguistics (using the technique of event-related potentials)
Dates: 01.10.2010-30.09.2013
More information: http://www.ifa.uni.wroc.pl/trait/
Title: ChildAct: Shaping a Preferable Future: Children Reading, Thinking and Talking about AlternativeCommunities and Times
Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 745888.
Project coordinators: Dr Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (Uniwersytet Wrocławski), Prof. Eugene Giddens (Anglia Ruskin University)
Aims
Despite overall agreement that children’s voices matter in the development of policies affecting them, little effort has been made to develop cultural practices encouraging utopianism as a critical attitude to reality and a means of facilitating the expression of formative opinions on the part of children. Nor have young readers’ interpretations of utopian literature been investigated as indicating their perception of the sociopolitical arrangements around them. Notwithstanding the popularity of YA dystopian fiction, little attention has been given to utopian contents in other children’s texts. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak addresses these lacunae in a project examining utopianism as a significant element of discourse about children, manifesting in various cultural products addressed to them. She also conducts empirical participatory research (with children as peer researchers) aimed at creating egalitarian spaces within which young readers are not only heard but also collaborate with adults towards a better understanding of how books shape ideas for the desirable future. This approach—an innovation in children’s literature studies—has a huge potential for making children’s literature scholarship relevant to young people’s lives as a cultural practice sustaining intergenerational dialogue.
Dates: 21.08.2017-20.08.2018
More information:
Title: Comparative analysis of psychological predicates in Polish, Spanish and English
Funding institution: National Science Centre
Project coordinator: Prof. Bożena Rozwadowska
Participants: Prof. Anna Bondaruk (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin), Prof. Ewa Willim (Jagiellonian University), Prof. Ángel L. Jiménez-Fernández (University of Sevilla), Dr Adam Biały (University of Wrocław), Dr Wojciech Witkowski (University of Wrocław)
Dates: 22.07.2015-21.07.2018
Aims: The main aim of the project is a comprehensive comparative analysis of psychological predicates (often referred to as affective predicates) in the framework of generative grammar. The scope of analysis comprises Polish and Spanish material in contrast with English data.
Title: Psycholinguistic investigations into number and quantification in natural language
Project coordinator: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Participants: Dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (University of Wrocław), Piotr Gulgowski, MA (University of Wrocław), Dr Barbara Tomaszewicz (University of Cologne)
Funding institution: National Science Centre (Opus 5)
Dates: from 28.03.2014
More information: http://www.ifa.uni.wroc.pl/opus/
Title: Decomposing categories in the brain: Focus on linguistic categories expressing eventualities
Project coordinator: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Participants: Dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska (University of Wrocław), Piotr Gulgowski, MA (University of Wrocław), Dr Anna Czypionka (University of Konstanz), Dr Barbara Tomaszewicz (University of Cologne)
Funding institution: Foundation for Polish Science (FOCUS)
Dates: 1.01.2014-31.03.2016
More information: http://www.ifa.uni.wroc.pl/focus/
Title: ChildAct: Shaping a Preferable Future: Children Reading, Thinking and Talking about AlternativeCommunities and Times
Funding: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 745888.
Project coordinators: Dr Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (Uniwersytet Wrocławski), Prof. Eugene Giddens (Anglia Ruskin University)
Aims
Despite overall agreement that children’s voices matter in the development of policies affecting them, little effort has been made to develop cultural practices encouraging utopianism as a critical attitude to reality and a means of facilitating the expression of formative opinions on the part of children. Nor have young readers’ interpretations of utopian literature been investigated as indicating their perception of the sociopolitical arrangements around them. Notwithstanding the popularity of YA dystopian fiction, little attention has been given to utopian contents in other children’s texts. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak addresses these lacunae in a project examining utopianism as a significant element of discourse about children, manifesting in various cultural products addressed to them. She also conducts empirical participatory research (with children as peer researchers) aimed at creating egalitarian spaces within which young readers are not only heard but also collaborate with adults towards a better understanding of how books shape ideas for the desirable future. This approach—an innovation in children’s literature studies—has a huge potential for making children’s literature scholarship relevant to young people’s lives as a cultural practice sustaining intergenerational dialogue.
Dates: 21.08.2017-20.08.2018
Title: Processing ambiguous English sentences by native English speakers and bilingual speakers of Polish and English
Scholarship holder: Marta Ślęzak
Supervisor: Prof. Joanna Błaszczak
Funding institution: National Science Centre (PRELUDIUM 6)
Dates: 05.08.2014-04.08.2015
Title: A quality assurance matrix for CEFR use
Funding: European Centre for Modern Languages/Council of Europe
Project coordinator: Enrica Piccardo (University of Toronto and Université Grenoble Alpes)
Participants: Anna Czura (University of Wrocław), Gudrun Erickson (University of Gothenburg), Brian North (Eurocentres Foundation), Meike Wernicke, University of British Columbia
Aims: The project aims to develop a quality assurance matrix that will promote effective language learning by supporting teachers and other language education professionals in their use of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Dates: 2016-2018