News

The Institute for the Languages and Cultures of the Baltic of the Faculty of Philology at Vilnius University, the Centre for Kitab Studies at the Nicolaus Copernicus University and the Institute of the Lithuanian Language kindly invites to participate in the international scientific conference Kitab Studies – Research Methodology and Source Editing. The conference is dedicated to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the publication of Anton Antonovichʼs (1910‒1980) monograph “Belarusian Texts written in Arabic Script and Their Graphic and Orthographic System” (1968) and the 85th birthday of Valery Chekmonas (1937–2004).

The conference will be held on October 5–6, 2023 at Vilnius University, Universiteto St. 5, Vilnius.

Purpose of the conference – to unite the scientists in dialogue and discussion in order to continue and develop research of eminent professors A. Antonovich and V. Chekmonas.

Conference topics:

• The cultural heritage of the Tatars of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania;
• The written heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania;
• Territorial, dialectological and social diversity of the Polish and Belarusian languages;
• Language and society.

Duration of the presentations

• Full paper presentations: 20 minutes
• Keynote presentations: 30 minutes

Conference languages:

• Lithuanian, English, Polish, Belarusian, and Russian.

Important dates

• Deadline for the submission of registration form and abstract: 30June 2023
• Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2023
• Registration closes: 15 August 2023
• Conference programme: 22 September 2023

Keynote speakers

• Prof. habil. dr. Czesław Łapicz (Nicolaus Copernicus University)
• Prof. habil. dr. Joanna Kulwicka-Kamińska (Nicolaus Copernicus University)
• Dr. Vladislav Hrybovskyi (Nacional Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Nadiežda Morozova (Institute of the Lithuanian Language)

Scientific committee

• Prof. habil. dr. Stefan Grzybowski (Nicolaus Copernicus University)
• Dr. Vladislav Hrybovskyi (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Jelena Konickaja (Vilnius University)
• Prof. habil. dr. Alla Kozhinowa (University of Silesia)
• Prof. habil. dr. Czesław Łapicz (Nicolaus Copernicus University)
• Prof. habil. dr. Danguolė Mikulėnienė (Institute of the Lithuanian Language)
• Prof. habil. dr. Agata S. Nalborczyk (University of Warsaw)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Grigorijus Potašenko (Vilnius University)
• Prof. dr. Kristina Rutkovska (Vilnius University)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Ērika Sausverde (Vilnius University)
• Prof. dr. Daiva Sinkevičiūtė-Villanueva Svensson (Vilnius University)
• Prof. habil. dr. Marek Stachowski (Jagiellonian University)
• Acad. prof. habil. dr. Bonifacas Stundžia (Vilnius University)
• Prof. habil. dr. Sergejus Temčinas (Institute of the Lithuanian Language)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Viktorija Ušinskienė (Vilnius University)
• Prof. habil. dr. Andrzej Zakrzewski (University of Warsaw)

Organizing committee

• Prof. habil. dr. Joanna Kulwicka-Kamińska (Nicolaus Copernicus University)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Galina Miškinienė (Vilnius University, Institute of the Lithuanian Language)
• Assoc. prof. dr. Nadiežda Morozova (Institute of the Lithuanian Language)

Registration and fees

• Regular registration for presenters: 50 euros*
• Registration for doctoral / MA students: 40 euros

Contacts

• The registration forms and abstracts should be sent to kulwicka-kaminska@umk.pl and galina.miskiniene@lki.lt
• For more information: galina.miskiniene@lki.lt
• Registration form
• Abstract form
• Invitation

We look forward to seeing you at the international scientificconference!

*The fee includes meals, conference materials and publication of the paper in the proceedings. We will be happy to help you find accommodation in a convenient location if you wish.

The Department of Slavic Studies at Vilnius University is delighted to invite young researchers – undergraduate students, Master's Degree students, and postgraduate students – to participate in The International Student Readings. The Readings are aimed at participants focused on innovation and further development of the field of Slavic and Russian Studies.  

The Readings will take place at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University on October 13th, 2023. The participation in the Readings is possible both in offline and online mode (via MS Teams).

The presentations are limited to 15 minutes (10 minutes for the talk and 5 minutes for the subsequent discussion). The working languages of the Readings are Russian, Lithuanian, and English.

A peer-reviewed collection of articles based on the talks is planned for subsequent publication.

Applications for the participation in the Readings and brief abstracts (no more than 600 characters, including spaces) are accepted until September 10th, 2023 by email at slavistika2023vu@gmail.com. The results of the call for applications will be announced on September 15th, 2023.

The application form for the participation in the Readings >>

For additional information, please contact the organizational committee of the Readings by email at slavistika2023vu@gmail.com.

The twentieth Salos Summer School of Linguistics Academia Grammaticorum Salensis Vigesima will be held between July 23 and 29 in Salos, Rokiškis District. This time the topics of lectures and papers will centre around research problems connected with the Baltic languages.

This year the school is funded by the Lithuanian Academic Scheme for International Cooperation in Baltic Studies. Attendants from centres of Baltic studies will have all costs of travel, accommodation and board covered from this project.  For attendants not delegated by centres of Baltic studies the participation fee is 120 EUR (100 EUR for members of the association “Academia Salensis” as well as for graduate and undergraduate students).

We will welcome 15 participants from foreign centres of Baltic studies and 15 from Lithuanian educational institutions.    

A list of the centres of Baltic studies can be found here > 

Registration is open till June 1.

As the number of fully funded places is limited, please tell us in the registration form what motivates you to attend the Salos Summer School.

As in previous years, attendants will have a possibility to present papers based on their research. Topics should be connected with Baltic studies.

Please feel welcome to register! Link for registration >

Notification of acceptance will be sent by e-mail before June 15.

Should you have any questions, please mail gina.holvoet@flf.vu.lt

Information will regularly be updated on our homepage >

ACCOMMODATION

Attendants of the summer school will be accommodated in the Salos manor, in the same building where the lectures are held. The number of available rooms is limited so attendants will have to share rooms. The number of beds per room ranges from 2 to 10. The rooms are plain but clean and kept in order. Toilets and showers are shared.

There are no restaurants or cafés in the neighbourhood, so full board (three meals daily) is provided by the organizers (the cost is included in the attendance fee). The food is not posh but tasty and prepared with love by local women from Salos, for whom this has already become a tradition. When completing the registration form please indicate whether you have special wishes (vegetarian and the like) – we hope we will be able to satisfy your needs. The village boasts two shops where you can buy sweets, snacks and drinks.

HOW TO GET TO SALOS

Salos manor is situated in Rokiškis District, about 150 km from Vilnius (find it on Google Maps).

For those heading to Salos from Vilnius a bus will be in readiness. It will depart from Vilnius University. Return to Vilnius will be on Saturday.

Follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. A few moments from last year’s conference are captured here. Click here for some photographs of the manor.

Here is the List of Open Electives for the 2023/2024 Autumn semester.

These subjects can be chosen with the individual study plan instead of the electives suggested in your study programme.

More information can be found here>

This week you are invited to guest lectures of Maria Khachaturyan (University of Helsinki), linguistic anthropologist, Africanist, field researcher.

M. Khachaturyan received her doctorate at the INALCO Institute in Paris - she wrote the grammar of Mano Language (Mande family). Her areas are field research and descriptive linguistics, social meaning in grammar, language contacts, language and religion, anthropological/sociolinguistic aspects of religious translation.

Thursday, May 11th., 17.00, Room 402 

Contact-induced variation in reflexivity marking: convergence, divergence and social meaning

It is commonly assumed in language contact studies that languages spoken by multilinguals become more like one another, which leads to long-term convergence between the languages. This does not lead to a sweeping linguistic uniformity, however: there is still an incredible linguistic diversity across the world’s languages. This diversity is partly due to an opposite process -- the process of diversification of neighboring languages which was called “neighbor opposition” (Evans 2019). However, while the results of convergence and diversification are rather well studied, little is known about the complex and contradictory process of convergence and divergence and the role of social factors in it. In this talk, I present my ongoing study of language contact between the Mano and the Kpelle languages of Guinea and show how, despite the potential of convergence, languages remain distinct. Focusing on variation in reflexive marking, an additional question I raise concerns differences in domains affected by convergence and divergence. Specifically, I discuss whether contact-induced variation in grammatical patterns can have social meaning on a par with linguistic features with concrete exponents, such as phonetic, morphological or lexical variables.

Friday, May 12 th., 15.00, Room 314A-B

Doing things with grammar

A well-known observation from interactional linguistics holds that the context of interaction is not a given but is constituted and sustained by the very process of interaction. Verbal acts do not only presuppose context for their appropriate interpretation, but speech performance can also effectively create that context. In other words, utterances can “carry with them their own contexts like a snail carries its home along with it” (Levinson 2003: 26). In this paper, I argue that certain grammatical categories—and above all, indexicals—are also part of the furnishings of the snail’s home. Indexicals are grammatical categories which are existentially tied to the context of utterance and index a relationship between specific properties of the speech context and properties of the narrated event. Examples of such categories include personal pronouns (e.g. I is understood as the person uttering “I”, Jakobson 1971), or tense (past tense markers denote events prior to the moment of speech). Their use, in some situations, helps reflect the context of utterance as much as it builds the context in other situations, in which case the speakers can effectively do things with grammar. I argue that the framework of presupposition accommodation can be applied for the analysis of these context-creating uses of indexicals. The theoretical discussion is grounded in a discussion of data on pronouns of address in Russian (ty vs vy) and demonstrative reference in Mano (Mande, Guinea).

Friday, May 12 th., 17.00, Room 314A-B (During BUS course "Linguistic diversity and language science" lecture)

Linguistic Fieldwork

In this talk, I will sketch out my journey as a linguist and a filedworker: the pathways to particular questions I address in my research, and unexpected ways in which the answers get shaped; trials, errors, failures and getting back on track; and most of all, the role of people: family, colleagues and language spekears who become colleagues and family.

On Thursday, April 20th, a band of Philology Faculty students delved deep into the crypts of the Vilnius Cathedral. The crypt-delvers are enrolled in the course Reading the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (lect. Rūta Šileikytė Zukienė) that focuses on studying the text in its authentic Old English. 

The adventurous group found themselves several meters below the cathedral floor; pleasantly toured through the archaeological exhibits of the reconstructed past, the last resting places of high medieval nobility, and then bravely guided into the depths of the Cathedral’s darkened drainage system. Examination of the Cathedral’s underground illuminated the greater context and comparisons between the fiction and history of Beowulf and the cold stony reality of the brick-laden depths.

To provide some context, Old English is the early medieval form of English, and the language of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of England amidst the turbulence of the Viking Age. Beowulf takes place in 6th century Scandinavia, but its Old English form is a Christianized retelling of an epic long familiar to pagan Danish poets. As the earliest noble graves in the Cathedral’s crypt testify, religious conversion was synonymous with cultural conversion. An act which creeps slowly over time, as the practices and rituals of a beloved past are not easily forgotten despite new identities under new beliefs.  

Beowulf recounts the adventures of a monster-slaying hero of royal stature. Thought to be indominable, and a bastion of poetic virtue, Beowulf himself existed in a transitioning world of religious identity. But the quality and greatness of his character surpassed Christian/Pagan dichotomies and revealed how bravery and excellence can be derived from both tradition and change. The Crypt exhibits a detailed history of transitioning faith and politics, while traditionally honoring the remains of the noble and faithful in the Royal Mausoleum under St. Casimir’s Chapel and the clerical Crypt of the Chapters. While Beowulf is a fictious work, brought out of Scandinavia to Anglo-Saxon England centuries prior to the Cathedral’s conception, such imperishable adoration and respect for shared tradition and societal change echoes both deep within the hallowed halls and the scripts of legend.

Along with their cherished Old English lecturer, the motely group of delvers hailed from different corners of the Earth. Lithuanian, Armenian, and American, Vilnius University students of the Scandinavian and English departments were accompanied by Erasmus students from both the Netherlands and the United States. The entire collective found themselves deep within the unlit heart of Vilnius, on an academic quest to understand more of this beautiful land and its incredible history. In grand respect for Beowulf and the entombed histories which lie beneath the Cathedral, the students, and their professor, continue their quest to further understand the majesty of this great wide world. 

–– Ian Dotson, 23/04/2023

On 25th April (Tuesday) at 16.30 in room K3 we invite you to a seminar Topic-targeted academic writing: creating and using a template corpus in class with Dr Michael Pace-Sigge.

Within a university setting, acquiring the skills of a proficient writer of academic texts presents a challenge for both L1 and L2 speakers of English. This workshop will take Data-Driven Learning (DDL) task-based teaching approach. 

Regardless of the subject – be it physics, psychology, sociology or, indeed, literary studies, students, researchers, and teaching staff have a need to write academic dissertations, articles, etc. in English. For this, they need to be proficient in the language itself, yet, crucially, need the wording (i.e. framing, signposting, clarification, exemplification) which is expected in academic writing as well as appropriate technical vocabulary which is fitting for the target subject.  

This workshop will be a practical, hands-on approach, where participants can create a template corpus for any topic and have an introduction to using a concordancer (i.e., WordSmith Tools). With this tool, typical words and phrases will be extracted; the tool, furthermore, allows users to see how and when these are usually occurring. In the end, it will be demonstrated how these can be used to assist in writing a suitable academic paper. 

Dr. Michael Pace-Sigge is Senior Lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland, Finland. His key areas of research are corpus linguistics, lexical priming, and Spoken English. He is the author of, among others, Lexical Priming in Spoken English Usage (2013), Spreading Activation, Lexical Priming and the Semantic Web (2018) and co-editor of Lexical Priming: Advances and Applications (2017). 

Dear colleagues, all members if the community of the Faculty of Philology,

Easter is on our doorstep. Inevitably and irrevocably. Despite that spring has to fight snowstorms. May I congratulate you on the revival of nature, days getting longer and longer, new hope. I wish you all new ideas growing into important meaningful projects, sweet moments experienced with your students upon the discovery of something new and confirming what has been already known, cosy get-together with your family and friends on a bright Easter morning.

Kind regards,

Prof. Inesa Šeškauskienė
Dean of the Faculty of Philology