Showing papers on "Czech published in 2001"

Red List of vascular plants of the Czech Republic - 2000.

Abstract: After more than 20 years since the publication of the first version of the list of extinct, endemic and endangered taxa of vascular plants of the Czech Republic, a new version is presented to the botanical and nature conservation public. This version includes much new data on the flora of the Czech Republic which has been accumulated since 1979. A number of taxa are included which were not considered in the previous version (i. e. newly described species, and taxa known from other territories but only discovered in the Czech Republic in the last two decades). The threat classification of some taxa been has changed on the basis of much more detailed knowledge of their present distribution.

Gender Differences in Drinking Patterns in Nine European Countries: Descriptive Findings.

Abstract: Gender differences in drinking patterns in nine European countries (the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, and Switzerland) were examined using data from surveys conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Drinking patterns were analyzed with regard to sociodemographic variables such as age, education, employment, marital status, and parenthood. Age was closely related to drinking in every society, but the patterns were different in different societies. Women with higher education tended to consume more alcohol than women with lower education in many societies, whereas a similar pattern was not found among men. Unemployment seemed to be more strongly related to women's drinking than to that of men. Divorced men consistently consumed the most alcohol in every country. Parenthood was profoundly and consistently associated across societies with women's monthly consumption and prevalence of heavy drinking.

On large vocabulary continuous speech recognition of highly inflectional language - Czech

Abstract: A system for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition of highly inflectional language is introduced. Word-based recognition approach is compared with a morpheme-based recognition system. An experiment involving Czech N-best rescoring has been performed with encouraging results.

Hastening Toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands

Abstract: This is the first comprehensive study in English of Czech society and politics in the High Middle Ages. It paints a vivid portrait of a flourishing Christian community in the decades between 1050 and 1200. Bohemia's social and political landscape remained remarkably cohesive, centered on a throne in Prague, the Premyslid duke who occupied it, a society of property-owning freemen, and the ascendant Catholic church. In decades fraught with political violence, these provided a focal point for Czech identity and political order. In this, the Czechs' heavenly patron, Saint Vaclav, and the German emperor beyond their borders too had a role to play. An impressive, systematic dissection of a medieval polity, Hastening Toward Prague is based on a close rereading of written and material artifacts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Arguing against a view that puts state or nation formation at heart, Wolverton examines interactions among dukes, emperors, freemen, and the church on their own terms, asking what powers the dukes of Bohemia possessed and how they were exercised within a broader political community. Evaluating not only the foundations and practice of ducal lordship but also the form and progress of resistance to it, she argues in particular that violence was not a sign of political instability but should be interpreted as reflecting a dynamic economy of checks and balances in a fluid, mature political system. This also reveals the values and strategies that sustained the Czech Lands as a community. The study honors the complexity and dynamism of the medieval exercise of power.

Parliaments in the Czech and Slovak republics

Abstract: Introduction - transition, consolidation and parliamentary institutionalization the institutional origins of the modern Czech and Slovak parliaments parliaments, parties and electorate - organizing representation executive-leglisative relations - parliaments and governments executive leglisative relations - presidents inside the parliaments - parliamentary parties conclusion - growing apart.

Cross-language similarities and differences in spontaneous speech patterns

Abstract: Quasi-spontaneous dialogues from six languages which, according to recent discussion of rhythmic types, belong to three rhythmic groups – Russian and Bulgarian as ‘stress-timed’, Italian and Greek as ‘syllable-timed’ and Polish and Czech as an intermediate ‘mixed’ type – were examined for the following segmental reduction phenomena: reduction of consonant clusters, weakening of consonant articulation, residual properties from elided consonants in the original context segments, phonetic schwa-isation and syllable elision. The hypothesis tested was that there are comparable reduction phenomena in all languages since all languages allow for variation in the time and effort invested in any given part of an utterance as a means to support the relative weight of elements within the information structure. This hypothesis was borne out in principle, though there were a small number of exceptions across the six languages to the occurrence of reduction types examined.

A New Czech Morphological Analyser ajka

Abstract: This paper deals with the effective implementation of the new Czech morphological analyser ajka which is based on the algorithmic description of the Czech formal morphology. First, we present two most important word-forming processes in Czech - inflection and derivation. A brief description of the data structures used for storing morphological information as well as a discussion of the efficient storage of lexical items (stem bases of Czech words) is included too. Finally, we bring some interesting features of the designed and implemented system ajka together with current statistic data.

Value Change and Demographic Behaviour in the Czech Republic

Abstract: Deep structural changes witnessed in the Czech republic in the past decade, that is establishment of a democratic political regime and market economy, and transformation of the social security system, could not have steered clear of everyday life and behavioural patterns of Czech population. One of the areas that have been profoundly affected is demographic behaviour. Marriage and fertility rates in particular have decreased to an unprecedented level. The main thesis of this paper is that the demographic changes in the Czech republic result from a condensed progress of the second demographic transition which was triggered off by a value change in young age cohorts born in the 1970s and early 1980s. New value orientations of these cohorts, which were latently present already before the political change, manifested themselves fully in the free environment of the new democratic society. The paper will present evidence of the value changes by utilising data from a comparative sociological research titled The European Values Study which was carried out in Europe in 1990/91 and in 1999. It is argued that the coincidence of value and demographic changes can hardly be regarded as accidental.

Religion and Secularisation in the Czech Republic

Abstract: Using an analysis of data from the European Values Study of 1991 and 1999 (together with data from the International Social Survey Programme 1998 - Religion from 1999), this article tries to suggest the scope of secularisation in the present Czech republic. It documents how the process of structural differentiation leads to the declining significance of institutionalised religiousness and privatisation of religion.

The failure of the participatory democracy in the Czech republic

Abstract: Following the breakdown of the Soviet system, the new East European elites faced the problem of defining and building democratic institutions. This problem was not a purely institutional one, however. During the transformation process, different conceptions of democracy appear and often become critical issues for political competition. Based on the Czech case, this article aims to understand how and why one particular conception of democracy becomes dominant during a process of regime change. Personified by the two ‘Vaclavs’ in the Czech political arena (Havel and Klaus), divergent perspectives on democracy exist in the Czech Republic, having concrete consequences for the practice of politics. These conceptions (referred to here as ‘participatory’ and ‘majoritarian') dramatically differ in their perception of the role of the citizen in a liberal democracy. This article identifies and describes these two different conceptions of democracy in the present and past Czech Republic. It explores the sociological...

Czech Attitudes Towards the Roma: 'Expecting More of Havel's Country'?

Abstract: EVER-GROWING IS THE ISSUE OF RIGHTS FOR ROMA and their relations with majority nations throughout Central and Eastern Europe. If one group of people seems today to be consistently verbally derided, subjected to physical abuse, social marginalisation and even legal disenfranchisement in the post-communist space, it is them. While hardly unique, this situation nevertheless has become particularly evident in the Czech Republic. Few incidents in the fate of contemporary Europe's Roma have seized the international imagination-rightly or wrongly-as much as those that have occurred in the Czech Republic. These issues, which not only require careful examination but also some qualification of foreign media coverage, include the 'wall' built effectively segregating Roma from Czechs, a series of killings, a 'citizenship' law condemned internationally as intentionally denying Roma Czech citizenship, the departure of Roma from that country and their claim of asylum in several states, and the continued operation of an industrial pig farm on the site of a World War II concentration camp for Roma.' All these incidents should be striking in themselves and call for explanation and analysis, as well as in some cases clarification of how they have been presented in the West. They are perhaps all the more unusual because of a paradox: the ethos of liberalism and tolerance accorded to Czech society by many of its own citizens, intellectual and law makers, and especially by its admirers and supporters abroad. Indeed, the present author would be among these, and this article carries some concern for the prestige and reputation of the Czech Republic.2 The importance of this assessment is multidimensional. The Romani issue has captured international media attention, if perhaps in a simplified manner. Its ramifications are numerous, affecting the Czech Republic's relations with several

Introduction: Patterns of Migration in Central Europe

Abstract: Since the memorable events of 1989, international migration in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe has undergone an historical evolution. In particular, the Central European countries of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary became a space for new and dynamic international population movements. For almost two centuries these countries have been sending migrants to the West. This tradition of emigration continues, in new forms, as flows to the European Union. Yet the size of such East—West migration was nothing like as high as predicted in the early 1990s. What is new, is that these countries have themselves become the destination for significant population flows. They attract temporary labourers, migrant traders, tourists and business people from outside the region, as well as migrants trying to get into Western Europe. In particular, they draw people from the bordering countries of the former Soviet Union, from South-Eastern Europe and even from non-European countries as distant as Vietnam, China and Sri Lanka.

Unemployment, Labour Market Programmes and Wage Determination: Evidence from the Czech and Slovak Republics

Abstract: This paper studies effects of unemployment and labour market programmes on real wages in the Czech and Slovak Republics using district panel data for the period 1992-1998. Clear evidence of a “wage curve” exists in both countries. The estimated unemployment elasticity of pay is, however, higher in the Slovak Republic, than in the Czech Republic. The wage subsidy and the public works programme exert upward pressure on real wages in Slovakia. When accounting for effects from adjacent districts, a positive significant effect of labour market programmes is also estimated for the Czech Republic. JEL classification: J31, J68, P39

SpeechDat-E: Five Eastern European Speech Databases for Voice-Operated Teleservices Completed

Abstract: In the Speechdat-E project five medium large telephone speech databases have been collected for Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, and Slovak. The project was recently concluded. This paper reports briefly on the contents of the databases, elaborates on experiences gained from the data recordings and from the validation of the databases. The availability of the databases to the public is addressed, too.

The Slovak Republic

Abstract: The Slovak Republic was created on 1 January 1993 after the consensual division of the former Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR). The map in Figure 1.1 shows that the Slovak Republic has borders with Ukraine to the East and Austria to the West, as well as neighbouring Central European states which are the focus of this book.

Tunneling Towards Capitalism in the Czech Republic

Abstract: Over the past decade, Czech society has been bombarded with reporting on a variety of corruption scandals. The most prominent example is tunelovani [tunneling], a uniquely Czech form of large-scale corruption rooted in privatization and post-socialist economic reforms. Since it first appeared in print some time in 1996, tunelovani has become a staple of the Czech media and public discourses. Its ubiquity makes it a useful lens through which to explore many significant issues in post-socialist Czech society: tensions over the meanings of justice, morality, emergent socioeconomic differences, national identity and international reputation. This article explores the workings of tunelovani and suggests the ways these discourses gain meaning within the specific context of the Czech transition.

Secondary Privatization in Poland (Part II): Evolution of Ownership Structure and Performance in National Investment Funds and Their Portfolio Companies

Abstract: This volume contains the output of country research undertaken in Poland in 2000-2001 by Barbara Blaszczyk, Michal Gorzynski, Tytus Kaminski and Bartlomiej Paczoski under the international comparative project "Secondary Privatization: the Evolution of Ownership Structures of Privatized Enterprises". The project was supported by the European Union's Phare ACE Programme 1997 (project P97-8201 R) and was coordinated by Barbara Blaszczyk of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) in Warsaw, Poland.The support of the ACE Programme made it possible to organize the cooperation of an international group of scholars (from the Czech Republic, France, Poland, Slovenia and the U.K.). The entire project was devoted to the investigation of secondary ownership changes in enterprises privatized in special privatization schemes (i.e., mass privatization schemes and MEBOs) in three Central European countries - the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia. Through a combination of different research methods, such as secondary analysis of previous research, analysis of legal and other regulatory instruments, original field research, statistical data base research and econometric analysis of individual enterprise data, the project aimed to investigate the scope, pace and trends in secondary ownership changes, the factors and barriers affecting them and the degree of ownership concentration resulting from them.The authors of this report look at ownership changes in the companies owned by the Polish National Investment Funds in the 1995-2000 period. They analyze the numbers of companies in the NIFs' portfolios were sold to what types of investors (i.e., domestic corporate, domestic individual, employee, foreign, other NIFs, public trading) in which years. A great deal of attention is also paid to the issue of changes in the ownership of the funds themselves as well as the issues of corporate governance in the funds (management costs, strategies, etc.) Finally, the economic performance of NIF portfolio companies is compared with other groups of companies in Polish economy, and then the group of NIF companies is broken down with respect to type of owner that acquired (or kept) them, and these groups are compared with each other.We hope that the results of this research will be of great interest for everyone interested in the little-researched question of what has happened to companies after privatization in transition countries.

Linear order as higher-level decision: information structure in strategic and tactical generation

Abstract: We propose a multilingual approach to characterizing word order at the clause level as a means to realize information structure. We illustrate the problem with three languages which differ in the degree of word order freedom they exhibit: Czech, a free word order language in which word order variation is pragmatically determined; English, a fixed word order language in which word order is primarily grammatically determined; and German, a language which is between Czech and English on the scale of word order freedom. Our work is theoretically rooted in previous work on information structuring and word order in the Prague School framework as well as on the systemic-functional notion of Theme. The approach we present has been implemented in KPML.

The Buoyant Class: Bourgeois Family Lineage in the Life Stories of Czech Business Elite Persons

Abstract: Life-story interviews carried out in the Czech Republic confirm that the new business elite is dominated by men who had already achieved high managerial positions in the Communist era. More surpris...

Morphological Guesser of Czech Words

Abstract: If a corpus is submitted to a morphological analysis, there always remain some words that the analyser could not recognize (foreign names, misspellings, ...). However, if a human reads the texts, he usually understands them, even if he does not know as many words as there are in the lexicon used by the morphological analyser. The language itself helps him to recognize unknown words. It is not only semantics or syntax but also pure morphology of unknown words that can contribute to their understanding. In this article, I describe a "guesser" that can lower the amount of unrecognized words after the "classical" morphological analysis of the Czech texts. It was tested on the Czech National Corpus.

"Semelfactive" -nǫ- and the Western Aspect Gestalt

Abstract: This article presents a discussion of differences between the Slavic languages re- garding the historical productivity of -no˛ as an aspectual suffix. It is shown that a class of prefixed pf a-stem/n-stem doublets has been more productive in a group of western lan- guages (primarily Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian) and that this productivity declines in the languages farther to the east, reaching a minimum in Russian and Bulgarian. Further, differences are shown regarding the function of -no˛ as a perfectivizing suffix in some Common Slavic unprefixed pf verbs. These differences are then discussed, with no claims to an exhaustive analysis.

Social dialogue: the Czech success story

Abstract: Discusses the history of social dialogue and its achievements in the Czech Republic during the 1990s.