The aim of the German Contrastive Linguistics Network is to connect research and learning activities of contrastive linguistics and to engage students of MA and PhD Germanic Studies who wish to perfect themselves in corpus linguistics.
Corpus linguistics has a long tradition at the Department of Germanic Studies at CU FA and is still being dynamically developed. The department participates in the project along with germanists from joined universities in the 4EU+ Alliance: Charles University in Prague, Sorbonne University in Paris, universities in Warsaw, Copenhagen, and Milano. It was also joined by a prestigious non-university institution – Leibniz Institute for the German Language (IDS) in Mannheim.
“Above all, we expect that the project will render our studies more attractive and strengthen its internationalisation. We wish to offer the students possibilities to join international projects and connect them with their colleagues studying German studies at major European universities even outside of Germany, Austria, or Switzerland,” says the head of the Prague team Dr Vít Dovalil from the Department of Germanic Studies at CU FA.
The project takes place from June 2021 to May 2022 and involves meetings of the attendees at summer and winter school and online conferences. The cooperation between teachers and students in the network of partner universities will continue also after the end of the project – from the winter semester 2022/2023, the partner universities will open the course of contrastive corpus linguistics led by a team of teachers involved in this project. The seminar will be primarily held via regular videoconferences.
“We consider it as useful and wholesome to create opportunities for students so that they can expand their ideas about their studies and its perspective in the European context themselves. In a wider context, we wish to contribute to the deepening the European multilingualism where the use of German as lingua franca has definitely its place,” continues Dr Dovadil.
