FF:BA_SZk_Mg MA Exam - Course Information

BA_SZk_Mg Master’s State Exam

Extent and Intensity

0/0/0. 0 credit(s). Type of Completion: SZK (final examination).
Taught in person.

Teacher(s)

Halina Beresnevičiúte Nosalova, Ph.D., M.A. (lecturer)
Mgr. Petra Hebedová, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Mgr. Nina Kapušová (lecturer)
doc. Mag. Vaidas Šeferis, Dr. phil. (lecturer)
Mgr. Jan-Marek Šík, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Mgr. Tereza Kabeláčová, Ph.D. (alternate examiner)

Guaranteed by

doc. Mag. Vaidas Šeferis, Dr. phil.
Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: doc. Mag. Vaidas Šeferis, Dr. phil.
Supplier department: Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts

Prerequisites

The prerequisite for access to the final state master's exam is the successful completion of the master's studies, i.e. the fulfilment of all the obligations prescribed by the study programme. The confirmation of this is issued by the MU Faculty of Arts Study Department.

Course Enrolment Limitations

The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with

• Baltic Studies (programme FF, N-BA_) (3)

Course objectives

Final exam, the legal condition to obtain the master's degree in Baltic studies.

Learning outcomes

After successfully passing the state exam the student is awarded the title of master of the Baltic studies.

Syllabus

• The exam consists of four parts:
• 1) Thesis defence (in Czech)
• 2) Examination of the Lithuanian or Finnish language system (depending on the student's specialisation; conducted in Czech).
• 3) The linguistic and literary interpretation of Lithuanian or Finnish literature (according to the student's specialisation; conducted in Lithuanian or Finnish, respectively).
• 4) Literary interpretation of Latvian or Estonian literature (depending on the student's specialisation; conducted in Czech)
• For point (2), the student draws one question from the Lithuanian or Finnish grammatical system (according to his/her specialisation) and prepares a systematic interpretation in Czech.
• For point (3), the Board selects a specific Lithuanian or Finnish literary work: the text is assigned to each student individually, the list of literary works is not predetermined and the choice of the text is entirely within the board's competence. For this text the student will be given a list of 5 questions in Lithuanian and Finnish respectively. The board then asks the student for a literary and linguistic interpretation of the assigned text. The student has two hours to prepare. The interpretation must include the following aspects:
• * The student demonstrates that he/she can place the text in its cultural and historical context, knows its content and is able to indicate important similarities or differences that can be found in other Baltic literatures for a comparable period and corresponding genre.
• * The student will demonstrate that he/she is able to translate the text in question accurately, identify the morphological and syntactic forms used in the text and is able to demonstrate the grammatical systemic relationships for these forms.
• * During the preparation, the student will prepare written answers to the 5 questions on the text (in Lithuanian and Finnish respectively), submit them to the board and then discuss them with the board in Lithuanian and Finnish respectively.
• For point (4), the student will prepare an interpretation of a Latvian or Estonian literary work (according to his/her specialisation) which represents a genre and chronological parallel to the Lithuanian or Finnish text discussed in point 3: he/she will provide basic data on this work, explain the genre and literary-historical context, and comment on the content of the chosen work.
• QUESTIONS TO THE POINT (2)
• Specialization Lithuanian
• 1) Typological characteristics of Lithuanian - what is typology and what does it study, basic language types (e.g. agglutinative, flexive, introflexive, polysynthetic), typological description of Lithuanian, possibly comparison with other languages.
• 2) Phonological apparatus of Lithuanian - inventory of Lithuanian phonemes, syllable, accent and intonation in Lithuanian, especially rules for accenting nouns and verbs, Lithuanian orthography and an overview of its development.
• 3) Morphology of nouns - basic morphological terms, problems of word types, characteristics of Lithuanian nouns, morphological categories, specific features.
• 4) Morphology of verbs - basic morphological terms, problems of word types, characteristics of Lithuanian verbs, morphological categories, participles.
• 5) Vocabulary of Lithuanian - its composition, word-forming tools of Lithuanian, word-formation processes, current tendencies in Lithuanian.
• 6) Sentence articles - their definition, special emphasis on the predicate and basic predicative structures, syntactic relations.
• 7) Sentence and utterance - simple and compound sentences, word order, theme and rheme.
• 8) Language from a sociolinguistic perspective - development of standard language, dialects, slang and other formations, language board.
• Specializing in Finnish:
• 1) Phonology of Finnish: inventory of Finnish phonemes and their distribution, syllable and accent in Finnish, boundary signals, Finnish orthography and an outline of its development.
• 2) Finnish morphology: definition of the basic concepts (morpheme, allomorph, differentiation of suffixes according to position after the stem and function) and description of the behaviour of stem morphemes and affixes in Finnish (regular stem alternations and what they are conditioned by, regular stem-final interactions, morphotactics).
• 3) Morphology of flexible words: defining categories of nouns, verbs and infinitive forms in terms of morphology - what categories they can express and how these categories can combine with each other, what syntactic roles these defined categories predetermine.
• 4) Finnish syntax I: definition of sentence members in Finnish (notion of subject and cases of sentences without a subject, object falls, predicative, adverbiale) and characteristics of sentence types (existential, non-sentential, feeling-causative, etc.).
• 5) Finnish syntax II: possibilities of using infinitive forms for semi-sentence constructions (types of these constructions and their characteristics), word order in Finnish and possibilities of its functional use.
• 6) Typological characteristics of Finnish: what is the typological comparison, demonstration of the use of typologically different devices (agglutination, flexion, introflexion, isolation, polysynthesis) in Finnish ( or in comparison with another language).
• 7) Vocabulary: characteristics of vocabulary composition, word-formation possibilities of the language and with the help of which terms they are described, vocabulary development.
• 8) Standard Finnish: the process of standardization and the development of written Finnish, language policy in Finland.
• 9) Language from a sociolinguistic point of view: dialects, sociolects, slang and other formations; their interrelations and the changes in these relations; the development of attitudes towards these language formations in society; methods of sociolinguistic research.

Literature

• Literature for the diploma thesis is assigned on an individual basis based on the topic of the thesis
• Literatura pro diplomový seminář je předepsána individuálně podle tématu práce.

Teaching methods

State exam.

Assessment methods

Oral and written examination prescribed by the MU Faculty of Arts study regulations.

Language of instruction

Czech

Further Comments

Study Materials
The course is taught each semester.

• Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2023, recent)
  
• Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/autumn2023/BA_SZk_Mg