News

Rijeka, July 2023: Workshop on the application of ERP method in neurocognitive research was held at the LaCoN lab between 28 - 30 June, 2023. The event was organized as part of the project activities within our ENGRI project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. This three-day event introduced participants to the practical challenges of setting up a functional laboratory as well as how to design and implement successful ERP experiments. Plenary lectures were given by invited speakers, Jose Antonio Hinojosa from the Complutense University of Madrid and Marijan Palmovic from the University of Zagreb. On days 2 and 3 project team member Eva Pavlinusic Vilus and guest speaker Mario Paci from Brain Products GmbH demonstrated how to successfully set up EEG equipment on human participants. Judging by the participants' feedback, the workshop was a successful event the implementation of which brought about new project ideas for future research endeavors. 

The article about the workshop has been published in Novi list, a daily paper from Rijeka, and can be found at: https://www.novilist.hr/rijeka-regija/rijeka/odrzana-radionica-laboratorija-za-jezik-i-kognitivnu-znanost/ 

Rijeka, April 2023: Katedra za strane jezike i Laboratorij za jezik i kognitivnu neuroznanost Pomorskog fakulteta u Rijeci (https://www.laconlab.com/)  u sklopu projekta Hrvatske zaklade za znanost “Engleske riječi u hrvatskome jeziku: identifikacija, afektivno-semantičko normiranje i ispitivanje kognitivne obrade bihevioralnim i neuroznanstvenim metodama” (UIP-2019-04-1576) organiziraju II. radionicu pod nazivom Metoda mjerenja evociranih potencijala (ERP) u neurokognitivnim istraživanjima, koja će se održati u razdoblju od 28. do 30. lipnja 2023. godine.

Ova je radionica namijenjena svima koje zanima rukovanje opremom za snimanje EEG-a te primjena metode mjerenja evociranih potencijala u svrhu ostvarivanja ciljeva vlastitih istraživanja. Polaznici će imati priliku upoznati se s teorijskom osnovom kognitivne obrade jezika, kao i sudjelovati u rješavanju praktičnih izazova na koje je moguće naići prilikom korištenja istraživačke opreme potrebne za provedbu ERP eksperimenta.  Radionica će trajati tri dana od kojih je praktični rad planiran u drugom i trećem danu (polaznicima će Program radionice biti dostupan u lipnju). Praktični rad odvijat će se u prostoru Laboratorija na Pomorskom fakultetu u Rijeci.

Jezici radionice: hrvatski, engleski

Radionica će se održati na Pomorskom fakultetu u Rijeci i za sve je sudionike besplatna.

Rijeka, May 2023: The Project titled “Metaphors in Language: An Eye-tracking Study into the Effect of Metaphor Awareness on Intercultural Competencies of Future Seafarers (MetLa)” has received funds through the Scientific-Research Project Initiatives programme of The University of Rijeka (ZIP UNIRI). Project activities are planned for implementation between June, 2023  and June, 2026 and will include ENGRI team members J. Jelčić Čolakovac, I. Bogunović, E. Pavlinušić Vilus and B. Ćoso as well as external team members S. Elkasović from the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula and Alenka Vrbinc, Full Professor from the University of Ljubljana. 

Rijeka, December 2022: LACON lab was recently featured in Novi list, the most widely read daily newspaper in Rijeka. The head of the lab, Irena Bogunović, presented the ongoing research in the lab and the ENGRI project, while team members presented the lab's equipment. The Vice-Dean for Scientific Research at the Maritime Faculty, David Brčić, explained why the lab and the research on English words in Croatian are equally important for and supported by the Faculty.

The article in Croatian and can be found at:

https://www.novilist.hr/rijeka-regija/rijeka/na-pomorskom-fakultetu-s-radom-poceo-laboratorij-za-jezik-u-glavnom-su-fokusu-engleske-posudenice-u-hrvatskom/

Rijeka, November 2022: ENGRI postdoctoral researcher Eva Pavlinušić Vilus’ idea has recently been approved for funding in the form of a one-year project entitled “Investigation into the semantic level of language processing in Croatian using the event-related potentials technique – SemantiCro”. The aim of the project is to study the neural processing of words in Croatian sentential context. The project is funded by the University of Rijeka as part of the “UNIRI Young researchers’ projects 2022” funding programme. The experiment that will be conducted within the project extends the research on semantic level processing in Croatian that was started within the ENGRI project activities.

Madrid, July 2022: The ENGRI Project’s PI Irena Bogunović, team member Bojana Ćoso, and postdoctoral researcher Eva Pavlinušić Vilus participated in the 13th International Conference on Experimental Linguistics, held in Paris, France (and online) between 17 and 19 October 2022. They presented the results of a cross-linguistic translation priming study, the first experiment to be conducted in LACON lab. Thirty-seven students participated in the experiment, which was conducted as a pilot study for the upcoming experiments on processing English loanwords in Croatian. The short paper presented at the conference can be found in the conference proceedings (page 125) at: https://exlingsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ExLing-2022-Paris-proceedings-1.pdf

Ghent, Belgium, July 2022: The ENGRI team participated at the “Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 - Inside and beyond binaries”, one of the most prominent sociolinguistic symposia, which took place in Ghent, Belgium this year in the period between 13th-16th July. The symposium was organised as a hybrid event, which allowed us to present our work remotely in two different formats - an oral presentation and a poster. The presentation titled “English loan words in Croatian: The gap between the linguists’ expectations and the speakers’ needs” was delivered by the paper's first author and ENGRI project's PI - Irena Bogunović. Preliminary results of our study on the affective content of English loanwords in Croatian were made available to interested parties in the form of a poster presentation titled “Affective norms of valence and arousal for 400 most frequent English words in Croatian language”. The study was conducted in collaboration with our Spanish associates from the universities in Tarragona and Madrid, and was successfully incorporated in the symposium's poster format by team member Bojana Ćoso. 

Madrid, July 2022: The Project’s PI Irena Bogunović and team member Bojana Ćoso visited our project associates in Spain this July. They spent a week at the Instituto Pluridisciplinar of the Complutense University of Madrid learning about the applications of the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) technique in the field of affective neurolinguistics from one of the leading scientists in the field, José Antonio Hinojosa, and his associates. Dr Hinojosa is also our project associate, whose help and advice have been invaluable in the implementation of ENGRI research activities. The visit presents a fitting introduction for the next stage in the ENGRI project, which is focused on ERP research and presents the very first one to be taking place in the newly-established LACON lab.  Stay tuned!

Rijeka, July 2022: Members of the ENGRI team participated in a very interesting, inter- and multidisciplinary meeting on language and digital technologies "Language, Data, Science, and Tech Days 2022 @ UNIRI" organised by the Center for Language Research - CLAR, University of Rijeka. The meeting was held at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka, 4th-5th July 2022. It gathered scientists from various disciplines and faculties of the University of Rijeka, as well as experts from the IT business sector. Irena Bogunović and Eva Pavlinušić Vilus presented the ENGRI project and the LACON lab and incited considerable interest, which resulted in the prospect of some interesting collaborations. The programme of the meeting can be found at the link. 

Rijeka, June 2022: ENGRI team participated in the 36th International Conference organized by the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society with two presentations. Irena Bogunović and Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac presented their research titled "Do we need download, downloadati or preuzimati: creating a database of unadapted English loanwords and their Croatian equivalents",  while the research presented by Eva Pavlinušić Vilus and Irena Bogunović was titled "Differences in Grammatical Features of the Words in Croatian and English: Evidence from a Translation Task". The Conference was held in the beautiful town of Osijek, 9th-11th June 2022, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The conference program is available at the link, while a book of abstracts can be found at the link.

Rijeka, May 2022: Two ENGRI members, Irena Bogunović and Eva Pavlinušić Vilus, presented the LACON lab and the ENGRI project, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation, on Radio Rijeka on Saturday, May 21, 2022.  

Irena's and Eva's talk is available on the following link: 

https://radio.hrt.hr/radio-rijeka/vijesti/laboratorij-za-jezik-kogniciju-i-neuroznanost-za-istrazivanja-jezicne-obrade-7483416

Rijeka, May 2022: On May 4, 2022, members of the ENGRI team organized a pub quiz “Say it in Inglizh”. The quiz, hosted by the River Pub, was designed as a linguistic contribution to this year's Festival of Science. Quizzers had the opportunity to answer language questions from five different language-related categories, including sports, culture, history, and music. Our team’s recent findings from research conducted as part of a project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation under the leadership of doc. dr. sc. Irene Bogunović were also included in the quiz. In this way, the quizzers were introduced to various psycholinguistic tools that can be used in psycholinguistic research. They were also introduced to the activities of the Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience (LACON), which operates within the Faculty of Maritime Studies. The response to the activity was great, and the participants were extremely successful in answering questions. The best teams won valuable prizes, sponsored by Cont and Štorija.

Rijeka, Ocotber 2021: Third work meeting of the ENGRI team was held on 8th October 2021 in an online format.  A new memeber of the team, postdoctoral researcher Eva Pavlinušić Vilus, was welcomed by Irena Bogunović, Bojana Ćoso, Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac, Mirjana Borucinsky and Mario Kučić. The team discussed Croatian translations of English words, which words should be included in the normative study and future plans for papers and conferences. Also, the project work plan was analyzed with special emphasis on possible obstacles and solutions. 

Rijeka, September 2021: Mario Kučić presented a paper titled Creating a Web Corpus Using GO at 44th International Convention on Information, Communication & Electronic Technology (MIPRO). The convention was held in a hybrid form due to COVID-19 outbreak, from 27th September  to 1st October 2021. The presented work is part of the ENGRI project, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation, and is availabe at github.com/laconlab/lacon-go-tiny-scrapy. 

Rijeka, February 2021: 1st ENGRI workshop "Sketch Engine: Corpus compilation and foreign word extraction" was held online, on 18th February 2021. The workshop was organized by ENGRI  team members and supported in part by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project UIP-2019-04-1576. After Mirjana Borucinsky introduced the participants with the possibilities of Sketch Engine, invited speaker Nikola Ljubešić (Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia) gave an interesting talk on the methods in corpus compilation and natural language processing. In the second part of the workshop, Mario Kučić, Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac, and Mirjana Borucinsky introduced the ENGRI corpus and explained the process of extraction of English words. The third part was focused on practical work - the participants were divided into groups based on their own research interests to work with Sketch Engine in combination with hrWaC and ENGRI corpora. A total of 38 researchers participated in the workshop.

Rijeka, November 2020: The second work meeting of the ENGRI research group took place on 4th November 2020. Due to the pandemic, the meeting was held online. Irena Bogunović, Bojana Ćoso,  Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac, Mario Kučić and Mirjana Borucinsky discussed current work (final steps in the development of the database, the status of research papers, etc.) as well as future plans (planned date for the workshop, paper submission, etc.).  

Rijeka, September 2020: Mirjana Borucinsky and Irena Bogunović presented their research titled "Finding English words in Croatian: An analysis of corpus linguistics tools" at the 34th International Conference organized by the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society.  The Conference was held online, 24th-26th September 2020.  The conference program is available at the link, while a book of abstracts can be found at the link.

Lisbon, July 2020: Mario Kučić attended Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS) as part of the ENGRI project financed by Croatian Science Foundation. Due to COVID-19 outbreak, the LxMLS was held as a fully virtual online school (July 21st – 29th). All presentations and materials are available on the LxMLS Youtube channel.

Rijeka, July 2020: The first work meeting of the ENGRI research team was held on July 14th 2020. Unfortunatelly, not all team members were able to attend due to COVID-19 outbreak. The meeting took place at Konoba Nebuloza, Rijeka. Irena Bogunović, Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac and Mirjana Borucinsky discussed the project's progress and the activities that follow. Special attention was given to the planned conferences and workshops, and back-up plans in case the pandemic worsens. Also, it was agreed that a Zoom meeting will be scheduled, so that all team members can attend.