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This article addresses e-mail communications between university students and their lecturer in the Czech Republic. Politeness strategies employed in 200 Czech students' e-mail apologies sent to a lecturer were analysed. Students use multiple strategies to create a positive self-image of a committed and reliable student, combining direct expressions of apology, explanations, and acknowledgement of responsibility. The most frequent strategies were direct, prototypically performatives or hedged performatives. The high level of direct forms is consistent with findings of previous research on Slavic cultures. Nearly half of the e-mails included structures with directive illocution (request for information), which shifts responsibility to an authority; however, this could be interpreted as a form of politeness because students show that they value their lecturer's opinion and are willing to follow their advice. Although students primarily employ strategies based on negative politeness, which is perceived as unmarked in an institutional setting, the closing sections of the e-mails contain positive politeness in complimentary closings, and thanking is prevalent. • Politeness in Czech students' e-mail apologies sent to a lecturer was analysed. • Students use multiple strategies to create a positive self-image. • The most frequent strategies were direct, including performatives. • Nearly half of the e-mails include structures with directive illocution [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Politeness strategies in 260 e-mail requests from university students to faculty were analysed. [•] Salutations, directness level, syntactic, lexical and external modification were examined. [•] It was found that students employ a great amount of syntactic modification. [•] It was found that both positive and negative politeness strategies were used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a description of the acquisition of modal verbs and their grammatical forms in a Czech monolingual child. The author uses a corpus of transcriptions of audio recordings from age 2.8 to 3.6 which covers the phase of protomorphology and transition to morphology proper. Pragmatic function of verbs occurring in a child's speech is illustrated by examples, the occurrence of miniparadigms and gradual development of grammatical forms is documented. First the child produces only a limited number of forms - first just in repetitions, then the 3rd person singular present tense appears as a universal form. Finally the 1st person singular and plural forms appear. In parallel, the child learns to use the past tense, the future tense, conditional and passives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]