Pavla Novakova

I am a PhD student in the School of Psychology, funded by the ESRC South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS). My research project is titled ‘Cross-linguistic variation in complex motion event encoding and the potential effects on attention and memory in the context of eye-witness narratives’.

I aim to explore if and to what extent our language guides our attention and memory when we witness complex motion events. Using naturalistic stimuli, I want to determine if speakers of different languages pay attention to, lexicalise and remember different aspects of the same witnessed events (such as path and manner of motion, placement of objects and focus on end-points of motion).

I am working with Kenny Coventry and Paul Engelhardt as supervisors.

During my undergraduate studies at Charles University, Prague I focused on syntax and translation of compound sentences from Czech into English. For my bachelor’s thesis I received the Vilem Mathesius Foundation Award for the best BA thesis of the year.

I have obtained an MA in Global Intercultural Communication from the University of East Anglia, working with Luna Filipović and Alberto Hijazo-Gascón. My dissertation focused on motion event encoding in Czech, following Talmy’s motion lexicalisation typology and contrasting English and Czech rhetorical styles.

I also hold an MRes in Social Science Research Methods (Linguistics) from UEA. My MRes dissertation focused on the potential effects of language on memory in placement events. Specifically, I conducted an experimental study of the lexicalisation of final object position in English, German and Czech placement events. I then explored if the cross-linguistic differences affected speaker’s memory for the object position.