2nd Annual Seed of Hope University Lecture Series

On April 13, International Black Sea University has hosted the 2nd Annual Seed of Hope University Lecture Series. The Rector of IBSU, Prof. Dr. Ilyas Ciloglu and a Chaplain at Harvard University, the chairperson of the Seed of Hope foundation greet the audience with welcome speeches that was followed by the short movie about SOH activities.

Seed of Hope representatives from different universities of United States, Harvard, Brandeis and Yale University, delivered 3 public lectures for today. Mr. Tony Dahao Qian – Lawyer and Literature Scholar B.A., J.D. Harvard University. Ph.D Harvard University (in progress) delivered the public lecture: ”Great Books: An Introduction to Some Foundational Works of World Literature” where he mentioned the famous works of world literature started from The Epic of Gilgamesh (1200 BC), The Hebrew Bible (1200 BC–500 BC), The Homeric Epics: The Iliad and The Odyssey (8th c. BC), then continued with The Confucian Classics (1000 BC–400 BC), The Mahabharata (last centuries BC), The Aeneid (29–19 BC) and ended the lecture with The New Testament (1st c. AD).

The second lecture: ”Phonotactic Constraints and English Language Learning” was delivered by Mr. Patrick Liu (Linguistics Scholar – Ph.D Harvard University; M.A.R. Yale University, M.A. Brandeis University). Dr. Patrick emphasized what kind of Phonotactic constraints exist while learning an English language, what causes a foreign accent? Phonology and 2nd language Acquisition (SLA). He mentioned the examples of the Errors in Georgian-Accented English that could be attributed to phonotactic factors.

Dr. Patrick Liu’s second lecture concerned the ”Linguistic Universals and Chomsky's Universal Grammar” where the main issues as he has concluded, are like Linguists (“generative” linguists) hypothesize a set of universal grammatical principles, innate in humans, which can serve as explanation for the constraints and the nature of these grammatical principles can result in insightful, interesting, (sometimes crazy!) analyses of phenomena which don’t seem amenable to analysis by other means…

In the end of the lecture series the representatives from Seed of Hope were awarded with the symbolic gifts and with the certificate of Appreciation and together with the students they took memorable photos.