To comprehend figurative utterances such as metaphor or sarcasm, a listener must both judge the literal meaning of the statement and infer the speaker's intended meaning (mentalizing; Amodio and Frith, 2006). To delineate the neural substrates of pragmatic comprehension, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with 20 normal adult volunteers. Participants read short stories fo...

BACKGROUND Studies have shown that individuals with fertility problems experience psychosocial problems. The use of various coping strategies seems to have different impacts on women with infertility stress. The aim of this study was to examine the role of coping strategies (active-avoidance, passive-avoidance, active confronting and meaning based) in predicting infertility stress among a group...

the word “hukum” literally and linguistically means judgement. in the holy qur’?n it also implies the same meaning. it is used in the jurisprudent terminology to mean verdict or ruling and may also imply other special meanings. when it is used unconditionally, it usually implies an islamic practical law which is divided into different parts and sections. the most important of which are“taklif” ...

Typically, information is retrieved by literally matching terms in documents with those of a query. However, lexical matching methods can be inaccurate when they are used to match a user's query. Since there are usually many ways to express a given concept (synonymy), the literal terms in a user's query may not match those of a relevant document. In addition, most words have multiple meanings (...

The current study was carried out to investigate the functions of the ritual speech act of ‘ya Allah’ (literally meaning ‘O God’) employed by Iranians in social interactions. To this end, sixty-two Persian native speakers of different age groups, ranging from 35 to 85, of both genders were observed in 250 natural situations such as daily interactions, gatherings, public or private places and lo...

I want to argue for contextualism. According to contextualism, the contrast between what the speaker means and what she literally says is illusory, and the notion of ‘what a sentence says’ incoherent. What is said (the truth-conditional content of the utterance) is nothing but an aspect of speaker’s meaning. That is not to deny that there is a legitimate contrast to be drawn between what the sp...

Nations Development Programme), and now also involves several other international organisations. MFF focuses on the countries worst hit by the 2004 tsunami, i.e. India, Indonesia, Maldives, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. While highlighting mangroves as an important flagship ecosystem of its efforts in the region, the MFF is also looking at the conservation of other features, including cor...