the purpose of this study was to examine cook’s (2003) ‘multiple competence’ by investigating backward pragmatic transfer (from l2 [english] to l1 [persian]) in refusals to invitations. it explored participants’ frequency and content of refusal strategies in l1 regarding the status (i.e., power and distance) of interlocutors and the proficiency level of efl learners. the participants were persi...

This paper presents the strategies of bestfit Bottom-Left by Right first (BL-Rf) and Bottom-Left by Top first (BL-Tf) (BL-Rf/BLTf) for block division selection. The block solution inspires from Space Allocation Problems (SAPs) and Packing Problems (PPs), however the huge number of possible solutions the heuristic with guided strategies required for the satisfied results. The mathematical expres...

investigating transfer of one’s pragmatic knowledge of first language to his second or foreign language has been one of the areas of interest for researchers. however, there are contradictory results even within the scarce studies which have addressed transferability. this study was an attempt to investigate perceived pragmatic transferability of l1 refusal strategies by persian efl learners. s...

Identification of prepositional phrases (PP) has been an issue in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). In this paper, towards Chinese patent texts, we present a rule-based method and a CRF-based method to identify the PPs. In the rule-based method, according to the special features and expressions of PPs, we manually write targeted formal identification rules; in the CRF approach, af...

the necessity of conducting more studies addressing the development of pragmatic profciency and strong pragmatic awareness for english language learners has made the role of instruction and feedback in teaching pragmatic knowledge of utmost importance. the present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of four types of instruction for teaching some pragmatic markers including topic change m...

OBJECTIVES Within a strong interdisciplinary framework, improvement in the quality of care for children with autistic spectrum disorders through a 2 year implementation program of Practice Parameters, aimed principally at improving early detection and intervention. METHOD We developed Practice Parameters (PPs) for Pervasive Developmental Disorders and circulated the PPs to all child and adole...

INTRODUCTION This study was undertaken to determine whether the anti-osteoarthritis drug pentosan polysulfate (PPS) influenced mesenchymal precursor cell (MPC) proliferation and differentiation. METHODS Human MPCs were maintained in monolayer, pellet or micromass cultures (MMC) for up to 10 days with PPS at concentrations of 0 to 20 microg/ml. MPC viability and proliferation was assessed usin...

This study aims to examine the cross-cultural similarities and differences in the use of rapport management strategies (rapport enhancement, rapport maintenance, rapport neglect, and rapport challenge) in the complaints during service encounters based on Spencer Oatey’s (2008) model. To this end, 90 participants (30 Persian native speakers, 30 Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) learner...