۱.
The present study is an attempt to contribute to the L2 acquisition research through finding an appropriate answer to the question usually asked by both language teachers and learners, namely how to learn vocabulary and how to retain meanings in memory over time. We have chosen to discover the effects of two major types of productive exercises, writing and oral production exercises, on the remembrance of word meanings over time: 24 hours, one week, and one month after learning the vocabulary. For this purpose, two linguistically homogeneous L2 classes received ten sessions of treatment each: in one of these classes, 100 vocabulary items were practiced through controlled writing exercises and the other class practiced the same items through controlled oral exercises. The preliminary results indicate the positive influence of oral production exercises on meaning rememberance over time, i.e., after one month, while the two exercise types did not show any significant differences in their effects on in class vocabulary learning processes.
۲.
The Persian morpheme ra has attracted the attention of many linguists including Karimi (1989), Dabir-Moghaddam (1990) and Ghomeshi (1996) among others. Karimi takes ra as the accusative case marker, the presence of which on subjects and objects of prepositions render the sentence ungrammatical. According to Ghomeshi (1996), it marks DPs functioning as VP-level topics. Dabir-Moghaddam (1990) analyzes ra as the secondary topic marker in the Halidayian Functional grammar framework. In none of these analyses, this morpheme appear on deep subjects. In this article, it is highlighted that ra may also mark subjects, just in case it occurs in the right grammatical configuration. More specifically Persian has the category of small clause in which an NP marked with ra is the subject of the small clause rathar than object of the matrix sentence. This is an unprecedented hypothesis in Persian linguistic literature. I also present a minimalist account of the construction in question.
۳.
Seistan was one of the important ancient urban centres in south eastern Persia. The ruins of the city show the prosperity and fertility of this city to the extent that a British civil officer considered it as the ancient London of Asia. This article attempts to describe the enormous latent wealth of this ancient city which made it important for strategic, political and commercial reasons. Due to strategic importance, it fell into the power struggle of 19th and 20th century especially between British and Russia. This power game was the main reason of the poverty of the peasant of Seistan. East India Company had extensively taken Seistan as the major point for its trade after its penetration in Afghanistan and likewise Russia’s penetration in the Central Asia. Western penetration in Seistan had already started in 1809. When Samarqand was annexed in 1867, the British raised the question of establishing neutral zone between Britain and Russian in Central Asia. In 1872 thus, Seistan was divided between Afghanistan and Persia. Government of India had proposed building a new trade link between Quetta and Seistan, just to establish the supreme interest of Britain in those parts of Persia bordering Baluchistan. In the later half of the 19th century, the whole policy of the British government was to capture the strategic locations to further its economic interest, which are evident from the official and non-official records. With this evil intention and local power struggle, the richness and fertility of Seistan was destroyed and local peasantry faced dire straits.
۴.
The end of Cold War created a unique opportunity for both the Arabs and Israelis to end their animosity and for the United States to play an important role to bring them to peace negotiations. Therefore, during the 1990s, the U.S. facilitated several rounds of talks between Syria and Israel, but the negotiations complicated gradually. The talks were stalled over the fact that Israel did not want to withdraw from the Golan Heights prior to concluding security arrangements and normalization of relations with Syria. There were variety of reasons that prevented Syria and Israel from reaching a peace agreement. Besides, unresolved issues such as the Golan Heights, the biased role of the United States in the Syrian-Israeli talks left the process at an intractable impasse. The fact that the U.S. had strategic relations with Israel and due to the increasing power of the Zionist lobby in the U.S. Congress, Washington failed to be an honest broker. Both Syrian and Israeli inflexibility, mutual mistrust and suspicious along with tentative and conditional nature of talks were proved hindrances. The U.S. could play an active role through urging both Damascus and Tel Aviv to comply with the basic and logical needs of peace, pushing the Israelis to withdraw from the Syrian territory, urging the Syrians to moderate their positions-allowing new demarcation of border-strengthening confidence-building measures between the parties and assuring them that peace will provide their basic needs, and in no way will the conflict be settled at the expense of either’s interests.
۵.
Landslides are among important mass movements of a great interest for earth scientists. This is due to their importance in land use and decision-making in rural and urban areas. Survey of old landslides to determine their behavior has important bearing on the study of new ones. Seimareh grand landslide is one of the oldest and the most attractive phenomenon that has been the subject of concern for Iranian as well as international scientists for decades. There are two different opinions on the motivation factor and incidence date of the slide. This paper tries to investigate both geographic location and condition of the slide, with the geologic background of the Seimareh basin. By using hydro- climatic data, kinematics calculations, morphometeric measurements and remote sensing simulation, the dimension and extension of the landslide have been determined and a reasonable date of event has been estimated. Geomorphologic field and documentary surveys and historical details have led to a new chronological conclusion that the event age was about 1100 years old instead of 10k.a. years as suggested by others. Also Hogback movement in limestones has been recognized as the trigger or motivation factor for the slide in the area rather a severe earthquake.
۶.
Since the last few years, criminal policy authorities of Iran started to withdraw their previous emphasis on repressive approaches and under the impact of criminological studies and translation of policy initiatives in western countries new concept and vocabulary were entered into official discourse and criminal justice policy of Iran. Consequently, a list of community-based approaches to criminal justice system such as community-based punishment, community-based settlement council, community policing and community crime prevention became integral parts of the third and fourth 5-year Development plan (2000-4 & 2005-9) and the Second Judicial Reform Plan (2004-8) very rapidly. Regardless of how these ideas and policies are introduced to the Iranian criminal policy, the most important questions should be asked in this field are that to what extent thes policies will meet current needs of criminal policy of Iran? To what extent community-based approaches are adapted to socio-economic, cultural and political contexts in Iran? It seems that, successful reforms in the area of public participation in criminal justice needs to some pre-conditions such as; structural changes, cultural capacity building and understanding the principles or rationales which are standing behind each of these reforms. Our effort in this article is to describe and criticize two important aspects of community-based approach to criminal justice in Iran; Community-based punishments and settlement councils.
۷.
In Persian, the only syllable type with consonant clusters is cvcc, where its coda can be filled with two consonants. The present article attempts to find whether these two consonant conform the sonority sequencing principle or not. For this reason, the Persian words with cvcc syllable type are gathered from Persian dictionaries and are classified based on the vowel filling the nucleus of the syllables and the consonants in the first or second slot of the coda and the following results were obtained: a. Sonority sequencing principle is confirmed in clusters nuclei are /i,u,a/. b. Sonority sequencing principle is rejected in clusters with vowels /æ, e,o/. c. Based on sonority sequencing principle, vowels in Persian make up two natural classes namely / æ, e,o/ and /i,u,a/.
۸.
The English narrative of "the adventure of Hajji Baba of Ispahan"[1] seems to be one of the controversial literal texts for the Iranian readership with social criticism interest. This paper intends, not to refute or redeem the validity claims of this historical actualized reading or to offer an alternative, but, to put it into perspective of a spectrum of possibilities and to show how and under what contingencies, the text can actualize some other rival and salient interpretations that reverberate our contemporary horizons of social reality. Using the Ricoeurian theories of literature by applying his theory of "surplus of meaning" on the text we suggest how "The World of Text " has the potential to have different readings and in the next step, by analyzing "The World of Reader" and its dialectical relations with the world of text, we exhibit the important role of "reading" as the act of Self Reflection.
