Hedging is a linguistic avoidance of full commitment or precision. It is the use of a vague language. The main objectives of this study are to: (1) identify and classify the linguistic devices which act as hedges; (2) to examine the semantic functions of these devices. This paper makes use of word class as well as clausal constructions to represent the forms of hedges in relation to certain grammatical categories, namely: adverbials, epistemic verbs, modal verbs, cognitive verbs, hypothetical constructions, anticipatory it-clause, and anticipatory constructions. The text analysed is the first presidential debate between Senator Barak Obama and Senator John McCain on the campus of the University of Mississippi, during the presidential election campaign of the Republican and the Democrat parties in America.The results show that politicians use hedges to mild their language in process to, so that not to be proved wrong later. This justification is that the claims they had already made were only an approximation to the statements.
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Restoration of degraded lands by adoption of recommended conservation management practices can rehabilitate watersheds and lead to improving soil and water quality. The objective was to evaluate the effects of grass buffers (GBs), biomass crops (BCs), grass waterways (GWWs), agroforestry buffers (ABs), landscape positions, and distance from tree base for AB treatment on soil quality compared with row crop (RC) (corn [
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Background: Due to the variations in tooth anatomy and size among different populations, this study aimed to compare the mesiodistal width of primary second molars in Iraqi children with the mesiodistal width of stainless-steel crowns from different companies. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 220 intact maxillary and mandibular primary second molars selected from boys and girls’ Iraqi children aged 8-9 years collected from different primary schools in Baghdad city. The mesiodistal dimensions of the selected teeth and the available maxillary and mandibular stainless-steel crowns from three different companies were measured by using a 3-D scanner, and then the whole measurements were calculated usin
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Several stress-strain models were used to predict the strengths of steel fiber reinforced concrete, which are distinctive of the material. However, insufficient research has been done on the influence of hybrid fiber combinations (comprising two or more distinct fibers) on the characteristics of concrete. For this reason, the researchers conducted an experimental program to determine the stress-strain relationship of 30 concrete samples reinforced with two distinct fibers (a hybrid of polyvinyl alcohol and steel fibers), with compressive strengths ranging from 40 to 120 MPa. A total of 80% of the experimental results were used to develop a new empirical stress-strain model, which was accomplished through the application of the parti
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