Register and Layout in Epistolary Judeo-Arabic

Medieval letters from the Cairo Geniza can be broadly classified into private, official, or mercantile correspondence, and all use particular linguistic registers. Official correspondence, for example, shows abundant code switching into Hebrew and the employment of high-style versus lower-style prose. Mercantile letters actively avoid Hebrew and emulate supraconfessional Arabic writing standards. Private letters typically display more colloquial and less standardized forms than other genres and are more often written in crude handwriting. Among these private letters, we find one written by or for women that share common features of colloquiality and less standardization even when they are transcribed by male scribes. Linguistic registers are also influenced by the time and place in which they are written, and comparing Geniza letters from different areas and time periods exposes geographic and chronological characteristics. For example, North African letters tend to be linguistically more conservative, and Babylonian and Egyptian letters show differences in layout and style. Throughout the medieval period, orthographic, grammatical, lexical, and stylistic changes in the letters reflect social and economic evolution over time. The principal trend is a distinct move away from prescriptive Arabic linguistic norms from the late twelfth century on.

Pop-Up Structures and the Fracture Pattern in the Balsam Lake Area, Southern Ontario

ABSTRACT An examination of topographic lineaments detectable in Landsat TM images and measurement of joints in outcrop in the Balsam Lake area reveals a systematic bedrock fracture pattern with three principal sets oriented 091°, 027°, and 152°. The 027° trend is parallel to a major aeromagnetic anomaly, the Niagara-Pickering Linear Zone (NPLZ), which underlies the Balsam Lake area and is thought to mark the sub-Paleozoic continuation of the Proterozoic Central Metasedimentary Belt Boundary Zone (CMBBZ). Possible origins of the main joint sets due to Acadian (091° set), Alleghanian (152° set) and St. Lawrence rift system tectonics (091° and 027° sets) are discussed. En-echelon pop-up structures have a mean principal trend of 118°. They displace Lake Algonquin paleobeaches, suggesting formation less than 12,500 years ago. The orientation of the pop-up structures is subnormal to the current in situ maximum horizontal stress direction, SHmax (020°), and is parallel to members of the 091° joint set, indicating possible nuclea-tion on favourably-oriented pre-existing joints. These pop-ups are the only features in the Balsam Lake area with strong evidence for a neotectonic age.

Vegetation diversity and dynamics on quarries in forest-tundra of Northwest Siberia (neighborhood of Labytnangi town, Yamalo-nenets autonomous area)

Vegetation of 11 quarries in the forest tundra of Northwest Siberia was studied in the years 1993–1995 and 1998–2000. The vegetation recovery age varies from 2 to 33 years. 235 relevés are sorted out according to the Braun-Blanquet approach. 13 variants with 37 subvariants are distinguished within the 4 sub­associations of the 3 associations (2 new among them) which belong to the alliance Chamerio-Matricarion hookeri Ishbirdin, Ishbirdina et Khusainov 1996. The relationship between associations and subassociations correspond to the principal trend of vegetation suc­cession in the quarries. Variants and their subvariants demonstrate better coincidence with either the stages of recovery succession, or different habitats conditions.