Digital Commons Network^™

Homophonemes, . Anil

Word Ways

How many different spellings can one phoneme or sound have?

Cyrillic That Looks Roman, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

The Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian has several letters that look like Roman letters The ones that correspond closely to the Roman letters in sound as well as appearance are: A,E,K,M,O,T.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Parents And Offspring Reunited, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A Parent word is split into two equal, or unequal, parts each of which is a word in its own right. The words are arranged to make a 3-word designation. There are 6 different ways in which 3 words can be arranged.

Magic Poker Hands, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

A magic trick.

Opening The Floodgates To A Pandora's Box Of Worms, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

in past Word Ways articles, I've differentiated between true mixed metaphors, which combine incongruous, absurd, or unreal images ("it's the whole kettle of fish in a nutshell") and what I call mashed metaphors -where clashing tropes and cliches aren't contradictory or impossible, but nevertheless create an awkward and ludicrous effect because of their proximity ("Investors smelling trouble can vote with their feet").

Making The Alphabet Dance - Part Two, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

The second part in an autobiographical series by A. Ross Eckler detailing his interest in, and the history of Word Ways.

Sound Bites -2, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

The tumultuous world we live in has given new meaning (and well-deserved esteem) to the title of 'first responder". Now is your opportunity to join this elite group and assume the mantle in a figurative sense by completing the word rebus that awaits you.

Aeiou Time Three Delicacies, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

While browsing through some back issues of Word Ways, I noticed in the November 2000 Kickshaws that Dave Morice and Eric Chaikin presented a number of "double pair supervocalics", words and terms which use exactly two each of the vowels AEIOU. At the end of the Kickshaws item, they wondered "dare we dream of a decadent feast of AEIOU-times-three-delicacies?", and offered a pair of number name examples: FOUR MILLION SIX HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND AND TEN and QUATTUORDECILLION FIVE THOUSAND AND TEN. However, both of these are inconsistent in their use of the word AND.

Simile For The Camera!, Daniel Galef

Word Ways

Similes have a tendency to become entrenched in the language. Though they may originally be an expression of originality, a creative link between two ideas never before formed, they soon are overused and undervalued figures of speech not given a second thought by users, addicted to similes in the way that other users are addicted to methamphetamine. Because a simile has a set meaning belied by its expression, it refers only to one meaning or sense of its base word, like any unambiguous phrase.

Dvorak Typewriter Words, Tristan Miller

Word Ways

In the November 1999 Word Ways Mike eith explored the subject of wordplay based on the typewriter keyboard - that is, words which can be typed with certain well-defined restrictions, such as using only one keyboard row, or alternating hands for each successive letter. Keith's findings were based on QWERTY, the most common keyboard layout in the English-speaking world. In this article we improve upon some of Keith's QWERTY records and repeat most of his original challenges with another popular English Keyboard layout, the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.

Internal Palindromes And Regular Inflection, T.A. Hall

Word Ways

An internal palindrome can be observed in a word like DAWNWARD, in which the five letter palindromic sequence AWNWA is embedded within an occurring word.

Compound Interest, Arthur Schulman

Word Ways

More than 90% of the elements of the periodic table consist of consonants which, rearranged with the appropriate vowels, may produce new (and occasionally apposite) words. Here are some that I found.

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Generic Alternades, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

in Language on Vacation, Dmitri Borgmann defined an alternade as a word in which every other letter, beginning with the first letter, make another word; every other letter, beginning with the second letter, also make a word.

Long Words In German And Other Languages, Solomon Golomb

Word Ways

The German language routinely forms very long words by incorporating (sometimes) long adjectival phrases and the nouns they modify into a single word. And such words find their way into everyday use.

Us State Nicknames, Slogans & License Plate Legends, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Over the years, Word Ways has offered transposals of the names of the US state names and state capitols, well as transdeletions and transadditions. But in this article, I look at transposals of state nicknames (both current and no longer in use), state slogans (used for promoting tourism, past and present), as well some of the legends that appear on vehicle license plates from different states.

Overlapping Names, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Recently Ray Love pointed out an unusual feature of his full name: it can be written out as one continuous word, as RaymonDaneiLove. He writes "No one I know has a name that does this...perhaps one name in a thousand or ten thousand has this rare characteristic...is this something that can be quantified?"

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Some Excerpts From The Scibulations Of Jerry Andrus, Jerry Andrus

Word Ways

Excerpts from the writings of Jerry Andrus.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover, including instructions to authors.

Coincidental Synonym Chains, . Anil

Word Ways

Coincidental self(ish) synonymy was defined in 04-45 (& 129) as words spelled the same (& nearly the same) that mean approximately the same but, surprisingly, are unrelated etymologically.

Speaking Of Secession: A Theory Of Linguistic Secession, Sami M. Dudar

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Tool Also For Linguists: A Review Of Paul Sullivan’S Qualitative Data Analysis Using A Dialogical Approach, Grandon Goertz

The Qualitative Report

Paul Sullivan (2013) introduces a method of speech analysis that uses a dialogical approach, which is distinguished from critical discourse analysis, phenomenological analysis, and grounded theory by its hermeneutic of trust. In this approach, data is analyzed using a pairing of bureaucratic and theoretical methods that indicates in the speech where the key moments are and where intonation expresses meaning. In the evaluation process subjectivity is defined and described. The types of data that would be especially suited to this approach include interviews, focus group speech, and conversation. This dialogic approach also has applications in the field of linguistics

Automatic Identification Of Metaphoric Utterances, Jonathan Edwin Dunn

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the problem of metaphor identification in linguistic and computational semantics, considering both manual and automatic approaches. It describes a manual approach to metaphor identification, the Metaphoricity Measurement Procedure (MMP), and compares this approach with other manual approaches. The dissertation then describes an implemented and simplified version of the procedure, Measuring and Identifiying Metaphor-in-Language (MIMIL), and compares the premises of this system with other automatic metaphor identification systems. MIMIL and three existing metaphor identification systems are then evaluated on a common data set. Finally, the dissertation looks at difficulties which face attempts to automatically identify metaphors caused by …

Not A Hearing Loss, A Deaf Gain: Power, Self-Naming, And The Deaf Community, David J. Thomas

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Self-naming has long stood as the primary assertion of power for disenfranchised communities in the western world. While person first language (e.g. person who is deaf) has been the preferred language of disability and disability services for the last 20 years, members of the Deaf community have asserted their cultural capital, and indeed, their Deafhood, or defining the experience of being ‘deaf in the world’, through the power of self-naming. This research examines attitudes toward language, self-naming, and disability in the Deaf community and seeks to move toward a more attentive, sensitive, and responsive language policy in the academy.

Historically, …

The Rotas Square - A Numerical Challenge, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The history of the discovery, and significance, of the Rotas square has been documented in detail in Word Ways, particularly by Dmitri A. Borgmann (WW November 1979 page 195.). I do not intend to delve into that aspect of the square here.

The Pun Is In Fashion...And The Fun Is In Passion, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

A news story on October 21, 2011 reported that Spain's separatist ETA group had pledged to end its four decades of violent protests. Thus, one of the all-time classic spoonerisms had become reality: All the Basques were put in one exit! This provoked a profound question: Could spoonerisms explain all important events?

High Single-Turn Scrabble Scores, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

According to Guinness World Records (2008), the highest single-turn Scrabble score in a real game is 392 points achieved by Karl Khoshnaw (UK) on 11 April 1982 when he played the nine-timer CAZIQUES spanning two triple word squares.

Johnson Solids & Their Acronyms, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In a previous article, I examined the names of the Johnson solids. A quick reminder; the 92 Johnson solids are a set of three-dimensional solids who faces are a mixture of triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, octagons, and decagons. Three constraints apply to the solids: (1) all their edges must be the same length, (2) the faces must be regular, and (3) there came be no dimples in their surfaces.