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Aeiou Words In Biology: Part 2, Suan Thorpe

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

Bosnia Pain (Sob!), Winfred S. Emmons

Word Ways

BOSNIA, GA. REV., ENDED. NEVER AGAIN! (SOB!)

a Southern minister, learning it's all over, vows it won't repeat.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 27 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Nested Word Squares, Leonard Gordon, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the may 1983 Word Ways, Helen Motamen describes a word puzzle contest she won in which the object was to construct a five-by-five letter array containing a maximum number of three-letter, four-letter and five-letter words across and down.

Yet More Fabled Phrases, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

Words Newfound, Words Reobserved, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

This article started life as a collection of odd slips of paper. While thumbing through dictionaries, or researching for other articles, I am inclined to note interesting words for possible use later. These words are usually irrelevant to the piece of research I am doing at the time, but they look good fodder for reexamination later on. I have a file stuffed full of these oddballs. In an attempt to downsize the file, I decided to bring 26 of these items together in this article, each one representing a different letter of the alphabet.

The Ultimate Presidential Rectangle?, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

Obsessed by the presidential rectangle problem, I fiddled with it during bouts of insomnia with the following results: a perfect 396-cell rectangle and a defective 391-cell one (BUSH disconnected). A perfect 391-cell specimen may be possible - surely the ultimate?

Vowelindromes Revisited, John Foster

Word Ways

In "The Vowlindrome" in the August Word Ways, Stephen Chism overlooked a third vowelindrome. All words but MEM are in Chambers 20th Century Dictionary.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

The Aeginrst Transposal: Part 1, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

All 24 combinations of the letters AEST make a word, from AEST, an obsolete form of 'east' through to TSE-A, a Keresan tribe of New Mexico. The halfway mark has been achieved for AELST (63) and AERST (64), from a possible 120 transposals. These feats are recorded in "Transposing Rates" in the November 1987 Word Ways and the current Colloquy. As far as I am aware, no comprehensive study of six-letter or seven-letter sets has ever been undertaken, but at the next level the remarkable transposability of the eight letters AEGINRST has been recognized by wordsmiths for most of this …

On Babbage And Babbling, Enoch Haga

Word Ways

Here are few random thoughts and comments for the logologist. As a retired mathematics teacher, it's been my experience that people interested in recreational mathematics are also interested in recreational linguistics.

Personal Anagrams, Harry L. Stern

Word Ways

The appeal in constructing anagrams lies in the balance between the extreme confinement of working with a fixed set of letters and the tremendous room for exploration afforded by all the permutations of those letters. If I were required to write a poem, without any restrictions on the form or content, my brain would quickly enter a state of paralysis; for without constraints on the assignment, the possibilities are infinite - and overwhelming.

Word-Order Spoonerisms: A Reply, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

In the May 1993 Word Ways, Kickshaws editor David Morice asked "Have you every run across any sentences that switched words around to achieve a different effect - a kind of word-order spoonerism?"

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.

Tolkien’S Word-Hord Onlēac, Ricky L. Thompson

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Explores “the stylized and conventional speeches” of Beowulf and the Green Knight as they “provide analogues for Tolkien’s heroes in The Lord of the Rings.” Contends that analysis of these speeches enhances awareness of many aspects of these heroes.

Dr-Link: A System Update For Trec-2, Elizabeth D. Liddy, Sung H. Myaeng

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The theoretical goal underlying the DR-LINK System is to represent and match documents and queries at the various linguistic levels at which human language conveys meaning. Accordingly, we have developed a modular system which processes and represents text at the lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse levels of language. In concert, these levels of processing permit DR-LINK to achieve a level of intelligent retrieval beyond more traditional approaches. In addition, the rich annotations to text produced by DR-LINK are replete with much of the semantics necessary for document extraction. The system was planned and developed in a modular fashion and functional …

The Variable (Th) In Dallas African American Vernacular English, Virginia C. Vinton

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

It is well-known that African American Vernacular English (hereafter AAVE) displays regional variation. In the case of the (th) variable, Wolfram (1969) found that AAVE speakers in Detroit used the nonstandard variants [f], [t], and Ø. In New York City, Labov (1972a) observed the use of [t] and [t?] as the nonstandard variants. In both of these studies conducted in the northern U.S. the variants used by speakers were stratified differently with regard to social factors. Given regional variation of this sort, we might well expect further interesting differences in southern cities of the U.S. The present study, conducted in …

Variability In Negation In African American Vernacular English, Tracey L. Weldon

Faculty Publications

For quantitative sociolinguists, one of the goals of investigating variability in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is to understand better the nature of the grammar. Specifically, researchers have been interested in whether the variation observed in AAVE is inherent to a single system or the result of interaction between two separate systems of AAVE and Standard English (SE). Variability in negation is an area of the AAVE grammar that has received minimal attention, but one that may offer some interesting insights into the nature of the system or systems at work. This article provides a framework to describe the variability …

Finding The "Two" In Diglossia, John C. Paolillo

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

Sociolinguists generally agree that a diglossic situation is one in which a single speech community employs two or more varieties of language, a H(igh) variety and a L(ow) variety, for different communicative purposes. Ferguson’s (1959) classic definition also includes a structural component: the two forms of language are varieties of the same language, and hence related, but “highly divergent” from one another, more so than a dialect in relation to its standard language. However there is little agreement on this point, and different researchers give different characterizations of how divergent H and L must be. The theoretical status of intermediate …

Subjectless Sentences In English, Patricia Willess Reiman

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

One of the goals of modern linguistics is to develop a model of Universal Grammar which captures natural language features that are universal, while also accounting for variation among languages. Thus a much-discussed phenomenon in Government and Binding theory is pro-drop (Jaeggli and Safir 1989). Pro-drop is the parameter which determines whether the subject of an independent clause must be overt or may be left empty (Crystal 1991:279). According to the definition given above, it would appear that English is a pro-drop language. However, Crystal (1991:279) cites English as an example of a non-pro-drop language. If this is correct and …

Emotionality In Free Recall: Language Specificity In Bilingual Memory, L. J. Anooshian, Paula T. Hertel

Psychology Faculty Research

Bilingual subjects (Spanish English) who had acquired fluency in their second language after 8 years of age rated 18 emotional and 18 neutral words for ease of pronunciation, implied activity, or emotionality; half of each type was presented in Spanish and half in English. During a subsequent, unexpected test of free recall subjects recalled more emotional than neutral words, but only for words that had been presented in the native language. This finding applied across native-language groups and suggests that emotion provides a basis for language specificity in bilingual memory.

A Case For Private Language, Peter Asaro '94

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Parsing Local Ambiguities In Syntactic Structures: Prosodic Influences, Harold Nicholas Nagel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1990 - 1999

This project comprises a series of experiments investigating the role of prosody--the timing and intonation of an utterance--in syntactic disambiguation. Acoustic analyses isolated two parameters--main-clause verb segment and pause durations, and the pitch contour over the verb and the following phrase--that reliably predicted syntactic structure in two sets of temporarily ambiguous sentences. The manipulation of one of these parameters--verb and pause duration--resulted in increased processing load over the disambiguating region of sentences temporarily ambiguous between a direct object and an embedded clause syntactic structure (e.g., "John knew the answer by heart" vs. "John knew the answer was correct"). Also, differences …

Significance Of Old French Manuscript Evidence For Seeking All Sources Of "The Romaunt Of The Rose", Nathaniel Cogswell Balis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1990 - 1999

The search for all sources of The Romaunt of the Rose, the fourteenth-century English version of Le roman de la Rose, focuses on Geoffrey Chaucer. The authorship controversy is so divisive that prominent medievalists like Huot, Hult, Robertson, and Badel write long volumes on the Roman's influence without mentioning the Romaunt. Comparing Geissman's list of rime-borrowings with both poems' concordances is the only way to end the debate, because Chaucer is the likeliest author and one must start with the most compatible French and English texts. At present, the best way to test Geoffrey Chaucer's authorship of the Middle English …

Richard Moyle's Review Of Ingjerd Hoëm, Even Hovdhaugen, And Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen's Kupu Mai Te Tutolu: Tokelau Oral Literature, Richard Moyle

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 26 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Rare Maps For Collectors, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

Three previous articles in Word Ways [1,2,3] have discussed ways of mapping distinct integers onto letters so as to produce "perfect" or self-descriptive number-names. So far English, French, and Spanish have been examined. Glancing next at German, the same pencil and paper plus computer program approach already outlined in [1] can be used to find mappings such as:

Cheater's Palindromes: Part 1, Walter Fretlaw

Word Ways

In the November 1990 Word Ways, Dave Morice's Kickshaws column gave pride of place to Cheater's Palindromes of various writers, most notably those of Jeff Grant. Many readers consider that 'cheater' is a modifying noun to suggest that some of the words in such palindromes are spurious. However, cheating in this context really implies tantalizing, as the contentious words are either obscure or of foreign origin.

Ultimate Homophones, Richard Lederer, Al Greengold, William Ward, Miriam Espinosa

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

Aeiou Words In Biology: Part 1, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Less than a handful of major articles dealing with AEIOU words (words in which each of the five vowels A, E, I, O and U occurs once) have appeared in Word Ways over the years. In November 1969 Ross Eckler, in "Unsociable Housemaid Discourages Facetious Behavior", compiled a type-collection of such words from Merriam-Webster dictionaries and other sources.