Digital Commons Network^™

Discourse Analysis Of A Michif Narrative, Breck S. Speers

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a transcription and translation of a Michif narrative. Michif is a hybrid language consisting of French noun phrases and Cree verb structures. After the translation of the text, a structural analysis of the text is given based on textual analysis techniques proposed by Roger Schank and Robert Abelson (1977) and Ellen Prince (1979).

The Michif narrative was elicited from a resident of San Clara, Manitoba, Canada, and was transcribed with the help of native Michif speakers involved with the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of North Dakota. The concept of the script, a stereotypic chain …

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 16 Number 2

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information, including a table of contents, for this issue.

N-Tile Scrabble Records, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

What is the highest score achievable by playing a given number of tiles in a single turn of Scrabble Crossword Game? As far as I know, no one has investigated the records for playing fewer than the maximum of seven tiles. But the majority of turns ordinarily encountered in Scrabble Crossword Game use only three to five tiles, not all seven. So after working on the seven-tile record for a few years, I decided to investigate the records for playing one through six tiles. I soon realized that these records were just as intriguing and strategical as the seven-tile record. …

Palindromic Introductions, Chaim Fleischman

Word Ways

NERO, LOREN! ERROL - MEET, SEE, ESTEEM LORRE!

Palindramayana, Don Emmerson

Word Ways

The Ramayana is one of the world's longest, oldest, and most admired epic poems. First composed in India over 2,000 years ago and now some 24,000 couplets long, the Ramayana describes Prince Rama's marriage to Sita, their banishment, her kidnaping, he rrescue, and their reunion. Apart from its popularity in India, the epic is well known in other parts of Asia, including Indonesia (especially Java) and Thailand.

The 4-Set Problem, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

23751 different sets of four letters can be formed from the 26 letter of the alphabet, if order is ignored and repetition allowed. (This is the same as the number of ways of selecting four different objects from a group of 26+4-1.) Is it possible, for each set, to find a word containing its letters?

The Oed Supplement, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

1972 saw the publication of the first volume of the revised Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, covering the letters A-G. The second volume, for the letters H-N, appeared in 1976. A review of the first two volumes of the OED (now usually abbreviated to OEDS) appeared in the volumes were discussed, and an extensive list of "new" words was presented.

Those Cryptic British Crosswords, William Sunners

Word Ways

When Will Shortz was gathering material for his recently-published book, World Class Championship Crosswords (Simon & Schuster, 1982), he visited me to consult some of my historical crossword competition material. We soon got into a spirited discussion about inadvertent ambiguity in British-style crossword puzzles: I maintained that the plethora of "outs" (black squares) in British diagrams allowed crossword fans sometimes to write different correct answers into the same word-path, whereas Will Shortz insisted that the typical British clue would not allow such a possibility.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions for the puzzles in this issue.

The Poet's Corner

Word Ways

From time to time, Word Ways receives a variety of short poems related to recreational linguistics, some original, others previously published. As poetic output cannot be easily predicted, these will be presented on an irregular basis.

A Balancing Act, Harry B. Partridge

Word Ways

As the heavy oaken door to Wombat Manor swung open to reveal the svelte outline of its laird's chatelaine mine eyne dazzled and became fixed upon the vertical line of quivering chatoyance issuing from the depths of the baroque chrysoberyl ferronniere which, like a third eye, made up with her own two a trefoil whose threefold reflection of the waning January sun distilled the essence of light. Her civilized purr broke through my optical enchantment, and as she pressed into my hands an elegant little hamper of ample weight I found myself being given subtle instructions supplementing the telephonic message …

Three Word Square Contests (Part 3), Helen Motamen

Word Ways

In the last contest, we had to make up a five-by-five grid of letters and find the most 3-, 4-, and 5-letter words reading across and down. The total number of letters in all the words was the score. So the best grid we could make would have all possible sequences of 3, 4, and 5 letters being words. This grid would be a five-by-five word square encompassing four four-by-four word and nine three-by-three word squares! It would ahve ten 5-letter words (10x5=50 points), twenty 4-letter words (20x4=80), and thirty 3-letter words (30x3=90), so it would score a grand total …

A Dialogue Of Nations, Peter Gambaccini

Word Ways

Ed This was a good idea, coming here. I can use the recreation. Let's play pool.
Ned Iraq?
Ed No, I'll rack 'em. I think I'll have some coffee, too.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors who wish to contribute to Word Ways.

Kickshaws

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

A New Number Nomenclature, John Candelaria

Word Ways

In two earlier Word Waysarticles published in August 1975 and February 1976, I proposed a nomenclature for very large numbers, going far beyond the vigintillion (ten to the sixty-third power) commonly regarded as the outer limit. In this article, I introduced some changes to make my proposed nomenclature more consistent with the modern system of Latin cardinal number names, as given on page 128-9 of Ernest Hettich and A.G.C. Maitland's Latin Fundamentals (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950). In particular, the number name millillion, formerly used to represent the number one followed by 3(1000) + 3 zeros, has now been …

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in it.

The American Heritage Dictionary, Alan Frank

Word Ways

Though heralded as "NEW!", the organization of the second edition of The American Heritage Dictionary (AH) is actually a throwback to the earlier days of dictionary making. The design adopted by the dictionary makes it more useful to the general public but less interesting to logologists.

Triple Tautonyms In Biology, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Triple tautonyms are hard to find. I know if only two in Webster's Third Edition, cha-cha-cha and tat-tat-tat. On page 175 in his book Language on Vacation (Scribner's, 1965), Dmitri Borgmann also suggests the college sororities Delta Delta Delta and Sigma Sigma Sigma, the honor society Beta Beta Beta, and the scientific names for the African weaverbird and the common rat, Quela quela quela and Rattus rattus rattus (misspelled with a single T). There are a few legitimate additions to his list, such as the movie title Tora! Tora! Tora!; much less acceptable are juxtapositions of …

Daft Fad, Chaim Fleischman

Word Ways

In this quiz the answer to each clue is a palindrome. To aid in the solution, word-divisions and all vowels are given. The first letters of all twenty-seven palindromes will spell out another palindrome when read from top to bottom. Answers are given in Answers and Solutions.

Medes In The Marsupium, Harry B. Partridge

Word Ways

The ancient world had to deal with its Media, that savage land whence came barbarians to ravage the neighboring empires. We, in turn, have our Media with their unstories celebrating sweat-freaks charged with carrying or propelling balls of differing sizes and shapes from an improbable point of departure to an even more improbable destination, detailing drug busts of jet-setters and car makers, and chronicling the concubinages, miscarriages, and splits of movie and TV facemakers distinguished primarily by busts of another kind. Therefore on a recent warm and oppressive afternoon in an attempt to escape for a time the attacks of …

A Surname Saga, Derek Pell

Word Ways

HAFIZ on my way to the LONDON POST ORPHEUS to MAILER a LEVERTOV to MAUGHAM. As I PAZ through the PARKER, my BACH began AIKEN. I SATIE down on a nearby BENCHLEY, first MENCKEN SCHORER it was DREISER. An INGE of SNOW had fallen recently - - HAILE REMARQUEaBOLL for the MIDDLETON of JUNO - - and there was a CRISP TRILLIN DEVRIES.

Another Vocabularyclept Poem, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

In a Vocabularyclept poem, the constructor (in this case, J. A. Lindon) is supplied with an alphabetically - arranged list of words from a poem by the originator (in this case, Howard Bergerson) ; his task is to reassemble these words into a more-or-less meaningful poem. Earlier examples of these reconstructions by Lindon, Bergerson, and the editor appear in the May 1969 and August 1970 issues of Word Ways. Unfortunately, the two poems given below are not quite identical; Bergerson erroneously supplied 'lightening' for 'lighning' in the word-list.

The Logologist's Love Letter, Richard M. Lederer

Word Ways

The following letter was written by Richard Lederer after a fight with his wife-to-be, Carol, when he was a student at Yale and she at Pembroke. Note that it contains no repeated words.

An 1800-Point Scrabble Turn?, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

In SCRABBLE® crossword game (hereafter referred to simply as SCRABBLE), playing all seven tiles at once entitles one to a 50-point bonus, which, when added to the score for the word(s) formed, often results in a single turn of 70 points or more. Even 100-point turns can occur when the tiles are played on one or more premium squares which double or triple the values of letters or words. Theoretically, in fact, well over 1,000 points are possible when seven tiles are added in key positions to eight tiles already on the board to produce several words including a 15-letter …

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections, and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

Three Word Square Contests (Part 2), Helen Motamen

Word Ways

In the second word contest sponsored by the Girl Scout magazine Daisy for kids under twelve, the grid size grew as well as the challenge. Contestants now had to fill in a 4-by-4 grid with letters of their choice and find the ten longest words that could be spelled without moving in any directio between letters (up, down, right, left, or diagonal) as in a game of Boggle. No letter in the grid could be used more than once per word, and all of the words had to be different. The value of each of the ten words depended on …

Scottish Occupations, Boris Randolph

Word Ways

According to Social Security records, the most common Scottish Macs are MacDonald (57 thousand), MacKenzie (18 thousand) and MacKay (11 thousand). Any telephone directory will reveal many others, but I suspect that few people have encountered the following Macs and their appropriate occupations:

Wordplay Miniatures, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

In this article, we introduce Word Ways readers to the wordplay miniature -- a special form of the familiar crossword puzzle. In the title, the term miniature refers to its size; all puzzles presented below are square arrays consisting of five horizontal five-letter words intersected by five vertical five-letter words. (Because of the simplicity of this array, we have deemed it unnecessary to supply the puzzler with a grid of squares to be filled in for each puzzle; a blank sheet of paper should be adequate.)

Pseudoredundancy, Merlin X. Houdini Iv

Word Ways

In the November 1982 Kickshaws, Edward Wolpow asked readers to supply pseudoredundant expressions of the form "BORN NATAL, South Africa" and "COLORFUL COLORADO" from the real world. There are many such groups of words, and the list can be further extended if non-dictionary phrases similar to his "When will BEGIN START peace talks?" are allowed.