The Future English Bible—Book Announcement from Psammeticus Press SpecGram Vol CLX, No 4 Contents

Modal Mania

by Keith Slater

Across
1. Tongue part used for apical sounds
4. Past indicative copula
7. Friend, low register
10. Antiquated data storage medium
11. Vague quantifier
12. Give off, with “groan” or “odor”
14. Pre-GB syntactic model
15. Consonant tier members for “routine”
16. Modal adjective: ability
17. Japanese culinary export
19. Romance language
21. Donkey
23. Possesses
24. Meaningful parts of words
28. Phonological model of Halle and some other guy (abbr.)
31. Some alphabets, colloquially
32. German for “with”
33. Modal interjection: agreement
34. Second person deictic
35. Sociolinguist’s delight
37. Scottish reflexive possessive
38. Chief Syntactic Officer? (abbr.)
39. Modal category: physical capacity or knowledge
43. Siouan-speaking birds?
47. Modal interjection: uncertainty or hesitation
48. Digraphs that usually occur except after “c”
50. Footnote deictic: immediate antecedent
51. Exxon’s other name
52. Modal auxiliary: ability or permission
53. Sinuous sea creatures
54. Covered with water (boustrophedon version)
55. Third feminine deictic
56. Unit in phon. theory

 Down
1. Thing to not talk about (alternate spelling)
2. Orthographies for linguists?
3. Modal adverb: maybe
       1  2  3         4  5  6         7  8  9        
10                              11                       12                13 
14                              15                       16                      
17                       18         19         20                             
                     21         22         23                                    
24  25  26                       27                       28  29  30 
31                              32                       33                      
34                       35                       36                             
                     37                       38                                    
39  40  41                       42         43         44  45  46 
47                              48         49         50                      
51                              52                       53                      
       54                       55                       56                      

      4. What the struggle in generativism was, according to Harris
5. Prefix for “passive” or “ergative”
6. Type of language that likes multi-morphemic words
7. Verbum dicendi for bells (singular)
8. Prefix with “position” or “valent”
9. One of Penn’s Gleitmans
10. SMS shorthand for “thanks”
13. Cardinal numeral of the decade
18. Derivational suffix for adjectives
20. Down under scientific academy (abbr.)
22. Field concerned with the study of meaning
24. Modal auxiliary: permission
25. Whatever you’re willing to pay (abbr.)
26. Institution of higher education devoted to study of clauses that modify nouns? (abbr.)
       27. Gramm. categ. expressing surprise
28. A dynasty during which Middle Chinese was spoken
29. What 19-across likes to drop
30. Poet’s “even”
33. Narrative contexts for studying the use of modals
35. Seven, to Caesar
36. Alternate extension for txt files
37. Modal verb: give permission
39. Wonder
40. Superlatively good
41. Linguist Lehiste
42. Modal interjection: agreement
44. What you do after receiving a deontic modal
45. Future auxiliary
46. Spoken Dialogue System (abbr.)
49. Half of a sneeze?

If you can complete the crossword and send your solutions to the editors of SpecGram by February 15th, 2011, you could win a SpecGram magnet of your choice. The correct solution and winners, if any, will be announced in the March issue of Speculative Grammarian.

The solution to November’s Out-of-this-World Fieldwork Puzzle #2 is that there is no solution: you’re screwed. It is not possible to visit each town and only travel on each road once. Every community has three roads connecting to it. To enter and then leave a community, you need to travel along an even number of roads (except possibly the communities you start and end with). Even linguists (most, anyway), know that three is odd, so it can’t be done. You are going to have to spend many, many hours riding on Fluffy’s back along these highways. Fieldwork is hard. Suck it up! If there had been such a path, it would be an Euler Path; if the beginning and end were the same, then it would be an Euler Circuit.

If you don’t like the explanation of the non-solution, then you should stick to linguistics and stay away from graph theory. If you don’t like the fact that there is no tidy solution to the problem, then you should stay away from fieldwork—it’s messy. On the other hand, these puzzlemeisters have no such problems, since they correctly recognized the lack of a solution. Each will receive a SpecGram magnet! Congratulations to the winners!

• Owen Laurion • Rick Bryan • Tom Walker •

The Future English Bible—Book Announcement from Psammeticus Press
SpecGram Vol CLX, No 4 Contents