Series Announcement from Xerus & Ratufa Press—Studies in Contemporary Vietnamese Influences on English SpecGram Vol CLXXXVIII, No 2 Contents

Rasmus Rask Schwa Puzzle

by Lila Rosa Grau

This is a schwa-themed variant of my popular Rasmus Rask puzzle. The puzzle is similar to a crossword puzzle, in that there is a grid for filling in words and phrases, and clues for the ACROSS and DOWN directions. However, all the squares in the puzzle are filled with letters, and the answers to the clues may (but are not required to) overlap. Clues for a particular row or column are given together, in the order they appear in the grid. No indication of the amount of overlap between clues is given. Three overlapping sets of letters spelling out SCHWA in a rough schwa shape are given to provide a framework for filling in the answers.

Complete the puzzle and send your solutions to the editors of SpecGram by September 15th, 2020 and you could win a prize. The correct solution and winners, if any, will be announced in the upcoming October issue.

0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 
1                         
2        S C H         
3                 W      
4     S C H W A      
5        C    W         
6           H            
7                         
8                         
Across
0
• The lowest form of wit, nonetheless much appreciated by SpecGram.

• To make a vowel more like schwa.

1
• The product of bovine lactation’s most favored small flat baked good.

• ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ‒

2
• One of four classical elements.

• trope : semantics :: ______ : syntax

3
• This is a _____. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two _____s.

• The last living sister of Gunindiri.

4
• ᚫ, de-ligatured.

• A necessary character for transcribing uhhhh.

• Old English for “Yo! Listen up!”, also de-ligatured.

5
• Does it mean “yes” or “hooray”? Who the heck knows anymore?

• One of the two main descendants of *gʷṓws in English.

• Whose petard one is traditionally hoisted on.

• BrE equivalent of AmE uh.

6
• One of Grice’s Principles, to friends.

• Hypernym of adze, francisca, halberd, hatchet, hurlbat, mattock, ono, parashu, pulaski, sagaris, splitting maul, and tomahawk.

• Spanish for “see you”, according to Gilchrist’s naïve linguists.

7
• Undergrad linguistics majors find it hard to do this, especially for Syntax III at 8 a.m. Monday morning.

• A kind of comma, allegedly popular in Cambridge, Mass. and Oxon, UK.

8
• What tends to happen to schwa at the margins of words.

• Any one of Ꙫ 🛪 ☯ ⚒ ⛧ ☍ 𓂀 ! ☏ ☯ ☤ ⏻ ⛏ ∞ ☞ ∛ ☘ 🕒 ⌫ ∴ 𓋹 ☠ 🛇 ☵ ☈ ♘ ✓ ⚜ ¢ ☣ ⚖ ♲ ⚠ ☿ ❧ ʘ ♠ ⚂ or ə.


Down
0
• One of the defining features of a consonant, abbreviated.

• What life finds, per Dr. Malcolm.

• Prefix added to adapt, adjust, content, form, function, inform, nourish, odor, practice, or treat to indicate that they are done poorly.
1
• Pretentious hypernym of URL.

• A Romantic river.

• Inverted schwa, uppercased.

• Primary sense organ for the majority of languages.

• Č___ň.

2
• The half of the French discontinuous negation most likely to disappear over time because it contains a schwa.

• Not abs., or, 100 µg⋅m2⋅Hz2.

• Surprisingly, this is the ISO 639–3 code for an Austronesian language of Vanuatu, not any of several more likely Germanic languages.

• Saussure claimed you could get this in one of two flavors, simultaneities or successions.

3
• ··· − − − ···

• Another name for the language Fox, in which one can presumably discuss a fluid-filled pouch.

• As you get older, it gets harder to do this to your, uh, uh, what’s it called? The dictionary thing. Lexicon!

4
• What asia, e, gene, idioma, phone, poe, semi, and tone all lack in common.

• Greek cousin of Neo-Etruscan .

• An interjection that, despite what prescriptivists and 8th grade English teachers may say, is not actually for horses.
5
• ろ or ロ.

• In asinine speech, a friend of hee; in equine, a foe of gee.

• Speaking in Lakovian metaphors, affection is this temperature.

6
• This kind of dash: – ; not this one: — .

• One of the words abbreviated in the title of JLSSCNC.

• The common but technically incorrect name for the pre-Unicode Windows code page for Western European languages. (Those were dark, dark days. <shudder>)

• A bibliographic abbreviation indicating that the citation is to the same source as the last one.

7
• Noun case used to indicate resemblance or likeness, abbreviated.

• American actress after whom inflatable life vest were nicknamed.

• Greek cousin of Syriac ܚ.

• The Way, per Pooh.

8
• More relevant than a sight or sound to the Pιčkιt, per Searsplainpockets.

• The backness of a schwa.

• In formal semantics and first order logic, what “∀” is for.


The solutions to last month’s domino puzzle—Glossominoes—is shown below.

JUSS ACTIVE PL AOR DAT TRIAL
OPT MIDDLE PRES QUAD ACC SG
PERF INTERR PASS CAUS ABS NOM
FUT PAUC DUAL LOC DECL SUBJ
ERG APPLIC IMPERF PAST IMPERA ANTIPASS

Each of the puzzlemeisters below will receive some moderately desirable SpecGram merch of their choosing:

Eemil Pölönen • Jang Seo-Joon • Jožefa Kovačič • Vincent Fish

Congrats to all!

Series Announcement from Xerus & Ratufa Press—Studies in Contemporary Vietnamese Influences on English
SpecGram Vol CLXXXVIII, No 2 Contents