词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Wordtree Reverse Dictionary

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": October 3, 2002
Rebroadcast on VOA News Now: October 6, 2002

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- The Wordtree. It's a reverse dictionary that, through a series of "branchings," takes you from an idea to a precise verb. An anthropologist¹ named Henry Burger is the publisher. He says it's different from using a thesaurus, like Roget's, to find words with similar or opposite meanings. The Wordtree works on the slight differences between words.

BURGER: "For example, the difference between, let's say, 'escort' and 'chaperone' is probably something like 'respectable,' because chaperoning adds the moral implication to escorting. So The Wordtree would show escort on the E pages, 'escort and respectablize equal chaperone' -- by the way, there really is a verb, I didn't make that up, 'respectablize' -- then on the R page it would say 'respectablize while escorting equals chaperone.' On the C page, it would say 'chaperone equals escort and respectablize.' So we differentiate² by the nuances, the opposite of Roget -- that's a brilliant book, I'm certainly not criticizing it."

AA: "Do you have any other examples of words with such nuancing?"

BURGER: "Surely. Take one like 'to enlarge and develop equals to grow,' 'to grow and to complete equals to mature.' And we've done this with the entire English language, the verbs, which represent actions. We've done this with the 21-or-so-thousand English verbs, so if you're looking for a precise word, you think of any part of the idea, look it up alphabetically³ and it presents a menu to you right there."

AA: Henry Burger is now at work on a second edition of The Wordtree, first published in 1984. He says it grew out of his work as an anthropologist, studying social engineering. He was trying to discover the factors that cause success or failure in sensitive situations, where opposing sides are bargaining and trying to convince the other side.

BURGER: "The government of, let's say, Peru wanted to move villages out of this area and they succeeded by doing the following. And I had about five-thousand summary sheets, about five-thousand cases of success and failure, and I was looking for principles. One day, when I felt I was pretty near the end of my knowledge there, I started spreading them out on a bed and they ran onto a second bed, and then they were -- enough were there that I felt I should be able to divine something from them.

"I looked at them and instantly it appeared to me that the successful method was a process, not a structure like corn or maize⁴ or a structure like some bureaucracy but the process let's say of persuading, the process of let's say moving, the process of razzle-dazzling. Whatever it was, the process name -- which in English is the transitive verb -- was the key to it, and once you do that, you overskip country names and food names and so on, you get a world of action."

RS: "So how do you hope The Wordtree is used in ... "

AA: "Who is using it already?"

RS: "Who is using it?"

BURGER: "A lot of large companies and government offices. We've had orders from Europe and so on. Probably the poor, downtrodden person who really needs it most cannot get to it, but at least his state library may well have it."

AA: Henry Burger is an emeritus⁵ professor of anthropology⁶ at the University of Missouri and publisher of The Wordtree, which, if you're wondering, is one-hundred-forty-nine dollars a copy.

And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is。。。。。。With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

 

1 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

2 differentiate   

vi.(between)区分；vt.区别；使不同

参考例句：

• You can differentiate between the houses by the shape of their chimneys.你可以凭借烟囱形状的不同来区分这两幢房子。
• He never learned to differentiate between good and evil.他从未学会分辨善恶。

3 alphabetically   

adv.照字母顺序排列地

参考例句：

• I've arranged the books alphabetically so don't muddle them up. 我已按字母顺序把这些书整理了，千万不要再弄乱。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They are all filed alphabetically under author. 这些都是按照作者姓名的字母顺序归档的。 来自辞典例句

4 maize   

n.玉米

参考例句：

• There's a field planted with maize behind the house.房子后面有一块玉米地。
• We can grow sorghum or maize on this plot.这块地可以种高粱或玉米。

5 emeritus   

adj.名誉退休的

参考例句：

• "Perhaps I can introduce Mr.Lake Kirby,an emeritus professor from Washington University?"请允许我介绍华盛顿大学名誉教授莱克柯尔比先生。
• He will continue as chairman emeritus.他将会继续担任荣誉主席。

6 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。