LINGUIST List 16.1771: New York Times: The Word Crunchers

LINGUIST List 16.1771
Mon Jun 06 2005 Media: New York Times: The Word Crunchers Editor for this issue: Marisa Ferrara <marisalinguistlist.org>
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Directory 1. Karen Chung, New York Times: The Word Crunchers Message 1: New York Times: The Word Crunchers
Date: 06-Jun-2005 From: Karen Chung <karchungntu.edu.tw> Subject: New York Times: The Word Crunchers Essay: The Word Crunchers By DEBORAH FRIEDELL Published: June 5, 2005 In David Lodge's 1984 novel, 'Small World,' a literature professor fond of computer programming presents a novelist with a fantastic discovery: by entering all the novelist's books into a computer, the professor can determine the novelist's favorite word. The computer knows to ignore the mortar of sentences -- articles, prepositions, pronouns -- to get to 'the real nitty-gritty,' Lodge writes, 'words like love or dark or heart or God.' But the computer's conclusion causes the novelist to shrink from ever writing again. His favorite word, it finds, is 'greasy.'... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/books/review/05FRIE01.html?8bu&emc=bu Free registration required to access article. Karen Chung http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/ http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/ Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics Respond to list\|Read more issues\|LINGUIST home page\|Top of issue

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