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These are not the actual complete American Speech issues, but merely indexes to the contents.
Back issues are available for order, and you can receive each new quarterly issue by becoming a member of the American Dialect Society.
Index
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Index to American Speech Thanks to former editor John Algeo, two electronic indexes to American Speech are available here. One is an author index to Volumes 1-60 (1926-1985). It is in the same format as the author index printed in 50.3-4 (1975), but it extends 10 years beyond. Furthermore, being electronic, it can be searched for words in titles, thus making it a title index too. The other is a classified subject index to Volumes 44 (1969) - 56 (1981) using the elaborate classification system described in NADS 14.3 (Sept 1982): 12-14. That description and the classification system are also in electronic form. For indexes to more recent issues, see the comprehensive annual indexes printed at the end of each volume. Omitted from the electronic indexes are entries for individual words cited in "Among the New Words" and elsewhere, even though those words are cited in the printed annual indexes. For a complete index to "Among the New Words" through 1991, see Algeo's Fifty Years Among the New Words (Cambridge UP, 1991). For an index to other words cited, see the Words and Phrases Index , available at many libraries. Otherwise, go through American Speech volume by volume, looking through the printed annual indexes. Of course, if a word under discussion happens to be in the title of an article, the electronic indexes will allow you to find that article by searching for that word. The author index 1926-85 is in four separate files:
There is also a 1000-word introduction to the subject index, dated August 1983 (about 1000 words), and a list of subject descriptors used with the subject index (about 2100 words). These are substantially the same as the reports printed in NADS 14.3 (Sept 1982): 12-14. In a January 1996 letter conveying these files, Algeo wrote: "This project began in pre-computer days on 4x6 slips. The 'Report' file speaks of those slips and says that subjects had been entered on them. That was only partly true. A lot of subject classification had been done, but much of it was done by student research assistants and needed to be checked for accuracy and appropriateness." Although some of the files have picked up stray characters and other problems in their movement through various computers to reach this archive, all are readable. The ones with the most problems are authors3.txt, authors4.txt, 01, 02, 06, 07, 14, 15, 19.
Subject Index To American Speech: A Report John Algeo One of the needs to increase the usefulness of American Speech is for a cumulative index to the subjects treated in the journal since the beginning of its publication in 1925. The annual volume indexes are uneven in the thoroughness of their coverage, some are lacking, and they are not consistent with one another in their approach to analyzing the subjects of their articles. Moreover, the need to consult 57 separate annual indexes is, at best, inefficient. I have now underway a project that will help to meet this need: a cumulative subject index for American Speech from 1925 to the present. Here is a brief description of this project and a report on its current status: Scope: The index will cover all volumes of American Speech from 1925 (volume 1) through l983 (volume 58) or until the project is ready for publication. In each volume, the index will cover all articles, Miscellany notes, departments, reviews, page fillers, contributors' notes, and announcements. I estimate that the index will include more than 6500 main entries and about 10,000 cross-references. Plan: The index is at present organized in 10 major sections: General, Phonology, Orthography, Lexis, Grammar, Semantics, Diachronic variation, Synchronic variation, American regional varieties, and Other languages. It is expected that this organization will be modified as a result of experience with the indexing. Each section will be subdivided in as much detail and to as great depth as necessary to accommodate the subject matter that has appeared in American Speech. Each item (article, note, review, etc.) will be listed in chronological order under its primary subject. Each item will also be cross-referenced under its most important subsidiary subjects. Many items will have one or two cross references; some will have even more. The entry for each item will include the item's volume number, inclusive pages, title, and author. If the title is insufficiently indicative of the contents of the item, a brief comment will be added in brackets. The classification scheme adopted for the index does not try to include all subjects that fall under the scope of linguistics or the study of the English language. Rather it is a pragmatic and an a- posteriori classification for dealing with those subjects that have been treated in American Speech. Procedures: The items in all back issues of the journal are put on four-by-six cards, which are then assigned subject descriptors and sorted according to those descriptors. The bibliographical information and subject descriptors on each card are then checked against back files of the journal for accuracy and adequacy. Next, the card file is transferred to diskettes by an IBM Displaywriter System (a word processor), which has been made available by the Department of English at the University of Georgia. The advantages of the word processor are several: (l) During the initial preparation of the index, new items can be added to the body of the index, and the contents and even format of the index can be revised in various ways with a minimum of effort. (2) When the initial preparation of the index is completed, the diskette file can be maintained and augmented or revised whenever necessary. (3) During the initial preparation, it will be possible to get hard-copy print-outs of whatever portions of the index have been done, to assist scholars who need information before the index has been completed and published. When the index has been completed and is stored on diskettes, a hard-copy version will be made available through an appropriate publisher. Present Status: All items in volumes 1-57 (1925-1982) are on file cards, have had subject descriptors assigned, and have been sorted under their primary subjects. As new issues of the journal are published they are analyzed in the same way. The procedure for transferring the information from cards to diskettes has just been started. A large amount of the labor has been completed on the index, but a good deal still remains to be done: verifying the correctness of bibliographical data and refining the subject descriptors already assigned, transferring the data from cards to diskettes, and making sure that the form in which the information is being prepared is the most useful one. Comments or suggestions about the project and requests for bibliographical information from it are welcome and should be sent to John Algeo, Department of English, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602.
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