The Wordtree: A Transitive Cladistic for Solving Physical and Social Problems

This is a reverse dictionary, designed to aid your vocabulary. -

How can a person find the exact word to fit his or her meaning ? - - Now there is an unusual book that tutors you to select virtually any action word in the language. This "Reverse-Dictionary" makes you a master of the English language. It differentiates every process word uniquely. For example, what's the difference between ESCORTING and CHAPERONING? -That's the kind of problem solved in a new kind of vocabulary-building product. (Answer: To ESCORTING, CHAPERONING adds the idea of bestowing respectability.)

This is The Wordtree (r). It is the world's only full-language, two-way dictionary. First, it points from a word to its meaning (as does the normal dictionary). Secondly, it is a reverse dictionary: That is, a system directs you a mere meaning or part-meaning to the word best expressing it. This arrangement enables the classification of procedural knowledge, and thereby a gradability of words from simplest actions (such as to EQUAL) toward complex concepts (such as to BAPTIZE). Such codification enables wordsmiths and computational humanists to pinpoint concepts and to trace ideas, step by step. The system begins with any concept for which the user seeks the exact term. It directs you, one step at a time, toward the more complex idea (or the other direction, toward simpler, when you want that). The new kind of reference work is an add-on listing that branches backward toward causes and forward toward effects. For instance, to FUEL and to NOURISH = to FEED.

The ordinary alphabetic dictionary requires the user to know the word he wants before he can look it up. Not so with the reverse dictionary, which connects ideas regardless of how spelled. It has been a goal of communicators at least since the Hittite civilization of 1400 B.C. But it has been solved only with the arrival of high-speed computers.

How does the conceptual dictionary help you home-in on the precise term? - The system cross-references each verb, so that on the N pages, you would see, NOURISH upon FUELING = to FEED. And, one step further, to FEED & REGULATE = to DIET.

No two verbs mean exactly the same thing. Therefore, at FASTEN, as another example, the reader sees precise differentiations (nuances) between RACKING, NAILING, BRADDING, WEDGING, SUTURING, etc. This computer-generated arrangement of a quarter-million word listings reveals all the solutions that the culture has recognized for solving any physical or social problem.

Only The Wordtree tries to list all the process-words in the language. Therefore only this plan can systematically direct the user from any fragment of an idea to each next more advanced concept. This approach conjoins all the different disciplines. A foreword in the book by the President of the American Anthropological Association calls Burger's system "a monumental conception .... If ever hard science and sociocultural, humanistic science come to join together, ... it will be in great part traceable to the pioneering he has carried out...."

Other reverse dictionaries have a far smaller listing. Typically they show merely common equivalents. For instance, they would simply list (on the "H pages) "Heart specialist = Cardiologist."

The Wordtree becomes a quick means to tell English-speakers and English-learners how to filter through the language's 25,000 impactive ("transitive") verbs to find the precise meaning. The user quickly learns the essential elements of such subtle actions as PRODUCTIZING a service into a kit, IMF'ing the wasteful Smart Set of a Third World nation, and GIACOBAZZIING one's companion.

The discovery is especially helpful for: Authors. Journalists. Copywriters. Technical writers. English-learning foreigners. Programmers. Science-fictioneers. Word gamesters. Crossword puzzlers. Natural scientists. Linguists. Computational linguists. Artificial intelligencia. Social scientists. Inter-disciplinarians. Multi-national corporations. Translators. Engineers. Engineering specification writers. Inventors. Lawyers, especially Patent attorneys. Social engineers. Public relaters. Advertisers. Therapists (for wordplay). Systematizers. Cataloguers. Librarians (academic, technical, & public). Instructors in any of these fields. Students in any of these fields.

Statistics: Has 381 pages each 21.5 x 29 cm. (=8-1/2 by 11 inch) oversized, quintuple-content pages on acid-neutral paper. With miniaturized type readable by the naked eye, providing a word content equivalent to a book of 1,800 pages. Includes 90,000 words of instruction and references cited, one halftone illustration, prose index, roster of multiple citation sources, word-listing hierarchy, word-listing index. Library of Congress "Cataloguing in Publication." Impactive (transitive) verbs: 20,484. Entries: A quarter-million. First edition, first published in and copyright MCMLXXXIV. In print. The book contains 30% more transitive morphemes than in the world's largest dictionary, which requires some 15 volumes of oversized-pages. Yet because The Wordtree defines additively, it requires only 380 oversized pages! The compilation program involves 5,000 computer steps. It is being used for research toward possible future editions. The phrase, The Wordtree, and the "tree-man" logo, are trademark-registered and copyrighted.

Warranty: Every copy against physical defects, FOB publisher. Additional warranty: If the book substantially fails this description or that in our 4-page list of features, return in mint condition within 30 days and receive full refund.

A brochure on solving problems by wording them is available free from the publisher.

DR. HENRY G. BURGER works in the field of automated word-finding. That is a branch of Informatics. Born 27 June 1923, the future applied scientist became a Pulitzer Scholar at the Ivy League campus of Columbia College. In World War II, he volunteered a year early as an army Private. The social-scientist-to-be spent 3.5 years on various assignments, such as organizing invasion planners into assembly lines (!). With three combat-zone service stars (for Papua, Leyte, and Luzon), he was promoted to Captain. He became storage director for the engineering supplies pouring into the rubbled port of Tokyo -- a position designated for a Lieutenant-Colonel.

INSTITUTIONAL ROOTS- Returning to civilian life, Henry Burger earned an Honors baccalaureate in the culture of industrialism at Columbia University. He established headquarters in Chicago and New York, and performed 123 projects, serving economic consultants and product designers like Ernest Dichter's Institute for Motivational Research. From 1957 through 1965, Burger additionally lectured in innovational strategy at the City University of New York. As a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Columbia University, he was awarded a State Doctoral Fellowship in Columbia's Department of Anthropology. At that Ivy League campus, his instructors included the cultural materialist Marvin Harris, the linguist Uriel Weinreich, and Margaret Mead. In 1967, he earned the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.).

In 1967-69, the applied scientist served in New Mexico as the first anthropologist in the 1,000-person staff of the regional educational laboratories. After he joined Southwestern Laboratory, it supplemented its repetitious Skinnerian drills with scrutiny of the Navajo Animal-Nest Creation Myth. That awakened ethnic youngsters' interest in careers of construction-engineering (discussed in Practical Anthropology 17(1970):241-252). His resultant book, Ethno-Pedagogy: A Manual in Cultural Sensitivity, has now appeared in eight versions, including perpetual availability through ERIC (ED-024-653). He was also Adjunct Professor at the University of New Mexico.

In 1969, Dr. Burger was called as associate professor to establish anthropology at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. In 1973, he was promoted to full (senior) professor of anthropology and of education, and of the university-wide Doctoral faculty. In 1993, the parent organization, the University of Missouri appointed him as (lifetime) Professor Emeritus. He works on campus with its computers some time each month. DISCOVERY OF PROCEDURAL GRADABILITY- Meanwhile, Burger's curiosity uncovered a problem of far greater scientific durability. It had long been recognized that the two building blocks of nature are substance (structure) and process. To codify each has been a goal of science. Substances have been hierarchized since 1869, when Dmitri Mendeleyev discovered the Periodic Table of chemical elements. But a paradigm has been lacking in the social sciences. In 1958, Burger perceived that the cognitive unit of process is the transitive verb. It is determined by each ethnicity, not by physical metering. At any moment, processes are complete and continuous. Hence any procedural word (in English, the transitive verb), regardless of how complex, can be analyzed as the prior action plus one added action. (That is like defining the number "25,000" as "24,999 plus one."). Thus, to Enlarge (something) and to Develop it = to Grow it. To Grow (something) and to Complete it = to Mature it, etc. He detailed the discovery in General Systems, 1962, and has authored 89 publications. But to make the scheme relatively gapless, the many technical and occupational verbs would have to be gathered. To report those novel transitives, over a thousand professionals were enlisted. (Each is accredited.) - The resultant arrangement of word branches enables a user to "ripple" any procedural-word forward, phase by phase, as if a cause into its effects -- or any effect back to its causes. After 27 years' labor, The Wordtree (r) reverse dictionary was published in MCMLXXXIV. Dr. Burger's expenses and time-value, when compounded over those decades, probably exceed $1.5 million. RECEPTION OF "THE WORDTREE"- The Wordtree has received full-length reviews in at least 85 media. It was discussed as a category unto itself in the Cambridge [University] Encyclopedia of the English Language. Several thousand inquiries and book orders have been received from 61 nations. And Literary Market Place lists it among the most important 6% of American publishers. Each week reveals some 10 new verbs, connecting prior definitions ever more precisely. The more interesting accessions are now discussed by Dr. Burger in his occasional column, "New Times, New Verbs." SPEECHES- Henry Burger has been interviewee on 24 radio / television stations and three networks. He has been social-science speaker or presenter at dozens of conferences in America and Europe: At the University of London, to the Society for General Systems Research (1979). At the University of Toronto, to the Association for Literary & Linguistic Computing (speech invited by Society for Conceptual Analysis, 1989). At the Free University of Amsterdam, to the European Association for Lexicography (1994). Etc. RECOGNITIONS- The social scientist is a member of eight scholarly societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. He is or has been Founding Member, Committeeman, and Life Member of the Dictionary Society of North America. Fellow of six more groups (including one of the 500 fellows of the World Academy of Art and Science). Life Fellow of American Anthropological Association, and of the Royal Anthropological Institute. The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary claims to cite word authorities who are "likely to be [still] read in the 23rd century." One of those quoted is Prof. Burger -- in seven places, such as to define symbolling. The vocabulist has been biographied in 38 recognition series, like Who's Who in the World, American Men & Women of Science, Who's Who in America, etc. The last-named declared Dr. Burger "Discoverer of the branchability of processes (corresponding, for materials, to the periodic [chemical] table of elements. AUTHCOMMENTS- The Wordtree system leads the user step by step (branch by branch) from a vague idea to a precise word. It is truly the "Book of How."