ICZN gender question

[Una Smith]

On Wed, May 23, 2001 at 07:43:38AM -0500, Thomas Lammers wrote:

>          Genitives do not have to agree in number or gender with the
>nouns they modify.

That's because they follow their own special rules.  In classical Latin,
the genetive case is used to refer (indirectly) to one or more persons.
So, here, the particular details of the person being recognzied by the
specific epithet determine the gender and number of the epithet.  Never
mind the generic name.

Other kinds of epithets generally conform to the generic name (I don't
know about ICZN, but in ICBN there are some yucky special exceptions).

        Una Smith

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mailstop K-710, Los Alamos, NM  87545