Taxacom: demystifying gender agreement ( was Re: Removals of offending scientific names)

Thu Jun 22 21:45:36 CDT 2023

Doug Yanega wrote:

> we are actually not
>   that far from being able to compile a master list of the genders of all
>   available genus names - uBio alone has an almost complete list, for
>   example, though lacking gender designations.

As I understand it, that was indeed uBio's original vision (see David
Patterson, "Progressing towards a biological names register", 2003,
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2F422661a&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C3c103680bcaf450953c708db7393f57f%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230851565288970%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=WsSzPL2qgwg%2B1uFs4c6zTLwI%2BNlY2I2X32zc%2BS09EJA%3D&reserved=0 ), but like many such projects it
seems to have foundered in the early 2010s or so for the usual reasons
(departure of key principals, cessation of funding or institutional
support, etc. etc.). Also to my knowledge, the uBio Namebank data
compilation never did really grapple with the issue of deduplication (i.e.,
multiple namestrings per actual taxon "name" depending on the source/s used
for data acquisition) and in addition may have contained a mix of "clean"
and "dirty" data (literature misspellings, etc.)

Meanwhile as some may know, I have had an interest in "all genera
index[es]" for some time, indeed have been constructing such a resource
since 2006 or thereabouts, the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine
Genera, see https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C3c103680bcaf450953c708db7393f57f%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230851565288970%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=LlBTSORmoF5O8NP6%2B8ABTqXwRCjSej%2BM4ND%2FGGqspEM%3D&reserved=0 ... "my" compendium being fairly
complete (see 2020 Megataxa paper entitled "All Genera of the World...")
but not an officially sanctioned or scrutinized registry of any king. On
the other hand ZooBank and/or GNUB, the Global Naes Usage Bank, is set up
to provide such an "official" function so could form the basis of what you
envisage, provided it were populated to similar degree with relevant genus
level content.

So maybe we can now await input from Rich Pyle from the viewpoint of
ZooBank/GNUB, etc...

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C3c103680bcaf450953c708db7393f57f%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230851565288970%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=9eHuYTN5wd3fGQjjuWl9qYHu7jn0dpNkiX%2FIcQq%2Fhkg%3D&reserved=0

On Fri, 23 Jun 2023 at 07:32, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> I'm back from lunch and have a little more time to respond to George
> Beccaloni's comment that adhering to gender agreement rules is
> "irritating".
>
> First, I actually agree - but only to a point, and only in a certain
> context.
>
> That context is one which would seem to be what George was describing;
> one in which an individual taxonomist, operating solely with their own
> "at hand" resources to guide them, is confronted with a situation where
> the only way forward is for them to PERSONALLY decide which species
> names must be changed, and how to change them.
>
> In that very specific context, I *absolutely* agree that adhering to
> gender agreement is not just irritating, but a time-consuming burden,
> potentially necessitating deep dives into obscure grammatical and
> linguistic "rabbit holes", and sometimes not even leading to clear and
> objective answers. This is a terrible and unfair burden for taxonomists,
> who generally have better things they can be doing with their time.
>
> That being said, the difficulty is - as I noted before - not something
> INHERENT in gender agreement. The problem is the concept that every
> taxonomist has to make these decisions, and do the research, and worry
> about linguistics, BY THEMSELVES. It does not need to be this way, and I
> feel it SHOULD not be this way. We can do better, and make it so the
> process is no longer irritating.
>
> There are two things that can free individual taxonomists from the
> irritation and burden of complying with gender agreement while *still
> allowing* gender agreement to continue as a practice - a practice which
> is, in fact, essential to nomenclatural stability.
>
> (1) The first thing is, as I said, designing our digital
> taxonomic/nomenclatural resources so they are "intelligent" enough to be
> able to perform *one* *incredibly simple task*: matching a gender entry
> in one field (a genus-linked field) with another gender entry in an
> "alternative spelling of species name" field. Basically, if the genus
> entry is listed as "Feminine", e.g., then it links to and displays the
> "Feminine" spelling variant for any species name linked to that genus.
> We *can* do this, and there are a number of existing resources that
> *already* do. That's the *easy* part to demystify.
>
> (2) The second thing comes naturally to most people's minds when they
> are told they could automate gender agreement: "That doesn't tell me
> which names to enter in the database as having variable spellings, and
> which names only can ever have one spelling, nor does it tell me which
> genus names are which genders." This is a more significant issue, and I
> freely admit that an actual solution is not going to be simple. However,
> a solution is possible, and I think it is highly desirable, and maybe
> even necessary. Namely, we create two resources: a single master
> registry of all available genus-rank names *that includes their genders
> *(as established by the rules in the Code), plus a single standard
> adjectival lexicon that indicates which species names (or name suffixes)
> are ALWAYS adjectival with variant spellings, and which names are in the
> very small subset that can be *either* nouns or adjectives depending on
> whether the coining author explicitly specified the etymology (with, for
> each such name, an appropriate default). Any name *not* listed in the
> lexicon would be treated as having invariant spelling.
>
> The rationale for having a single master registry of genus names is to
> prevent disputes and debates and - most importantly - redundancy of
> effort. There is no reason for hundreds of taxonomists to have to
> independently research the gender of a genus name. The sensible thing to
> do is to compile a list from existing resources, and have a small group
> of Code-conversant people review all of the disputable names on the
> list, and resolve all those disputes permanently. Make the list public,
> and permanent.
>
> The rationale for a single standard lexicon is basically the same: to
> put an end to confusion, indecision, and controversy, as well as
> redundancy of effort. For example, in Latin, the word "alba" is both a
> noun and an adjective, but in the history of nomenclature, it has only
> ever been used as an adjective (to my knowledge). This should not be
> subject to debate or revisionism: "alba", "albus", and "album" should
> all be treated as adjectives EVEN IF the coining author happened, by
> some miracle, to have explicitly stated otherwise. Otherwise, things
> would be too confusing, given how common these epithets are in both
> plants and animals. This decision should only need to be made once, not
> subject to "second-guessing", and made fully public and adhered to by
> all taxonomists. It's a burden for an individual taxonomist to have to
> look through two books and five online resources to figure out whether
> "alba" is a noun or an adjective, but it's trivial if they only need to
> look at a SINGLE resource, type in the name "alba", and be told
> *unambiguously* that for nomenclature it is an adjective, and ONLY an
> adjective, AND what the alternative spellings are.
>
> The important point I would like to make, for those of you who are
> rolling your eyes or shaking your heads, is that we are actually not
> that far from being able to compile a master list of the genders of all
> available genus names - uBio alone has an almost complete list, for
> example, though lacking gender designations - and the number of
> disputable cases is a very small subset of that total, so assigning each
> genus name a definitive *and irrevocable* gender is entirely feasible.
> The overwhelming majority of genus names are unambiguously assignable
> under the Code. We are, admittedly, not as close to having a list of all
> existing adjectival species names, but there *are* exhaustive digital
> lexicons of Latin and Greek adjectives that could be adapted to our
> needs. The subset of those terms that are disputable under the Code is
> perhaps a bit larger, but still not entirely unmanageable. I've spent
> over 10 years going over the names of insects, and out of over 200,000
> valid insect species-rank names, only about 8% are disputable, and a
> *very* high percentage of those are duplicates (e.g., 1100 of the 16000
> disputable names I have recorded are those ending in "-cola", "-colus",
> or "-colum"). So, even this particular task, of an "official list" of
> species names, is attainable.
>
> The bottom line is that I would ask people to reconsider their
> opposition to gender agreement, if the only reasons you oppose it are
> the issues that would be resolved by having access to the resources
> described above.
>
> Specifically, if the scenario I describe were to become reality - having
> smarter databases, and being provided with official lists - are there
> people here who would *still* advocate that we reject gender agreement?
> If so, why?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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>    "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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