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

Thu Jun 22 21:49:27 CDT 2023

Apologies for a couple of typos in my message above - for "king" read
"kind", for "Global Naes" read "Global Names"... I am hopeful that readers
would make these corrections intuitively, as well!

- Tony

On Fri, 23 Jun 2023 at 12:45, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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%7C488cb56def7c4236e4c108db73947ec5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230853851809580%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=E36n%2F247FFE2SSXhTjxdZWCA%2FzG1eTY4U53gz7AREQ0%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%7C488cb56def7c4236e4c108db73947ec5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230853851809580%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=gIXt9gxtPSvaD39r3PTrEuPZPsX%2F1UFC45CWCbpIg2I%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%7C488cb56def7c4236e4c108db73947ec5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230853851809580%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b5zoHs8eDkWHzZMoNkt4HQrO%2BLWyRMzt0WXL0Rhd%2Bco%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)
>>               https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C488cb56def7c4236e4c108db73947ec5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230853851809580%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=A5QcruXULsE%2Bo73M0FtiHtR0DxMc0pMT15LJL5m0Tms%3D&reserved=0
>>    "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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>> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
>> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>>
>