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

[Markus Döring]

I have to say I find Stephens proposal to allow any gender combination tempting.

After years of writing code for searching & matching names in GBIF & Catalogue of Life I came to the conclusion that a latin stemming of the epithet works very well to catch most of its variations. 
Galba viator/viatrix was one of the examples I also met. Stemming actually is a very common technique applied to searching for decades and does not need any AI at all.

Markus


--
Markus Döring
Lead Developer Catalogue of Life (COL)
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
mdoering at gbif.org
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> On 26. Jun 2023, at 13:03, David Campbell via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> An alternative solution would be to abandon the idea that any particular
>> gender form of a name is the correct one. All gender variants of a name are
>> the same name in effect, just with different gender forms. Hence, one could
>> just use any gender variant of a name and anyone searching for the taxon
>> would just have to search for the different variants (masculine, feminine
>> and neuter), but would not need to know which of them is correct. We sort
>> of already have to do that anyway for names with uncertain or disputed
>> gender. We also have to do that with different combinations of the same
>> name.
>> Stephen
>> 
> 
> Regardless of whether this particular solution is deemed the most
> practical, it raises the important point that awareness of alternate gender
> forms is essential for distinguishing between versions of the same name
> versus distinct names.  Even for variants that are not legal under the
> current Code, recognizing grammatical variation is useful.  For example,
> Galba viator is widely listed as Galba (or Lymnaea or various other genera)
> viatrix.  The original description used viator, which as a noun does not
> change under the current rules. Viator is a male traveller and viatrix is a
> female traveller; the original description used a misspelled masculine
> version of Lymnaea as the genus, which may have prompted the masculine
> noun.  Probably shifting to viatrix reflected a feminine genus.  (The snail
> itself is hermaphroditic and probably doesn't care what we call it.)  A
> curious mixing of biological and grammatical gender is found in the case of
> the deliberate change of the genus Viviparus to Vivipara, on the grounds
> that one having live birth is feminine.  That change is also not allowed
> under the current code, but does affect tracing the genus in literature.
> 
> Similar issues occur with cases where there are alternate spellings for
> Greek or Latin terms.  I have seen a label written by someone who mixed up
> sinensis and chinensis, for example.  The zoological Code has provisions
> for common alternatives in transliteration (article 58).
> 
> Any effective AI approach will have to incorporate the recognition that two
> similar names have a chance of being variants of the same name, as well as
> the fact that two identical names might be homonyms.  It also must have
> effective tools for submitting and verifying corrections.  As is, badly
> done AI results are often treated as authoritative and get more support
> than the basic work of generating and verifying the data.
> 
> -- 
> Dr. David Campbell
> Associate Professor, Geology
> Department of Natural Sciences
> 110 S Main St, #7270
> Gardner-Webb University
> Boiling Springs NC 28017
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.