From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Jun 22 12:13:15 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 21 Jun 1993 20:11:17 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1752; Mon, 21 Jun 93 20:10:05 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8547; Mon, 21 Jun 93 20:11:38 EST Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1993 12:13:15 GMT+1200 Reply-To: Chris Handley Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Handley Organization: University of Otago Subject: Re: Animal {gismu} X-To: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu To: Erik Rauch X-Status: Status: OR Message-ID: John Cowan writes thus: > >Using the wonderful tool WordNet (from Princeton University), I've examined >our gismu relating to animals, as a simple test case, and I've found a few >things that seem to me to be holes. <..> > > <..> > > PROPOSAL: I suggest that we need >high-quality< lujvo, or else new gismu, >for the following kinds of animals right away. Entries for them appear in >the tree below, with "#nnnn" in place of a gismu. <..> > Comments? > Very definitely, the creatures identified are all important in one way or another. We could also have a 'catch-all' for the local worrisome insect -- in South Africa it was mosquitoes, here it is sandflies. > >Vertebrata:Mammalia:Primates remna human >Vertebrata:Mammalia:Primates smani monkey ape simian baboon chimpanzee Just to mess things up because animals do not split neatly into species. The latest evidence claims that the DNA distance between chimps and us is less than half the distance between either and gorillas and hence any reasonable classification should at least acknowledge this (%-}. I realise that the human - non-human split is probably too firmly entrenched to expunge, but it woule be nice to at least think about it. Alternatively lump us all together with some prefix to distinguish between the various species (the Pongid/Hominid split is totally artificial). ====================================================================== Chris Handley chandley@otago.ac.nz Dept of Computer Science Ph (+64) 3-479-8499 University of Otago Fax (+64) 3-479-8577 Dunedin, NZ ______________________________________________________________________ There are three types of Computer Scientist: those who can count and those who can't.