Message-Id: <199310061731.AA08018@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Wed, 6 Oct 1993 13:28:03 -0400
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      New "jutsi" (species) proposal
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO

I have a new proposal for resolving the ambiguity of "jutsi" and giving it
a fixed place structure.  The current place structure is the open-ended:

        x1 is a species belonging to genus x2, which belongs to group x3,
                which belongs to supergroup x4, which ...

where both the number of places and the exact purposes of those beyond x2
are left very vague.  The normal Linnaean system which this gismu is
designed to handle has seven hierarchical levels (species, genus, family,
order, class, phylum/division, kingdom) but there are an arbitrary number
of interposed levels, such as subfamily, suborder, superclass, subphylum,
and tribe (between genus and subfamily), which exist in some parts of the
tree but not others.  (For example, most members of phylum Chordata belong
to subphylum Vertebrata, but phylum Nematoda (roundworms) has no subphyla.)
The different categories which fall into these levels are collectively
known as "taxa" (singular, "taxon"): thus Homo sapiens is a taxon, and so
is Chordata, but "family" is not.

It seems to me that this gismu seems to need this open-ended structure
because it is trying to do too much: it talks about the various taxa, but
it also purports to relate them.  Now we already have in the language a
mechanism for relating classes in a hierarchical fashion, although perhaps
not always recognized as such, namely "klesi", with place structure:

        x1 is a class/category/subset within x2 (set) with defining prop. x3

This relationship is entirely adequate to explain how a species relates to
a genus, or a genus to a phylum, or an order to a kingdom.  What remains
is some way to say "Homo sapiens is a species" and for this purpose "jutsi"
can work well with a simple place structure:

        x1 is a species/genus/taxon/hierarchical class of type x2

So we can say things like:

1)      la'o ly. Homo sapiens .ly. cu jutsi la'o ly. species .ly.
        Homo sapiens is a taxon of type "species".

2)      la'o ly. Chordata .ly. cu justi la'o ly. phylum .ly.
        Chordata is a taxon of type "phylum".

3)      la'o ly. Homo sapiens noi jutsi la'o ly. species .ly.
                cu klesi la'o ly. Chordata .ly. noi jutsi la'o ly. phylum .ly.
        Homo sapiens, which is a species,
                is a subclass of Chordata, which is a phylum.

The Linnaean level names, like the taxon names, can be incorporated as "la'o"
foreign names, as these examples show.  Canonically, they should be
in Latin form, which means that "family", "order", "class", and the marginal
"tribe" show up as "familia", "ordo", "classis", and "tribus" respectively.
(In addition, the plant kingdom is organized into "divisions" rather than
phyla, but this minor distinction can probably be ignored.)

Comments?

--
John Cowan              sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.