Coi rodo,
Ok, if you've been looking at new words added in jbovlaste recently, you've maybe noticed that I have added a lot of names for animals and plants.
Why you might wonder?
Well, I don't have a lot of time and energy to think about place structure and such for more complex lujvo (I'm a very busy person), so now and then I spend some time to do something mechanically, like adding fu'ivla for different genera, instead of watching tv for example. Kind of relaxing in fact (yeah I know, that's not normal, but then I'm a lojbanist;).
So even if I don't participate a lot in discussions and such, I contribute to the lojban community on my own terms (and I don't think this is totally meaningless for some obvious or non-obvious reasons (read the whole text to see what I mean)).
I know this is an old topic here, but I hope to give some strong arguments here for my view (on biological taxonomy specifically, and on fu'ivlas in general).
So this is my recommendation/proposal/essay:
ON BIOLOGICAL TAXONOMY AND LOJBANI have some personal criteria for adding biological generic names, that I think would be nice if more followed (for consistency, even if I don't want to force anyone, and anyway I don't have authority to do so):
1) Typically add names for genera, rather than species or some other taxa.
Why? Well the most common case is to talk about "fishes", "birds", "cattle", etc. in a generic, non-scientific kind of discourse. For this we already have gismu-words.
If you would like to be more specific you'll probably speak of some or another genus of fishes, birds, cattle, etc. Genus (or in some cases a higher taxa) is usually a more basic concept than species (most people can't tell the difference between the bananas
Musa acuminata and
Musa balbisiana, so they just talk about the genus Musa = 'Banana' = {badna}).
But there are exceptions, like cats. {mlatu} is for certain vague in the same way as 'cat' is in natlang, you can't be sure if someone using this word refers to all felids or just the domestic cat (Felis catus) (most probably the latter; some other common felids also got their own gismu: {tirxu} and {cinfo}). If you would like to be specific about that you're referring to domestic cats, you'll therefore have to use either a lujvo or a fu'ivla (or a cmevla) with a more narrow definition, lets say {fadmlatu} or
{tolcicmlatu}.
Anyhow, most of the time when we're using {mlatu} we
assume that we're talking about domestic cats (see Grice and conventional implicature), and in this case the gismu refers to a species as the basic class of referents. If someone would like to make distinctions between cats, that person would be talking about different breeds like siamese, birma, etc, so in cases where the subspecies/breeds are relevant/useful I also add those to jbovlaste. But for the most part common people does not make distinctions on the level of species or lower. And that's why we don't bother to add words for all species/subspecies/breeds (that would be millions of words by the way!!!).
As a matter of fact it is quite common that natlangs and their users are not even capable of telling the difference between that or that kind of genera. For example, in English, fishes belonging to the family
Acipenseridae are called sturgeons, but some genera in this family do also have other common names. I think a good solution for lojban would be to have a descriptive word (lujvo) for the more general concept of sturgeons (family), and fu'ivlas for the different genera of sturgeons.
Also, if you would like to translate a text from English which refers to sturgeons, try to see if it is possible to find out if the author refers to a specific kind of sturgeon (in that case use a specific word for this, otherwise use the more general concept).
2) Use fu'ivla to name genera (and in some cases: species/subspecies/breeds). Use lujvo to name other kind of taxa.The argument for this is that it would be a very difficult task (if not impossible) indeed to name all genera in the world, based on lujvo (which in that case ought to be descriptive).
First, it would be difficult to avoid using the very same word for two distinct genera. Second, to give every genera a name which describes the most salient/necessary property of that genus, require that you're a very, very competent biologist. As a matter of fact not even the biological taxonomy itself meets this demand. Many scientific biological names are in fact totally arbitrary, inconsistent, bizarre, as they're based on some local common word for that or that plant/animal, gibberish words, words beginning with 'a' so they would have their entry in the beginning of the dictionary, names of some beloved person of the namegiver, false descriptions, and only occasionally based on some significant descriptive content.
However, it may be possible to give all
higher taxa descriptive content in the form of lujvos, for example
{fepryfi'e }= 'lungfish' (subclass Dipnoi of class
Sarcopterygii), or
{recyctimabru}='carnivoran' (mammal of order Carnivora). The set of those taxa are not quite as big as the set of genera and species at least.
3) Use fu'ivla stage-3 rather than stage-4
CLL says: "Stage 4 fu'ivla do not have any rafsi classifier, and are used where a
fu'ivla has become so common or so important that it must be made as
short as possible."
This is a principle many lojbanists doesn't seem to observe. But there are good reasons to do so:
Let us say that you would like to use the stage-4 fu'ivla {prunela} referring to 'Accentator' (genus of bird).
First how are the listener supposed to know that you're talking about a bird? You might answer: "Because s/he has learned it from jbovlaste". But then you mean that you'll have to learn thousands of oddly looking words (many of them derived from latin/greek), and be able to know when someone is talking about birds, cats, cars, mathematical concepts or some other topic? That seem to convert lojban to something similar to natlang, where the vocabulary consists of a lot of words you'll just have to memorize without any kind of regularity. With a stage-3 'topic prefix', you know at least that the speaker refers to some kind of bird, even if you've never heard the word {cipnrprunela} before.
Second, say that the listener is a biologist and recognize the word {prunela}. But now it shows that this word is ambiguous. What are the arguments to let {prunela} refer to a genus of birds, and not to a genus of herbaceous plants with the same name? The word is of course ambiguous in natlang also, but shouldn't lojban has as it goal to minimize ambiguity as much as possible?
What wikipedia has to say about this kind of ambiguity: "A genus in one kingdom
is allowed to bear a scientific name that is in use as a generic name
(or the name of a taxon in another rank) in a kingdom that is governed
by a different nomenclature code (there are some five thousand such names in use in more than one kingdom)."
An objection might be that stage-3 fu'ivla are difficult to pronounce and/or sound awful. That's a pretty subjective opinion, and I respect it, but personally I don't have any difficulties to pronounce stage-3 fu'ivla and I even do like the sound of many of them.
4) Use the rules for constructing stage-3 fu'ivla (CLL 4.7) and Lojbanizing the scientific names (CLL 4.8) correctly
If everyone would use this convention, I think that would give jbovlaste a more consistent appearance.
When I started this project I didn't always use those naming rules correctly, and I regret that now. Just think about having to go back and try to correct thousands of misspelled words later on (whoever that person might be), oicai:(
When you're constructing lujvos also be careful how to remove dependent places, order of places, etc. See CLL chapter 12.
5) Use the same form to fill the definition
Use a word like {sparkordiline} as an example of a well-defined word (seb standard, 'seb' that's me - I've become tired of my lojban name), or come up with some standard of your own.
If you think that everyone can have their own standard, so fine, but this is how my suggestion looks like:
- Choose a genus
- genus Cordyline is a genus of plants, so {spati} would serve as a stage-3 topic prefix.
- To shorten the word I use the short rafsi variant if possible, so we get {sparkordiline}: s1 is a tī/palm lily (genus Cordyline) of species/cultivar s2
- In stage-3 fu'ivla definition I give the variables name after their gismu-based prefix, so here I use s (={spati}) instead of x. Maybe I should have used both...
- Gloss word 1: palm lily ; in sense: plant (genus Cordyline), Gloss word 2: tī ; in sense: plant (genus Cordyline)
- Note that I fill 'in sense'-data. Sometimes you just don't know if the natlang counterparts got some any other sense (like in the case of Prunella), and anyhow it looks nice to always specify the gismu-base (here 'plant (genus Cordyline)').
- some plants of Cordyline are also trees, so to denote those species specifically you could also add the word {ricrkordiline}. Definition: t1 is a tī/palm lily (genus Cordyline) of species/cultivar t2
6) DerivatesNext step is to see if Cordyline plants are useful for something. Not what I can see on wikipedia. But in case you find parts of a plant/animal/object useful, invent fu'ivlas for these as well, derived from the first word.
For example: vanilla orchid (genus Vanilla) = {sparvanila} (note that you can't use {xrula} here since that is just an pretty irrelevant part of the plant), vanilla pod = {rutrvanila}, vanilla seed = {tsirvanila}, vanilla extract = {runtrvanila}, vanilla sugar = {satrvanila}, vanilla sauce = {sansrvanila}. Compare that with the stage-4 fu'ivla {varnila} - what does that mean?
This is also an argument why the project to systematically go through all genera is important: to generate a lot of new useful words, not least for culinary purposes;)
7) NotesNow is it time to fill in the notes for all connected words, to make cross-referents, and other useful information. But this is not the most important part I think.
8) Type species/genus etcOptimally the type species should be a part of the definition of a genus. That leads to an idea what {lo'e} and {zu'i} are capable of referring to in scientific contexts. But it isn't always that easy to find information about the type species. Not on (and according to) wikipedia at least.
Wikipedia:
"Because of the rules of scientific naming, or "binomial nomenclature", each genus should have a designated type, although in practice there is a backlog of older names that may not yet have a type."
/End of list of criteria/
I'm sure my text here is full of grammatical errors, but otherwise: Is it too much to ask for, to upload this text to lojban.org?
And I really look forward to hear your comments about my view on this topic.
mu'omi'e seb