Re: Leveraging Linnaean lingo in a loglang

More ramblings on naming stuff...

On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:

> My gjâ-zym-byn handles most of its biological terms similarly,
> borrowing words from Latin mostly at the genus and family
> levels, occasionally for species or order.   But it's not a pure
> loglang; some species have onomatopoeic or otherwise
> idiosyncratic names, and there are a few words for plants
> I recognize and perhaps know the common English name
> of but don't know (haven't been able to find out) the Latin name
> of, or what other plants they're close kin to.
> E.g. "vjyn" is the plant called "candle-lily" around here
> (Atlanta Ga.), but searches online for "candle-lily" reveal
> there are several plants with that common name, in different
> familes or genera, none of which look like the plant in my
> yard. <http://www.pobox.com/%7Ejimhenry/>
>
It seems that naming plants is a challenge in natlangs, and even more so in
a conlang in which one-meaning-per-constituent is a design requirement.  I
will probably never get around to naming more than a tiny fraction of the
varieties of plants.  I do seek to provide a system that could be used, in
theory, to conveniently name any plant or anything else that someone wishes
to name. Right now, I have three basic tactics for naming living things:

1. Basic expressions (BEs, i.e. single morphemes) are coined directly for
many familiar living things, as I described in my previous post.  I coined
mostly 'a posteriori' BEs for convenience, but I don't think there is
anything inherently un-loglang-ish about coining onomatopoeic or otherwise
idiosyncratic names as you use IYC.  (Nor, IMHO, are classifier systems, or
elaborate compounding morphologies, super-advantageous in lexicon design.
For me, the main consideration is simply keeping each BE morphologically
unique and semantically well-defined in any given context.)

2. Identifiable subsets of the extension denoted by any given BE can be
indexed using arbitrary noun phrases.  IMC, prefixing any basic expression
'X' with "zu" provides a argument place for a NP 'Y' which names, possibly
metaphorically, an identifiable subtype of 'X';  in other words, the phrase
'zùX Y' means roughly "thing belonging to that subtype of 'X' known
metaphorically as 'Y'".   For example:

zùlilio kandela = candle-lily = certain variety of genus 'Lilium' known as
"Candle" (whatever one)
(literal gloss: thing belonging to that subtype of Lily known as "Candle")

zùhunde pastore kèdoytce = German Shepherd (dog)
(literal gloss: thing belonging to that subtype of dog known as "German
Shephard")

Each subtype would be defined as precisely as a basic expression.
Therefore, properly speaking, there would be only one variety of plant
called "zùlilio kandela" (candle-lily).  However, each BE has its own
subtype space, so "zùrosa kandela" (candle-rose) would name some other
plant, as would the putative "zùplanta kandela" (candle-plant), whatever
those things may be.  In a way, this system works like Linnaeus's bionomial
system of genus+species, except that it's intended to subtype many things,
both natural and artificial, e.g. plants, cheese, minerals, stars, etc, and
do so independently of any over-arching taxonomical system.

Frequently used expressions could be later shortened to basic expressions by
coining a new BE (which could be a portmanteau, a borrowing, a 'sui generis'
formation, etc.) e.g. "lilikandela" < "zùlilio kandela"; "pastordoytche" <
"zùhunde pastore kèdoytce" (or perhaps "doytcaceferhunde" < G. "Deutscher
Schäferhund") .

3. As mentioned, scientific binomials can be directly quoted, when desired
or needed.

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