Re: Dublex (was: Washing-machine words (was: Futurese, Chinese,

Tim May wrote:
>Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 20:35:42 +0100
>
>Andreas Johansson writes:
>  > John Cowan wrote:
>  > >J Y S Czhang scripsit:
>  > >
>  > > >     It may help to show examples of this, And. From taxonomy and
>  > >natlangs
>  > > > (and, possibly, conlangs). I am keen to clear this up myself ;)
>Thanx in
>  > > > advance...
>  > >
>  > >Well, the lowland or common gorilla is "Gorilla gorilla gorilla",
>whereas
>  > >the mountain gorilla is "Gorilla gorilla beringei".  Then we have the
>  > >indri,
>  > >a prosimian of Madagascar, whose Linnaean name is "Indri indri".
>  > >
>  > >But my favorite Linnaean name belongs to the boa constrictor: "Boa
>  > >constrictor".
>  > >No kidding.
>  >
>  > I may be very dense, but what's the joke?
>  >
>  >                                              Andreas
>  >
>  > _________________________________________________________________
>  > Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
>  > http://www.hotmail.com
>
>It's just that it's rare for a Linnaean name to be the same as the
>common name.  Also, in English, you'd tend to automatically interpret
>"boa constrictor" as being modifier-head, whereas in the Latin-based
>Linnaean nomenclature it's head-modifier.
Ah. I may've run across two many microorganisms who don't have any
non-Linnaean names to react to that sort of thing (my sister studies
microbiology).

                                                     Andreas

_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com