Re: New issue of JVP 2001(2) (no JOKE)

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Ken Kinman (kinman@hotmail.com) wrote:

<Sorry, but it seems to me that requiring an object to precede
the subject in Latin-based generic names is a requirement that
has long been dispensed with. The use of a pure grammatical
Latin has long been an anachronistic goal to which few now
strictly adhere (just as I used an dangling participle in the
preceding sentence, but avoided it in this sentence since it
shows that I know the difference).>

  Yet you operated on it. One sees how the use of a Language
that has been spoken and taught in the pure form as handed down
academically, the language of the sciences as late as the
1870's, and still used at Oxford, etc., should be preserved, so
that when structures are made from it, they should also reflect
this. The lack of doing this, and just picking whatever latin
words fit what you want to say and slapping them together and
say "voila! Here's a name!" is to say there is no respect for
the structure being applied. This is laziness. If you want a
name that means anything in any particular order you want, don't
use a language that requires such order for a proper
construction. Having the connecting vowel being the right vowel
is a nice idea, but as the discussion on the name *Paralititan*
showed, there was an intent to form a proper, Latin/Greek-based
name in use of the proper structure. It is laudable. The use of
name structures that do in fact incorporate such rules into
their form indicates that the structure is alive and kicking. So
_any_ name I form will, if a Latin structure, be correctly
coined to correspond to the intended meaning. Classically, the
use of the word "raptor" was either a pure sense of the
snatcher, or of a bird of prey; only post-Osborn has the term
become a use of small dinosaurs.

  By the bye, would you keep the object and subject on the
correct sides of each other if speaking Spanish? or French? Or
as in English. Yeah, it requires rewiring the way one thinks
about phrase structure, but that really isn't too hard.

<I have no idea why you would bring up a "Hitler lizard"
example. Even if Hitler was a tyrant, this certainly does not
mean all tyrants are like Hitler.>

  My point exactly. Look at it this way: I would not name an
animal *Hitlersaurus* to honor or deride the man. I would choose
a euphemism or phrase to characterize him: *Constructus* to
honor the architect, or *Bellor* to honor the soldier, or
*Tyrannus* to honor the dictator. In this way, the phrase
"tyrant lizard" can be taken euphemistically to imply a reptile
like Hitler, as much as the name "fire snatcher" was used to
imply Prometheus, or an animal snatched from a fire, etc....

<Likewise, a literal interpretations like "snatcher of Utah" or
"snatcher of swiftness" seem rather absurb to me.  Snatcher of
the dawn and snatcher of fire are equally absurb literal
translations which obviously do not reflect the intentions of
the authors of these names.>

  Read above and in my last post on why *Pyroraptor* was named
for precisely this reason by Allain and Taquet, 2000.

  But this is my popint otherwise, these names _are_ ridiculous
as originally constructed. There was no reason *Utahraptor*
couldn't've been named *Megapredator utahensis*, it would have
meant much the way the animal has been perceived and was at the
time. It still honors the state. Or *Ostromia utahensis* in one
kill stroke [I'd personally like to honor Ostrom with a taxon in
his honor, as above]. However, yes, the names are ridiculous
when literally interpreted. But it is possible to say "the dawn
small, snatching, grasping predator" in Latin, and not say
*Eoraptor* unless one is trying for a pun on _Carpe Diem_.

<If one gets a fixation on "proper" Latin grammar, one is liable
to drive oneself crazy given the ways it has been used in the
latter part of the 20th Century.>

  Gosh, and we should allow the later half of the century to
moderate how we use a language alive for two thousand years?

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