The nominative singular is mys-s, which surfaces as mys.
The genitive singular is mys-os, whose surface form shifted first to myhos and then to myos.
So the s is a legitimate part of the historical stem of this noun, which surfaces in compounds before a voiceless consonant and is otherwise deleted.
Nick Pharris
Sent from my iPhone
Ben CreislerI think there is some confusion about the term "stem" here. What I was referring to is the stem-form that would normally be used in forming compounds. This is typically (but not always) derived by taking the genitive case of a noun or an adjective and dropping the final grammatical inflection.
mys is the nominative case singular, myos is the genitive case singular.
The combining stem would be my-, dropping the -os grammatical inflection. A connecting vowel "o" often would be added as myo- before a consonant.
See Greek words such as:
myobrotos "devoured by mice"
https://logeion.uchicago.edu/%CE%BC%CF%85%CF%8C%CE%B2%CF%81%CF%89%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%82
mygale "shrewmouse, field-mouse"
myomakhia "battle of the mice"
myotheras a type of mouse-eating snake
https://logeion.uchicago.edu/%CE%BC%CF%85%CE%BF%CE%B8%CE%AE%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%82
However, there a few words in which the nominative form mys occurs:
myspoleo "run about like a mouse" mys + poleo "go about, roam"
https://logeion.uchicago.edu/%CE%BC%CF%85%CF%83%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%BB%CE%AD%CF%89
mysphonon "mousetrap" mys + phonos "killing, slaying"
https://logeion.uchicago.edu/%CE%BC%CF%85%CF%83%CF%86%CF%8C%CE%BD%CE%BF%CE%BD
===
The point would be that is was some variation in how some words were combined. There are cases in which an "s" from the nominative singular or other source was left as-is.On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 9:32 AM Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:âGreek had both the words myagra and mysphonon for a moustrap. The stem of the Greek noun mys is my-.âNot at all up to your usual standards, Iâm afraid, Ben.The stem of the Greek noun is mys, but the s disappears between vowels (as a general phonological process that is reversed by analogy in certain words).Nick PharrisSent from my iPhoneBen CreislerI rushed the last reply a bit and missed a typo on keressiphoretos (NOT "keressiphanetos").Responding to David...The term Neo-Latin (also called New Latin and modern Latin) is commonly used for not only formal zoological names but also for modern medical terms, technological and scientified terms (helicopter, telescope, in English), etc. Starting in the Renaissance, Neo-Latin was actually a fully developed language for scholarly discourse that lasted up into the 19th century.
Neo-Latin had a different vocabulary and different meanings compared to classical Latin.
It survives now mainly only in names of animals, plants, microbes, and medical conditions. The ICZN still imposes a few Latin rules (use of the Latin alphabet, family-group suffixes, gender matches, etc.). (Botanical descriptions no longer have to be written in Latin.)I gave the example of Mosaesaurus to show that some people tried to "correct" the grammar to match the intended meaning "saurian of the Meuse" more explicitly compared to the original spelling Mosasaurus. I in no way implied that the form Mosaesaurus was the valid name.
Greek had both the words myagra and mysphonon for a moustrap. The stem of the Greek noun mys is my-.
If the first part of compound is a noun that ends in a vowel, it is sometimes left as-is, which gives the appearance of a noun in the nominative case. The grammatical meaning, though, can be similar to regular compound formed from stems.I'll do a future post of various points.On Sat, Aug 24, 2019 at 3:23 PM David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:Gesendet: Samstag, 24. August 2019 um 20:50 Uhr
Von: "Ben Creisler" <bcreisler@gmail.com>
> The bottom line here is Neo-Latin is distinct from classical Greek and Latin.
There is no such thing as "Neo-Latin". Taxonomic names are just a set of nouns and adjectives, not a language.
Personally, I find there is something to be said for abandoning the pretense of Latin altogether not only if you're unable to do Latin right, but also if you simply aren't feeling like it: *Juratyrant* is unmodified English, problem solved. A heap of names from China are toneless but otherwise unmodified Standard Mandarin, problem solved. *Seitaad* is toneless Navajo without the apostrophe for the ejective consonant in the middle, problem solved...
The ICZN allows practically anything you can imagine, including meaningless combinations of letters as long as the result looks kinda pronounceable and doesn't cause too much offense (neither "looks kinda" nor "too much" are defined). There are actual cases of this: the name of the Jurassic bivalve *Gythemon* Casey, 1952, may look Greek, but it's arbitrarily made up out of thin air, and there's nothing wrong with that.
> There are many examples in Neo-Latin zoological names in paleontology in which two nouns are combined without modifying the ending of the first word.
Most of these are formed the way compound nouns were formed in Classical Greek and, very rarely, in slightly pre-Classical* Latin: by taking the _stem_ of the first noun and sticking it on the second noun, exactly as the ICZN wants it.
The trick is that not all Latin or Greek nouns have special nominative singular endings (-s, -m/-n) to begin with. The Latin ones that end in -a don't; their dictionary form is the endingless stem. That means there's nothing whatsoever dubious about *Mosasaurus*, *Camarasaurus* or (once theke has been Latinized to theca) *Thecachampsa*. I suspect *Platecarpus* should have had -a- instead of -e- even if Latin is completely left out of the picture, but don't actually know enough Greek to tell.
* Specifically in Plautus: legerupa ("lawbreaker") from lex (leg-s, a "consonant stem" that gets extended with -e- when a vowel is needed), sociofrauda ("who defrauds his friends") from socius (socio-s after a sound shift that turned -os, -ol, -om into -us, -ul, -um). That's pretty much it. Later Latin, like the Romance languages today, avoid noun compounding (e.g. by resorting to "breaker of the law").
> It gets a bit messy because Parkinson changed the spelling to Mosaesaurus (using a genitive "of the Meuse") in later editions of the book.
Irrelevant, because "Mosaesaurus" is invalid by the principle of priority (and because *Mosasaurus* isn't a nomen oblitum). It's an objective junior synonym.
> Other examples include Confuciusornis, Xiphosura, etc., where for ease of pronunciation or clarity of etymology, a first noun is left unmodified with a grammatical ending intact with a consonant before a vowel.
Bad examples: neither ease of pronunciation nor clarity of etymology would be any worse in the expected forms "Confuciornis" and "Xiphura". These names were simply coined by people who â like practically all people on this planet except the very few (and shrinking!) who've had a very, very peculiar kind of education â didn't know enough about Latin or Greek to even wonder whether they should ask someone who might know better.
> However, Greek had amphisbaina (amphisbaena) for serpent that could go forward or backward with a head at each end, and mysphonon "mousetrap" with an s retained.
I don't know about amphis-; but the -s in mys is not (only) the nominative ending, it's part of the stem, as you can see from the fact that the stem of the Latin homolog of that word, mus, is mur-*, and the fact that the -s is still there in the English homolog â mouse.
* Between vowels, s became r a few hundred years before Classical times. Or rather, it became [z] a few hundred years before Latin or any Italic language was written, then this [z] was written S in the first few Latin inscriptions because there was no dedicated letter for [z]** and because the language treated the difference between [s] and [z] as predictable and therefore meaningless. Later this [z] merged into the existing [r], and [r] from both sources has been spelled R ever since.
** The letter Z existed, but stood for [dz] and/or [zd], neither of which occurred in Latin. It's only later that Greek went through a sound change that simplified this to [z].