Re: KT boundry event


uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx kirjoitti:

neverbetter wrote:
uraniumcommit...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx kirjoitti:

Robin Levett wrote:

The word is of Siberian origin. Entered English in early 18th c. See
your Oxford English Dictionary.

Relevance? Mammoths were extinct when the name entered the language.

But they were known. Dinosaurs were not. A few fossils of ancient life
may have turned up from time to time, but they were not clearly
understood.

What? I don't understand. Are you saying that mammoths were named after
they were known and dinosaurs were named before they were known? How
could the name of anything enter the language before the entity it
refers to is known to people?

Mammoths were known to be recently alive creatures because they stank
when you got around them as they thawed. It was easy to see the
connection between the scattered tusks and skulls and these creatures
that occasionally thawed out of the ground.

I don't think this answered my question though. How could dinosaurs be
named if they weren't known?

They weren't known until their fossils were dug up in recent times.
Mammoths wer probably know for centuries as recent animals. The cases
are not parallel. the word 'dinosaur' was made up specifically by Owen
to refer to the incredibly ancient beasts. 'Mammoth' is an adopted
Siberian word that is quite old. Mammoths in one form or another have
been known for much longer than dinosaurs.

So they both were named after they were known. I don't see why it's
relevant if one naming happened a bit earlier than another.

Anyway, it's irrelevant because human
languages are perfectly capable of naming not only things that are
known to be recently alive, but things that are known to have existed
long ago, things that will only exist in the future and things that
have never existed and probably can't exist in the future.

See above. Right. Words like 'quasar' and 'pulsar' were invented to
supplement 'star'. That's because it was necessary to distinguish
diffeernt kinds of heavenly bodies, for which the old word 'star' was
though inadequate. The same situation applies here. Archaeoptryx should
not be called 'bird' for the same reason we do not call quasars
'stars'.

The difference being that a lot of people find it adequate to call
Archaeopteryx a bird.

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/active/quasars.html

So...what's the word for all the small extinct animals, like
Compsognatus?

I don't know. Make one up.

So, according to your definition, Compsognathus wasn't a dinosaur? Then
why does everyone else think it is?

I don't follow you. I don't know what the term is.

That wasn't what I asked. You claimed that Compy wasn't a dinosaur; I aksed
why everyone else thought he was.

Is that
condescension on your face?

I have no idea; would you have a problem if it were?

It would not surprise me. Paleontologists have been guilty of using
language sloppily and inaccurately for decades.

Are there other fields that you feel are using their professional
terminology inaccurately and should look for guidance in the vernacular
usage of laymen?

No, just the reverse. Paleontologists are using vernacular language
instead of their own specialized voaculary, in an attempt to popularize
their findings. Saying Archaeoptryx is a 'bird', for instance, when the
proper term is 'avian' or 'proto-avian'. Don't corrupt the vernacular
language!

Bird is a noun. My dictionary says that avian is an adjective and means
'of or pertaining to birds'. What is the corresponding noun for avian?

'Avian'. It's a noun too.

According to all the dictionaries I consulted, it's an adjective,
except one which omitted it altogether. But even if it's used as a
noun, it refers to birds.

Would it be 'bird'?

No. 'Avian'.

Avian the adjective means "of or pertaining to birds". Avian the noun
logically then means birds.

*snip*
Nope. I'm a man, and a hominid and a primate, but I am not a fish.
Gorillas are primates but not hominids (nor, of course then, men);
Australopithicenes were hominids but not 'men'.

Are they vertebrates or eukaryotes? We have evolved far more from our
first vertebrate or eukaryote ancestors than we have evolved from fish.
Why do we still belong to those ancient groups but not ones in between?

Some are all-inclusive but some are not. We are vertebrates but not
fish. It's simple.

How do you tell which groups are all-inclusive?

'Vertebtate' is not a traditional English word but a popularized
scientific one. It is not, therefore, equivalent to 'fish' or 'bird' or
'man'.

I see. You think that the etymology of the word defines the referents.
If it's an old one-syllabled Germanic/Anglosaxon word, it refers to
modern animals exclusively; if it is a more recent polysyllabic
borrowing from Greek or Latin or coined by scientists it can refer to
ancient and modern animals both. It's not about the characteristics of
the animals or the properties that define the category, it's about the
time the word entered the English lexicon.

Have you given any thought about the first English speakers who called
birds birds? What do you think they would have called Archaeopteryx,
had they come across a live one flying across the skies? I'll bet
they'd have called it a bird and not argued that it's not a bird,
it's... er... something.

I am looking right now at the OED, 2nd ed. the first citation is 1826,
used as an adjectiv:

"But as I have before observed, generally speaking, one of the most
remarkable characters of the insect world, is the little space they
occupy; for though they touch the vertebrate animals and even
quadrupeds by their giants, yet more commonly in this feature they go
the contrary way, and by their smallest species reach the confines of
those microscopic tribes that are at the bottom of the scale of animal
life."

So words that entered the English lexicon in the 1800's can refer to
ancient animals. How about 1700's? 1600's? Where do you draw the line?


http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~pmiller/stick_insects/papers/kirby1826/volume3.html

Maybe you had not heard.

Is that condescension on your face?

More like a sneer.

To say birds 'are' dinosaurs is semantically unsupportable, every bit
as absurd as saying men are fish.

Sez you - and only you. Not even the dictionaries to which you appeal agree
with you.

Tut tut! Look up again what I posted from W3 as 'dinosaur'. Are you not
averse to uttering falsehoods?

Here's the online Merriam-Webster definition:

"any of a group (Dinosauria) of extinct chiefly terrestrial carnivorous
or herbivorous reptiles of the Mesozoic era"

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/dinosaurs

Birds are members of the group Dinosauria. The dictionary writers are
just unaware that birds are not extinct. :)

'Birds' are not members of the group 'Dinosauria'. 'Bird' is a layman's
term. 'Aves' belong to the group 'Dinosauria'. In layman's language,
'bird' is sufficient in and of itself. It needs no further
qualification. 'Aves' and 'bird' are not interchagable, nor are
'dinosaur' and 'Dinosauria'.

Aves is just Latin for birds.

No, it is not. It is a sccientific technical term that includes birds
and their predecessors.

Look, what do you think the word means in Latin? It was what they
called birds. Latin is not a language that was invented for scientific
technical purposes, it used to be a living language spoken by normal
people. And they referred to birds as Aves. Scientists have coined some
Latin words to be used as scientific technical terms and those would
have been unknown to actual Latin speakers, but Aves is not one of
them, it is the word they used to refer to birds. They knew what birds
were and had a word to refer to them. That's what it means. Aves is
Latin for birds. The birds Latin speakers would have been familiar with
were pretty much just as modern as the birds Old English speakers were
familiar with, so if Aves can be used to refer to ancestors of modern
birds, why can't birds?

Dinosauria is just Latin for dinosaurs.

What would you call birds, Aves, Dinosauria and dinosaurs if you were a
fluent Latin speaker?

Latin is an extinct language.

Irrelevant. Just answer the question, please.

In any event, this discussiion is about
how to use English.

The context makes our understanding of Latin highly relevant, as you've
just denied that Aves is Latin for birds. It is not a term which has
been coined for scientific purposes by scientists long after Latin went
extinct. It's a normal Latin word which refers to birds and is used as
such in the scientific vocabulary.

Why is this so important to you anyway? Even if paleontologists and
zoologists etc. refer to birds as dinosaurs, because that's how it goes
cladistically, it doesn't change the way people use the terms in the
everyday usage.

Paleontologists're trying to, and it's confusing to the layman. It's
simply bad practice.

No they're not trying to change the everyday usage. This is ridiculous.

They certainly ARE.

Assertions don't make it so. I've never ever heard anybody say that you
should call birds dinosaurs. If someone says that birds are dinosaurs,
they mean that birds belong to the cladistical group of dinosaurs, not
that you shouldn't call them birds, you should call them dinosaurs.
Everybody understands that birds have evolved a lot since their
dinosaur ancestors roamed this planet. Give laymen a bit more credit.

If a paleontologist mentions that birds are dinosaurs he probably just
thinks that it's an interesting cladistical tidbit people might like to
know. He's not twisting their arm to make them change the way they
speak and categorize things in everyday life. And no, it's not
confusing to the layman. The everyday categories are strong enough to
stand the vicious attack of meeting paleontologists who insist that
birds are dinosaurs. How often does that conversation happen in an
average layman's lifetime? Once? Twice? The everyday categories are
used every day.

I see it in several dinosaur books that I have right now.

Could you give us a quote or two that supports your fear? I'll bet that
when they say birds are dinosaurs they are in fact referring to the
ancestry and cladistical grouping of birds and not making the case that
laymen should call birds dinosaurs instead of birds. 'Birds are
dinosaurs' is just the sort of fact that would go into a dinosaur book,
for heaven's sake.



It's usually quite clear from the context that when
referring to dinosaurs we're thinking about a group of extinct reptiles
back in the Jurassic and if we're just talking about modern-day birds
the need to call them dinosaurs normally doesn't come up. Few people
will point out a sparrow and tell their kids: "Look, a dinosaur!"

RIGHT! Now you understand my point. 300-plus posts to come up with what
I said early on!

No, I don't really understand your point. I see what you mean about the
everyday usage and agree that laypeople don't usually think of birds
when they think of dinosaurs and vice versa, but so what? Laypeople
don't usually think of nuclei when they think of otters but it doesn't
mean that biologically otters aren't still eukaryotes.

The two staements are not parallel.

Laypeople don't usually think of the first eukaryote ancestors when
they think of otters or vice versa but otters are still eukaryotes.
Happy now?

BTW, eukaryote and dinosaur are both relatively recently coined terms
which have been originally created as scientific terms, so to be
consistent they must both be able to refer to old and modern things
both. So dinosaur is allowed to refer to birds too.

Saying that men are fish - and they are, in cladistic terms, unless fish is
paraphyletic, and cladisticians (is that a word? - it is now) don't like
paraphyletic groups.

Tell you what, why don't you ask an ornithologist and a palaeontologist what
they think?

Are you telling me I don't know how to use English?

Is it possible that you're unaware of certain conventions of certain
professional usages and the rationale behind them?

Do you have any idea how much science I read?

I know I tend to shy
away from telling scientists outside my field that they're using their
terms wrong, for fear of embarrassing myself horribly. Usually they
have a reason for the usages that seem strange to me.

But they're not using THEIR terms wrongly, they're using LAYMAN'S terms
wrongly, and it looks stupid!

If you say:

" 'Aves' belong to 'Dinsauria' ", I assure you you'll get no complaint
from me. If, however, you insist on saying " 'birds' are 'dinosaurs' ",
I'll harass you without respite.

The two statement are NOT equivalent, and the latter is simply and
indubitably false.

Aves is Latin for birds. Dinosauria is Latin for dinosaurs. Why do you
think that the referent of the words has to change when you switch
languages?

Because they are defined differently. They are not the same thing.

By whom? Just you?

"dinosaur adj. 1. in proper usage, describes any member of clade
Dinosauria 2. in common usage, describes any member of clade Dinosauria
that is not a "bird"

Dinosauria n. ("fearfully great lizards") clade of animals, partly
distinguished by a largely to fully open acetabulum, that first evolved
in the latter third of the Triassic and was the dominant land animal
from the early Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous. Holtz and Padian
(1995) define Dinosauria as the most recent common ancestor of
Triceratops and modern birds, and all its descendants. Dinosaurs were
wholly terrestrial, with no known aquatic species. Only one major clade
of dinosaurs, Aves ("birds"), survives today"
http://www.dinosauria.com/dml/diction.htm

Note also: Aves is translated as birds. As it invariably is.

If you argue the case that because bird is an old word which was used
vernacularly before scientists appropriated it and therefore its
correct usage must be determined by the laymen's usage, then to be
logically consistent you should also accept the vernacular usage of
Aves by the old Latin speakers, and then you realize that they refer to
the same thing: a group of animals known as les oiseaux, gli uccelli,
Vögel, fåglar, linnut etc. All languages I know have a word to refer
to them. English and Latin both. So why do you think they refer to
different things in English and Latin?

It also occurs to me that if you claim that the correct usage of bird
is determined by laymen's usage because bird is an old English word,
then you can't claim that the correct usage of the word dinosaur is
determined by the laymen's usage in which birds are not dinosaurs,
because dinosaur is a fairly recent word and it was coined by
scientists. So the scientists get to decide what 'dinosaur' refers to,
and they say that it refers to the members of the clade Dinosauria.


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