Re: Lessons from orangutans: Upright walking may have begun in trees

On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 22:01:22 +0100, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk>:

In message <l3jo6356r7c075k9i500i3k20pkuskug00@xxxxxxx>, Ye Old One
<usenet@xxxxxxxxx> writes
On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:08:29 -0700, UC <uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:

On Jun 9, 10:00 pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 13:27:05 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by UC <uraniumcommit...@xxxxxxxxx>:

On Jun 8, 5:22 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

<snip>

Nevertheless, that is common usage. "Hey, there's a Biston betularia on
that tree trunk!" You will proceed to tell me that this common usage
either is not common (among those people who do say Biston betularia,
not the public at large) or is wrong despite being common. Right?
Would you say:
"That's a General Motors"?

Invalid analogy. There's no car, or other individual
"thing", called a "General Motors"; it's a legal entity, but
not a tangible one.

"Biston betularia" is the name of a species
and cannot be properly used for a member of that species as in the
expression "a Biston betularia".

Really? So it would be incorrect to say, "There's a Homo
sapiens driving that Chevy"? Uh-huh...

Yes.

For once, you are correct, though I doubt it is for the right reason.

The correct sentence should be "There's a Homo sapien driving that
Chevy".

Your correction is incorrect - Homo sapiens is singular; the plural is
something like Homines sapientes. (My Latin's not good enough to be sure
what the correct plural is.) If a hypothetical situation where there
were multiple sapient species the sentence "There's a Homo sapiens
driving that Chevy" would even be a reasonable utterance, especially as
it's quite likely that usage of man for adult sapient would have
developed in that situation.

Thanks; that's what I thought, too. And I like your
hypothetical example.

However, it would also be correct to say "There's a [*] driving that
Chevy". Where [*] can be replaced with man, ape, primate, mammal or
animal.

--

Bob C.

"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless

.

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