Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)

John Atkinson wrote:

> >> >> Most other languages prefer "Down's". Portuguese "sindrome de Down",
>
> > [...]
> >
> >> The Finnish and Turkish I gave undoubtedly have the translation of
> >> "syndrome" in a non-nominitive case too.
> >
> > No, the Finnish is nominative, but you misspelled it rather badly.
> > It should be "Downin oireyhtymä"; the latter word is a compound
> > "oire+yhtymä" whose parts mean roughly 'symptom+group' (surprise!).
> >
> > I'm pretty sure Turkish "Down sendromu" is nominative, too. If I'm
> > right, the -u is a possessive suffix marking "sendrom" as being
> > governed by "Down".
>
> If so, it corresponds to English "Down's syndrome", as opposed to "Down
> syndrome", no? So we should move it out of the group of languages whose
> normal term doesn't involve a possessive.
>
> So German (and more-often-than-not English) seem to be the only ones left in
> that group..

I really don't see what the usage in _any_ other language has to do with
the correct form in English.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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