Re: The case of the Hebrew word for "oxygen"...

On May 11, 5:52 am, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<d9cb5123-899c-41d4-9f07-7b122d761...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
António Marques <ento...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 11, 12:00 am, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It hasn't got to do with rigour. 'Quarks' and the like are just not
expected to be interpretable,

What about "strange quarks", "up quarks", etc.? I'm not saying that
"quark" itself should be interpretable, but surely "strange" would be.
And yet, there's nothing particularly strange about strange quarks (at
least, not distinctive from other quarks!).

Nor is any misleading information conveyed by the name - unless
nuclear physics attaches some special significance to any other kind
'strangeness', which I don't think it does - so I still don't see how
do they fit in.

One would logically expect "strange" quarks to behave strangely. If
in fact they do not, then the name is a misleading description.

'Behave strangely' hardly has any meaning in this context. Next,
please. At least TRY.

so the misnomer issue doesn't arise at
all. And it's possible to call a plant with red flowers 'caerulea',
but unless there is a reason for it, it just comes across as dumb. Of
course no one said it's *forbidden*.

Like calling a rodent from the Andes a "Guinea pig"? Or a bird a
"titmouse"?

And guess what, they're 'piggies from India' here. Go figure. But did
you miss the 'there is a reason for it' part?

What counts as "a reason for it"? Or I guess more importantly, what
doesn't?

You guess correctly. In a scientific context, a long disspelled
misconception doesn't count as a good reason.

Names are just labels---they need not be accurate descriptions as well.

Who said they needed?

Anyone who says that avoiding misnomers is expecting in naming
implicitly says so.

You're quite the reasoned fellow, Nathan. I didn't simply say avoiding
misnomers is expected in naming.

So what did you mean by "In a scientific matter such as this, the
person would be expected to avoid the misnomer, either correcting it
or choosing a different path altogether."?

I'm somewhat troubled to see that 'In a scientific matter such as
this' and the several contextualising paragraphs preceding it are
apparently lost on you.

Up until now, all objections have
emphatically missed the point.

If "all objections" have missed the point, then perhaps the point
wasn't made clearly enough.

Wrong hypothesis. The point is quite literal and you have not engaged
it, but rather directed your objections at an unqualified general
statement which I did not make.

It is understandable why a writer would
place the blame for failed communication on the reader,

As if I didn't expect you'd say this. When the reader doesn't depart
from the writer's material when raising objections, the reader is to
blame. No matter how may do so.

but if every
single reader has misunderstood the writer,

'Every single reader' being you and mb? mb is just exhibiting typical
behaviour. Harlan pointed out that you're deliberately ignoring the
technicality on which it all hinges, because it's a technicality, when
in fact what is being discussed is precisely that technicality.

I think the writer needs
to consider alternative reasons for the communicative failure.

Clever argument, which of course I'd never considered before. You may
impress some 5th grader with it, but it isn't applicable here.

I'll have to point out that most of these aren't technical at all, and

I'd hardly say that "oxygen" is (just) a technical term. It is most
certainly the ordinary term for the stuff! What else would you call
it in casual, non-technical speech?

DD UU HH !!! !!! !!! The first prediction from my algorithm is
precisely that the term wasn't probably coined in a scientifc context.
If you didn't even read that, that's my fault?

ventriloquism,

Just what is misleading about it?

Look up the Latin root "venter", and think carefully about what parts
of the body a ventriloquist uses (and doesn't use) when performing.

I don't need to look up no latin root, 'ventre' is a perfectly normal
word in my language (there goes your assumption; did you really
imagine I didn't know what it meant? One of the things that makes
discussions monotonous is having the other said systematically indulge
in whishful thinking). There is no reason at all why a word that
designates making voice appear to come from somewhere else than it
really does should point to the exact source of sound.

Chinese checkers,

I understand the name was chosen on purpose.

So would purposefully choosing a misnomer be "a reason for it"?

Certainly.

American Indians,

'Native American' (which isn't actually wrong)

Well, they were natives of this land long before it was ever called
"America"!

But it is 'America' now.

has been on the rise for some time now.

Irrelevant. "Indian" was and is still widely used, despite centuries
of knowing that it's a misnomer.

Because the semantic connection to 'India' is too weak to matter.

Gothic architecture,

The original sense of gothic is in even more restricted use.

The original sense is presumably "of or having to do with the Goths".
Gothic architecture, from my limited knowledge of architecture, was
not created by the Goths (about 900 years and one country in the wrong
direction).

And? I didn't say it had anything to do with the Goths, I said that
the original sense is all but unused. If memory serves, 'gothic
style' was coined as a natural follower of 'romanic', with a
derogatory sense (hence the 'reason'). Not because someone thought it
had developed under the Goths.

the Holy Roman Empire

Self-designation and taken quite seriously.

So would self-designating oneself with a misnomer be "a reason for it"?

Certainly, unless someone else were offended.

Are the two of you sure you know what I'm actually saying? Your

Apparently not, if you don't think we have responded to what you think
you have said.

I don't need to 'think' much, It's up there (http://groups.google.com/
group/sci.lang/msg/55dc0ff29c97e411?dmode=source) in succint enough
terms, points 1-4 and the 5th is expressed in the coda. It's not a
recipe for calquing words, it's a number of points which should arise
in a very specific context. It isn't put forward as inevitable - it
states its requisites. As its outcome is not what came about with the
hebrew version of oxygen, I point out that some of the prerequisites
probably wasn't met. You dispute (4), but for all this talking haven't
put forward a counterexample which respects 1, 2 and 5. You might have
tried to show 5 to be unfalsifiable; but I've given you above an
example of something which doesn't count as a 5. So if you have
documentary evidence of a case meeting 1, 2 and 5, with an outcome
different from 4, then you have a case.
(You'll have a case of a coinage which I'll label as unfortunate and
sloppy; I never said it couldn't happen. You'll just have me having to
admit that person X, even if X is dear to me, has acted poorly.)

In other news, today I'm introducing 'melanophile' as a new
designation for white supremacists.
.

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