Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 March 31

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March 31

Mammalogy

Why is mammalogy the only branch of zoology that gets a name with a non-Greek word for its first element?? Was there an ancient Greek word for mammal?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:43, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

If you derive it from "mammal", then there's haplology involved. Anyway, there is an ancient Greek word "Mamma", but it seems to mean more a baby's cry to be breast-fed than it does the breasts themselves... AnonMoos (talk) 18:54, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if the Ancient Greek language had a distinct word for it, but θηλαστικό (thilastiko) seems to be the modern Greek term for mammal.[1] The answer to the first question, is the same for every single question, toned with incredulity, that you've ever asked about inconsistencies in languages. The answer is that languages are always inconsistent, they were not created wholly formed at a single point in time to be perfectly consistent and then remain immobile forever. Languages evolve in a mostly arbitrary manner, and words are coined and "stick" in ways that don't reflect any consistent system. You need to stop having the expectation that they would be otherwise, and start to accept that while patterns in language do exist, they pretty much always have exceptions, and the exceptions don't always have easy to explain reasons. Also, not every branch of Zoology has a name in English using a greek term. apiology is the study of honeybees, and uses the latin "apis" for Bee. There's also primatology, from the latin also. And felinology, also latin. Your first presumption that every branch of zoology has greek etymology in its name is also not true. --Jayron32 19:00, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Just a note, I always used to see GG's questions ending in a double question mark as "toned with incredulity", because that's what I would mean if I used that punctuation. But as far as I can tell GG always uses the double question mark for an opening question on the refdesk. I think it's just a personal style, maybe a kind of emphatic "this is the end of my question; please answer now", but doesn't mean much more than that. --Trovatore (talk) 16:51, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Would the root "-ther-" be what you are looking for? The original Greek meant "wild beast", but in biological naming it generally means "mammal". See the subclass Theria. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The article mammalogy suggests alternative terms from Greek: "mastology" from wikt:μαστός (breast), and "theriology" or "therology" from wikt:θηρίον (wild beast). None of those mean "mammal" in ancient Greek, but the Latin root also doesn't mean "mammal" in ancient Latin. The word and concept wikt:mammal are modern, devised by Linnaeus. --Amble (talk) 20:30, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The post-Classical Latin adjective mammalis that Linnaeus adopted for his taxonomy means "related to breasts". While not attested, I think Ancient Greek speakers would have understood the adjective θηλαστικός (thēlastikós) as meaning "able to suckle". Probably, the equally unattested μαστικός (mastikós) would have been understood as meaning "related to breasts". The term masticology has actually been proposed as an alternative to the "dreadful word" mammology,^[2] but found no traction.  --Lambiam 12:02, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

And yet we have "mastectomies" rather than "mammectomies". "Mastitis", not "mammitis". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:11, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Grammar in Battle_of_73_Easting

I' no native speaker and have a grammar question:

In Battle_of_73_Easting is the following sentence:
Task Force 1-41 Infantry breached the berm on the borders between Saudi Arabia and Iraq which was the initial Iraqi defensive positions
In my opinion the bold part is a mix of singular and plural. I assume it has to be: which was the initial Iraqi defensive position
If I'm wrong, would someone please explain it for me.

Thanks in advance
Yours --Baumfreund-FFM (talk) 18:59, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, you would say either "Which were the initial Iraqi defensive positions" or "Which was the initial Iraqi defensive position". Stripping the sentence down by removing confounding adjectives it is "which was the positions" which is mixing conjugations. It would be "...were the... positions" Or "...was the...position". Either would be correct, but not what is originally written. --Jayron32 19:03, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your rapid response. --Baumfreund-FFM (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Definitely should be singular, as it refers back to "berm". The "berm ... was the ... position". --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:27, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Right answer, wrong reason. Consider the sentence "The topic is new movies." The verb is "is" because the subject is "topic", which is singular. "New movies" is plural and refers back to "topic", but this does not affect the verb. --184.144.97.125 (talk) 02:13, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

The subject here is actually the initial Iraqi defensive position(s), while which is the complement, an anaphor whose antecedent is the berm on the borders .... After agreeing that subject–verb agreement is required and reverting the transformation that produced the dependent clause, the question can be rephrased as: which of the following two is correct:

1. the initial Iraqi defensive position was the berm ... ;
2. the initial Iraqi defensive positions were the berm ... ?

It should then be clear that the singular complement needs a singular subject. In light of this observation, the reason given by User:Khajidha is not actually wrong, although the reasoning leading to this answer was implicit.  --Lambiam 11:16, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

You can have multiple positions on the same berm, though. It's a three-dimensional object, and not merely a point. The fact that "berm" is singular doesn't control the single/plural nature of the positions, from a grammatical sense. Both sentences above work perfectly fine from a grammatical point of view. Consider a slight variation "The unit took a defensive position on the berm" or "The units took defensive positions on the berm". That there is one berm doesn't mean that there can't be multiple positions along it. There may be a distinction to be made based upon whether there was a single position or more than one position, but that's a semantic distinction, not a syntactic one; which is to say that the distinction is based on the meanings of the words, not on their grammatical usage in the sentence. --Jayron32 16:06, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Someone can have multiple warts on their nose, but that does not mean one can say, *"their warts were the nose". That would mean that the nose was wholly composed of these warts.  --Lambiam 21:07, 1 April 2022 (UTC)