Disputatio:Cultigena

Cultigena fuit Translatio Hebdomadalis.

This is not exactly my cup of tea, but I began translating, not aus Liebe zur Biologie, but mainly in order to imply that the etymologies fancied out for cultigen in other wikis are based on defective knowledge of Latin. Cultigen has clearly been formed on indigen — as can be gleaned from Bailey himself — the Latin counterparts of which are indigena (-ae / nomen commune) and cultigena (-ae c.). Now, does Stearn really say, imo confusingly, that the singular is cultigenum? I fail to see what kind of purpose this kind of variation might serve. ¶ Iacobe, I agree that the definiendum should be in the singular. Maybe the problem that I was trying to solve by having the lemma in the plural is more or less self-generated. I tried to avoid using planta — which, in the kind of Latin prose that we're supposed to strive for, doesn't mean 'plant' but 'twig; graft' — and so used the hendiadyoin phrase stirpes et herbae, which is admittedly cumbersome. Maybe it's better to use planta and thereby get more reasonable syntax. ¶ By the way, could you explain to a non-native, what "vegetative sports" (in the En. article) is supposed to mean. Though I think I know what vegetative and sports mean separately, the complex concept is impenetrable to my mind's eye. Neander (disputatio) 17:11, 8 Martii 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Stearn says the word is cultigenum and specifies that it's a second-declension neuter. (He adds that cultivar in Latin is cultivarietas, and he doesn't list any—capitalized!—gruppus.) Does Bailey really coin cultigena on the basis of indigena in 1918? Merriam-Webster says the English word was first used in 1924, fashioned, not out of Latin, but out of English cultivated + English -gen, and in turn this English -gen was fashioned out of French -gènes 'born', "akin to Gk genos birth" (no mention of Latin geno = gigno, which Cassell's says is the origin of indigena). Under the lemma -gen, Merriam-Webster says examples of its use are in English androgen, cultigen, and phosgene [sic]. If so, then New Scientific Latin for all three of them should agree in form & gender. ¶ On planta. The English wiki uses British spellings (centre, colour, programme) for British topics and American spellings (center, color, program) for American topics. Latin could well do something similar, using terms in their modern, technical, scientific sense when discussing species (and other taxonomic notions), the morphology of plants & animals, the principles of mathematics & physics, and such, while using more Ciceronian diction for nontechnical subjects. (Incidentally, Cassell's says Cicero used stirpes et herbae to mean 'a plant'.) However, there's no reason a text can't read stirpes et herbae while having a link to planta: links often go to lemmata that don't appear in their text. ¶ A sport is "an individual exhibiting a sudden deviation from type beyond the normal limits of individual variation usu. as a result of mutation esp. of somatic tissue" (M-W). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:49, 9 Martii 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I haven't access to Bailey (1918), but from the English wiki page one may infer that he compared cultigen to indigen which has nothing to do with Greek. English -gen obviously conflates two proveniences, viz. Latin (indigenous, as Cassell's rightly implies) -gena, and Greek -genes (an ablaut stem variant of genos, used as an adjective). When comparing cultigen with indigen, Bailey was of course not acting as an etymologist. What he found was simply an analogy on the basis of the English (etymologically ambiguous) -gen. It's the etymologist's job to explicate the analogy, and I'm not convinced at all that Merriam-Webster has chosen the right tack (with all due respects, of course). The right tack is not the one leading to Gk -genes; the comparandum indigena simply prevents this. ¶ I replaced stirpes et herbae by planta in the definition to get better syntax. Notice, incidentally, that when creating the journal Gentes herbarum. Bailey was obviously using Latin herba in the meaning of 'plant'. ¶ Thanks for explaining sport — iocus naturae. The ways of semantics are manifold, indeed. ¶ Feel free to alter or/and continue the article. I guess I've done my share. In the field of botany, I'm doomed to be in the underdog, forever. :–) Neander (disputatio) 15:31, 9 Martii 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Macte! Nice work!Jondel (disputatio) 00:03, 13 Martii 2012 (UTC)[reply]