A small point: those of you who took Latin remember memorizing all those
declensions. There are many exceptions to nouns ending in 'a'. 'us'. 'um'
that make them not the predictable gender (eg. agricola); also there are
adjectives that are different declensions. Yes, this sounds like the
Twighlight Zone. I really liked Latin but, geesh, it was more complicated
than.....
 
Paul Monfils wrote:
 
> Andy,
> Your welcome message to Wolfgang (which I would like to reiterate -
> Welcome to the group Wolfgang!) reminded me of a narrow taxonomic
> question that has been recurring to me for some time, and which
> hopefully might have a dull answer lurking in the pages of some
> obscure ICZN manual.  Generally, the gender suffix on a species name
> (typically an adjective) matches that of the genus name (the noun it
> modifies).  However, in many cases that is not true, for example:
> Cypraea cervus, Cypraea ovum, Pterygia conus, Phalium pila, Conus
> granum, Conus terebra, Marginella prunum, Modulus tectum, Natica
> vitellus.  I have noticed that in many cases where the two endings do
> not match in gender (including the examples above), the specific name
> is not actually an adjective, but rather a second noun used as an
> adjective.  (We do this all the time in english - bicycle rack,
> telephone pole, coffee cup, shell collection.)  So, this leads me to
> suspect there must be some rule governing this situation, whereby a
> noun used as an adjective retains its own gender, rather than
> matching the gender of the primary noun.  SO - my question is - is
> there?
> Regards,
> Paul M.
> Rhode Island