From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/7437 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Terminology; categorical versus categorial. Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 19:37:14 -0400 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1347110683 14297 80.91.229.3 (8 Sep 2012 13:24:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2012 13:24:43 +0000 (UTC) Cc: peasthope@shaw.ca, categories@mta.ca To: "Fred E.J. Linton" Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Sat Sep 08 15:24:45 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpy.mta.ca ([138.73.1.128]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TAL1f-0003Ii-CY for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Sat, 08 Sep 2012 15:24:43 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:46103) by smtpy.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from ) id 1TAL0x-0007Qn-9q; Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:23:59 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TAL1K-0004FP-V9 for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:24:22 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:7437 Archived-At: On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 1:35 PM, Fred E.J. Linton wrote: > Peter Easthope (peasthope@shaw.ca) proposed: > >> According to online dictionaries, categorical and categorial can be >> synonyms. Almost everyone seems to prefer categorical whereas >> categorial comes from the simple rule of replacing the last vowel of >> the noun with "ial". >> >> So, is the preference for categorical just an inheritance from early >> authors? Is there a stronger reason to use it? Is the explanation >> in the archive? > > It's a lovely "simple rule", Peter, but where does it apply? Certainly no= t to > Allegory, Anthropology, Biology, Botany, Catastrophe, Economy, Geology, > History, > ..., Numerology, Ornithology, Philosophy, Psychology, ..., Topology, ..., > Zoology. Both constructions have plenty of examples; the OED online=E2=80=99s wild-c= ard search is useful here, e.g. http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=3Ddictionary&q=3D*orical&_searchBtn=3D= Search. This gives 81 words with -orical, against 279 with -orial. The -orial examples are mostly from verb roots =E2=80=94 dictatorial, professorial, et= c. =E2=80=94 but with some exceptions: armorial, (im)memorial, and so on. I= =E2=80=99m not enough of a linguist to see any full explanation for which words get which suffix. But in the case of categories, the OED backs up what others have written: categorists are/were simply following standard usage. =E2=80=9CCategorical=E2=80=9D is older and more widely used, going back to = 1598, and with plenty of both colloquial and technical usage. =E2=80=9CCategorial=E2= =80=9D appears in 1912 in philosophy, and from the 50=E2=80=99s in linguistics, bu= t remains mostly restricted to these fields. Google N-grams gives a quick view of the comparative frequency: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=3Dcategorical%2Ccategorial&yea= r_start=3D1800&year_end=3D2000&corpus=3D0&smoothing=3D3 Even proponents of =E2=80=9Ccategorial=E2=80=9D generally take this for gra= nted, I think. Goldblatt, in the preface of his (lovely) book on topoi, explains his motivation as precisely to *break* with the older and more common usage of =E2=80=9Ccategorical=E2=80=9D in logic, to distinguish= the new sense from the old. Best, =E2=80=93Peter. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]