ha! well. thanks for the clarification. I'm always up for a bit of
etymology. :)
KS
On 01/11/06, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi, Kasper.
>
> > any conscious gorilla tactics (ha har), but I won't deny that they pop
> up
> > once in a while.
>
> Sorry about this, Kasper, I hadn't meant to insult you -- I was thinking
> particularly of an internet discussion list called Milton-L. All this
> wasn't helped by my misspelling "noyau" as "noyeau", which Martin silently
> corrected.
>
> > anything but a lack of experience (I'm 19 years old -- let's see how
> many
> > people [who didn't know that] take me seriously anymore!);
>
> I wouldn't worry about being 19 -- it'd be more of a problem if the
> figures
> were reversed and you were 91. Then you'd be challenging the Sage of
> Raynes
> Park for the title of Most Senior (senile?) Member. <g>
>
> > Robin, what does 'noyeau' mean?
>
> Um, yeah, well ... <blushes> I have it on good authority that this is
> the
> name of a particularly lethal French drink made form the cernals of
> gorillas. Peaches! (Oops.)
>
> Thus, when Martin says:
>
> >> "Noyau" means stone or kernel - I have no idea what Robin meant by
> that.
>
> ...he's referring to how I should have spelled it. (I presume -- Martin?
> --
> that the link between what I meant to say and the Lethal French Drink
> turns
> on the "kernel" side of the French word? ).
>
> The French term gets picked up in Primate Studies, and is used with a
> completely different meaning.
>
> I'll tuck on at the end of this what seems to be the beginning of
> something
> I wrote some time ago. I can't vouch for too much of this, as it's so
> long
> ago that I must have put it together.
>
> Sorry for the confusion.
>
> Best,
>
> Robin
>
> ***************
>
> Interaction in Internet Lists Considered in the Light of Primate Social
> Groupings
>
> Or
>
> Sportive Lemurs, Baboons, and Gorillas
>
> 1. The Origin of the Term "noyau"
>
> In French, "le noyau" has the senses NUCLEUS, CORE, or KERNEL
>
> [The term is also used in French computing to correspond to "kernel" in
> English - the core code of a computer operating system.]
>
> In the course of studying the Lepilemur, or sportive lemur in Madagascar
> in
> the early sixties, the French ethologist * Jean-Jacques Petter chose the
> term to apply to the social structure of these primates.
>
> [No, this is not a misprint for "ethnologist":
>
> ETHOLOGIST: Psychology. a person whose work or speciality is ethology.
>
> ETHOLOGY: Behavior. the study of animal behavior, especially of animals
> in
> their natural environment rather than in a laboratory or in captivity.
>
> [Jean-Jacques Petter, L'Ecologie et L'Ethologie des Lémuriens Malagaches
> (Paris, 1962)]
>
> In time, this term, in Primate Studies, was both extended beyond the
> sportive lemur, and came to have a very specific meaning:
>
> NOYAU: "A social structure in which a male's territory overlaps the
> smaller
> territories of several females; found in several nocturnal primates."
> (Rowe,
> 1996)
>
> It is, of all the ways in which groups of primates can interact, the most
> primitive of social structures ...
>
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