[Ads-l] Antedating of "Speciesism" (Corrected Email)

[Ben Zimmer]

ChatGPT can actually be taught to invent a new language, and invent words
within that language.

https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/i-taught-chatgpt-to-invent-a-language

On Tue, Dec 20, 2022 at 10:03 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter Reitan wrote: Isn't it a form of specieism to assume a human
> came up with the concept first?
>
> I only searched in newspapers.com; hence, there was a selection bias.
> The material in newspapers.com in the 1960s and 1970s was written by
> humans (presumably). If intelligent dolphins or extraterrestrials came
> up with a comparable term at an earlier time then my search would not
> have revealed it.
>
> Peter’s inquiry raises the larger question of whether word coinage by
> a non-human entity is possible. So I asked the non-human entity
> ChatGPT to attempt to coin a word. I misspelled "word" as "work" in my
> prompt. The results reminded me of Samuel Johnson’s remark: “like a
> dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are
> surprised to find it done at all”.
>
> Prompt: Would you please coin a new work meaning speciesism?
>
> [Begin response from Chat GPT]
> Sure, I can propose a new term for speciesism. How about "speciesismus"?
> [End response from Chat GPT]
>
> Prompt: please try again
>
> [Begin response from Chat GPT]
> Sure, here are a few more options for new terms to describe speciesism:
> "speciesistia"
> "specieism"
> "speciephobia"
> "specieschauvinism"
> These are just suggestions, and it's important to note that the
> English language is constantly evolving and new words are being coined
> all the time. Ultimately, the term that becomes widely accepted and
> used will depend on the societal and cultural context in which it is
> used.
> [End response from ChatGPT]
>
> Garson
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2022 at 10:06 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Isn't it a form of specieism to assume a human came up with the concept
> first?
> > ________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> > Sent: Monday, December 19, 2022 5:37:08 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: Antedating of "Speciesism" (Corrected Email)
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Antedating of "Speciesism" (Corrected Email)
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Fred Shapiro wrote:
> > > Terrific find, Garson.  Did you actually search for "specie-ism"
> > > or did that come up when you searched for "speciesism" or
> > > for "species-ism"?
> >
> > Thanks, Fred. I noticed that you posted a =E2=80=9CCorrected
> Email=E2=80=9D=
> >  that led
> > me to think of misspellings of =E2=80=9Cspeciesism=E2=80=9D. I knew that
> yo=
> > u would
> > have performed a thorough job searching for the standard spelling. So
> > I deliberately searched for a misspelling. Also, I thought the early
> > version might be hyphenated. So I searched for
> =E2=80=9Cspecieism=E2=80=9D =
> > and
> > =E2=80=9Cspecie-ism=E2=80=9D.
> >
> > There were too many false matches in newspapers.com, so I restricted
> > the range to 1960-1980. This allowed easy manual review.
> >
>

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