On Thu, 3 Aug 1995, Irene Wanner wrote:
> You hyphenate adjectival forms, e.g., two-year-old colt or two-year old. =
=20
> "Scrub" is a modifier and since there's no doubt what's being modified,=
=20
> you leave it out. Hyphens and habitat, huh? Nuh-uh, Burt. Return to=20
> your Chicago Manual of Style. =20
> Irene

Don'=92t we also hyphenate two nouns simply to combine them into a single,=
=20
almost-compound word? A Scrub-jay is a particular kind of bird. It=20
comes in Florida, California, and Santa Cruz Island flavors.=20

Sharing a name does imply close relationship with other birds of the=20
same name, as Burt Guttman observed. This is a desirable attribute of=20
group names, but in practice it has to be taken with a large grain of=20
salt -- consider *Grosbeak*. (And even in the case of the Scrub-jays=20
it remains possible that the three species in question constitute a=20
paraphyletic assemblage, i.e., some descendants of the most recent=20
common ancestor are excluded from the group in question. And, yes,=20
that's *paraphyly*, not *displacement*.) =20

David Wright
dwright at u.washington.edu