The ability to interbreed until a certain point was my point: a concrete definition is agreed upon by all.  Non-sexually reproducing organisms are not a problem because they are of another class that are agreed upon by all.

Besides, what is your gut-level feeling about biology and grammar?  Do you think our inability to know and define and agree upon when a species has evolved is the same as our inability to know and define and agree upon grammatical terms?  


On Nov 14, 2010, at 4:42 PM, Brett Reynolds wrote:

> On 2010-11-14, at 5:22 PM, Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar wrote:
> 
>> That is why grammar is an art.  In biology a new species evolves from another.  There is a right answer (as soon as sexual reproduction cannot occur, that species is new).  There are no competing terminologies that couldn't eventually be resolved (biologist may find out they were wrong, but there always was a right answer).
> 
> 
> I'm afraid it's not nearly that simple. Two examples: there are cases in which birds at two ends of a range may not be able to interbreed, but where interbreeding is possible all along the range. It also completely ignores the question of when non-sexually reproducing organisms speciate. It would be nice to believe that the biologists have it all tied up, but in fact, they're as troubled/successful (depending on how you want to look at it) as the linguists.
> 
> Best,
> Brett
> 
> -----------------------
> Brett Reynolds
> English Language Centre
> Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
> Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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