Dominant group/Origin

The origin of the term dominant group may have been from William Kirby in his book with William Spence: An Introduction to Entomology: or Elements of the Natural History of Insects, Volume IV published in 1826. But, an examination of relative synonyms has discovered an earlier date of 1820 for "dominant party". This suggests that "dominant group" is firmly established much before Darwin, perhaps as part of "natural theology", and that Darwin incorporated "dominant groups" into his theory of evolution by natural selection to replace a creationist approach to evolution of "dominant groups".

The relative synonyms of "dominant group" appear to date from earlier times suggesting that the concept behind "dominant group" has been around longer and represents perhaps an artifact in human evolution.

Searching alternative fields may reveal the two-word term in completely different contexts.

Research questions
Def. "a social group that controls the value system and rewards in a particular society" is called a dominant group.


 * What is the origin and first use of the term or its primordial concept and usage?

Dominant group
Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.


 * 1) Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
 * 2) Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
 * 3) Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
 * 4) Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
 * 5) Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
 * 6) Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
 * 7) Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
 * 8) Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
 * 9) Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
 * 10) Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
 * 11) Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
 * 12) Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
 * 13) Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
 * 14) Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
 * 15) Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
 * 16) Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
 * 17) Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
 * 18) Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
 * 19) Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
 * 20) Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
 * 21) Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
 * 22) Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.

Experimentation
Sampling: Google scholar, Wikipedia, Wikiversity, other Wikimedia sources and offline libraries are sampled for likely valuable examples.

So far the earliest occurrence of "dominant group" in an 1840 monograph on ants and beetles is a discovery using Google scholar with the search concepts: "1840" and "dominant group". The search begins at "1858" and proceeds backwards in time, examining the first two to three hundred returns for the date of publication.

Language searches use dominant group translated usually using Google Translate, plus 1800 or 1700, for example.

Other search engines in use are www.altavista.com, www.lycos.com, and www.yahoo.com.

Searches are conducted in specific subject areas where early publications are included: www.adsabs.harvard.edu, www.jstor.org, www.questia.com, and www.tandfonline.com.

A book or an article may contain a quote from an earlier work that includes dominant group.

Humanities
"The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life." --National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, 1965, as amended.

The Division of Research Programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities encourages research and writing in all areas of the humanities, including the study of history, literature, philosophy, religion, and foreign cultures. Through grants to individual scholars and institutions, the division fosters work that enables Americans to understand the world.

What aspects of the origin of dominant group are considered to be part of the humanities?

Between 1853 and 1857 (the French Revolution and Napoleon): “The fact that a group is egoistic and dominant proves that it is well formed and that it approaches the make-up of a man.”

1899 (Human Progress): "While the human groups are many and diverse, they are conveniently combined in two categories: first, the natural or consanguineal or kinship group in which the unit is the ethnos; and second, the artificial or essentially social group in which the unit is the demos. The ethnos, or ethnic group, is the homologue of the varietal or specific group of animals; it is the dominant group in lower savagery, but its influence on human life wanes upward, to practically disappear in enlightenment except as retained in the structure of the family. The demos is the product of intelligence applied to the regulation of human affairs; it has no true homologue among animals; its importance waxes as that of the ethnos wanes from savagery through barbarism and civilization and thence into enlightenment."

Dominant and group
The two words "dominant" and "group" have far earlier origins. From JSTOR, url=http://www.jstor.org, the earliest occurrence of each is "dominant" 1672 and "group" ~1739. While earlier origins of both words may exist, "dominant group" is cuurently limited in its origin to ~1739 to present.

"Dominant" as an adjective has its origin in Middle French (MF) or Latin (L), from L dominant-, dominans, present participle (prp.) of dominari. From the Wikipedia article Middle French, Middle French "is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from (roughly) 1340 to 1611."

"Group" is from French groupe, in turn from Italian gruppo, of Germanic (Gmc) origin. From the Wikipedia article History of French: "Following a period of unification, regulation and purification or latinization, the French of the 17th to the 18th centuries is sometimes referred to as Classical French (français classique), although many linguists simply refer to French language from the 17th century to today as Modern French (français moderne)."

Associations
In the following excerpt, the two words are associated by the author toward the same or similar objects.

"[Tien-ti-huih] has been called by the Chinese, the three united, from being composed of the members of a sacred triad; viz. heaven, earth, and man, to whom equal adoration is offered, being all considered of equal dignity and rank; but to man, only after death, under the name of ancestors. Heaven and earth are worshipped as the father and mother of mankind. They are styled the three dominant powers, and supposed to exist in perfect harmony. There appears to be some mystic importance attached to the number three by the Chinese; it is related in the Peach Garden Record, that Chang-Shan afterwards entered the society, and made the fourth brother; still his name is rarely, if ever adduced. Three is the number also of the officials, or elder brethren, of the drops of blood shed during the inaugural rites, of their days of meeting during the month, and of the prescribed prostrations before the idol, viz. pae, kwei, and kow, bowing, kneeling, and placing the forehead in the dust; the last in some ceremonies is thrice repeated. The grand day is the ninth of the moon, equal to three times three. The secret manual signs are made with three fingers. The characters on some of the secret seals are grouped in triads. One of the smaller seals a, is in the form of a triangle. The symbol in the small seal b, appears to have been selected for its triune character, resembling the trisula of the Hindus, and three is generally the number of the personages forming the group in the picture worshiped by almost every Chinese."

Collocation
"In corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation (from Michael Halliday ) is the expression strong tea. While the same meaning could be conveyed by the roughly equivalent powerful tea, this expression is considered incorrect by English speakers. Conversely, the corresponding expression for computer, powerful computers is preferred over strong computers. Phraseological collocations should not be confused with idioms although both are similar in that there is a degree of meaning present in the collocation or idiom that is not entirely compositional. With idioms, the meaning is completely non-compositional whereas collocations are mostly compositional."

Substitution restrictions
"We can say highly sophisticated, and we can say extremely happy. Both adverbs have the same lexical functions, that is adding the degree, or magnifying the impact of the adjectives (sophisticated, happy), However, they are not interchangeable. Still, other adverbs, such as very can replace both highly and extremely." .

Modified syntaxes
"Unlike the majority of idioms, collocations are subject to syntactic modification. For example, we can say effective writing and write effectively." .

For the term "dominant group", this may be "group dominantly". Another may be "group dominants", which has been shown to be a type of dominant group. See group of dominants.

Compound nouns
"Some words are often found together because they make up a compound noun, for example 'riding boots' or 'motor cyclist'." .

Syntactic relations
"Collocations can be in a syntactic relation".

Lexical relations
The "lexical relation" can be antonymy, or "in no linguistically defined relation." .

Key words
A collocation may be "a Key Word in Context (KWIC)".

Collocation processing
"The processing of collocations involves a number of parameters, the most important of which is the measure of association, which evaluates whether the co-occurrence is purely by chance or statistically significant. Due to the non-random nature of language, most collocations are classed as significant, and the association scores are simply used to rank the results. Commonly used measures of association include mutual information, t scores, and log-likelihood. "

Collocation definitions
"Rather than select a single definition, Gledhill proposes that collocation involves at least three different perspectives: (i) cooccurrence, a statistical view, which sees collocation as the recurrent appearance in a text of a node and its collocates,  (ii) construction, which sees collocation either as a correlation between a lexeme and a lexical-grammatical pattern, or as a relation between a base and its collocative partners and (iii) expression, a pragmatic view of collocation as a conventional unit of expression, regardless of form.  It should be pointed out here that these different perspectives contrast with the usual way of presenting collocation in phraseological studies. Traditionally speaking, collocation is explained in terms of all three perspectives at once, in a continuum:


 * ‘Free Combination’ ↔ ‘Bound Collocation’ ↔ ‘Frozen Idiom’".

Darwin's dominant groups
The term “dominant group” does not appear in Darwin’s 1859 book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”. But the plural term “dominant groups” appears thirteen times. The earliest use of the phrase is on page 343, “The dominant species of the larger dominant groups tend to leave many modified descendants, and thus new sub-groups and groups are formed.”

"In 1831, ... [Darwin] had just completed his BA degree at Cambridge University in England. ... The voyage [on the Beagle] lasted from December 1831 to October 1836". "Darwin had been much impressed by Paley’s Natural Theology while a student at Cambridge; and his greatest achievement ultimately lay in providing a different explanation for the apparent design of all living beings." "He traveled with a copy of Charles Lyell’s pathbreaking summary of a new way of thinking about geological processes, Principles of Geology, published in 1830–1833. This book influenced Darwin greatly." In Lyell's book is the phrase "dominant influence", but "dominant group" does not appear.

Def. “[u]nder the many conditions of life which this world affords, any group which is numerous in individuals and species and is widely distributed, may properly be called dominant" [a dominant group]. [Letter 110. To W.H. Harvey, August, 1860]

Early dominant groups
"The Ants and the Staphylini have been supposed to represent each other in the tropical and temperate zones. In the temperate zone, and especially in our own country, the Staphylini are a dominant group, and the ants a secondary one."

Kirby's dominant groups
The system established by William Kirby as published in 1826 concerns the "geographical distribution of insects; their stations and haunts; seasons; times of action and repose." "Starting in 1822, Kirby and Spence published their four volumes of An Introduction to Entomology."

"Groups, according to their range, may be denominated either predominant, dominant, sub-dominant, or quiescent."

"M. Latreille has observed, that where the empire of Flora ceases, there also terminates that of Zoology2. Phytiphagous animals can only exist where there are plants; and those that are carnivorous and feed upon the former, must of necessity stop where they stop. Even the gnat, which extends its northern reign so highb, must cease at this limit; while, where vegetation is the richest and most abundant, there the animal productions, especially the insect, must be equally abundant. I call that, therefore, a predominant group, members of which are found in all the countries between these points, or from the limits of animal-depasturing vegetation in the polar regions to the line."

"There are other groups which, though their empire extends to the tropics, fall short of the polar circles: - these I call dominant groups."

"I call those subdominant groups, which either never enter the tropics, or those tropical ones whose range does not exceed 50° of N.L. in the old world, or 43° in the new."

Relative synonyms
The term "dominant group" is used in many subjects by authors to identify entities. The genera differentia for possible definitions of "dominant group" fall into the following set of orderable pairs:

'Orderable' means that any synonym from within the first category can be ordered with any synonym from the second category to form an alternate term (relative synonym) for "dominant group"; for example, "superior class", "influential sect", "master assembly", "most important arrangement", and "governing grouping". Further, any word which has its most or much more common usage within these categories may also form an alternate term, such as "ruling group", where "ruling" has its most common usage in category 739 and "group" is in category 61; or "dominant party", where "dominant" is in 171, and "party" is in 74.

Dominant party

 * 1820

"There was a violent war party, who wished all the resources of the State to be placed at the disposal of the national government; there was a peace party, composed of members of both parties, determined to put every obstacle in the way of the administration; while the Federalists generally regarded the declaration of war as an act of tyranny, and the measures of the dominant party as an infringement of State rights." [Bold added]

Most important interests

 * 1780

"Even the actual promoters of the most important interests of mankind have seldom anticipated, in idea, the progressive consequences of their own plans."

The dominants

 * 1757

“so sind solche entweder tonische Noten, Dominanten, oder Unterdominanren, und die Dominanten können simple oder tonische Dominanten seyn.”

Upper departments

 * 1780

"For the impression of the commercial arts is often conspicuous in the upper departments of life, before it reaches those of inferior condition; but the circle gradually widens."

Bokmål
dominerende gruppe

Český
dominantní skupina

1925: Portion of a text, probably with a few errors: "oznacovani byvají mravenci jako ov1 ádajíсí, dominantní skupina zivocisná, neb ninezenéji jakc dominantní skupina hmyzová, jez za jistych okolností skoro se jaksi stává pánem pfírody, aspoñ v jistém smyslu, v omezeném okruhu."

Dansk
dominerende gruppe

1908: "Den talrigste og absolut dominerende Gruppe er tilstede i et Antal af ca. 90-95 pCt."

Deutsch
dominante Gruppe

Ελληνικά
κυρίαρχη ομάδα

Español
Grupo dominante

Euskara
dominante talde

Français
groupe dominant

1899: "Il est différent dans une société purement familiale, dans une société fondée sur la conquête avec un groupe dominant et un groupe dominé, et dans une société établie sous le régime de castes."

1847: "L'individu dominant de tout groupe, ou le groupe dominant, pivotal de toute série, à pour place naturelle le centre."

Italiano
Gruppo dominante

日本語
支配的なグループ

支配集団

Nederlands
dominante groep

Polski
grupą dominującą

Pусский
доминирующей группы

Suomi
hallitseva ryhmä

Türkçe
Baskın grubu

Hypotheses

 * 1) Dominant group has an origin, probably much earlier than patrician class.

Such proof of concept has been demonstrated for dominant group, but not necessarily for its many relative synonyms.