Disputatio:Procestrum princeps

Nomen si mutandum sit, putaverim "processorium princeps" melius fuisse. Sed non iam attestatum est "centrale" apud Pliny et apud fontes vocabulorum computatralium? Cur necesse est mutare nomen?--Rafaelgarcia 11:38, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Nescio! Verbum centrale non est in Cassell's Latin Dictionary, neque The White Latin Dictionary. In classical usage, according to Ainsworth's, the centrum was the point in the center of a round thing, not the middle of an irregularly shaped thing (which is the most commonly heard sense of center in modern languages, though of course the technical sense survives too, in reference to an exact circle). In a long article that I've been writing (and which should appear in a few days), I've been turning myself into a pretzel trying to manage modern scientific jargon within the classical vocabulary, and it seems rather unfair to cheat with senses borrowed from later languages when perfectly sound and thoroughly Latin expressions are available, though they may be less familiar & less readily intelligible than obvious back-formations, like mysteriosus (for arcanus, occultus, secretus), performare (for exsqui, perfungi, &c.), and so on. Sometimes there's no way out (as when an author coins the English noun symbolate to denote a thing symbolized, and the Latin has to accommodate the difference between that and a mere symbol), but schoolmasters have insisted for centuries that it's important to try! ¶ So change it to Processorium princeps if you like, or back to what it was, whatever is best. IacobusAmor 11:58, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

To a large extent, though not completely, remember that modern scientific jargon actually came from Latin scientific jargon. I learned that lesson with frequentia, whose jargon meaning is quite distinct from the classical (crebitas) (though related). It's OK to have jargon, especially if it comes from late latin literature. Pliny as cited in L&S centralis (Plin. 2, 23, 21, § 86) used the term in connection with terra, in the sense of "in the middle, central" apparently. Definitely I think the english meaning of "central" is different from "in the middle/center", in this case and in general. The difference, I think, is that "central" conveys the idea of "equally accessible to all in an area". In that sense, which may have been Pliny's also, the analogy of the circle is apt.--Rafaelgarcia 12:15, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

That's all apt, but it doesn't negate that the most usual, ordinary, unweird way of saying, for example, 'into the center of the road' is in mediam viam (Bradley's Arnold, §60). Latin has a set of adjectives used in this way. We novices are likely to write about cacumen montis (and there's nothing incorrect about that) where the more idiomatic phrase would apparently be summus mons. It must be especially difficult for people who've grown up supposing that the word centrum, which their own language uses to denote a focus of something (the "center" of a city; or any hub of activity, such as a "medical center" or a "research center"), must imply, in the most obvious way possible, a Latin equivalent. IacobusAmor 12:35, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Those are all valid points, Iacobe. However, the meaning of being "in the middle or in the focus" is not the sense of "central" in this case. The CPU in a laptop is usually off-center, in mine it is under the lower, leftside of the keyboard. In fact, nowadays the math co-processor is usually located on the same chip as the CPU, so that it is always as centrally-located as the CPU itself. The sense that "central" tries to convey is "the main processor for executing programs controlling the most pertinent activities of the computer" as opposed to the math co-processor, the graphic processing unit, and a host of other minor processors. That's why I suggested proc. princeps as perhaps a better translation.--Rafaelgarcia 13:27, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

BTW, how does one translate "medical center"? Clinicum medicum? (neolatin for medical clinic)--Rafaelgarcia 13:30, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. But let's remember that a "center" doesn't need to involve either medius or centrum/centralis. A center of government, for example, is a sedes imperii. The center of a city is a sinus urbis. And a center of attraction (in the modern metaphor) is a cynosura. IacobusAmor 16:40, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Notice that Cassel gives neither processorium nor centrale. In late Latin, processorium would denote something that belongs to a solemn procession or parade, e.g. a bishop's chasuble or something. Part of the problem is that processus qua 'process' is Neolatin. Had Cicero had to say something to the effect of 'process', he'd probably used elaboratio. But I'm not necessarily suggesting elaboratrum. Processorium as a learned borrowing is all right with me, but given that much, we could borrow centrale as well. Or perhaps processorium principale, which seems to capture the functional idea (brought forward by Rafael) of a CPU. On one reading, at least, medium processorium is comparable to media via 'middle of the road', which would suggest the middle of a CPU. --Neander 15:28, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Right: somewhere deep inside it. For the reason brought forward by Rafael, your processorium principale looks best to me so far. IacobusAmor 16:38, 23 Martii 2009 (UTC)

Mmmm principale and centrale seems to be two different things to me when it is used to described CPU that computing industry is trying to convey. In encountering various CPU qualifiers, I've seen terms used "primary CPU" and "secondary CPU", as well as "CPU core" and "multi CPU." I'm leaning toward centrale in deference to industry usage as the driving force.-- Egberts at Wikipedia 10:01, 18 Martii 2011 (UTC)

The best practice is usually to translate concepts, not words. The definitions in en:CPU suggest that central doesn't refer to a location (as it may in the current lemma, a phrase coined as a stopgap), but means something like 'main, principal':

<<The central processing unit (CPU) is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer's functions.>>

and

<<the term "CPU" is generally defined as a software (computer program) execution device>>

so wouldn't it appear to be an effector programmaturae? or an instrumentum programmaturae efficiendae? Can we say it's an exsecutor primus ~ praecipuus ~ princeps ~ principalis? We can omit an adjective like computatralis because no such clarifying modifier is found in the English phrase: it's the main (prima) "oneness" (unitas) that "processes software" (quae programmaturam efficit ~ perficit ~ exsequitur ~ elaborat). IacobusAmor 11:47, 18 Martii 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is correct to say that the cpu "processes software"; it just serially executes the instructions in its inputs and sends out the output of those instructions; it thus can only be thought of as processing machine level commands or instructions. Exsecutor principalis of the choices you suggest seems the closest to the idea, but I think it ought to be neuter( perhaps exsecutorium principale) otherwise the term could just as well mean the main computer user who runs the program. However, I am hesitant to violate the noli fingere rule: the only attested term is processorium centrale.

Also, the historical roots of the term processor shouldn't be ignored : the time when data on cards were fed into the computer and it produced another set of cards with output, this is what they called data processing, and this is how computer scientists think of the cpu(: which would suggest elaboratorium principale?) but I think when coming up with the processor term they may have been thinking of a chain of consecutive steps (serial process) that the individual actions would result in.

Finally the term centralis is apter term than principalis or medius here; since in the original term the processor is central only in the sense of being "centrally important", because it controls the main functioning of the computer; it is certainly not located in the center or middle of anything. And as pointed out some computers have a primary and secondary cpu, so obviously only one of these could be termed principalis, I think.123.192.69.44 10:23, 21 Augusti 2011 (UTC)

Procestrum princeps

Hi all!

Regarding the adjective I have no doubts about princeps ("main").

Regarding the name, I would like to propose a more classical procestrum instead of the late-latin-like nominalized adjective processorium.

Another nice possibility would be elaboratrum – but it could create confusion, since it may also be used as a synonym of computatrum (for instance, in Italian computer and elaboratore are synonyms).

Therefore my proposal is Procestrum princeps.

The word processorius, -a, -um will be still used for the adjective "of the procestrum" (i.e., organum processorium, pars processoria, etc., but procestrum when it is a name), letting so the language be more expressive and precise.

--Grufo (disputatio) 19:29, 7 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I rename the page. In case of doubts, the discussion is still open :) --Grufo (disputatio) 18:58, 13 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Suffixes are added to stems. Proces- isn't a stem, unless the verb is something like processere (which it isn't). The stem of procedere is proced-. Therefore, procestrum has an unexpected formation. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:51, 13 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Hi Iacobus! Let's first define the suffix. The suffix in our case is the typical suffix for nomina agentis: -tor (m.) / -trix (f.) / -trum (n.) / -torius, -a, -um (adj.) as in arator / aratrix / aratrum / aratorius; -sor (m.) / -strix (f.) / -strum (n.) / -sorius, -a, -um (adj.) as in assessor / assestrix / *assestrum / assessorius. The rule is always to add this type of suffix to the stem of the supine, as in rado, rasum > rastrum. In the case of procedo the supine is processum, which, together with the suffix -trum, will give procestrum. The complete list of the nomina agentis for procedo would be: processor (m.) / procestrix (f.) / procestrum (n.) / processorius, -a, -um (adj.). Here is a list of classical words suffixed with -trum. --Grufo (disputatio) 00:23, 14 Decembris 2015 (UTC)