sudanglo:However, we can comfortably draw the conclusion that a non-Esperantist linguist has no special authority in making a sweeping generalization about Esperanto from his observations of natural languages.

You don't have to speak the language fluently to recognize basic patterns. Such patterns being word order, inflection, and word formation, among others.

sudanglo:How can the non-Esperantist linguist know which features of natural languages are, or are not, replicated in Esperanto?

Obviously the linguist in question must have studied the language at one point- long enough to learn the aforementioned patterns.

Even though I don't speak it fluently, I can tell you with absolute confidence that Esperanto is a SVO language which inflects its nouns and adjectives for plurality and case, and conjugates verbs according to tense and mood.

Even though I don't speak it fluently, I can tell you with absolute confidence that Esperanto is a SVO language which inflects its nouns and adjectives for plurality and case, and conjugates verbs according to tense and mood.

Oh you can, can you Razlem.

Well inflection/conjugation covers, for example, changing English's 'speak' to 'spoke' or French's 'journal' to 'journaux' - which is not how Esperanto works.

Esperanto functions by simple combination of constant form roots. And Esperanto is only SVO statistically.

Anyway, perhaps, the interesting ways in which Esperanto differs from the natural languages occurs at a higher level than you would find on the first few pages of a primer.

since it seems reasonable to assume that mass adoption of Esperanto would do the same thing as English and endanger lesser used languages where the economic/social benefits of learning the "international language" make caring about your own pointless

By the same argument, English should have killed off Welsh. Au contraire, there is a revival of Welsh.

When I was in Llandudno a couple of years ago, I found that even the hole-in-the-wall cash dispensers asked you which language you wished instructions in.

Daft as a brush, in a country where everybody speaks English, but there you go.

And the prospect of widespread adoption of Esperanto unseating English, French or Spanish seems very unlikely.

sudanglo:Well inflection/conjugation covers, for example, changing English's 'speak' to 'spoke' or French's 'journal' to 'journaux' - which is not how Esperanto works.

Of course Esperanto works like this, there just aren't irregularities in inflection as there are in English or French.

Conjugation of est_

estas
estis
estos
estus
estu
esti
estanta
estinta
estonta
(etc, etc)

Compare this with Spanish- the conjugation of 'estar' (yo forms). The methods of inflection are identical.
estar
estoy
estuve
estaba
estaré
estaría
estando
estado
esté
estuviera
estuviese
estuviere

sudanglo:Esperanto functions by simple combination of constant form roots. And Esperanto is only SVO statistically.

How were the roots created?- is the real question.

Most SVO languages are only SVO statistically. Spanish, for example, can act like an OVS sometimes.

sudanglo:When I was in Llandudno a couple of years ago, I found that even the hole-in-the-wall cash dispensers asked you which language you wished instructions in.

Sometimes I think that bilingualism goes too far in the opposite direction.

I visited Conway Castle last summer, and I noticed that the rubbish bins had signs on them "Sbwriel / Rubbish"

I would have been happy if they'd only said Sbwriel. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out that it's a rubbish bin. For that matter, did they really need any signage at all, let alone a bilingual sign?

To describe English as an SVO language is to go well beyond identifying a statistically dominant pattern.

The difference between 'dog bites man' and 'man bites dog' is more than a shift in emphasis.

sudanglo:To describe English as an SVO language is to go well beyond identifying a statistically dominant pattern.

The difference between 'dog bites man' and 'man bites dog' is more than a shift in emphasis.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. English is SVO. Because nouns aren't marked for case, the word order is strict ('man bites dog' has a totally different meaning than 'dog bites man'). Esperanto marks its nouns, allowing the possibility of varying word order, but it is still predominantly SVO.

Esperanto does reproduce elements found in natural languages, either by conscious or unconscious design (verb conjugation, and speakers' native language influences on preferred word order, respectively).

razlem:

sudanglo:To describe English as an SVO language is to go well beyond identifying a statistically dominant pattern.

The difference between 'dog bites man' and 'man bites dog' is more than a shift in emphasis.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. English is SVO. Because nouns aren't marked for case, the word order is strict ('man bites dog' has a totally different meaning than 'dog bites man'). Esperanto marks its nouns, allowing the possibility of varying word order, but it is still predominantly SVO.

I swear there's a special term for English word order, due to the way it changes between SVO and VSO and some brief allusions to SVOV2 occasionally. Anyone in the know on this?*

---

Anyway, on what Sudanglo has brought up, I believe there's varying degrees to how much a language is "SVO" or whatever. Latin was technically SOV (as were most Indo-European languages originally), but it technically had free word order and often became VSO amongst other things, and not like English where going to VSO changes the meaning of the sentence to a question.

So, I think it's safe to say Esperanto is a SVO language by default but has free word order in limits, while English is an SVO language with semi-rigid word order rules that govern the overall meaning of the sentence.

To be precise though, both Esperanto and English are not true SVO languages, they just default on that order for different reasons. It's just convenient to call them SVO though since it's a very prominent feature of their use (Esperanto being the far weaker adherent by far, since while English is SVO/VSO almost always, Esperanto can be VSO/VOS/SOV/OSV/OVS at the whimsy of a speaker).*

*And then there's the Romance languages with their SVO, SOV, VOS, VSO, and god-knows-what-else constructions, even though they're mostly categorised as SVO...

Erinja:I would have been happy if they'd only said Sbwriel. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out that it's a rubbish bin. For that matter, did they really need any signage at all, let alone a bilingual sign?

For the fun factor? I seriously think the fun-factor is highly under-represented in modern politics and economics. What good is a neat bottom-line (which ironically not many govts can seem to manage anyway haha) if we can't have fun about it?

(also, it needs to be bilingual otherwise someone might think "Sbwriel" is a company name, Welsh(?) for "Recyclables" or something else interesting)

KienLi: Stephen Fry, fama brita aktoro, volas lerni #Esperanto -n (Youtube). Li diras tion ĉe 09:35

Stephen Fry, famous British actor, wants to learn Esperanto. He said that at 09:35 minute.