Postitused: 71
Keel: English
erinja (Näita profiili) 10. detsember 2011 17:37.50
razlem:No, but it gives you insight into another way of doing things. It doesn't have to be constructed. You could look at any natural language that uses compounds, such as German or English, and see how each word in the compound is treated.It doesn't actually matter how other languages treat compounds, because Esperanto has more than a hundred years of literature treating compounds, and by now, it has long established its own customs.
Insight into how other languages do things is wonderful when you're coming up with something new, but not useful when you're trying to understand something that already exists. German compounding is not relevant to Italian compounding, and it would not provide useful lessons to someone who is trying to learn the Italian system of compounding.
razlem (Näita profiili) 10. detsember 2011 17:58.06
sudanglo (Näita profiili) 11. detsember 2011 11:46.26
Yes, I think I'd have to read through that quite a few times to make any sense of it!Quite right Chainy.
But, of course if you aren't wedded to the idea that roots are of a particular native grammatical class, but rather, accept that concepts should be defined through words, then all this convoluted description becomes irrelevant.
The account in PAG is forced to be couched in terms of grammatical class transformation.
Much simpler to say Povi means can/be able, Povo means power - the thing you would naturally associate with the idea of Povi (tiu, kiu povas, havas povon).
Then it is no surprise that 'senpova' should mean powerless - sena je povo.
robinast (Näita profiili) 18. detsember 2011 1:28.56
sudanglo (Näita profiili) 18. detsember 2011 13:09.27
Most Esperantists quickly acquire a sense of how Esperanto creates its compound words (including the single roots with the various explicit gramatical terminations).
Only at a later stage, having encountered and reflected on the idea of a native grammatical class (part of speech) for each root, they might enter an argument about the meaning or correctness of a particular form, using that idea to justify their position.
But the truth is that some compounds cannot be rigidly interpreted in terms of the native class of their components.
However, I suspect that when an apparent shift from one part of speech to another occurs, there is always some clue in the compound (or from the nature of our involvement with the world) which tells you that the root in that compound should be understood as a truncation of the -o form, or the -i form, or the -a form.
For example, if I referred to the grooming parlour of my pet shop as the 'komb-kaj-brosejo', this doesn't have to mean the place where the pets are combed and the brushes are stored, but can mean the place where combing and brushing takes place.
Under a strict interpretation of the theory a 'martelejo' could only be a place where you keep hammers.
But viewing the root as being a context dependent truncation of either martelo or marteli, then 'martelejo' could be the panel-beating workshop of a garage.
In other words, Esperanto is much more pragmatic than the native class-theory would suggest, whilst at the same time it is true that, mainly, compounds are to be interpreted in terms of the dictionary head-listing for the root(s) in question.
Miland (Näita profiili) 18. detsember 2011 14:41.08
sudanglo (Näita profiili) 18. detsember 2011 21:50.55
Miland:The suffix ejo is usually used with a root whose class is clear in context, e.g. kuir(-i)ejo, fruktovend(-i)ejo, kongres(-o)ejo, kaf(-o)ejo.And your point is?
By the way, how do you know that kongresejo is kongres(-o)ejo and not kongres(-i)ejo?
Miland (Näita profiili) 19. detsember 2011 11:22.08
sudanglo:That the class of such roots is not ambiguous.Miland:The suffix ejo is usually used with a root whose class is clear in context, e.g. kuir(-i)ejo, fruktovend(-i)ejo, kongres(-o)ejo, kaf(-o)ejo.And your point is?
sudanglo:By the way, how do you know that kongresejo is kongres(-o)ejo and not kongres(-i)ejo?From the context. Thus, a kongresejo is promoted from the start as the locale for an event as a whole.
sudanglo (Näita profiili) 19. detsember 2011 11:48.45
Are you saying that, depending on context, a kongresejo might be viewed as a kongres(-o)ejo or a kongres(-i)ejo - loko kie estas kongreso, or loko kie oni kongresas.
Or are you saying that kongres is not ambiguous and must be interpreted as a substantive root, regardless of context?
Miland (Näita profiili) 19. detsember 2011 11:52.03
sudanglo:.. are you saying that kongres is not ambiguous..?In the context in which kongresejo is usually used, Yes.