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Kinds of Roots and Grammatical Usage

de Polaris, 3 de desembre de 2011

Missatges: 10

Llengua: English

Polaris (Mostra el perfil) 3 de desembre de 2011 19.35.47

Okay...by now, I should know this, and I feel sort of dumb asking. People keep talking about how the root words in Esperanto all fall into some official category (I.E., Sudanglo's recent post, et. al...); and I've read about this before. Supposedly, each root has a "home base", which makes it easy to know what ending has to be added to change from one part of speech to another. When discussing infinitives, each is supposedly already either transitive or intransitive in it's original state, so knowing whether to add igi/iĝi is supposed to be a given.

Okay, gang, WHERE, oh where, does one look to find this information? Where do you look to see what the grammatical "home-base" of a word is in order to know how you have to treat it? Please don't respond with an acronym or tell me to consult a dictionary---my dictionaries do not give me this information, and neither does the vortaro on here.

Speaking of dictionaries, what's the latest good, modern dictionary (with complete information) that should be on my "must purchase" list. Thanks!

darkweasel (Mostra el perfil) 3 de desembre de 2011 19.52.44

Actually the dictionary on this site does - if you input something that is not in the "home base", such as manĝo, you get:
manĝo (manĝ·o ← manĝ·i)
which means that the root is verbal.

Miland (Mostra el perfil) 3 de desembre de 2011 22.14.16

In the entries in Wells, roots are separated (by a forward slash "/") from the most common endings that indicate whether they are usually used as verbs or nouns. Here's a few examples:

dolĉ/a sweet
dolor/i hurt .. ~o pain
infan/o child
manĝ/i eat ~o meal

So different possibilities are indicated.

TatuLe (Mostra el perfil) 3 de desembre de 2011 22.58.30

I always use Reta Vortaro when I need to know how to use a word. The "home-base" word class and transitivity are clearly indicated for each entry, and any other uncertainties are clarified by the example sentences.

Altebrilas (Mostra el perfil) 4 de desembre de 2011 0.04.51

I tried with "mangxi": the verb is transitive, but not used as such in the examples given:
manĝi
(tr)
Maĉi kaj gluti nutraĵon; sin nutri: la infano ploras, ĉar ĝi volas manĝi [2]; doni por manĝi al birdoj; ĉiu manĝas, kiel li aranĝas [3].

erinja (Mostra el perfil) 4 de desembre de 2011 0.22.32

The examples look transitive to me.

A transitive verb doesn't always have to specify an object. If you said "Mi volas manĝi", that is just as transitive as "Mi volas manĝi pomon". If you are going to eat, then it's understood through context that you're going to eat a thing (the direct object), even though this direct object isn't specifically stated.

Transitivity is defined by a verb being able to accept a direct object - not by the verb having an explicit direct object every single time.

sudanglo (Mostra el perfil) 4 de desembre de 2011 12.25.55

The short answer Polaris, as people have already indicated, is that the first entry in the dictionary indicates the native word class of the root, and most dictionaries will mark (in the case of verbs) the transitivity.

This is quite different from learning the male/female class of a word, if you are studying French - which can be pretty arbitrary.

In a very high percentage of cases the native word class will be what you expect. And derivation or combination of the root with others (including terminations) behaves as you would expect.

It is no surprise that Luno (moon) has a substantive root in the grammarian's terminology, that rugxa (red) has an adjectival root and lerni (learn) has a verbal one.

There are some arbitrary cases like broso and kombi, but they are in the minority.

There can even be cases where usage suggests that the dictionary entry is wrong or that there is some vagueness or divided opinion in the allocation to a class - or even like 'park' belong to two classes.

The issue being discussed in my separate thread is whether this class allocation is a true description of how Esperanto behaves in derivation and compounding, or whether it is just an approximation, an over-systematization, if you will, - however, useful for pedagogic purposes.

In the matter of transitivity, this is slightly less easy for a new-comer to the language to guess, but again mostly the transitive class will be the expected one.

Or, having learnt one word you can often generalize to words of related meaning.

Knowing that it is morti and mortigi (die and kill) it is not too difficult for an English speaker to remember that it is droni and dronigi for the two meanings of English's 'drown'

sudanglo (Mostra el perfil) 5 de desembre de 2011 11.40.44

To get a handle on this issue, Polaris, it might be useful to start from the recognition that Esperanto has two kinds of roots.

Those like 'Dum', that don't require a grammatical termination, and those that are always defined with some grammatical 'finaĵo', like 'manĝ', which is listed in the dictionary as manĝi.

Members of the first group may occupy more than one grammatical class eg 'Dum', which may be a preposition (dum la nokto) or may modify a whole clause (Dum vi faros tion, mi ..). Also they may take a 'finaĵo' as in 'Dume' (meanwhile)

The allocation of members of the second group to a specific grammatical class is a post hoc construction of the grammarians.

Nobody actually defines 'manĝ'. But you will find definitions of 'manĝi', 'manĝo' etc.

When Esperantists speak of 'manĝ' as a verbal root, this is a short-hand for saying that the primary listing is 'manĝi'

One thing to note here is that a root belonging to more one than grammatical class is not an alien notion in Esperanto - it applies to many members of the first group.

The specific allocation of members of the second group is a post hoc construction which actually accounts for much of the behaviour of such roots, but is not actually necessarily inherent to the root.

Zamenhof did not actually say 'manĝ' means eating (verbal idea). The grammarians say something like this and say that the 'i' in manĝi is redundant - adds nothing to the meaning.

darkweasel (Mostra el perfil) 5 de desembre de 2011 12.29.36

sudanglo:
Zamenhof did not actually say 'manĝ' means eating (verbal idea).
Actually he did, by translating it as a verb in the Universala Vortaro:

manĝ' manger | eat | essen | ѣсть | jeść.
- maten'manĝ' déjeuner | breakfast | frühstücken | завтракать | śniadać.
- tag'manĝ' dîner | dine | zu Mittag essen | обѣдать | obiadować.
- vesper'manĝ' souper | sup | zu Abend essen | ужинать | jeść kolacyę, wieczerrzać.

(which should also clear up the whole issue about VESPER/MANĜ/ being substantival or whatever some users on this forum are postulating)

BTW, PMEG has a different view of the whole issue of root classification, though it obviously results in the same usage.

sudanglo (Mostra el perfil) 6 de desembre de 2011 13.13.54

I stand corrected then Darkweasel.

I assumed that in the UV, as in most dictionaries, the entries were defined with termination, not in bare root form. I confess that I didn't bother to search the net for the UV.

It would be very odd to see a modern dictionary of Esperanto defining roots. The raw data of Esperanto seems to me to be words.

Thanks for the link on how PMEG handles the issue. I certainly think it is more profitable to start from the conception of meaning (signifo) than from grammatical class.

Since, even if rare, homonyms are not unknown in Esperanto, this idea may give us a profitable route to accounting for cases which seem problematic under the grammarian's conception.

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