I have no special desire for Esperanto to become less systematic, Erinja.

In fact I have argued elsewhere that one of the ways in which Esperanto is distinguished from the natural languages is that the latter permit higgled-piggledy evolution, whereas Esperanto conserves its 'artificial' nature, frowning on paths of evolution which would lead to the undermining of the systematicity.

This tradition is very strong in the Esperanto community. And you rightly suppose me to be a traditionalist. And I might refer to the long established tradition of using these forms, as evidenced by the carefully selected corpus of the Tekstaro.

My point about alies and aliel is that it is false analysis which leads to criticism of these forms.

It is a separate point that Esperanto is not 100% systematic.

A test of whether the classic table is in fact systematic might be revealed by the question as to the correct order of listing of forms such as tie tio and tia in the dictionary.

I think NPIV is simply wrong to list tio before tie and to subsume tia under tio. but it is right to put nenio before nenie - as NPIV does.

In the UV the order of listing is alphabetical for roots (tia tie tio), similarly for nenia nenie nenio.

Yet Zamehof himself sanctioned neni as a productive in creating other words, which was very pragmatic.

Is the case of alies, so very different? If neni can escape from the table, albeit with a limited productiveness, and generate other words why can't es?

The case for alies is even less subversive(because alies is a root) than Zamenhof's neni words where neniajxo and nenieco really do make neni look like a normal root.

If anybody wants to disagree with my validation of alies , let them do more than just condemn, but advance their arguments.

sudanglo:Yet Zamehof himself sanctioned neni as a productive in creating other words, which was very pragmatic.

What he did was a very weak sanction; essentially he said that since these words were already in widespread use, it would be more trouble than it's worth to prohibit them. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

In summary, his text says that the correlatives "prefixes" can in limited cases be considered like nouns and generate words as if they were nouns; but correlative "suffixes" absolutely can't escape the table. He names several instances of suffixes escaping the table and refers to them as "against the rules". But Zamenhof can speak for himself.

This is the full text of his answer to the question about such words [original text in Esperanto url=http://ttt.esperanto.org/Ondo/L-lr.htm]here[/url]:

ABOUT “NENIIGI”

All words from the "correlative table" consist of two parts: a) root, b) characterizing ending (e.g. ki-al, ki-o, neni-u, neni-a k.t.p.). Due to various reasons, which I can't discuss in detail now, the characterizing endings of these words couldn't be fixed as independent and generalized endings (for example, I would have been required to take the e and u endings, which already have another meaning), that's why I had to combine them inseparably with the root. Thus their independent use (for example in forms "ali-u", "ali-es", "kelk-om", etc., which are used by some Esperantists by grammatical instinct) is against the rules. estas kontraŭregula. But in those two columns which end in a and o, the endings are not conditionally correlative, but purely adjectival and purely substantival, although they, due to uniformity, are printed in the dictionary together with the root (one could however print them very well even without the ending). That's why the removal of the purely substantival o and its replacement with various other endings seems to me to be well permissible. Of course, if this would produce something new, against the customs up to this point, we should avoid that, because absolute and literal regularity wouldn't permit this; but, because the words "neniigi" and "neniigxi" have been well known and used for a long time by all Esperantists, for that reason I think that it is needless to prohibit use of this form.

I have to say, the poor standard of grammar education in many English speaking countries contributes to this problem, I fear. The system simply doesn't induce a facility with sentence construction. I know Latin teachers often have similar problems.

I'm a beginner at Esperanto, but I don't think the accusative case presents a terrible burden and it seems like a nice compromise.

There are are two ways to indicate relations between nouns: cases and prepositions. A large number a cases helps languages to be more specific in their usage, but the use of cases varies significantly between languages and it can be a headache for a non-native speaker to stop and think about what case something should be in a particular language. I think prepositions are generally more user-friendly for non-native speakers, but they can contain a lot of ambiguity and be more idiomatic in usage.

Zamenhof made the choice to use prepositions in Esperanto and tried to ensure that their usage would be more regular and specific to the extent of creating "je" for use when the relation was unclear. Nevertheless, languages without cases must have a completely fixed sentence structure, which can be overly restrictive.

The accusative case is a very minor addition which gives you a lot of flexibility. The idea of an accusative case is widely understood and it allows you to create sentences with emphasis on the object. It also is more friendly to speakers from a "topic–comment" language structure.

Ferrus:I have to say, the poor standard of grammar education in many English speaking countries contributes to this problem, I fear. The system simply doesn't induce a facility with sentence construction. I know Latin teachers often have similar problems.

I agree. It's ridiculous that students can't identify direct objects, indirect objects, and other simple parts of a sentence. I think I only learned how to identify the subject, verb, and predicate of a sentence, which isn't very helpful while studying foreign languages, especially a case language like German.

Esperanto made me aware of the fact that almost all other languages also have tabular correlatives. Just look at your own language(s) and you will see that. English has the wh-, th-, any-, no- and al- words. Of course English is not as consequent as Esperanto but it comes close. In Spanish you have to use the sounds and not the written word, but the results are similar.

sudanglo:In a beginners course it would suffice just to teach them without any reference to a table.

If the tradition hadn't existed of tabular presentation, you would just learn the words as you needed them and alies and aliel when encountered you would think quite ordinary.

Learned this way, there would be nothing odd about alie being a normal adverb.

Interesting. I myself did not learn from the 'table of correlatives'; I rather haphazardly taught Esperanto to myself when I was 14, and it didn't occur to me until I had already learned the most useful of the ki- ti- neni- etc. words that they all could be very neatly tabulated.

Furthermore, the idea of alies and aliel are very attractive to me. I would say that sudanglo is correct in his assumption that someone who didn't learn from the table would see them as coming naturally--at least in my case, it's spot on. I had already found myself accidentally/spontaneously wanting to use them before I ever read this thread.

I don't wish to incur anyone's wrath, but personally I'd love alies and aliel to enter the language. But I admit I'm a bad Esperantist. I have respect for the idea of keeping everything how it is and as regular as possible for the sake of worldwide ineligibility and ease of use...But I find slang, dialects, and the sloppy brushstrokes of unregulated and unconscious evolution irresistibly fascinating. So while in an instructional setting like Lernu I stick to the rules and advise others to do so, in the wilds of casual conversation I enjoy seeing what forms peoples minds naturally conjure up, even if they're "incorrect"--and not just with Esperanto. I'm a huge fan of forms like "ain't", "y'all", and "your'n" cropping up in English, even though I would never use them in a formal context

As for grammatical cases--bring them on. I speak English natively and suffered an American public education, so initially I had much trouble identifying direct objects and understanding the accusative case, but now that I've gotten a grasp on it, I love it. Were I to proceed with learning a language that used more cases, I feel that I am now way more prepared for it than I would have been before learning Eo. And the flexibility afforded by a moveable direct object is wonderful; I'd love to see what would come of further use of cases in Eo were it possible to instate such a change outside of my imagination.

ddias001:I'm a beginner at Esperanto, but I don't think the accusative case presents a terrible burden and it seems like a nice compromise.

I am coming into this discussion a few days late, but I am one of those former anti-Esperantists who has changed his(/her) mind concerning the accusative. Although I am by no means an accomplished E-ist, here at lernu! I have even managed to make a few posts in the language, and at least in writing I found the case no problem and actually rather useful. Over the last several months I have done more reading in the language, and I find the case useful. As ddias001 writes, it is a useful compromise, and no longer the issue I once though it was.

Those who usually dislike the accusative is because their mother tongue doesn't show any case/declension, or they simply never understood very well grammar or linguistic concepts; like when English speakers struggle knowing when, where and why English has to use the subjunctive mood. If it were for me, I would add the dative case, genitive, instrumental, ergative and locative case with a very specific ending for each case for any word. Why? because it allows us to have a very free yet still clear order and meaning; it allows us to get rid of most prepositions making the speech faster; prepositions would be used only when there is risk of ambiguity as for the sense/nuance of a sentence, pretty much like Latin. Perhaps, I just like too much Finnish as it almost does not use prepositions (it has 15 cases). But, Esperanto should stay as it is. Should it change drastically, it would destroy the idea Zamenhof had

English does have cases - though now only for the prepositions: I, mine, me; He, his, him; she, hers, her, etc. That is how I explain the cases to English speakers studying Esperanto.