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Why do people hate grammatical cases?

kelle poolt Wilhelm, 7. jaanuar 2012

Postitused: 115

Keel: English

erinja (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 19:21.10

razlem:Is it available for free online? A Google-search renders only expensive hard copies.
The translated excerpt that you found online isn't the part I was referring to. I don't have my book in front of me but I believe the excerpt you found may be the chapter on the accusative. The part I was referring to went systematically through sample texts of old versions of Esperanto, discussing what had changed in each text from one to the next. The accusative (or lack thereof) was one of the grammatical aspects discussed, but not the only one.

Lingvo kaj Vivo is a fairly detailed book, and it talks about the accusative more than once.

Not everything in life is free, and sometimes you have to pay for a book to get its contents. Sorry about that. I bought my copy from an Esperanto book service. It wasn't that expensive; Esperanto-USA's book service is selling it for about $20, which is very reasonable for a hardcover book with a small print run.

erinja (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 19:32.23

Fenris_kcf:I was trying to communicate, that changes in a language or normal and occur all the time. Now I have to face ridiculous accuses that I dislike Esperanto... Looks like some people paint their world only with black and white.
Natural evolution of a language is normal and occurs all the time. Changing the fundamental grammatical basis of a living language is not something that occurs all the time.

My world isn't painted with black and white. But it is painted with frustration at people who troll Esperanto forums with reform proposals, without bothering to learn the language first. All kinds of topics can be discussed in the Esperanto-language forums on this site. But as for the non-Esperanto sections, discussions are best kept to Esperanto as it is today. Whining about why Esperanto doesn't make this or that reform isn't helpful to learners of Esperanto, and the only reason that we even have forums here in languages other than Esperanto is to help learners.

Fenris_kcf (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 21:09.00

Oh, so now you claim, that I didn't learn the language. I hope it's something, you smoke, that makes you state things, that are simply not true.

Answer one question: What reform-proposal did I made in this thread?

erinja (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 21:41.16

Forums are a public place. My comments are directed at the whole mass of readers, not at a specific person, unless I name someone specifically, or use the word "you" when citing someone else's message.

The fact is that there are many people who come to these forums who make all kinds of complaints about Esperanto without bothering to learn it first. Sometimes it's a reform proposal, sometimes it's just a vague "xyz grammatical reasons are the reason why Esperanto hasn't succeeded", or "Esperantists' refusal to reform is the reason why Esperanto hasn't succeeded".

It gets rather old. Therefore many people who have been involved in Esperanto for a while get tired of explaining the same old things over and over. No number of complainy comments from any person is going to get the masses of Esperanto speakers to become more favourably disposed towards language reforms.

Fenris_kcf:Maybe I'm too much an idealist, but if there is a better solution, then I aim towards it, instead of staying where I am.
So if you want to go changing Esperanto, moving towards what you see as being a better solution, go ahead. But this site is for learning and using a living language, not reform projects. It seems to me that Unilang would be the best place to discuss your ideas for moving towards a "better solution".

Or would you honestly, hand on heart, go to a website for learning German to talk about your proposed reforms to the German language?

darkweasel (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 21:44.56

erinja, I don’t think Fenris_kcf is another troll posting reform proposals; he’s actually a normal good-faith user, though such people are getting rare on here.

sudanglo (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 23:37.20

If one truly wanted to use a word like "alies", a grammatically correct option would be "aliies"
??? surely not, Erinja.

Alies is not a compound word with a new suffix 'ies'. It is a new correlative formed by analogy with ties, kies etc.

There's nothing in the rules to say that new root words can't evolve.

Same would go for 'aliel' - another useful form.

If 'aliies' were a correct form (and a compound) then la vir-ies domo (the man's house) would be possible.

NPIV's analysis of Tio as Ti-o is also incorrect. This makes 'Ti' a root.

It isn't, there are just some forms like tiel ties tie etc which for mnemonic purpose begin the same.

If 'Ti' were a root, then 'tie' would mean 'tiel' - in a 'ti' manner.

cFlat7 (Näita profiili) 9. jaanuar 2012 23:44.37

razlem:
erinja: "Lingvo kaj Vivo"
Is it available for free online? A Google-search renders only expensive hard copies.

EDIT: Just found an English translation of exactly what we're looking for:
http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/akuzativo2.html
This is a good read in my opinion.

darkweasel (Näita profiili) 10. jaanuar 2012 5:59.07

sudanglo:
If one truly wanted to use a word like "alies", a grammatically correct option would be "aliies"
??? surely not, Erinja.
Surely yes. Prefixing ali- to ies is very much correct.
sudanglo:
If 'aliies' were a correct form (and a compound) then la vir-ies domo (the man's house) would be possible.
No, because this isn’t an expression where ies (which indicates an indefinite possessor) makes sense.

Bemused (Näita profiili) 10. jaanuar 2012 6:50.59

@ erinja
Thank you for mentioning Unilang and providing the link.
It looks to be a very interesting resource for learners who want to ask "why is it so?" rather than just learn as is with no understanding of the reasons behind characteristics of the language.
Cheers.

sudanglo (Näita profiili) 10. jaanuar 2012 11:02.22

An interesting line of argument Dark Weasel.

But I can still make the reductio ad absurdum argument work by choosing a different example. Homies domo estas ties kastelo - a man's house is his castle.

And if '-ies' is a new suffix then, how to analyse 'kies' or 'ties'. Doesn't that make 'k' and 't' roots?

Much simpler to say that alies and aliu and aliel are new roots, which violates no principle.

Actually the classic table of correlatives is already much less sytematic than it might appear.

In practice it has holes - forms that are practically never used like ĉial and ĉiom (or of very low frequency).

Also nenio really is neni+o - nenifari neniigi etc, whilst 'ti', 'ki', 'ĉi' remain completely bound

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