Bemused:Esperanto was designed to be a UNIVERSAL SECOND LANGUAGE, easily learned (compared to natural languages), and accessible to all, regardless of education, nationality, race, culture, creed, age, or any other artificial limit that people might wish to impose. It was designed and intended to be USABLE BY ALL PEOPLE.

Absolutely wrong. Esperanto was based around premise of 'classic school' education, available only for upper-middle classes, and including obligatory classic Greek and Latin.

In my opinion, it almost doesn't matter who Esperanto was designed for.

I'm sure that members of IFEF (International Federation of Esperantist Railway Workers) would be surprised to learn that Esperanto is for classically educated elites only. Esperanto has a long history with railway workers (back to 1908, at least), and somehow I doubt that many of them had a classical education.

Even in the early days of Esperanto, you had mass Esperanto classes aimed at workers. Whoever you want to suppose it was designed for, certainly it was, and still is, promoted and taught to anyone interested in the topic, not only to people with classical educations.

At any rate I think it's fair to say that if you have a classical education, it's easier to learn Esperanto than if you don't. I think that's true of a lot of topics, not just Esperanto.

sudanglo:My objection is not to prescription per se but to BAD prescription - through a false theory of how the language functions that imposes unnecessary limitation on what counts as being well-formed.

But who has the right to prescribe? Who decides whose "theory of how the language functions" is false? Who decides whose prescription is "BAD prescription"? To me the idea of inherent root classes makes very good sense (e.g., the old broso versus kombilo issue). If any old root can be in any old grammatical class, how can I possibly know how anything means anything?

sudanglo:Even after la fina venko, it will still be the case that Esperanto would be learned by adults, as and when they have a need for international communication.

I would expect that after la fina venko most people would already be learning Esperanto in childhood, so that it would not really be a matter of adult learning.

lgg:

Bemused:Esperanto was designed to be a UNIVERSAL SECOND LANGUAGE, easily learned (compared to natural languages), and accessible to all, regardless of education, nationality, race, culture, creed, age, or any other artificial limit that people might wish to impose. It was designed and intended to be USABLE BY ALL PEOPLE.

Absolutely wrong. Esperanto was based around premise of 'classic school' education, available only for upper-middle classes, and including obligatory classic Greek and Latin.

I don't speak classic Greek or Latin, but I do speak Esperanto, which was my first language back some 35 years ago when I did not speak any foreign language at all. So your conclusion sucks... man.

You ask two important questions, Bartlett.

1. How does one know that a theory is a bad theory?

2. If any old root can be any old grammatical class, how can one know the meaning of anything?

The answer to the first question is that you learn that a theory is a bad theory by examining the cases that it has difficulty with.

The answer to the second is that you learn the meaning of words.

Once you have learnt that broso means the implement (a brush), there is no sense in saying brosilo to express the idea of the implement.

Kombo in the sense of the implement you won't find in the dictionary, but you will find Kombi meaning the action. So to express the idea of the implement you need to add -ilo.

This is enough to lead you to correct usage.

The double meaning of vestejo directly contradicts the inherent grammatical class theory. However the two meanings make perfect sense given that vesto means a garment and vesti means to dress.

Then vestejo can be seen as either vest(o)ejo or vest(i)ejo. The vest in vestejo can use the meaning of vesto or the meaning of vesti - because BOTH of these parsings make a useful idea (one that connects with what exists in the real world).

Can you find me a case where you actually need the inherent grammatical class idea, and where the usage can not be explained in terms of the meanings of words as you would find them in the dictionary?

The roots in Esperanto that don't need finaĵo may be analysed as of a different grammatical class in different sentences(eg 'iom' - noun and adverb) and this causes little difficulty. Nobody argues that such roots must have a single inherent class.

When you learn Esperanto, you don't actually learn the meanings of the lexical roots per se, rather you learn the meanings of these roots with their finaĵoj.

From this you understand the meanings of more complex compounds.

Forigite

Its the Americans who think that a bathroom doesn't have to contain a bath.

If an English estate agent advertised a flat as having a bathroom, when it only had a toilet, he would be in trouble.

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In arguing that these theoretical considerations are just that, and have no practical consequence, I think, Hyperboreus, you are arguing from a natural language perspective.

Esperanto is different.

In Esperanto you can't just rely on established usage, though for the core language this may be true. Meaning derived from principle has a much bigger role to play in Esperanto than it does in those languages which are in constant daily use.

That's why it is important to establish what the mechanisms of the language actually are from careful examination of un-disputed examples. The root-class theory seems to me to be only an approximation (and excessively complicated to boot).

There is no great impetus in the case of natural languages to preserve systematicity, but this is almost a sine qua non for Esperanto and for any other artificial language (if there were any, instead of just projects).

Irregularities are rife and well-tolerated in natural languages. But do they have any place in Esperanto?

Thus, a simple theoretical account which regularises instances, which under the root-class theory seem to be exceptions, is desirable - and makes the language more useful in removing doubt in cases where some false theory may lead to dispute.

We should not have dictionaries in which certain forms are marked 'evitinda'.

sudanglo:We should not have dictionaries in which certain forms are marked 'evitinda'.

This is an interesting statement.

Are you against the idea of any form being considered "evitinda"? Or do you simply hold the opinion that these forms shouldn't be included in dictionaries?

From my end, I think that it's useful to learners to include common "evitindaj" words in the dictionary, marked as such and accompanied by the preferred form.

From the perspective of a language learner, not every text you read will be well written, and it's helpful to have dictionaries guide you on the right path by pointing out preferable forms.

What I mean, Erinja, is that there is something odd about the inclusion in dictionaries of forms which are in principle incorrect - particularly if they are 'common evitindaj words'.

After all, in the illustrative examples to pin down the definitions one would not include sentences with misprints or errors of grammar.

It is a separate case with regard to forms which are not in principle wrong but where a different form is preferable.

An example of the latter which I found in NPIV is 'Arkuso', marked as (evi) and defined as 'Arko 2.

(I don't know enough mathematics to decide whether the two meanings of 'arko' are worth distinguishing.)

Of course we should have "evitinda" in dictionary entries. A dictionary that didn't include words which are worth avoiding in Esperanto but which are nevertheless in use - of which there are no small number - would be conspicuously incomplete. And a dictionary that did include such entries but didn't make any distinction would be simply misleading.

In a language like Esperanto that makes it easier to get away with non-ordinary forms and whose speakers are subject to influence from their native language, it makes sense that there should be a number of words in use which one ought to avoid. I see nothing odd in the entries for such words being marked accordingly. To not do so is what would be odd, in my view.

sudanglo:a simple theoretical account which regularises instances, which under the root-class theory seem to be exceptions, is desirable

Desirable yes, possible - I very much doubt it.

Obviously pretending roots are just category-less semantic primitives and leaving popular usage as the arbiter is a cop out, and provides almost no assistance to the speaker trying to derive the meaning of an unfamiliar construction.

To call root-classes "false" is, I think, going too far. "Too complicated", "needs improvement", "unreliable" etc are at least semi-credible, if disputable judgments, but they don't really lead to falsity.