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SImple question

od sudanglo, 1. februára 2012

Príspevky: 79

Jazyk: English

sudanglo (Zobraziť profil) 8. februára 2012 23:34:14

I happens in science, Eldanar, that when scientists are confronted with cases that the theory does not encompass, the first reaction is to patch the theory, rather than to completely abandon it.

So your suggestion that some roots may belong to more than one class is in an hallowed tradition.

But this is messy.

There are some words where the verb form and the noun form have tenuously related meanings eg parki (aŭton) and parko (municipal facility).

So in terms of the theory, 'park' is both a noun root and a verbal root, but this seems somehow to be an acceptable special case.

tommjames (Zobraziť profil) 9. februára 2012 11:02:52

sudanglo:What does present irregularity (or at least a complication for the theory), is when a root apparently changes its class in different compound words.
I don't see how that's a complication for the theory. Indeed the theory, at least as far as the Academy defines it, gives fairly thorough treatment to the way in which the meaning-character of the elements of compounds are effected by each other.

sudanglo:the proponents of root-class are forced into abandoning their idea within their own theory to account for a perfectly normal word like 'dumviva'
This is simply untrue, because the Academy's document makes explicit mention of exactly that kind of compound:

Akademio:XIV. NI KONSTATAS, ke ĉe duobla flankelemento ne nur la dekstra elemento povas difini la vortkarakteron de la maldekstra elemento (ekz‑e: skribmaŝina = skribo‑maŝino‑a), sed ankaŭ la maldekstra elemento povas efiki al la dekstra, difinante ties vortkarakteron. Adjektiva aŭ prepozicia maldekstra elemento efikas substantivige: grandkuraĝa = (granda kuraĝo)‑a = karakterizita de granda kuraĝo; palblua = (pala bluo)‑a; helverda = (hela verdo)‑a; senforta = (sen forto)‑a; senutila = (sen utilo)‑a; senpova = (sen povo)‑a; senduba = (sen dubo)‑a.[/b]
sudanglo:This is clearly dumviv(o)a and not dumviv(i)a.
As above, the theory does not disagree with that; to the contrary, it confirms it.

sudanglo (Zobraziť profil) 9. februára 2012 11:53:42

What I meant, Tom, by 'abandoning their idea' is that the full treatment (of all the various compound words) starting from the position that each root has a grammatical class has to abandon the idea that the root has a fixed class.

The whole business gets ridiculously involved with many rules like if an X-class-root is conjoined with a Y-class-root then it becomes a Y-Root (or even a Z-root).

It's easy to get muddled ploughing through all these complications, but I believe they result in vestejo having only one possible meaning under the theory.

WHEREAS, the lingvo-sento of the average Esperantist comfortably interprets this word differently according to context.

Please parse for me - 'la floro kiun vi aĉetis por mi ankoraŭ ne floris'. Is flor a verb root or a noun root? What does florejo mean?

tommjames (Zobraziť profil) 9. februára 2012 13:51:01

sudanglo:What I meant, Tom, by 'abandoning their idea' is that the full treatment (of all the various compound words) starting from the position that each root has a grammatical class has to abandon the idea that the root has a fixed class.
Well I'm not entirely sure what extra meaning you wish to introduce by way of the word "fixed" here, but I don't think it's correct to say that the idea of root-class is abandoned. It's still valid to say the root viv- represents a basically a verbal idea, even though in a compound - where other elements will naturally have an effect - it may take on a more substantivial character.

The Academy says that one element in a compound may "difini la vortkarakteron" of another. Well 'dum' is a preposition*, so we can see that taking place in 'dumviva' since a preposition usually expects a noun as its object. It's therefore reasonable to expect a 'substantiviga' effect in cases where prepositions are prefixed to other roots.

To me that doesn't mean the root's inherent leaning to a verb or noun or adjective is somehow fictitious, just that it may be overridden in some cases. In compounding, which mixes elements potentially having differing leanings to parts of speech, it seems quite understandable that this should be the case. How we get from that to abandonment I don't really see.

* A conjunction too, but we can ignore that for the sake of argument.

sudanglo (Zobraziť profil) 10. februára 2012 12:03:09

If I say that dum is a preposition (that's its grammatical class) I imply that it isn't a member of a different class.

That's part of the concept of grammatical class. If this is a fish, I am saying it is not an insect.

If I say viv (not vivi) is a verb, that carries a similar implication.

(of course dum can actually belong to more than one class, as can many English words)

Outside the UV, our dictionaries don't define roots, they define words.

It is from the meaning of the word definitions that we actually deduce the meanings of compounds.

From the meanings of vesto and vesti, I get two meanings of vestejo.

But if vest=vesti then I can only get one meaning strictly.

And if mastr=mastro, I can't use the meaning of mastri to validate Mi rimarkis lian ne-mastron de la akuzativo.

I find the whole convoluted superstructure of the word formation accounts based on grammatical class of the root - such as you will find in PAG - unnecessary and inconsistent.

sudanglo (Zobraziť profil) 10. februára 2012 12:12:59

There's a whole discussion in the Esperanto forums of blok.

Can you say blok-listo meaning a list of people or accesses that are blocked in the Forum management.

If blok=bloko (the concrete thing of a certain format), I suppose you can't.

But it seems very reasonable to derive blok-listo from the meaning of bloki.

lgg (Zobraziť profil) 10. februára 2012 12:43:44

sudanglo:There's a whole discussion in the Esperanto forums of blok...
Living language could not have such problems by definition. We can discuss as much as we like, but it will not change the fact that Esperanto word-building system is too weird, underthought, dogmatic and therefore unsufficient for practical use.

P.S. Where would we were if English (or Russian, or whatever) language traegers would have such idiotic discussions over each new word?

sudanglo (Zobraziť profil) 10. februára 2012 13:34:23

You've missed the point Igg.

In practice the word-building system of Esperanto works very smoothly, and has done from the earliest years.

The debate is about how to describe the facts in the least misleading way.

It is a debate about theory.

When there is an argument about the meaning of this or that form, it relates little to the actual level of comprehension, but starts from theoretical viewpoints.

Esperanto was used for effective international communication for decades before the development of elaborate PAG type accounts.

EldanarLambetur (Zobraziť profil) 10. februára 2012 14:22:14

sudanglo:If I say that dum is a preposition (that's its grammatical class) I imply that it isn't a member of a different class.

That's part of the concept of grammatical class. If this is a fish, I am saying it is not an insect.
Perhaps strictly theoretically the definition of a class would be such that if X is a member of a class then by definition it is not the member of any non-X.

But in practice, and certainly with respect to language, such rigid divisions don't seem to be appropriate. What we call a "class" of word is more like a group or tag in most languages, such that words can belong to multiple groups, inheriting the properties of each group they are assigned to (e.g. dum: preposition,conjunction).

Either way, it's a simple implicit extension of the class definition to imply that "dum" is part of the class of words that are both preposition and conjunction though, right?

Just saying that I don't think that saying 'dum' is in the class of prepositions makes it unable to be a conjunction by definition, for a non-philosopher. ridego.gif Perhaps in the strictest sense, the use of "class" here is just wrong if you can belong to multiple, and we should say group (or something else), but I don't think anyone would care enough for that! ridego.gif

EldanarLambetur (Zobraziť profil) 10. februára 2012 14:24:48

So, if we want to keep the root-class theory as a guide, but not let it decide that perfectly logical/intuitive compound meanings don't exist, how about viewing it this way:

I recently read this document:

http://cindymckee.com/librejo/Word_formation_in_...

It very much aligns with the root-class theory, and shows how it saves us from many woes and difficulties, at the tiny expense of roots having a default class.

But it actually deals with cases where the class changes by intuition in a compound too!! By not altering the root-class theory, but elaborating on word-building theory.

It simply says that the root-class allows you to know whether you need "ilo" or "ado" and suchlike, and how the word might behave in general, e.g. why:

haki = to cut
hako = chopping

but

martelo = hammer
marteli = to hammer
martelado = hammering

But they seem to imply that when compounding, you aren't compounding roots (with only their default class to worry about), you're compounding all possible POS of that root:

mangxhoro = mangx(a/i/o/e)horo

And that often the meaning is so similar across the POS that by saying "mangxhoro" we know it's just "mealtime" (same as "eating-time" for example).

So they suggest simply that when the different POS suggest starkly different resulting compound meanings, and context does not clarify, simply mark the POS explicitly (e.g. pagipovo = ability to pay), or use more morphemes (e.g. igx).

Importantly, because we aren't just building with roots, we aren't confined to a single root-class-based definition of the compound.

EDIT: This seems to suggest vestejo could be both vest(i)ejo and vest(o)ejo, and would require context (or additional morphemes) to disambiguate. But doesn't violate the root-class idea, because you're combining words (roots with implicit/explicit grammatical terminations)

Nahor