xBlackWolfx:
And I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about Esperanto as I used to be, because after having studied linguistics for several years, I now know that an auxlang is outright impossible, languages are just far too diverse. Did you know that there isn't one single sound in the world that appears in all languages? Some are more common than others, but not one is universal.

As a colleague I understand your feelings (the problems apply to all auxlangs, not only E-), but do you know this concept of education science: "Don't try to be perfect, you need to be only good enough (German "hinreichend gut")", which is told to young parents so that they don't go mad trying to "optimize" their child('s education).

The same holds true for international languages: No one should postulate a "universal" language which is suitable for all kind of speakers. It's impossible. But this doesn't mean that Esperanto were no better alternative to English or Latin as an international language.

I once wrote a short (and a bit superficial) essay on E-o from a typological point of view. It can't fit to everyones mother tongue* but it fits to a large amount of languages (it's a right-headed/accusative/SVO languages as respectivly 75% or so of the worlds languages).

*I of course don't deprecate any language, but from the point of view of the adoption of an auxlang some are more important than others, e.g. it is better to have an elaborate phoneme inventory in order to assimilate internationalisms than to take care of people like the Pirahâ with 14 or so phonemes in their language, who probably never will take part in international conversations.

sudanglo:
However, birdtimigula does seem to be more literal, actually for the job of scaring birds, whereas birdtimula seems more to conjure the idea of looking like a scarecrow.

And lunlumitaj stratoj seems better for moonlit streets than lunlumigitaj stratoj.

[...]

My suggestion is that an element, intransitively listed in the dictionary can sometimes be legitimately employed transitively without an automatic appending of an -ig.

Sorry, but I see no base in the actual language for your claims. They may seem natural for a native of a language which very often doesn't employ a difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, but for me "birdtimula" is either wrong or means "someone who is afraid of birds'".
Do you have any real examples where an intranstive root is used transitively?

Well, Kirilo I don't want to vigorously argue the case for 'birdtimulo'.

But if you browse through NPIV you do seem to come across quite a few verbs that have intransitive entries and yet can also be used transitively without an -ig.

Fumi in its use for what hot oil does and what a smoker does to cigarettes would be one. I'll try and post some others when I have collected a list.

But my point is not so much that the customary assertion that verbs in Esperanto are either tr or intr, is not universally true, but rather that, possibly, in a compound word, it may sometimes be allowable to economise on the number of roots, if the desired meaning is clear in context.

So, normally, with 'tim', it is timi or timigi depending on your meaning. But maybe in 'birdtimigul-o/-a' we can drop the -ig because bird phobics are not common, but scarecrows are.

However, if without the -ig the meaning would never be judged to be scarecrow, and always to be bird phobic, then this blows me out of the water.

You could test this empirically by asking people what image is conjured by 'Li venis al la festo en birdtimula kostumo'.

Kirilo81:

xBlackWolfx:
And I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about Esperanto as I used to be, because after having studied linguistics for several years, I now know that an auxlang is outright impossible, languages are just far too diverse. Did you know that there isn't one single sound in the world that appears in all languages? Some are more common than others, but not one is universal.

As a colleague I understand your feelings (the problems apply to all auxlangs, not only E-), but do you know this concept of education science: "Don't try to be perfect, you need to be only good enough (German "hinreichend gut")", which is told to young parents so that they don't go mad trying to "optimize" their child('s education).

The same holds true for international languages: No one should postulate a "universal" language which is suitable for all kind of speakers. It's impossible. But this doesn't mean that Esperanto were no better alternative to English or Latin as an international language.

I once wrote a short (and a bit superficial) essay on E-o from a typological point of view. It can't fit to everyones mother tongue* but it fits to a large amount of languages (it's a right-headed/accusative/SVO languages as respectivly 75% or so of the worlds languages).

*I of course don't deprecate any language, but from the point of view of the adoption of an auxlang some are more important than others, e.g. it is better to have an elaborate phoneme inventory in order to assimilate internationalisms than to take care of people like the Pirahâ with 14 or so phonemes in their language, who probably never will take part in international conversations.

the point is not just about accomodating languages with small phonologies, its mostly about allophones. for some people, there is no difference between tenuis and voiced consonants (meaning to people like the koreans, p and b are identical), some people can't differentiate between different types of nasals (so m and n sound identical, which i identify with because in the audio recordings on this site, i can never hear the difference between mi and ni), and for pretty much all far-eastern peoples, l and r are one in the same.

auxlangs with small phonologies are designed to accomodate people who simply aren't familiar with the huge number of phonemes in languages like esperanto, which to them may as well be using ejectives and clicks and other rare phonemes.

edit: oh yeah, and i just thought up another word for the dictionary: cyborg. this one is particularly important to me because its a character from one of my favorite shows (okay, the show was cancelled in like 2006, but that's irrelevant)

xBlackWolfx:I find it funny that the site's dictionary has no entry for 'compound word', or even 'compound', considering how often compound words appear in Esperanto. Really, the only words in Esperanto that are a single morpheme (linguistic term, go look it up if you don't know it) are the personnal pronouns and most of the prepositions. Even the name of the language is a compound word.

So how do you say 'compound word' in Esperanto anyway?

I'd say it as "kunmetavorto" or "kombinavorto" or "pluralavorto"... probably use kombinavorto more often though

Ginoman:[
I'd say it as "kunmetavorto" or "kombinavorto" or "pluralavorto"... probably use kombinavorto more often though/quote]The established terms are "kunmetaĵo" and "kunmetita vorto" - on the other hand "kunmetavorto" for me is not a valid compound in E-o.

xBlackWolfx:
the point is not just about accomodating languages with small phonologies, its mostly about allophones. for some people, there is no difference between tenuis and voiced consonants (meaning to people like the koreans, p and b are identical), some people can't differentiate between different types of nasals (so m and n sound identical, which i identify with because in the audio recordings on this site, i can never hear the difference between mi and ni), and for pretty much all far-eastern peoples, l and r are one in the same.

Making an auxlang is a horribly difficult task, because you have contradicting goals and always have to make compromises. You'll see if you only try to make little reforms e.g. to E-o, there will be a chain reaction of inevitable other changes.
I'm aware that E-o is phonetically rather difficult (also for me), but if you compare Volapük, which has much simpler phonotactics but doesn't care about the recognizability of the lexicon (bel is not "beauty", but "mountain" (German Berg)), I would always elect the E-o account. Furthermore, the more phonemes, the greater redundancy is possibly, especially if there are not so much minimal pairs. In this way E-o is rather friendly to people who have pronunciation problems in the beginning.

xBlackWolfx:
auxlangs with small phonologies are designed to accomodate people who simply aren't familiar with the huge number of phonemes in languages like esperanto, which to them may as well be using ejectives and clicks and other rare phonemes.

Do you know an auxlang with less than 20 phonemes which has gone beyond the stage of a project (spoken only by its inventor)? I sincerly don't know any.

sudanglo:
Fumi in its use for what hot oil does and what a smoker does to cigarettes would be one. I'll try and post some others when I have collected a list.

But my point is not so much that the customary assertion that verbs in Esperanto are either tr or intr, is not universally true, but rather that, possibly, in a compound word, it may sometimes be allowable to economise on the number of roots, if the desired meaning is clear in context.

[...]

You could test this empirically by asking people what image is conjured by 'Li venis al la festo en birdtimula kostumo'.

Yes, fumi is always cited as THE exception form the rule. That shows that for most speakers (or esperantologists ) it is a valid distinction.

What you're talking about generally is the principle of "sufiĉo kaj neceso", formulated by René de Saussure in 1910, i.e. that you have to use as many affixes as needed but not more.
Of course I would understand "birdtimula kostumo" as you intend, too. That's a matter of context (as ornitophobics (=birdtimuloj?) don't wear costumes, do they?), but as a lexeme without context "birdtimulo" would be wrong.
I have some sympathy for forms like "lumita", as this is a sophisticated case of "sufiĉo kaj neceso", but you need some language skills in order to understand that -ig- was left out here because the passive participle already indicates that the base is transitive (i.e. transitivized by -ig-). I wouldn't use this in a "normal" text.

Yes, Kirilo the tr/intr distinction is an important distinction in relation to Esperanto verbs.

But even the normative NPIV points out in the foreword how this dichotomy is somewhat too rigid.

In the old Plena Vortaro from the thirties, they used to have a special symbol (x) to mark verbs that had both transitive and intransitive uses (without -ig). Unfortunately, I am no longer able to find the copy that I once had.

I do have still an older Esperanto English dictionary (Millidge) that came out in 1912 and went through multiple editions was revised and reprinted upto 1956 at least, where they don't bother to mark the verbs but just define by translation and cited usage.

I read somewhere that in the history of Esperanto word formation there has been a marked tendency to become increasingly economical in the number of elements in the word. Birdtimulo may be a step to far, however.

But I wouldn't find it shocking if someone, explaining the use of some machine, pointed to a lever and referred to it as the haltilo rather than the haltigilo.

Nor, I think, if whilst viewing a recording someone said Paŭzu ĝin instead of Paŭzigu ĝin.

I personnaly prefer precision, which is something that probably developed after i studied Lojban for a while. I don't like the fact that Esperanto doesn't automatically mark wheather a verb is transitive or intransitive (why shouldn't it? it is available as an optional feature)

But what do I know? I can't even read these 'messages' that people keep sending me on this site...