Mesaĝoj: 23
Lingvo: English
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 11:05:08
if you can say prep, tio, ke ..., but you can't say prep ke ..., then you can't say prep+infinitive. (Pri tio, ke valid, but pri ke not, so pri + infinitive also not OK)
But you can say sen ke (plenty of examples in the Tekstaro and more common than sen tio ke). So that would under your rule prohibit sen+infinitive.
Conclusion: back to the drawing board.
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 11:24:34
In English, the latter group all have to be expressed with 'of' - love of eating, thought of eating, feeling of eating.
However we would say the desire to eat, the need to eat, the wish to eat and couldn't use 'of Xing'.
This may be a quirk of English, or it may reflect a different sort of relationship between the noun and its verbal 'object'
Hyperboreus (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 14:17:25
Hyperboreus (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 14:20:56
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 15:23:45
Mi telefonis may be used for both I was on the phone and I made a call. That doesn't make the difference less real.
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 16:04:00
Hyperboreus:(B) If "X ke Y" is not possible, then "X inf" is not possible either.OK. But if sen ke was in use in Zamenhof's time this wouldn't explain why he was opposed to sen+inf.
Now, pri +inf seems to be starting to be used, but pri ke is not used. In this case, it is not the use of pri ke that is leading to pri+inf.
Now consider another case. Mi kalkulis je manĝi, antaŭ ol iri al la kinejo. Whilst this is unusual, it is comprehensible (I was counting on eating before going to the cinema)
But mi kalkulis je ke mi manĝos, antaŭ ol vin renkonti seems impossibly weird.
EldanarLambetur (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 17:10:15
Regardless of the fact that Infinitives can act as nouns, we must describe them as verbs (I.e using adverbs), as in:
Ridi estas bone
Similarly, prepositions like 'pri' are for relating nouns. They cannot be used to relate verbs. So perhaps 'por', 'anstataux' etc are so useful, that usage permits them as exceptions.
So in the same way that infinitives cannot be described by adjectives, neither can they be described by prepositions. And so whenever it becomes useful enough to make another exception...
My inspiration for this came from a weird place:
"WITH THE INFINITIVE in Ido one more logically uses adjectives, not adverbs, because the infinitive is a verb-form with the character of a noun (8). Use of adverbs here is a Slavic idiom, or misunderstanding (9). For the same reason, one can in Ido freely and without hesitation use a preposition before an infinitive; for example sen vidar, ante parolar."
The bit that says 'for the same reason'. (does anyone know if the avoidance of prepositions before infinitives is a Slavic thing?)
Whilst I like the use of the adverb in this way (and that it has a logic to it), I think that if this is the reason that it's so not done to put prepositions before infinitives, I think it might be too far. Especially if there are generally approved exceptions, and an ever growing list of them.
Infinitives perform noun-like roles already (like being the subject of a verb), so why can't they fill a noun-like role as the dependent of a preposition?
Describe them as the verbs they are, but allow them to fill their noun-like roles, perhaps?
Hyperboreus (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 18:45:12
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-14 22:38:49
EldanarLambetur:I wonder if the reason is one of consistency?On the whole Esperanto avoids exceptions. We prefer consistency throughout the language.
But this principle would seem to suggest that we should remove the restrictions on what prepositions may precede an infinitive.
The ones, that can be so used, are used so ordinarily in this way that it seems uncomfortable to consider such usage as exceptional.
The prep+inf construction is very useful. It avoids having to specify tense or mood, even of being too explicit about the subject of the verb.
For example do I mean Mi kalkulis je tio, ke mi estus manĝinta antaŭ ... or Mi kalkulis je tio, ke mi manĝu antaŭ ... or Mi kalkulis je tio, ke mi manĝos antaŭ ....
Sometimes it is convenient to be vague - which Mi kalkulis je manĝi antaŭ... allows me to do.
Hyperboreus (Montri la profilon) 2012-marto-15 16:04:54