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Eaten - aorist meaning and past meaning

by Suzumiya, May 19, 2012

Messages: 22

Language: English

Suzumiya (User's profile) May 19, 2012, 10:13:58 PM

Good afternoon! ridulo.gif

In the English sentence below, the participle eaten has a habitual/aorist meaning:

The turkey is a North American bird, traditionally eaten at Thanskgiving.

But the participle eaten can also be used to refer to something that happened in the past:

While walking in the desert, I came upon the body of a dead dog, apparently eaten some time ago.

In the second sentence, the eating happened only once, in the past, and not on a regular basis.

Not all languages have this type of double meaning to their participles. What does Esperanto do in those cases?

Thanks in advance.

eitanulo (User's profile) May 19, 2012, 10:55:13 PM

Well, this just has to do with the context. When you say "eaten" without having a "have/has/had" before it, it would really mean it got eaten. On the other case it just refers to the past. I really can't remember the linguistic terms.. lango.gif
In the second sentence, the eating happened only once, in the past, and not on a regular basis.
Again, it depends on the context. In every language I know you've got to mention the time when it happened in order to be understood. So in the first sentence you have "traditionally" which gives you the clue it happens on a regular basis. In the second one there's "some time ago" which mentions an EXACT date.
Hope it helps. ridulo.gif

Matthieu (User's profile) May 19, 2012, 11:09:08 PM

I would use a passive present participle (manĝata) in the first sentence and a passive past participle (manĝita) in the second one.

Hyperboreus (User's profile) May 20, 2012, 7:47:45 AM

Forigite

sudanglo (User's profile) May 20, 2012, 9:16:27 AM

The only two aspects Esperanto has for sure are inchoative (with the ek- prefix) and durative (with the -ad suffix).
There was a big debate around the early 60's over the meaning of ata and ita, HB, as speakers of some Northern European languages had started to use these endings in a strange (and non-Zamenhofian) way.

The issue is no longer controversial after this thorough airing, and it is fully accepted now that they are aspectual. I expect you can find more detail if you google the ata/ita problemo.

In the sentences that the OP gave, in one case it would be manĝata, in the other manĝita.
"Mi estus manĝinta" for "I would have eaten".
This last form seems to be really popular among Germans.
Not just with Germans - this is standard Esperanto.

sudanglo (User's profile) May 20, 2012, 9:35:05 AM

"Mi estas manĝanta" for "I am eating". (progressive)
"Mi estas manĝinta" for "I have eaten". (perfective)
"Mi estis manĝanta" for "I was eating." (progressive)
"Mi estis manĝinta" for "I had eaten". (perfective)
There is no confusion about the meanings of these forms. The only issue is the preference for simple forms with an extra word to make the meaning more definite, if it isn't sufficiently clear from context.

Suzumiya (User's profile) May 20, 2012, 2:26:00 PM

Thank you all of you! Everything's clear now.

Hyperboreus (User's profile) May 21, 2012, 2:37:17 AM

Forigite

sudanglo (User's profile) May 21, 2012, 9:34:18 AM

HB if you take this argument to the extreme you could argue that in vi telefonis hieraŭ, the -is isn't really necessary since the hieraŭ tells us that it is past.

Some redundancy in language is a good thing.

The point about using estus telefoninta is that it establishes the time frame immediately. We don't have to wait until we encounter a time word or some other contextual clue to establish the time frame - and this theoretically might come much later in the sentence.

In, for example, se vi telefonus antaŭ ol decidi la horon de via vizito, tiam .., we don't know whether the speaker is making a suggestion as to appropriate behaviour, in general or in the future, or making a complaint about what happened on a specific occasion, if we accept that telefonus should stand for all times.

Interrogating the Tekstaro with estus w+intFI throws up almost 900 hits. So the complex form is hardly uncommon. In fact the ofteco of this form leads to the plain -us being immediately interpreted as general or future.

Searching for est/i/as/os/is/u/us + X-anta(j) (ie all forms of est+the present participle) throws up substantially fewer hits and some of those will be straight adjectival use like Esperanto estas vivanta lingvo

EldanarLambetur (User's profile) May 21, 2012, 5:33:07 PM

sudanglo:
The issue is no longer controversial after this thorough airing, and it is fully accepted now that they are aspectual. I expect you can find more detail if you google the ata/ita problemo.
There's quite a good discussion here:

http://anthro.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/eo/colloq/colloq2...

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