Part two (continued from my previous post):

PMEG gives a good example:

Nur de ses monatoj mi scias la veron.

That was taken from here.

I don't see any reason why that can't be rendered as 'Nur ekde ses monatoj mi scias la veron.' PAG supports this usage.

I disagree with PAG. It's not the only dubious usage that PAG seems to support, in my opinion.

I suppose that my general view on PAG is that although it has had five editions, it hasn't changed sufficiently since its original publishing in the 1930's; as I understand it, that was partially intentional, since one of the authors explicitly stated that he didn't want to change anything substantive after the death of the other (1964 would have been the last edition before the death of Kalocsay in the 70's; Waringhien died himself in the 80's). In Esperanto it has frequently happened that there is a debate on which form to use in a particular instance. With time, the community generally tends to agree on one of the forms, and the alternate form is eventually considered wrong. Even some of Zamenhof's writings contain usages that today would be considered incorrect. The language evolves, and in cases where there was doubt in the past, today the "correct" form has been agreed upon. A modern grammar should reflect that.

As a small example unrelated to this topic, there was a raging debate in the past on whether to use -at- or -it- in certain instances. The debate has long ended, and the community has now agreed upon when to use which (aside from perhaps a few holdouts). If you were to use -at- in a case where -it- would now be expected, most people would consider you to be wrong - the Academy has made a decision on this topic, and it's now a settled-upon point of grammar, so even if you read an old grammar telling you otherwise, I wouldn't rely upon it for a decision.

Therefore, I don't rely on PAG as a definitive opinion on anything, though certainly I'm happy to read its reasoning and take it into consideration. And as far as I'm concerned the Akademio is authoritative over PAG or PMEG or any particular grammar, so if an Academy response says not to use a form, I would follow that decision, written after a discussion between eminent Esperanto speakers of today, over a grammar whose actual grammatical content hasn't been edited for more than 50 years.

Erin, you might not like PAG (for whatever reason), but you're also ignoring PMEG, a very modern grammar book written by a highly respected Esperantist. Maybe the representative of the akademio made a mistake? It's not impossible. I doubt they discuss in length every question that comes their way.

Here are a few examples from the Tekstaro:

Paul Gubbins:
Kontraŭmilita manifestacio en la urbeto: surstratiĝis 65 homoj — sufiĉe kontentige. Por la unua fojo ekde 20 jaroj mi prenis mikrofonon kaj alparolis preterpasantojn: unue stranga sento sed mi rapide rekutimiĝis.

PEJNO Simono:
Vere sensacie estis tamen, ke ekde ĉirkaŭ jaro liaj kursoj enhavis elementon, kiu ĉie mankegis en la kursoj de liaj konkurencantoj.

Dafydd ap Fergus:
Kiel nova esperantisto, mi malcerte serĉis miajn vortojn en fremda lingvo. Aliaj, esperantistoj ekde dekoj da jaroj, flue parolis.

Chainy:Erin, you might not like PAG (for whatever reason), but you're also ignoring PMEG, a very modern grammar book written by a highly respected Esperantist. Maybe the representative of the akademio made a mistake? It's not impossible. I doubt they discuss in length every question that comes their way.

On the contrary, I'm not ignoring PMEG. But I didn't use it as a reference because it doesn't give an opinion on this matter, one way or the other. PMEG never says that it is (or isn't) ok to use a period of time (rather than a moment in time) after "ekde".

However, since Bertilo emphasizes elsewhere that "ek" shows the very first moment of an action, the very beginning of an action, I would be somewhat surprised if he considered it correct to use "ekde" with a whole period of time, without a helper word like "antaŭ" in the middle (ekde antaŭ du jaroj, etc)

If you'd like to know his opinion, I'm sure you can e-mail him and ask.

I have very high respect for Bertilo. But regardless of his opinion on this matter, if I had to choose between his opinion and the opinion of the akademia konsultejo, I'd go with the konsultejo (in addition, it seems like more than one member of the academy have a short discussion before sending out those answers, and I would be slightly surprised if Bertilo were not one of them).

Bottom line - if we just spend a second thinking about the usual usage of "ek", "ek" is inherently something that happens in a moment, not in an extended period of time. One might say that since I can "sidi" for an hour, then I can also "eksidi" for an hour, and why would I subject ek+root to different usage rules than the root by itself? But that doesn't make logical sense. "Eksidi" is something that happens in a single moment. After your "eksido", that's it, now you simply "sidas". "Ek" marks the beginning only, so there's no more "ek" once the action has already begun.

Chainy:Here are a few examples from the Tekstaro:

As I said, I don't see a good logical basis for using "ekde" by itself with a period of time, and I think that for every single strange grammatical thing that I don't agree with, you could probably dig up a couple of quotes by well-known Esperantists using it.

And while I'm sure that the Academy has better things to do than spend hours discussing questions that come into the konsultejo, I doubt very much that they would publish an answer that is flat out wrong (as you seem to be implying they did with regard to ekde). These replies are published online for general consumption, so they can't risk publishing something that most Academy members would disagree with.

erinja:On the contrary, I'm not ignoring PMEG. But I didn't use it as a reference because it doesn't give an opinion on this matter, one way or the other. PMEG never says that it is (or isn't) ok to use a period of time (rather than a moment in time) after "ekde".

Did you not see the quote from PMEG above? Here it is again:

PMEG:
Nur de ses monatoj mi scias la veron.

And then directly under that, it says:

PMEG:
Por montri klare, ke temas pri tempo, oni povas uzi ekde aŭ de post:

ekde = “de la komenco de”
de post = “de la fino de”

Here's the link again: Tempo

erinja:However, since Bertilo emphasizes elsewhere that "ek" shows the very first moment of an action, the very beginning of an action, I would be somewhat surprised if he considered it correct to use "ekde" with a whole period of time, without a helper word like "antaŭ" in the middle (ekde antaŭ du jaroj, etc)

As PMEG says:

Tempa de povas stari ankaŭ antaŭ esprimo de tempodaŭro. Tiam la du daŭroj komenciĝas (pli-malpli) samtempe:

- So with that in mind, I'm not sure that I see the problem with adding 'ek-'. Nobody would have any problem with 'Ekde tiu tago', which relates to a period of time after that day, and not only to "the very first moment of an action", as you put it.

According to Alexander Shlafer (Director of the Consultation Section of the Academy of Esperanto) (from this source, as mentioned by Darkweasel):

La uzado de “ekde” en la senco “(jam) de” estas evitinda.

Ok, so that confirms that the sentence as found in PMEG is correct, namely:

Nur de ses monatoj mi scias la veron.

- The akademiano is confirming that it is not necessary to say 'de antaŭ' in such a sentence (Erinja, you seem to disagree, though).

However, I suspect nobody can explain what exactly can, but rather shouldn't be misinterpreted in the following quote. What's the wink all about?:

Bonvolu noti, ke en la frazoj, kiujn vi citis, oni povas interpreti
“ekde N jaroj” ankaŭ kiel indikon de komenca tempopunkto kun
la signifo “ekde la tempopunkto kiu okazis antaŭ N jaroj”. Do,
tiuj frazoj estas misinterpreteblaj, sed ne nepre misinterpretendaj

I seem to recall this ekde thing coming up a while ago in a newsgroup. It was said, I think by some or other authority, that phrases like "ekde du jaroj" have an implied "antaŭ", and thus do reference a point in time, despite the fact "du jaroj" is a duration. Apparently that would be taking PAG's line.

I don't have a problem with "ekde du jaroj" myself and I've seen/heard that usage fairly frequently, though I can see why some wouldn't like it. I wouldn't call it wrong.