Messages : 60
Langue: English
EldanarLambetur (Voir le profil) 7 novembre 2012 22:03:37
tommjames:I'm not sure I see this strangeness.
To be honest I find the phrase a bit strange. If you meant "she was so pale, as if she had died" I would put that "Ŝi estis tiel pala, kvazaŭ ŝi mortis". If you meant "as if she was going to die" then I'd put that "kvazaŭ ŝi mortos".
I'd see the replacement with AS-modo or OS-modo as a bit strange. PMEG does suggest this usage is not an error, but advises against it. And I can kinda see why. She's not pale because she's going to die, or pale because she's dying. She's pale as if death is going take her; but it probably won't, because of the use of the imaga modo.
Rugxdoma (Voir le profil) 7 novembre 2012 22:13:43
EldanarLambetur:Hyperboreus:I agree, but sometimes your first interpretations go further than the text really permits. I think my first thought was: "Pale, thus she is dead; they just are not quite sure yet." Thereafter: "What we know is that she is dead-like." Thereafter: "Strange, this is against the argument of Sudanglo! Oh, there is an other possibility too: She fears her death."
But the very nature of US-modo is imaginary, and doesn't talk about real events. So to assume the very real fact that the death happened, without any contextual cues seems a bit unfounded.
Hyperboreus (Voir le profil) 7 novembre 2012 22:14:11
EldanarLambetur (Voir le profil) 7 novembre 2012 22:46:53
I take your point. It's the logic of Esperanto that governs well-formedness, its grammar and rules.
But the abundance of experienced Esperantists engaged in debate about aspects of the language should tell you something. That there are aspects of Esperanto that when it comes down to practical usage, some forms are generally more understandable due to usage, or some words take on particular established meanings due to usage, etc. Thankfully much less than national languages, but still, we're only human.
Of course when someone calls on their "lingvosento", there are occasions when they are just being closed-minded about Esperanto's possibilities for expression. But there are legitimate uses for it. Someone who's been active in the Esperanto community, regularly talking to other Esperantists can offer helpful advice on what forms are generally good. They could tell you things like: when you use US-modo without too many context pointers, what do people generally assume you mean? Or is borrowed word "X" popular in Esperanto across continents? What usage of compound tenses are people generally comfortable understanding? etc.
The book "Being colloquial in Esperanto" written by a very experienced Esperantist often proceeds similarly to: Sometimes this is used... This is rarely used... This may be interpreted as [abrupt/more polite/etc.]... not necessarily due to one alternative being more logical than another, but because of usage.
tommjames (Voir le profil) 7 novembre 2012 22:49:47
EldanarLambetur:I'd see the replacement with AS-modo or OS-modo as a bit strange.That's -IS not -AS, actually. And I don't find it strange at all; on the contrary, it's much clearer in this type of phrase.
I agree with PMEG's view that you should normally use -US with "kvazaŭ", but as far as I'm concerned in this case using an indicative is perfectly acceptable.
EldanarLambetur:But the very nature of US-modo is imaginary, and doesn't talk about real events. So to assume the very real fact that the death happenedI don't necessarily read it as saying she had actually died, but rather that she looked as if she had died. Either way it concerns "having-died-ness" rather than "going-to-die-ness".
As Ruĝdoma pointed out, in some contexts you could plausibly infer from "looking as if she'd died", that she actually had died. In other contexts that won't be possible. All of which just highlights again the pointlessness of analyzing a phrase like this without knowing the context.
Hyperboreus (Voir le profil) 7 novembre 2012 22:51:54
sudanglo (Voir le profil) 9 novembre 2012 11:45:52
The only valid measurement, whether a sentence is well formed or not (whether it is grammatical), is to check if it comes naturally to native speakers (L1), who have learned this language non-analyticallyThe mechanism needs teasing out here.
A native speaker might confirm that a sentence is well formed because he is aware of this as a particular usage that he has come across.
But sentences can be completely novel. In this cases a measure of consistency with the rest of the language is applied. Whether you call this analytical appraisal or not doesn't much matter. This process is not that dissimilar to the one an Esperantist applies in making a judgement about well-formedness.
And when we use a corpus such as the Tekstaro to check an intuition we are not doing something so very different to what a native speaker does informally when making a judgement about whether you can or cannot say something.
In short, in relation to Esperanto, 'lingvosento' is not an empty expression. It means from my experience with the language.
erinja (Voir le profil) 9 novembre 2012 12:05:03
I type my phrase and its possible variants into Google and see how many hits I get, and in what context.
sudanglo (Voir le profil) 9 novembre 2012 13:00:27
If you meant "she was so pale, as if she had died" I would put that "Ŝi estis tiel pala, kvazaŭ ŝi mortis". If you meant "as if she was going to die" then I'd put that "kvazaŭ ŝi mortos".Yes, Tom. I have never understood the prescription on the indicative after kvazaŭ. I believe Onklo Zam also used it.
However, returning to the issue of what kvazau ŝi mortus means, I have now posted the query in the Esperanto forums and we will see the result.
tommjames (Voir le profil) 9 novembre 2012 15:09:34
sudanglo:Yes, Tom. I have never understood the prescription on the indicative after kvazaŭ.Mi neither. The "irreal" meaning of 'kvazaŭ' does make it go well with -US, but seeing the hits in Tekstaro with the below search string I find it hard to consider using the indicatives "evitinda" in any real way.
\bkvazaŭ \w+ \w+[iao]s\b