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Who did he say was coming?

od sudanglo, 23. siječnja 2013.

Poruke: 44

Jezik: English

Tempodivalse (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 01:11:05

EldanarLambetur:The "e-word + de" construction often seemed to translate to "on/by/to (or other preposition) the [o-word] of/from...". So I just jammed the ideas together. ridego.gif
Fair enough. Actually your suggestion is growing on me, although I still feel slightly uneasy. Part of the trouble, I think, is that I am accustomed to seeing only certain roots used with -e (sekve de, senkonsidere, danke al, fare de, etc.) and other roots just look irregular because I never see them used in this manner, nor use them myself. But semantically you're right, "pense de" is a very logical extension of this construction. I just wonder whether most people would understand it immediately.

Breto (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 02:11:28

Does it necessarily have to be "e-word + de", or could an e-word be used perhaps with a different preposition instead? Something like "krede laŭ li"? (As long as we're jamming ideas together....)

SethDamien (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 03:36:16

In English, this ambiguity used to be resolved with the accusative, believe it or not. "Whom did he say/think/believe/decide/etc. was coming?" From what I've learned so far, it mightn't be out of place to adopt 'kiun' for this purpose. Perhaps something on the order of 'Kiun vi diris veni?'

Unless I misunderstand the question.

Tempodivalse (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 04:27:35

SethDamien:In English, this ambiguity used to be resolved with the accusative, believe it or not. "Whom did he say/think/believe/decide/etc. was coming?"
It's so unfortunate that nobody uses "whom" anymore. I cringe whenever I hear "who" being used as the object of a sentence (which is almost all the time). malgajo.gif

I think part of the problem is that "kiu" is, in a way, acting as both a subject (in the sense of "Who will come?" ) and an object (in the sense of "whom he is talking about" ).

Does anyone know of languages other than English that employ this exact construction? I can only comment that Russian uses a rather different wording, usually via chto (i.e. "ke", "that" ). I'm not so certain about German or the Romance languages. (?)

But keep in mind that English has a tendency to drop or tweak parts of speech in ways that can't be replicated easily in other languages. For example, in "The refrigerator needs cleaned", the auxiliary "to be" is omitted, but understood. Yet in Esperanto, you have to use the infinitive. So we should not necessarily try to make a literal translation into EO from English.
Perhaps something on the order of 'Kiun vi diris veni?'
Glancing at that sentence, I immediately tried to attach "kiun" to one of the verbs, but it's not quite clear which way to parse it. (Also, shouldn't "veni" at least be "venos"?)

While we're brainstorming: perhaps we could simply say "Kion li diris: kiu venos?" But I'm uncertain whether the punctuation conveys the concept clearly enough.

RiotNrrd (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 05:27:56

I think the biggest problem with "Kiun li diris veni?" is that the tense only tells us when he said it (i.e., in the past). It doesn't tell us whether the event being attended is in the past, present, or future.

Whom did he say...
... is coming?
... came?
... will be coming?
... would come?
... etc.

"Veni", in the infinitive, doesn't give us a clue.

scorpjke (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 09:04:13

erinja:You can say it in simpler ways than that. "Kiu, laŭ li, venos?" or "Li diris ke *kiu* venos?" would be alternatives.
100% agreed. And all other propositions are not clear enough and don't really make sense.

Timtim (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 11:25:20

sudanglo:An example where laŭ+pronoun might seem a little odd is 'Who did we decide should have the money?'
What's wrong with "do, ni decidis, ke kiu ricevu la monon?", Terry? I would phrase it like that in real time without giving it a thought. It works, doesn't it?

sudanglo (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 12:08:14

Yes that's fine according to the emerging consensus, but my point was, that in that instance the solution with 'laŭ ni' doesn't work.

The baffling thing in all this is the absence in the Tekstaro of support (as far as I have searched) for any particular solution, and certainly not for the consensus X-is, ke kiu

Yet it seems impossible to imagine that the problem hasn't cropped up in translation. This sort of question is clearly not limited to English - actually the Esperanto thread was launched by a Japanese speaker.

So what are we to conclude? That the four and a half million words of the Tekstaro do not cover adequately ordinary dialogue, or that the translations in the corpus have not been too faithful to the originals?

Incidentally, among the many variations proposed in the English and Esperanto threads, there are rich pickings for someone needing to represent the speech of a foreigner in the translation of a novel into Esperanto.

The discussion on this topic has relevance to another issue - whether it is legitimate to pose a question in Esperanto without a question word. Eg is it wrong to say Vi konas ŝin?. [The translator of the Maigret series clearly thought this was OK, giving many examples in the dialogues.]

The type of sentence under discussion is really two questions in one. What did he say + who is coming. But the consensus solution does not flag this, instead using a statement form to introduce itself. Actually, you don't know it is a question until you get well into the sentence (when you reach the 'kiu' ).

I think the consensus solution gives support to the idea that in Esperanto it can be legitimate to question without an explicit question flag.

Of course, if Esperanto permitted inversion as a question device the answer to the problem raised in this topic would be obvious - Kiu, diris li, venos? or Kiu venos, diris li?

sudanglo (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 12:34:27

I think the biggest problem with "Kiun li diris veni?" is that the tense only tells us when he said it (i.e., in the past). It doesn't tell us whether the event being attended is in the past, present, or future.
If this variation had usage support, this might not be too serious a problem. If extra precision were required you could always say Kiun li diris veninti/venonti?

You would be quite happy to say Kion li diris kunporti? without worrying about the time realtionship - ke ĝi estu kunportata/kunportita/kunportota.

tommjames (Prikaz profila) 24. siječnja 2013. 12:53:42

sudanglo:Eg is it wrong to say Vi konas ŝin?
IMO it's not wrong (though I would do it sparingly), if you can be reasonably sure this won't be interpreted as a statement rather than a question. In writing that shouldn't be an issue. When speaking, context or tone or voice could help to make it clear, though we should bear in mind that speakers may not interpret tonality in the same way.

PMEG's view on this is "Tiaj sen-ĉu-aj ĉu-demandoj estas akcepteblaj, kiam la tuta frazo estas draste mallongigita". I'm not quite sure I agree though, that a sen-ĉu-a phrase must be a "drasta mallongigo" in order to be acceptable.

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