Hello all,

Just a quick question about the use of adverbs. It seems that in Esperanto, as in English, an adverb can be used to modify not only a verb but also adjectives etc.

So, as I was reading up on this a little bit, I came upon the Grammar questions page (http://en.lernu.net/lernado/gramatiko/demandoj/a-e...), which had a couple examples that I thought were sort of unusual.

The example I am referring to is the phrase:

En la ĉambro estas varme. - It is warm in the room. (lit. "In the room is warmly" )

In general, this construction seems a little odd to me, but the most difficult part is varme used in conjunction with estas. Using the adjective varma seems much more intuitive to me here. I'm not sure I understand what varme is modifying. Is it the verb estas? If so, it would seem like it is describing the existence of the implied "it" adverbially, i.e., the room exists in a warm manner. The very concept seems strange, especially because this clause is void of a definite subject. Is this the idea? Would this be the norm in typical Esperanto expression?

I'm sure there is some concept here I am missing, but I just can't figure it out.

Any thoughts or explanations?

Thanks.

It is modifying the "estas" or "is" because you’re talking about the manner in which the room is in, not describing the room? I'm not sure if that helps. Another way to look at it is like this

Estas varme, en la ĉambro
It is warm, in the room

Since "Estas" doesn’t have a subject we modify it with an adverb

I probably described that terribly, but that’s my way of thinking about it.

In English we say

It is warm.

However, in Esperanto we do not[1]. The "it" in the above sentence is considered superfluous, and we always drop it.

However, that leaves us with a problem. Adjectives MUST modify nouns[2], but there are none in the resulting sentence to modify (not even implied ones). If we drop the noun "it", all we have is a verb to work with. So we have to resort to an adverb, the "verb modifier".

Estas varme.

Alternatively, you could express the sentence as a single verb.

Varmas.

To a native English speaker, that may seem overly terse[3], but it is, in fact, a very common manner of expression in Esperanto. It's raining = Pluvas. It's cold = Malvarmas. It's good = Bonas. And so on.

En la ĉambro is a separate clause, which can be added to either of the aforementioned choices.

--------------------------
[1] And not just because all the words are different.
[2] It isn't just a good idea; it's the law.
[3] We appear to be a wordy bunch.

If you think about it in another way, the "it" in the English "It is warm" is also superfluous. It is not referring to any particular thing; it is not replacing a noun, like pronouns usually replace nouns (The dog is brown. It is brown. it = the dog). We only say "it" in English because English doesn't accept verbs with no subject, so we put in a dummy subject as a placeholder.

Esperanto accepts verbs with no object, so no fake placeholder subject is necessary, and the grammar is affected by that too, since obviously you no longer have a noun or a pronoun to describe.

I see now. I understand what you're all saying now.

Thanks everyone for your input. All the comments were very helpful.