Hello,

I again have some questions I came upon during my study of Esperanto and I would be happy if you could me again

1st: I was told that you can intensify questions or add curiosity by adding a "then", e.g. "How then are you?", "What then did he cook?", "How then was your exam?" and so on.
Is there a way for doing so in Esperanto as well?

2nd: How do I read mixed fractions in Esperanto, eg. "1 1/2", "2 1/10", "10 1/3", and so on?
As for PMEG, it says that fraction are made with "on" but I could not find any further information for mixed fractions there.
I thought of "unu unu-duono", "du unu-dekono" and "dek unu-triono" but I am not sure.

3rd: You know those construction: "Yesterday I had my hair cut.", "Tomorrow he will have his carpet cleaned." or more colloquial "She got her car repaired." and so on. How do I say that something is done for me or anybody else in Esperanto?

Thank you for your help!

"How then are you?", "What then did he cook?", "How then was your exam?"

The 'then' goes at the end. How are you then? How was your exam then?

But in the case of the cooking example there is an ambiguity. What did he cook then? could be:

1. Do, kion li kuiris?
2. Kion li kuiris tiam?

How do I read mixed fractions in Esperanto, eg. "1 1/2", "2 1/10", "10 1/3"

unu kaj duono, du kaj dekono, dek kaj triono. Or, that's how I would say them.

"Yesterday I had my hair cut.", "Tomorrow he will have his carpet cleaned." or more colloquial "She got her car repaired."

In general you use 'ig'. the first and the third are:

Hieraŭ mi tondigis miajn harojn
Ŝi riparigis sian aŭton.

If you use tondi or ripari that would mean the subject did the cutting or the repairing.(of course you could say instead iri al la barbiro/frizisto)

The second example is more problematic, purigi is the word for to clean. So you either have to use the somewhat inelegant purigigi, or let context make it clear who's doing the cleaning, or find a work around like aranĝi la purigon

As regard my comment about ambiguity (above), you have to understand that in English the rhythm, the pattern of stressing and the melody, can completely alter the sense.

This is a major problem for foreign learners of English who speak romance languages. They rarely manage to get the rhythms of English right.

sudanglo:

"How then are you?", "What then did he cook?", "How then was your exam?"

The 'then' goes at the end. How are you then? How was your exam then?

But in the case of the cooking example there is an ambiguity. What did he cook then? could be:

1. Do, kion li kuiris?
2. Kion li kuiris tiam?

That's exactly what I thought when I wrote down this example. I guess if you raise your voice in the word "cook"
it means Do, kion li kuiris? and if you raise your voice in the word "then" it means Kion li kuiris tiam? or something like that.
Did I understand you right that "do" carries this intensification? If I said "So what did you cook?" it would be much clearer, would it not?

sudanglo:

"Yesterday I had my hair cut.", "Tomorrow he will have his carpet cleaned." or more colloquial "She got her car repaired."

In general you use 'ig'. the first and the third are:

Hieraŭ mi tondigis miajn harojn
Si riparigis sian aŭton.

If you use tondi or ripari that would mean the subject did the cutting or the repairing.(of course you could say instead iri al la barbiro/frizisto)

Ah, that makes sense. I got a page about the suffix "-ig" but I misunderstood this special usage, since the German translation of it indicates a kind of "to let" meaning also.

sudanglo:The second example is more problematic, purigi is the word for to clean. So you either have to use the somewhat inelegant purigigi, or let context make it clear who's doing the cleaning, or find a work around like arangi la purigon

After reading your previous explenation, I thought this might causes some problems in verbs derivated with "-ig".
Can I seperate an "-ig" of the verb "purigigi" and make it to an single verb "igi"?
I thought of "Morgaŭ li igos lian tapiŝo purigi." Hm, it rather sounds like "He will cause his carpet to become clean."

The pur- words routinely make my brain hurt. It always strikes me as strange that "to clean" is rendered by "purigi", even though I totally understand the reason for it. My instinct always tells me it should be "puri", even though it isn't, and I even get why it isn't. It just seems wrong (although to be clear to all beginners: it isn't wrong).

Just to be pedantic, for the beginners...

"Pura" means "clean".
Therefore, "puri" means "to be clean" rather than "to clean", if we are to follow the standard pattern.
Therefore, "Vi puras" means "You are clean" (intransitive) rather than "You clean (something)" (transitive).
Therefore, if you want to indicate that you are making something clean, as opposed to being clean, the -ig is required. So, "purigi" for "to clean".

For some reason, my brain doesn't want to hand this up automatically whenever I write (or think) about cleaning. It's go-to word for "to clean" is always "puri", and I always have to spend a few mental cycles correcting myself.

So, no real point here, other than to say that if you find yourself in the same boat as me, well... you aren't alone. And I've been doing this seven years, now.

It would be so much nicer (for me) if "puri" meant "to clean", and the adjective "clean" was rendered by "puriĝa". THAT makes sense to me.

But, of course, it doesn't work that way. Nice tune, but it isn't part of the musical.

Can I seperate an "-ig" of the verb "purigigi" and make it to an single verb "igi"?
I thought of "Morgaŭ li igos lian tapiŝon purigi.

Yes, 'igi' can be used as a stand-alone verb.

If you search the Tekstaro (corpus of selected Esperanto texts) you will see it has been used as such from the earliest days to the present.

So Mi igis mian amikinon purigi la tapiŝon means I got my girfiend to clean the carpet (literally make clean).

Theoretically, another solution to 'get the carpet cleaned' (not mentioning who) is something along the line 'Ni devas igi la tapiŝon purigita' or 'Ni devas igi la purigon de la tapiŝo'.

I think that in practice most Esperantists are likely to be quite happy using purigi without explicitly indicating that they will be getting a man in rather than sullying their fingers - saying perhaps necesas purigi la tapiŝon, or oni devus purigi la tapiŝon.

In the end, there are many ways you can work around this. Oni devas porti la tapiŝon ĉe la purigiston; la tapiŝo bezonas purigon; mi telefonos pri la purigo de la tapiŝo, and so on.

OR, you can use purigigi. Though personally I find the double ig clumsy.

Riot, I'm curious as to why you have a hang-up about purigi. Does this apply also to words like bonigi (improve) and grandigi (enlarge)?

I know that one can sometimes have blind-spots about the meanings of particular words. No matter how many times I look up the meaning of 'escarpment', I never seem to be able to get the meaning to stick in my head.

sudanglo:Riot, I'm curious as to why you have a hang-up about purigi. Does this apply also to words like bonigi (improve) and grandigi (enlarge)?

I know that one can sometimes have blind-spots about the meanings of particular words. No matter how many times I look up the meaning of 'escarpment', I never seem to be able to get the meaning to stick in my head.

No, I have no trouble with either of those. I think it is just a mental block. I think "to clean" and I immediately think "puri" and then immediately think "no, that's not right - what's right? Purigi? Puriĝi?... Purigi." Every freaking time. It's not Esperanto's fault. It's all me. Some neural route that just does not want to get built.

It's the same problem I had with the English word "occasion". I am an absolutely excellent speller, and rarely ever make a mistake or need to look a word up (for its spelling), but for literally decades I could not spell the word "occasion" for the life of me. I had to look it up every single time. I have no idea why, other than that the ratio of c's to s's just seemed wrong even when I was looking directly at it printed in the dictionary. "Really, two c's and one s? man, that just doesn't seem... bah, alright." I am glad to report that I finally seem to have broken through that phase, however, and can now spell it properly without having to concentrate, same as every other word I know. So, give "purigi" and me forty years, and we'll probably come to terms, too.

sudanglo:OR, you can use purigigi. Though personally I find the double ig clumsy.

My personal feeling - purely an opinion, mind you - is that no word should ever end in -igigi unless you're trying to be funny.

As you say, it's clumsy. I'd add hideous, and confusing. Sure, people can work it out, but why make them?

But. It's not a rule. So, just don't do it. For the children. Or, you know, whatever plea that will make you not do it.

@RiotNrrd: Perhaps this explanation would help.

Donald J. Harlow:Herewith follows a short and somewhat idiosyncratic discussion of the theory of Esperanto word-formation.

Zamenhof invented the Esperanto word-formation system without bothering to attempt to justify it except by pointing out that ... it works! Couturat, the prime mover behind the Ido conspiracy, felt that this was a major failing in the Esperanto word-formation system -- that it had no supporting theory to justify it. (Though Ido's derivational system did not work as well in practice as Esperanto's, it at least had a theory...)

To answer Couturat, René de Saussure, a member of the Lingva Komitato, began to put together a theoretical basis for the Esperanto word- formation system. His basic theory was expanded by Kálmán Kalocsay, included by Kalocsay and Gaston Waringhien in their Plena Gramatiko de Esperanto, and eventually adopted by the Academy of Esperanto.

The basic idea behind this theory is that every root in Esperanto -- the root, not the word, is the basic unit of Esperanto -- has an inherent grammatical quality. For example, the root ŝton' (stone) is a noun, the root kur' (run) is a verb, and the root ruĝ' (red) is an adjective. Grammatical endings of -O, -I and -A respectively are therefore redundant.

Not all Esperanto speakers were particularly happy with this essential "westernizing" of the word-formation system; some (particularly Kalocsay's countryman István Szerdahélyi) continued to insist that, in fact, roots have no grammatical category whatsoever.

As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. It is possible to categorize Esperanto roots in a number of ways, but one of these is into the categories of object roots (ŝton' ), action roots (kur' ) and attribute roots (ruĝ' ). This leaves some questions floating around -- for instance, where do we put roots that describe states, and which might either fall into the attribute category or be linked together, as we often do in the west, with actions? For the nonce, let's leave them hanging loose -- something we could not do with the rather rigid grammatical-category description.

Still, there seems to be a nice correlation between our three categories and the three grammatical categories of the Academy, and we can continue to speak, if we wish, of noun roots, verb roots and adjective roots -- remembering, however, that we are not talking of word categories but simply using a shorthand for how certain roots describe the universe. Don't forget, however, that all of these things can be nouns (that's how we're describing them -- as objects, actions, attributes!), verbs or adjectives -- no grammatical endings are redundant, they are necessary to determine in what grammatical function the root is being used.