Missatges: 65
Llengua: English
johmue (Mostra el perfil) 5 de juliol de 2013 5.10.36
Roberto12:It's true that the accusative, in principle, takes away the ambiguity surrounding who's "kiel reĝo", but you can create phrases that are similarly ambiguous with a prepositional phrase, where the N suffix can't help.Obviously. What's your point?
Roberto12 (Mostra el perfil) 5 de juliol de 2013 7.44.48
johmue:What's your point?Well, it's in the last paragraph of that same post.
johmue (Mostra el perfil) 5 de juliol de 2013 8.03.13
Roberto12:And I still say: Obvious. What's your point?johmue:What's your point?Well, it's in the last paragraph of that same post.
To me its pointless to say, that a tool, that is generally useful but does not help in some cases, should be abolished. The accusative is helpful in many cases for disambiguation. The fact that it doesn't help in other cases, is irrelevant.
Roberto12 (Mostra el perfil) 5 de juliol de 2013 9.40.21
johmue (Mostra el perfil) 5 de juliol de 2013 10.13.43
Roberto12:I'm struggling to think of things to say that haven't been said a thousand times before. Maybe we should all agree to stop talking about the "old chestnuts" of Esperanto, except in direct response to komencantoj questions.That's what I meant when I said, that this discussion is tiresome.
lagtendisto (Mostra el perfil) 6 de juliol de 2013 18.47.01
(1) How to express that in English?
pdenisowski (Mostra el perfil) 6 de juliol de 2013 20.19.24
Mi havas libron
Mi havas na libro
Incidentally, it is widely accepted among historical linguists that post-postions (i.e. "prepositions" that come AFTER the word they modify) often develop into case endings.
Amike,
Paul
evanamd (Mostra el perfil) 6 de juliol de 2013 21.28.16
pdenisowski:I always find it interesting/ironic when people say "let's just use a preposition instead of the accusative ending".Isn't "na" supposed to be used only when you can't (logically) use the accusative ending? For example, "Mi legis na Gerda Malaperis." In that case, it's not an example of changing complexity, just preserving meaning.
spreecamper:How to express 'pli malpli' in English?As far as I know, the expression "more or less" means the same thing.
Tempodivalse (Mostra el perfil) 6 de juliol de 2013 22.43.32
evanamd:Indeed. This is a fairly international turn of phrase - compare Spanish mas o menos, Russian boleje meneje, EO pli malpli.
spreecamper:How to express 'pli malpli' in English?As far as I know, the expression "more or less" means the same thing.
pdenisowski (Mostra el perfil) 7 de juliol de 2013 0.01.11
evanamd:Isn't "na" supposed to be used only when you can't (logically) use the accusative ending? For example, "Mi legis na Gerda Malaperis." In that case, it's not an example of changing complexity, just preserving meaning.In that case, I would simply say "Mi legis Gerda Malaperis" If it were really important to mark the case, you could say "Mi legis la libron 'Gerda Malaperis'".
Note too that in this particular example there's no ambiguity because the only other noun in this sentence (mi) does NOT have the accusative ending. For example :
(SAT = Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda)
Mi kontaktis SAT
SAT kontaktis mi
SAT mi kontaktis
etc.
are the same (I contacted SAT). If SAT contacted me, I could say
SAT kontaktis min
Min kontaktis SAT
SAT min kontaktis
etc.
[Saying "Mi kontaktis SAT-on" seems silly to me]
So I still don't see a use case (no pun intended) for "na" or some similar "accusative marking preposition". Some langauges do have case-marking prepositions (e.g. Japanese を and に for direct and indirect object, which are technically postpositions ...), but my feeling is Esperanto does fine without them
![ridulo.gif](/images/smileys/ridulo.gif)
Amike,
Paul