Ku rupapuro rw'ibirimwo
Kwishura

No -n

ca, kivuye

Ubutumwa 65

ururimi: English

johmue (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 5 Mukakaro 2013 05:10:36

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 (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 5 Mukakaro 2013 07:44:48

johmue:What's your point?
Well, it's in the last paragraph of that same post.

johmue (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 5 Mukakaro 2013 08:03:13

Roberto12:
johmue:What's your point?
Well, it's in the last paragraph of that same post.
And I still say: Obvious. What's your point?

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 (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 5 Mukakaro 2013 09:40:21

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.

johmue (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 5 Mukakaro 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 (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 6 Mukakaro 2013 18:47:01

Does there excists some 'pronouncation procedure' to give that accusative N-ending some more volume? During Esperanto events embedded inside noisy environment I often feel very stressed to grasp the spoken word which comes with accusative N-marker. Especially with speakers who don't use SVO order at their native language often our conversation goes into double dutch conversation. To save the situation it goes that crazy way that I try to assume the accusative N-marker according counterparts jawbone movement. But that only well works for 'ajn' and 'ojn' word endings which mostly can be seen 'pli malpli'(1) during regarding counterparts pronouncation. Spoken accusative N-markers of singular words I mostly don't understand. Its not that big matter because often I try to understand out of the context and try to clarify with help of additional questions. That communication confusion mostly give conversation some funny flavour I don't feel ashamed of. But recognition of spoken singular word N-markers remains difficult to me and if mental power decreases joy of conversation also decreases. I really would be happy to get that solved some way.

(1) How to express that in English?

pdenisowski (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 6 Mukakaro 2013 20:19:24

I always find it interesting/ironic when people say "let's just use a preposition instead of the accusative ending". In that case the only difference between a case ending and a preposition is it's position and whether it's (orthographically) attached to the word. There's no real difference in complexity between.

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 (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 6 Mukakaro 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 (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 6 Mukakaro 2013 22:43:32

evanamd:
spreecamper:How to express 'pli malpli' in English?
As far as I know, the expression "more or less" means the same thing.
Indeed. This is a fairly international turn of phrase - compare Spanish mas o menos, Russian boleje meneje, EO pli malpli.

pdenisowski (Kwerekana umwidondoro) 7 Mukakaro 2013 00:01:11

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

Amike,
Paul

Subira ku ntango