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Grammatical theories of Esperanto

de sudanglo, 2013-julio-17

Mesaĝoj: 42

Lingvo: English

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-17 09:26:37

Pick up a book on English grammar and you will find explanations which contradict those in other books.

Why should the situation be different in the case of Esperanto. Why must the grammarians of Esperanto not have got it wrong?

Fenris_kcf (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-17 10:07:49

Because the grammar of Esperanto was not derived from observation and empirism, but has been built and written down by a single person?

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-17 13:54:00

Fenris_kcf, I don't know why you would say that. Zamenhof never wrote down a detailed grammar of Esperanto, and indeed, the detailed rules of grammar were not set in the 16 rules, but derived based on texts that Zamenhof wrote.

But I reject the premise of the thread. I think that there is indeed disagreement among Esperanto grammar texts. I seem to recall, for example, that PMEG doesn't always agree with PAG.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-18 11:46:50

I had in mind not trivial differences in usage but more fundamental theories about the language.

I'm sure both PAG and PMEG agree for example that roots (not words) belong to a specific grammatical class for example or have a certain meaning. This seems to me quite plainly wrong, and contradicted by usage.

Normally it is usage which has to be accounted for by theory, not usage which has to be adapted to conform with theory.

Is Esperanto different?

PS why the various theories that may be found in English grammar books about the verb are unsatisfactory is precisely that they do not account for all uses of a specific form

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-18 15:24:28

sudanglo:Is Esperanto different?
It's different in many other regards from natural languages, so why not in this as well?

I think if the point is to keep Esperanto as straightforward as possible, then we need to adapt the usage to the rules, not the other way around. Otherwise irregularities will start being introduced, the rules will become more and more complex over time, and eventually we'll have something that is about as regular as English is.

bartlett22183 (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-18 19:23:30

sudanglo:I'm sure both PAG and PMEG agree for example that roots (not words) belong to a specific grammatical class for example or have a certain meaning. This seems to me quite plainly wrong, and contradicted by usage.
On the other hand, the concept that (at least most) roots pertain originally to a specific grammatical class is one of the very things that makes Esperanto most comprehensible to me. Otherwise, it seems like an anarchy. ridulo.gif

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-18 20:47:49

The root-class idea makes intuitive sense to me, and likely to the majority of other people. There are plenty of roots that are just unarguably adjectival, or substantival, or etc. I don't think it's wrong to group those words into classes of like words.

However, I also think that to say that any given root belongs to one and only one class is mistaken. I think there are roots that are at home equally in noun and verb space*, or adjective and adverb space*, or etc.*, which makes it difficult to slot those roots, leading to arguments and so on.

I think there just aren't enough classes, is what I think. I'm pretty sure there are at least a few roots that don't fit naturally into ANY of the commonly defined root-classes. That's cool. Maybe they fit into a class of roots like THAT. Let's be flexible. It isn't math.

Anyway, even if it's got some rough edges, the theory is too useful as an educational aid to throw away. It makes a lot of sense to a lot of people, and if that helps them speak properly most of the time, I don't have an issue with it.

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* I'm too lazy to think of any examples.

robbkvasnak (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-18 22:38:26

One of the problems with the statement "in other languages" is that most (native) English speakers refer to other Indo-European languages. Chinese, for example, as well as Turkish, is closer to the Esperanto concept of "radiko". In this respect, Esperanto is indeed international. I am not saying that Esperanto does not recognize parts-of-speech in regards to the radikoj, just that there is more of a tendency than for "words" in the Indo-European sense. The reason that usage may play a role is the preponderance of Indo-European speakers who use Esperanto. I truly hope that we will one day see Esperanto flourish in non-Indo-European language countries. I really wish that more Turks would use Esperanto.

Miland (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-19 07:21:15

I sympathise with Fenris_kcf. Esperanto was designed, and so I would expect real differences between the best grammars to be very few in number, e.g. whether po should be followed by an accusative (Jen Nia Mondo gives both alternatives).

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2013-julio-19 10:04:29

There are plenty of roots that are just unarguably adjectival, or substantival, or etc. I don't think it's wrong to group those words into classes of like words.
But roots aren't words (except for those roots like dum, la, kiel, hieraŭ etc that can be used without a grammatical finaĵo). Only words have defined meaning which can place them in a grammatical class.
However, I also think that to say that any given root belongs to one and only one class is mistaken. I think there are roots that are at home equally in noun and verb space*, or adjective and adverb space*, or etc.*,
I know what you are trying to say, but it is still couched in terms of the roots. The more accurate description seems to me to be that in any compound, a particular lexical root may stand for the meaning attached to the noun word or the verb word etc.

Postlumoj de veturilo (not the after-shining but the rear lights)
Prilumi (illuminate, derived from lumi to shine)

Senpova (powerless, derived from povo)
Vi povas fumi (you can smoke, derived from povi)

To be an accurate description of the language the 'theory' must not account for 95% of the cases but all the cases, otherwise the rule creates exceptions.

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