sudanglo:The only 'benefit' of the root class theory is that it gives the linguists something to pontificate about.

Explanations of how the grammar at hand works are “pontificating” only to the extent that explanations of the rules of the road in a drivers manual is pontificating. The only real pontificating I’ve seen on the subject has been here in this forum.

sudanglo:But provided that we ignore their 'ex cathedra' pronouncements, and happily pursue our pragmatic path, these particular cooks won't spoil our broth.

For someone who likes to portray every Esperanto grammarian from Zamenhoff on as part of an aristocratic cabal of delusional busybodies, you sure do use the royal we a lot in your posts.

For that matter, for all the time you seem to spend on the subject of Esperanto, you seem to have a lot of complaints about its grammar and lexicon. You might prefer Latino Sine Flexione, made by a man who shares your “the language governs best that governs least” sensibilities.

portray every Esperanto grammarian ...as part of an aristocratic cabal of delusional busybodies

Beautifully worded.

you sure do use the royal we a lot in your posts.

If that has ever happened please consider it as a Presidential 'mis-spoke'.

By 'we' and 'our', I hope I have always conveyed the meaning of me and the other plebs.

As I keep on saying, you can't take GK theory out on a date without her dragging along her fat sister Vort-efikaj Reguloj (see PAG for full account). And there's the rub.

sudanglo:As I keep on saying, you can't take GK theory out on a date with her dragging along her fat sister Vort-efikaj Reguloj (see PAG for full account). And there's the rub.

Amusing imagary, but it says nothing about the fitness for purpose of the root class theory. This isn't "the rub" at all, it's just your personal prejudice.

That root classes requires some additional explanations for the effect of flankelementoj in compounds is at most a minor blot on the theory. While I can agree that it does bolster (to some degree) the argument that words are the primary derivational unit, rather than roots, it is quite wrong to claim it undermines the whole concept of roots having class. Or, to put it another way, inherant semantic qualities that can be categorised grammatically.

I have to say I find all this hyperbole and exaggeration a bit dubious. I mean, to date we have heard of convoluted superstructures, tortuous analyses, intelectual acrobatics, labrynthine rulesets, impenetrable arcanities, latinate obscurities, pontificators, high priests, emperors, halucinations, dogmas, straightjackets, fictions, fantasies, falsity, incoherance...

All this for a fairly mundane, possibly sub-optimal wordbuilding theory in some artificial language, itself sub-optimal in a number of areas. What on earth is going on here?

I understand the appeal of being the person to come along and reveal to everybody the emperor as being naked, but all that balmy talk is not warranted and is frankly demeaning.

sudanglo:By 'we' and 'our', I hope I have always conveyed the meaning of me and the other plebs.

You have. But representing your personal views as the plebiscite of the linguistically downtrodden is obnoxiously self-aggrandizing as well as misleading. If you have to invent a posse of Robert Palmer girls at your back to lend weight to your claims, then I think even you must know those claims were never going to gain much traction except, perhaps, through incessant repetition ... which, I suppose, is why you’ve been doing exactly that.

tommjames:All this for a fairly mundane, possibly sub-optimal wordbuilding theory in some artificial language, itself sub-optimal in a number of areas. What on earth is going on here?

Thanks, TommJames, for the badly needed perspective.

I know that I have mentioned this before, but the "root class theory" is one of the most salient aspects of Esperanto that makes some of the most sense to me. Without it, I would be floundering. I find it one of the most admirable and, yes, desirable aspects of the language. It gets it right, as it were. I am sorry (so to speak), but I find objections to the root class theory to be baffling and, indeed, almost incomprehensible. If you don't like the root class theory, then learn and use some other auxiliary language. (I might suggest Interlingua, Occidental, Berendt, or Oz.)

That root classes requires some additional explanations for the effect of flankelementoj in compounds is at most a minor blot on the theory

Oh, it is much more than a minor blot, Tom. It actually undermines the cental tenet that the roots have a fixed grammatical class.

Tortuous, arcane, convoluted, don't seem to me to be excessive in describing the vortefikaj reguloj - which are all about how other elements in a word will change the 'fixed' grammatical class of a root.

In testing whether a theory is good, it doesn't matter how many times it fits the facts. It is the cases that don't fit the facts, that need to be examined.

The relevant facts here are 1. usage (actual meanings of compound words). 2. what the average spertulo would suppose the meaning of some compound (not previously encountered) to be.

sudanglo:Oh, it is much more than a minor blot, Tom. It actually undermines the cental tenet that the roots have a fixed grammatical class.

Tortuous, arcane, convoluted, don't seem to me to be excessive in describing the vortefikaj reguloj - which are all about how other elements in a word will change the 'fixed' grammatical class of a root.

I shudder to think what hyperbolic language you must bring to bear in the event that something more serious ever happens in your life.

But, for the benefit of the people watching at home, let’s look at the torturous arcana you keep railing against:

PAG:En vortkunmetado la ĉefa vorto staras en la fino kaj fiksas la gramatikan vortkarakteron kaj la ĉefan sencon de la kunmetita vorto. Ĝi estas la ĉefelemento. La antaŭaj elementoj servas nur por karakterizo de la ĉefelemento, tiuj estas la flankelementoj ...

La finaĵoj, se ili estas pleonasmaj, estas neglekteblaj el la vidpunkto de la vortkunmeto, do tiaokaze la ĉefelemento estas la radiko antaŭfinaĵa. Sed la finaĵoj proprafunkciaj estas rigardataj kiel memstaraj vortoj, do la proprafunkcia finaĵo mem estas la ĉefelemento, kaj la antaŭfinaĵa radiko estas nur flankelemento ...

La ĉefelemento fiksas per sia gramatika karaktero ne nur la sencon de la vorto, sed ankaŭ la gramatikan karakteron de la flankelementoj. Ĝi do efikas sur ilin, povante al ili doni tian vortkarakteron, kian, per sia radikkaraktero, ili ne havas.

Esplorante ĉi-rilate la Esperantan lingvouzon, ni povas el ĝi tiri la jenajn regulojn:

I. Substantiva ĉefelemento substantivigas la antaŭan flankelementon.
II. Adjektiva ĉefelemento substantivigs la antaŭan flankelementon.
III. Verba ĉefelemento povas efiki al sia flankelemento dumaniere
(a) per adverbigo
(b) per adjektivigo, farante ĝin, laŭ la senco, sia predikata adjektivo.

Note that the PAG distinguishes between vortkaraktero and radikkaraktero, that is, the part of speech of complete (compound) words and the part of speech of roots. One can easily change the part of speech of words — that’s the whole point of word-formation; one does not change the part of speech of roots, as you maintain.

Example: far- is a verbal root. I can add -o, which makes the compound (fari)o, or “ago de fari”. The part of speech for far- remains the same; all I did was incorporate it into the compound far'o.

(By the way, there are more details for the morbidly curious — since the number of pages spent on the subject is something else Sudanglo has an issue with — but that’s why it’s called the Plena analiza gramatiko and not the Ioma analiza gramatiko.)

sudanglo:In testing whether a theory is good, it doesn't matter how many times it fits the facts. It is the cases that don't fit the facts, that need to be examined.

Here are some of your recent examples of the system failing:

[list=1]
senpova. Head word is -a, which nominalizes the modifiers, so (sen povo)a. Povo is itself a compound word, naming the action of pov-, which remains verbal.
flor-. A nominal root, so flori is (floro)i, that is agi flore or esti flora — in both cases, “to flower”. The adjective flora is (floro)a, which can only mean “floral”, not because it’s more convenient for it to mean that, as you suggested — certainly it wouldn’t be convenient if I wanted to talk about blooming — but because flor- is nominal, not verbal. “Pertaining to blooming” would be florada.
vestejo. Vest- is a nominal root. One can make a verbal compound (vesto)i “agi veste”, i.e. “to dress”, but again, that only changes the part of speech for the combined word, not the root. A vestejo, then, can only be a place where one keeps or leaves clothes; it is not, when the need arises, a dressing room, for which one might say vestadejo.
korekt-. Like it or not, this is a verbal root in Esperanto, whatever it might be in other languages, so korekta is really (korekti)a, which can mean “corrective” or “pertaining to correcting”, but not “correct”. For that one has to use ĝusta or senerara.[/list]You might not like the way the system works — Lord knows I have my own issues with it — but in every one of your examples, it’s working as intended.

sudanglo:The relevant facts here are 1. usage (actual meanings of compound words). 2. what the average spertulo would suppose the meaning of some compound (not previously encountered) to be.

I’ve suggested this before, but I’ll say it again: You really should stop speaking on behalf of the average spertulo.

In any case, whether or not you like Esperanto’s system of word-formation doesn’t matter; it’s the system that’s been taught in every grammar book I’ve seen since at least 1903, and consequently it’s the system the “average spertulo” knows. Pretending that it only exists in the rarified laboratories of ivory tower grammarians bent on baffling the tiny population of Esperantists is just silly, and if it’s really that “tortuous”, “arcane”, and “convoluted” for you, then, by all means, leave Esperantio’s blighted hellscape for the sunny shores of anywhere else. Yeesh.

morfran:so korekta is really (korekti)a, which can mean “corrective” or “pertaining to correcting”, but not “correct”. For that one has to use ĝusta or senerara.

I agreed with everything you said morfran, and your explanations are very clear and useful, but the part above I must take issue with. Korekta may well be better read as "corrective", which would be more in line with the usual wordbuilding logic in Esperanto, and by extension, the root-class theory, but I think it's not correct to say korekta cannot mean "correct". The reason I say this is that it simply does have that meaning, as something of a historically accepted "exception", if you will.

"Korekta" comes in for a bad rap but it's by no means the only adjective with a questionable meaning. Komplika for example is "complex", not necessarily "related to the act of complication". Veka is not necessarily "related to the act of awakening" but simply "awake". Falsa is "false", not "falsifying". Fuŝa is "bungled", not "bungling". Fiksa is "fixed", not "fixing".

So if we're going to go on the offensive about korekta then we need to be consistent about it and haul the other examples into question. PMEG did just that in a recent U-turn but for me that's a step too far into the prescriptivist landscape. I sympathise with the motive, which is to bring more logical consistency to the language, but there's a difference between evitinda and malĝusta. The former judgement is justified in my view, though I don't necessarily agree with it. The latter judgement is just as it says: wrong.

The radikkaraktero doesn't necessarily pull in the vortefikaj reguloj. While the former is indispensable for the understanding of the language, the latter is an unnecessesary invention of PAG.
I wrote about it in my diploma thesis, page 28s.