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Esperanto collocations

de captainzhang, 2014-januaro-09

Mesaĝoj: 86

Lingvo: English

captainzhang (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-09 15:21:10

Hi,

I am a beginner of Esperanto, and think I, and others, would benefit greatly if we had some sort of reference to the 1000 or more most common collocations in Esperanto. Esperanto has existed for over 100 years so it must have, by now, developed a significant amount of fixed phrases/collocations.

Years ago I read a linguistic study concerning collocations and their relation to fluency, and the researchers found that second language learners that learned a lot of common phrases in their target language were more fluent because understanding chunks of language vs. having to think about every single word freed up their mental resources, reduced cognitive load (or something like that), for other tasks. So, for someone who is learning a language and wants to reach a decent level as efficiently as possible collocations are really important. They're also really important to sounding like a native as well.

If anyone knows of such a list or knows how to generate one using linguistic methods please let me know. Thank you.

Respectfully,

Nicholas aka captainzhang

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-09 15:36:36

I've never heard of such a thing for Esperanto (or for any other language, for that matter).

I think it is less important in Esperanto than in other languages because Esperanto is more flexible; there are fewer fixed expressions that require memorization, and it is totally acceptable to come up with something on the fly (whereas if I say in English "knock against the door" rather than "knock on the door", it is totally understandable but there's something that sounds "off" about it; this kind of situation is much rarer in Esperanto).

michaleo (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-09 20:47:36

From my personal experience I can attest that this is a good method, especially good for languages other than Esperanto where strict collocations exist. Erinja's example of knock on/at the door is good because the same idea of knocking can be expressed in many ways depending on a language which you use. But in Esperanto each form which is understandable is correct even if it could seem odd for you. Another example: in English you listen to something when in Polish you just "listen" something, similarly in Esperanto.
The good method is learning by heart whole correctly written sentences. For instance, if one word has a few meanings you could learn exemplary sentences in which the same word is used in different functions. It has such advantage that you automatically learn also characteristic forms which appear together. For example in English you can write a subject + suggest + gerund + (an object) or a subject + suggest + (that) + another subject + (should) + verb + (an object).
Moreover, to make your sentences more natural and logically linked you should also learn so called linking words like first of all, in spite of, to depend on, for example, moreover, however, therefore, thus, because of and many more.

whysea (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-09 21:48:13

Interesting idea, OP. While I agree with the posts so far saying that Esperanto has fewer strict phrasings (like erinja said, coming up with stuff on the spot is very common and acceptable with Esperanto), plus word order is so freeform, I think that nonetheless, more common phrasings for things do exist, simply because people tend to copy each other. While I'm not really qualified to create a "top 1000" list, I'll try making a list of things off the top of my head, to get the ball rolling...

Common phrase/collocation/compound word | Less commmon version (according to me) (not necessarily incorrect phrasing) | English meaning

Bonan tagon | Bontagon | Good day
Mi fartas bone | Mi bonfartas | I am well
tagiĝo, frua mateno | iĝo de tago, aŭroro, frumateno | dawn
ĝi okazos lundon | ĝi okazos je lundo, en lundo, ĉe lundo... | It will happen on monday
mi parolas esperante | mi parolas en esperanto | I am speaking in esperanto

I think the best thing to keep in mind with "proper" or more common Esperanto, is that creating words from commonplace/basic roots plus affixes is better practice than using less common root words and less affixes. For example, "biletejo" (root "ticket" + affix "place", which the vortaro defines as "ticket office" ) is probably going to sound better to more people than "giĉeto", a root which specfically means "ticket-window, booking office". Or, like I wrote above, the word "tagiĝo" (root "day" + affix "becoming" ) or "frua mateno" ("early morning" ) is much more commonly used than "aŭroro" which is the actual root word meaning "dawn".

captainzhang (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-09 23:51:52

Good points and posts so far, but I was really hoping that some linguistics major that happened to see my thread would have maybe done some research on the matter. Nevertheless, I appreciate the input so far and encourage more.

Woot, I did find some free collocation extraction software for windows, however, I don't use windows, and wine hardly ever helps much. I'll be getting a new computer within a couple months and will use the software to generate a list of Esperanto collocations. I will need to accumulate a lot of Esperanto texts for this purpose.

Does anyone have any suggestions on quality Esperanto literature that I can get in digital format? Gutenberg.org seems like a good place to start.

Thanks,

Nicholas

whysea (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-10 03:15:51

captainzhang:Good points and posts so far, but I was really hoping that some linguistics major that happened to see my thread would have maybe done some research on the matter. Nevertheless, I appreciate the input so far and encourage more.

Woot, I did find some free collocation extraction software for windows, however, I don't use windows, and wine hardly ever helps much. I'll be getting a new computer within a couple months and will use the software to generate a list of Esperanto collocations. I will need to accumulate a lot of Esperanto texts for this purpose.

Does anyone have any suggestions on quality Esperanto literature that I can get in digital format? Gutenberg.org seems like a good place to start.

Thanks,

Nicholas
Huh. I had no idea there was collocation extraction software...I use windows so I'm going to look this up now.

I think Libera Folio (http://www.liberafolio.org/) is a good place to look for contemporary Esperanto. You'll find lots of good literature on Gutenberg but some of the older stuff contains more atypical language, imo.

You may be able to find some PDFs and articles on Ipernity:
http://www.ipernity.com/search/blog?q=esperanto&am...
http://www.ipernity.com/search/doc?q=esperanto&...

Literature collections:
http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/ESP/literaturo.html
ELibrejo: http://i-espero.info/files/elibroj/ (PDFs)

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-10 03:25:48

whysea:Bonan tagon | Bontagon | Good day
Mi fartas bone | Mi bonfartas | I am well
tagiĝo, frua mateno | iĝo de tago, aŭroro, frumateno | dawn
ĝi okazos lundon | ĝi okazos je lundo, en lundo, ĉe lundo... | It will happen on monday
mi parolas esperante | mi parolas en esperanto | I am speaking in esperanto
Btw I disagree with you here. I've never in my life heard "bontagon". And "Mi parolas en Esperanto" is likely more common than "Mi parolas esperante". And "frumateno" (early morning) is a different idea than "dawn", they aren't really the same thing.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-10 11:00:11

CaptainZ, you have identified one of the ways in which Esperanto differs significantly from the national languages.

By the way, the learning of fixed turns of phrase probably does not only make it easier for foreign learners to speak like a native but also facilitates fluent speech for native speakers - permitting them to waffle on without actually saying much or thinking about what they are saying.

In Esperanto, you have to be more intellectually agile and think what you mean.

Whilst fixed turns of phrase are much rarer in Esperanto, the phenomenon of collocation is probably more clearly to be seen in the compounding of word elements, where certain compounds have through usage come to mean something more specific than a novice learner might expect. Thus aliĝilo means an enrolment form for a congress and an alternative expression of this idea such as enskriba dokumento might sound a little odd.

I suppose that the test of collocation at the phrase level is whether given a few words the competent speaker would have an increased expectation of what words come next (or in between).

If in English I said 'a nine days ..', most native speakers of English would expect the word 'wonder' to follow. Or if 'as ... as a pancake' was encountered the missing word would be expected to be 'flat'.

Its very difficult to think of examples of this sort of thing in Esperanto, where the missing element would be truly arbitrary rather than dictated by logic or meaning.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-10 11:08:25

Does anyone have any suggestions on quality Esperanto literature that I can get in digital format? Gutenberg.org seems like a good place to start.
If you want a corpus for your investigations then go to the Tekstaro

Oijos (Montri la profilon) 2014-januaro-10 13:26:32

Why the term isn't co-location?!

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