Bruso:

orthohawk:We call those "pattern drills" in the old aural-oral approach to learning languages. The method is considered passe nowadays but in a language like E-o it can be quite useful.

I think it's too easy to rattle off pattern drills automatically and mindlessly. Probably why they've become passé.

yes, but if that's the goal (to be able to "rattle it off" automatically), they're very useful. Of course, it takes some work from the student as well (i.e. pay attention to what they're doing and not mindlessly). Maybe that's why they became passe?

It would be most interesting if you could find any examples in Esperanto which would count as an idiom, or fixed turn of phrase, or as a collocation, in which the meaning is not transparent from the elements.

The absence of these features from Esperanto has little to do with the relative youth of the language, but everything to do with the purpose of Esperanto - to be a relatively easy to learn language for adults, to be used between speakers of different mother tongues.

What would be the point of having phrases that logically could be correct Esperanto but make you sound ridiculous because that is not what experienced Esperantists would say?

As an earlier poster pointed out, in English you commit a murder, you don't do a murder, though you can do a bad thing. By the way, don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

There are so many ways in English for the foreign learner not to get it right. But what purpose would it serve to have Esperanto like English?

As I pointed out previously, in Esperanto, there is one area where the exact meaning may not be completely transparent from the meaning of individual elements and that is in the specificity of the meaning of certain compound words.

So you do have to learn that a lernejo is not a universitato, but the separate meanings or lern, ej and o do give you substantial guidance as to area of application of the word, and the general principle that compound words may have a more specific semantic value alerts you not to use them as though they were no more than the elements.

sudanglo:It would be most interesting if you could find any examples in Esperanto which would count as an idiom, or fixed turn of phrase, or as a collocation, in which the meaning is not transparent from the elements.

The absence of these features from Esperanto has little to do with the relative youth of the language, but everything to do with the purpose of Esperanto - to be a relatively easy to learn language for adults, to be used between speakers of different mother tongues.

What would be the point of having phrases that logically could be correct Esperanto but make you sound ridiculous because that is not what experienced Esperantists would say?

As an earlier poster pointed out, in English you commit a murder, you don't do a murder, though you can do a bad thing. By the way, don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

There are so many ways in English for the foreign learner not to get it right. But what purpose would it serve to have Esperanto like English?

As I pointed out previously, in Esperanto, there is one area where the exact meaning may not be completely transparent from the meaning of individual elements and that is in the specificity of the meaning of certain compound words.

So you do have to learn that a lernejo is not a universitato, but the separate meanings or lern, ej and o do give you substantial guidance as to area of application of the word, and the general principle that compound words may have a more specific semantic value alerts you not to use them as though they were no more than the elements.

I'll respond to these statements and questions in turn:

I will search for them with the appropriate software later this month or early next month.

You say the absence of these features, but that's an assumption because I have yet to see proof that those features are absent, and I don't count anecdotal evidence.

It has nothing to do with purpose or usefulness for Esperanto, but seems to be an inevitable feature of any well developed language. In other words, it may be an unavoidable consequence of language, meaning that over time they will become more and more common in Esperanto regardless of how the individual Esperanto speaker feels about them.

Once again, it's not a matter of purpose but of the natural progression of language, most probably unavoidable.

Again I'm not claiming that this or that is good or bad or useful or not useful, I'm only searching for the truth, what is and is not. Would a great deal of collocations work against some of Esperanto's goals as an easy-to-learn auxiliary language? Yes, it would make it more difficult, but that may be unavoidable with language.

Thanks again for everyone's views,

Nicholas, A seeker of truth

Bruso:I think it's too easy to rattle off pattern drills automatically and mindlessly. Probably why they've become passé.

I think it depends on how well the pattern drill was written. If all you have to do is substitute one word, then it's too easy. But a well-done pattern drill isn't easy or mindless. I say this as someone who has just helped my boyfriend through the 10-lesson course in the Richardson book, which definitely used pattern drills; he read off the answers and I didn't find those particular drills to be easy or mindless. You definitely had to think about the meaning to get the right answer, in most cases, and correctly thing about more than one factor to transform the information you are given into a correct sentence, even though they all followed the same pattern.

Of course. Nicholas, if you can find the evidence that there are collocations (or idioms, or fixed turns of phrase) in Esperanto, such as there are in the national languages, then I shall change my opinion.

However, I think you have made the linguists error - namely that because certain features are common in the national languages, they must be present in an 'artefarita' language, or designed language, that is actually spoken.

There are two factors which prevent the higgledy-piggledy mess of historic baggage, characteristic of the national languages, arising in Esperanto.

The first is that once you have complete regularity any exception stands out like a sore thumb. The second is the culture of the community of Esperanto-speakers.

In that culture any disordered development in the language is actively resisted, considered to be a bad thing, and clarity in communication is a good thing. And that comes from the raison d'être of Esperanto.

Admin: off-topic comment deleted to avoid derailing this thread. If you want to discuss that topic, please open a new thread.

PS. you cannot underestimate the power of group or social norms in determining behaviour. If something is not the done thing people tend not to do it. Language is a social thing. Meaning depends of agreement within the group.

Admin: You have previously taken another thread far off topic with this topic and I'm not allowing it to happen here. If you seriously think these topics are linked, then start a new thread about that. Further posts in this thread on that topic will be deleted without explanation, even if they contain other information relevant to the thread. Open a new topic of you want to talk about it.

Collocations does not mean unpredictable idioms. It simply means that any given word will be used more often in the presence of certain other words than not.

Manĝi will occur more often with nouns referring to food than with nouns referring to vehicles, matenon is quite often found near bonan, "mi ne scias" probably occurs more often than "mi ne fandiĝas."

For example here are some of the most frequent two-word collocations involving the word "frequent" in written English:

more frequent, less frequent, become frequent, frequent among, require frequent, report frequent, increasingly frequent, frequent contributor, frequent flier, frequent visitor

Really, collocations are not a cause for alarm! It would be great to have some surveys of Esperanto collocations done and to think about ways the information might help students achieve fluency.

Collocations does not mean unpredictable idioms. It simply means that any given word will be used more often in the presence of certain other words than not.

Manĝi will occur more often with nouns referring to food than with nouns referring to vehicles

Oh, if collocations just means statistical association, then of course there will be collocations in Esperanto.

I assumed that what was being referred to was conjunctions that a learner would not expect on the basis of the nature of the world and the meanings of the elements.

Such predictable collocations do not have to separately learnt. Any adult learner will come to Esperanto with the relevant expectations already established.

According to the Tekstaro, statistically the most common qualifier of 'ofta' (frequent) is 'mal'. Does knowing this facilate language acquisition? Or is it more productive to learn the meaning of 'mal' and then apply it logically, not just to 'ofta, but all over the place.

As I said, let the evidence speak for itself. If there are collocations which are not transparent, that are surprising for the learner, then let's see some examples. And if a collocation based approach to learning Esperanto has some merit then all well and good.

sudanglo:
As I said, let the evidence speak for itself. If there are collocations which are not transparent, that are surprising for the learner, then let's see some examples. And if a collocation based approach to learning Esperanto has some merit then all well and good.

Are these examples? I got these from the vocabulary listings for "Gerda Malaperis":

tio ne gravas - that doesn't matter
ne tio gravas - that is not the thing that matters

ne tute - not quite
tute ne - not at all

Another pair I saw consisted of single words, but an agglutinative word and a compound word, so maybe it counts as a collocation:

Dormejo - dormitory
Dormoĉambro - bedroom

(As I recall, the old Teach Yourself Esperanto gave those two as both meaning "bedroom".)

Are the differences between the above pairs supposed to be transparent? Are the differences just Sinjoro Piron's personal opinion?

Bruso:

sudanglo:
As I said, let the evidence speak for itself. If there are collocations which are not transparent, that are surprising for the learner, then let's see some examples. And if a collocation based approach to learning Esperanto has some merit then all well and good.

Are these examples? I got these from the vocabulary listings for "Gerda Malaperis":

tio ne gravas - that doesn't matter
ne tio gravas - that is not the thing that matters

ne tute - not quite
tute ne - not at all

Another pair I saw consisted of single words, but an agglutinative word and a compound word, so maybe it counts as a collocation:

Dormejo - dormitory
Dormoĉambro - bedroom

(As I recall, the old Teach Yourself Esperanto gave those two as both meaning "bedroom".)

Are the differences between the above pairs supposed to be transparent? Are the differences just Sinjoro Piron's personal opinion?

I'd say that those examples with "ne" are just showing how its location in the sentence does affect the meaning. "Ne tute" is more like "not entirely", while "tute ne" is "entirely not". The word order change has the same implications as it does in English.

"Tio ne gravas" is "that is not important", while "ne tio gravas" could be translated as "not that matters", which I'd English-ize as "it is not that which is important".

I would say dormitory is close to being an example of a fixed expression, but when I'm reading I tend to use the general idea, so:
"dormejo" - "place of/for sleep"
"dormoĉambro" - "sleep room"

It is words whose Esperanto definitions would be unintuitive that you have to watch out for. The "-um-" words are the most noticeable.