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The word Estas - Boring Grammar Question

de Alkanadi, 2014-julio-15

Mesaĝoj: 6

Lingvo: English

Alkanadi (Montri la profilon) 2014-julio-15 07:46:52

Many languages don't have verbs such as "is" or "are". They are simply omited. It still makes sense. For example: instead of the saying "The car is red" would be "The car red". Or, instead of saying "We are leaving now", you can say "We leaving now". It still makes perfect sense but it sounds terrible.

People who learn English usually struggle with this because it is not natural for them. I know someone who says "I go Sri Lanka"

My question is: What advantage does Estas have in Esperanto? Is it nessasary?

Fenris_kcf (Montri la profilon) 2014-julio-15 08:17:18

Because it possible to turn any attribute into a verb, omitting an explicit form of "esti" is possible in many cases, e.g. "La aŭto estas ruĝa." ~ "La aŭto ruĝas.".

My personal opninion is that some form of "to be" belongs to a logical language.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2014-julio-15 09:24:57

it sounds terrible
Yes, and it would sound terrible if you omitted 'esti' in Esperanto. If I can think of a nice example where a confusion would arise if you left out the esti, I'll post it.

patrik (Montri la profilon) 2014-julio-15 13:16:21

I think "esti" is important because it expresses a fundamental concept in all of philosophy: being. To prove the point, I dare anyone to translate succinctly any single work of any of the existentialist philosophers, from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Sartre and (most especially) Heidegger, into Esperanto without any mention of "esti" in all its forms. Trust me, it's impossible.

Eltwish (Montri la profilon) 2014-julio-15 13:40:41

There's certainly no reason Esperanto needed to have the verb "esti", but it does serve several useful purposes. Having your copula be syntactically a verb gives you one convenient way to express your language's usual tenses and aspects in places other than verbal predicates. "Nia problemo morgaŭ estos manko da tempo," "la estonta reĝo naskiĝis," etc.

Granted, these are both in a sense only the most natural forms of expression because Espernato figures with having a verbal copula. As for why it does, I don't think there's much of an answer other than it's common in European languages, so Zamenhof wouldn't have likely considered making a language without one if he wanted it to be easy to learn and understand.

As others have pointed out, that esti is semantically null in cases such as simple present adjectival predicates, and sure enough it is often thus omitted. In other positions where it is nonetheless obligatory, such is syntax.

nornen (Montri la profilon) 2014-julio-15 16:37:03

Eltwish:There's certainly no reason Esperanto needed to have the verb "esti"
This is very true. Nevertheless, another design decision of Esperanto made "esti" necessary:

In Esperanto predicates must always be verbs. An adjective, adverb, noun or another part of speech (or phrases thereof) can never be a predicate. Having taken this decision (i.e. that all predicates must be verbs), as a consequence "esti" became necessary.

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Edit: The above statements refer to the semantically empty copula "esti" and not to the fully-fledged verb "esti" = "ekzisti".

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