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Verb with two infinitives

من ras52, 27 سبتمبر، 2014

المشاركات: 8

لغة: English

ras52 (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 4:00:08 م

I'm doing a translation exercise that asks me to translate they prefer to break the branches and find the sweet cherries into Esperanto. I have translated this as ili preferas rompi la branĉojn kaj trovi la dolĉajn ĉerizojn, but the answer given has trovas instead of trovi. I chose to use the infinitive trovi because I wished preferas to apply to both rompi and trovi. Is my translation wrong? Or are both valid?

nornen (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 4:06:41 م

Both are distinct but valid. I would have used two infinitives too.

Fenris_kcf (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 4:34:23 م

Merely from the written version in English it is not possible to tell exactly what statement is expressed due to the "missing" conjugation.

sergejm (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 4:41:58 م

they prefer to break the branches and to find the sweet cherries
ili preferas rompi la branĉojn kaj trovi la dolĉajn ĉerizojn
I don't know English, do the sentence without second "to" can mean both "trovi" and "trovas".

ras52 (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 5:00:28 م

sergejm:they prefer to break the branches and to find the sweet cherries
ili preferas rompi la branĉojn kaj trovi la dolĉajn ĉerizojn
I don't know English, do the sentence without second "to" can mean both "trovi" and "trovas".
In English, with the second "to", it definitely means "trovi". But without the second "to" it is ambiguous. It could mean
they prefer to break branches and [they prefer to] find the sweet cherries
or it could mean
they prefer to break branches and [then they] find the sweet cherries.

What I wasn't sure about was whether it was okay in Esperanto to have one present tense verb serving two separate infinitives, e.g.
li ŝatas kuri kaj salti.
But from everyone's answers, it seems that's perfectly okay. So thanks, all.

bartlett22183 (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 5:01:14 م

As a native speaker of (General American) English I would parse the sentence as that "find" in this instance is an elliptical infinitive ("to" elided), so that "trovi" is the proper rendering. That to me makes the most sense.

ras52 (عرض الملف الشخصي) 27 سبتمبر، 2014 5:12:21 م

bartlett22183:As a native speaker of (General American) English I would parse the sentence as that "find" in this instance is an elliptical infinitive ("to" elided), so that "trovi" is the proper rendering. That to me makes the most sense.
I agree. Interestingly it's not ambiguous in English if the subject is singular instead of plural:
he prefers to break the branches and find the sweet cherries versus
he prefers to break the branches and finds the sweet cherries.

The first has an elliptical infinitive which the second does not.

sudanglo (عرض الملف الشخصي) 29 سبتمبر، 2014 11:30:54 ص

Is my translation wrong?
The 'right' answer is wrong.

Perhaps the analysis of the sentence to be translated should be they prefer to break the branches to (in order to) find the sweet cherries.

Then the best translation would be preferas rompi ... por trovi.

Or the sentence should be understood as break and find being one block, so to speak, like a single word.

The alternative analysis (with the trovi in the indicative) seems to me to require extra context or extra words.

Ili preferas rompi la branĉojn kaj tiel ili trovas ..

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