A very simple way of looking at the choice between -ata and -ita is not to consider not what exactly the meaning is of one form, but to consider whether the other form does not express one's meaning.

La sono de rompita ligno is clearly not right. As wood that has been broken no longer makes a noise

This obviates puzzling over whether la sono de rompata ligno expresses repetition or duration, or that the breaking has extension in some other way.

La sono de la nomo de la homo amita kaj perdita ekpikis la vundon de ŝia koro (Z)

Now here amata might conjure the idea of the man currently loved (but lost) rather than the idea of a lost love in the past.

Tempo, it may be that in the early 1900's there was less clarity about the proper usage of -ata and -ita. Or it may be that the meaning of certain verbs has shifted. Whether -ata or -ita is appropriate does depend on what reality the verb concerned relates to.

At the end of the day plenumiĝo versus plenumiteco seems a useful guide.

sudanglo:A very simple way of looking at the choice between -ata and -ita is not to consider not what exactly the meaning is of one form, but to consider whether the other form does not express one's meaning.

La sono de rompita ligno is clearly not right. As wood that has been broken no longer makes a noise

This obviates puzzling over whether la sono de rompata ligno expresses repetition or duration, or that the breaking has extension in some other way.

La sono de la nomo de la homo amita kaj perdita ekpikis la vundon de ŝia koro (Z)

Now here amata might conjure the idea of the man currently loved (but lost) rather than the idea of a lost love in the past.

Tempo, it may be that in the early 1900's there was less clarity about the proper usage of -ata and -ita. Or it may be that the meaning of certain verbs has shifted. Whether -ata or -ita is appropriate does depend on what reality the verb concerned relates to.

At the end of the day plenumiĝo versus plenumiteco seems a useful guide.

Sudanglo-Forgive my lack of expertise in Esperanto, but what is the exact difference between plenumiĝo and plenumiteco? I presume that the first one means 'having become' but you may care to explain this to me. As regards determining what the meaning is of one form can indeed not be taken in isolation. What you say here makes sense to me. In the end, the writer expresses a particular meaning in such a way that it will be understood by the reader.

sudanglo:La sono de rompita ligno is clearly not right. As wood that has been broken no longer makes a noise

To be really on the sure side one should say "is normally not right", because material science indeed presents instances of delayed relaxation. Se oni atente auxskultas cxe stako de jxus hakitaj lignetoj, oni eble povas auxdi la sonon de rompita ligno. If you listen attentively with your ear close to a pile of freshly cut firewood twigs, you might hear the sound of wood after it has been broken.

nornen:What is in Finnish the difference between "mi depresas" and "mi estas depresanta"? Is it a difference in aspect/aktionsart as in English (progressive/durative/static/gnomic/etc)?

"Mi depresas" describes an action. "Mi estas depresanta" describes a property of the subject. It is like "Mi estas depreseca", "mi estas depresema", "mi estas depresanta homo". I think for some verbs it may not be very far from the English progressive, but I am not sure.

nornen:Does Finnish have a passive voice? If yes, is it formed by a copula + passive participle or is it a simple form of the verb?

The passive is expressed by an infix between the verbal root and the affixes for time and numerus/person.

nornen:Do you have two passives to distinguish between "static passive" (Zustandspassiv; German: Die Tür ist geschlossen.) and "progressive passive" (Vorgangspassiv; German: Die Tür wird geschlossen)?

German is complicated, because it uses the auxiliary verb "sein" together with perfect participle to express perfect tense of some words, and the same construction to express some sort of passive. Perfect: "ist gegangen", Passive: "ist geschlossen". I am not sure I understand the whole system. It may be that when I learned Finnish and German at school, the two grammars were presented in a way to emphasise the similarities between them. Also some aspects of German were so similar to my our mother tongue, Swedish, that they were treated very briefly.

How I remember it:

Active: "ist gegangen" is the perfect form of the verb gehen: "gehen, ging, ist gegangen". The verb is intransitive, and cannot have a passive, so no other interpretation is possible.

Active: "hat geschlossen" is the perfect form of schliessen: "schliessen, schloss, hat geschlossen".

Passive: "wird geschlossen, wurde geschlossen, ist geschlossen worden"

Now I try to figure out how the Zustandspassiv fits into this system:

Should it be "ist geschlossen, war geschlossen, ist geschlossen worden" ?
The first two are like Swedish, but I think germans have a very strong tendency to put a "worden" after everything, even when Swedish and English don't. Swedish and English do not have the need to protect themselves against any confusion of the double use of the auxiliary verb "att vara" = "to be" = "sein" = "esti". It is never used for perfect in English and Swedish.
As I have written the last verb form, it is exactly like Vorgangspassiv. Saying instead "wurde geschlossen worden" appears strange to me.

Finnish has only one auxiliary verb, "esti", never "havi". It is used for perfect only. So, to your question:

"Static passive", Zustandspassiv; German: Die Tür ist geschlossen. Finnish uses auxiliary verb plus passive perfect participle, exactly as in English, Esperanto, German. "La pordo estas fermita".

"Progressive passive", Vorgangspassiv; German: Die Tür wird geschlossen. Finnish uses a simple verbform, which shows passivity as well as present tense. "La pordo fermatas".

I can't recall it being explicitly referred to any textbook on languages, but it occurs to me that a general principle relating meaning to form in languages may be that when there is limited choice of forms, as is often the case when it comes to grammar, the semantic space occupied by one form is dependent on the semantic space occupied by alternative forms.

To flesh that out: in English the speaker must choose for any verb between the simple form (eg smoke) and the continuous form (eg. smoking). (In Esperanto the speaker is confronted with choosing between -ata and -ita)

Course books in English for foreigners will provide explanations like say 'do you smoke' for habit and 'are you smoking' for action occurring.

The trouble with such typical course book explanations is that you can often provide usage which seems to contradict the explanation.

What I was struggling to express is the idea that the choice of a particular form may not always be so much an expression of the meaning of that particular form as an exclusion of the meaning of the alternative form.

To put it in simple terms, with regard to -ita and -ata, the choice may be dictated by -ata or -ita clearly not expressing the intended meaning, so you choose the other form.

And pedantry aside (pace Rugxdoma) la sono de rompita ligno is silence, so that's not the right choice.

Sometimes it is much more subtle. Consider these from the Tekstaro

Vidate de proksime, la konstruaĵoj estis imponegaj.
Tio kaŭzis mar-poluon je skalo neniam vidita en Eŭropo.

Rather than struggling for an explanation of why -ata is used instead of ita, it may be simpler to try the other form in the sentence and see if this seems to more readily capture the intended meaning.

I mentioned before the human capacity to abstract from relatively few examples,and it seems to me that the judgement over the choice between vidat and vidit here flows from some abstraction of the meaning difference from paradigmatic examples.

Nordzee, by contrasting plenumiĝo with plenumiteco, I was contrasting the transition (the process) with the outcome. If you don't like my condensed explanation, then a fuller account is given by the PIV definitions under -ata and -ita.

But trying to give foolproof abstract articulations of differences in meaning with regard to grammatical contrasts is not easy compared with intuiting the correct usage in specific cases.

And this doesn't just to apply in the case of Esperanto. You only have to browse in course books for English as a foreign language to come across poor explanations of the English verb forms.

I am not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps the pressure on the language to evolve appropriate abstract meta-descriptions is weak. (The linguists always seem to be floundering around with largely impenetrable jargon, the meaning of which may be different from one linguist to another.)

Such things can be more readily understood from examples. And the general population is quite happy to get on with saying what they mean without cross reference to some arcane articulation.

Perhaps when we have a better understanding of how the brain works, it will all become clear why we can easily choose the right grammatical form for our meaning, and why meta-description of language is so difficult.

sudanglo:Nordzee, by contrasting plenumiĝo with plenumiteco, I was contrasting the transition (the process) with the outcome. If you don't like my condensed explanation, then a fuller account is given by the PIV definitions under -ata and -ita.

But trying to give foolproof abstract articulations of differences in meaning with regard to grammatical contrasts is not easy compared with intuiting the correct usage in specific cases.

And this doesn't just to apply in the case of Esperanto. You only have to browse in course books for English as a foreign language to come across poor explanations of the English verb forms.

I am not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps the pressure on the language to evolve appropriate abstract meta-descriptions is weak. (The linguists always seem to be floundering around with largely impenetrable jargon, the meaning of which may be different from one linguist to another.)

Such things can be more readily understood from examples. And the general population is quite happy to get on with saying what they mean without cross reference to some arcane articulation.

Perhaps when we have a better understanding of how the brain works, it will all become clear why we can easily choose the right grammatical form for our meaning, and why meta-description of language is so difficult.

Sudanglo, the more I read up about this, the more I understand. It has been and still is great to see so many entries about this subject.