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Accidental dropping of the accusative ending

de Tempodivalse, 2015-marto-24

Mesaĝoj: 22

Lingvo: English

Tempodivalse (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-24 20:31:36

I noticed that even proficient (even native) Esperantists will occasionally forget to add the accusative -n to a direct object in fast, spontaneous speech (or in fast typing, say on IRC). This appears to happen irrespective of the speaker's native language.

I find this curious. Speakers of other languages practically never fail to mark the object with a non-nominative case. The odds of a rusophone saying *Ja ne smotrel programma* are nil. However, in Esperanto, inadvertently dropping the accusative (among proficient speakers) seems to be rare but not unheard-of - you would obviously identify *Mi ne vidis la programo* as wrong, but might blurt it out anyway, without thinking.

I wonder how to explain this.

Is Esperanto's agglutinate -n to the existing ending, rather than changing the ending (programo - programon vs Russian programma - programmu) just a bit easier to forget?

Yet there is almost never a similar confusion with plurals, which follow the same scheme: programo - programoj (even though Russian programma - programmy). Maybe plurals are more "intuitive" (e.g., along the lines of a Universal Grammar) than cases?

Do speakers of languages with no plural (e.g. Chinese, Indonesian) forget to add -j to plurals in similar circumstances?

Elhana2 (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-25 02:23:35

The accusative case all but died in the Indo-European languages, so it's natural for speakers of Russian or English to omit it, as only remains of it have preserved in the former, and nothing has in the latter.

Tempodivalse (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-25 02:56:25

Elhana2:The accusative case all but died in the Indo-European languages, so it's natural for speakers of Russian or English to omit it, as only remains of it have preserved in the former, and nothing has in the latter.
The accusative is quite well-preserved in Russian, for both feminine and masculine-animate nouns, plus the entire complement of pronouns. I hardly call this "remains". The same is true of many other Slavic languages. Persian has a fairly consistent accusative marker, and modern Greek preserves a distinct accusative for masculine nouns and articles. (Plus Latin ...)

So I think we are mostly looking at the Germanic and Romance language families (minus German).

My question is why native speakers of languages with accusatives don't make obvious mistakes with those accusatives, yet when they speak in EO, they are not always completely immune to dropping the -n in fast spontaneous language use, even if they are quite proficient.

Elhana2 (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-25 03:23:06

Tempodivalse:The accusative is quite well-preserved in Russian, for both feminine and masculine-animate nouns, plus the entire complement of pronouns.
Nouns of neuter gender never had it.
Feminine nouns of 3rd declension do not have it.
Most of 2nd declension nouns do not have it too.

Pronouns are not nouns, and they preserve the oblique cases in English too.

If the speakers omit accusative marking, that means this category is redundant, and they use it in their own languages not out of necessity but out of habit.

Also, most people learned the English first, so they could possibly associate the lack of accusative with any foreign language.

Christa627 (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-25 04:23:19

I generally forget the accusative only when my train of thought is interrupted, for example if I have to look up a word in a dictionary in the middle of a sentence. If I'm tired and not paying attention, I might stick -n on any word that comes at the end of a sentence, or in some other place it doesn't belong; but this is more likely than omitting it.

TKNIGHT (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-30 17:46:54

Christa627:I generally forget the accusative only when my train of thought is interrupted, for example if I have to look up a word in a dictionary in the middle of a sentence. If I'm tired and not paying attention, I might stick -n on any word that comes at the end of a sentence, or in some other place it doesn't belong; but this is more likely than omitting it.
As a komecanto, and a literacy teacher, I have some thoughts on this. Because my interface with Esperanto has largely been textual, rather than spoken or heard, I rarely forget to include it when writing, and I don't even "see" it anymore when reading, even when the SVO default is broken. However, when I'm speaking it, I frequently replace it with a plural -j, without thinking. My teacher-training is telling me that this is a sound-based miscue, rather than a meaning or a visual, relating not to the intended meaning (which is preserved) or to the visual (because the overall form of the word is intact). The sound-based change is likely rooted in the speaker's knowledge that something needs to be changed, but in the "heat of the moment" the wrong affix is chosen, or forgotten altogether. In my case, replacing the -n's with -j's, the likely culprit is just the raw volume of exposure: I see them frequently, and often together.

TL;DR the brain recognizes the word, but not the circumstance in which to use the -n, because of linguistic processing interference or generalized misapplication.

kaŝperanto (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-30 18:46:04

Is there any collection of more objective evidence along these lines, or is this mostly a subjective conclusion? I would weight the number of omissions against the number of proper uses before drawing any conclusions.

I would also bring up how many native English speakers misuse who/whom in a similar way, and its use is at least closely related in function to that of the accusative.

Christa627:I generally forget the accusative only when my train of thought is interrupted, for example if I have to look up a word in a dictionary in the middle of a sentence. If I'm tired and not paying attention, I might stick -n on any word that comes at the end of a sentence, or in some other place it doesn't belong; but this is more likely than omitting it.
^^This, I tend to omit/wrongly add accusative endings when I am distracted and/or editing a sentence, and I add it much more than I omit it. I'd guess a fair share of the errors are from editing a sentence to use a preposition after the verb.

Rugxdoma (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-30 20:34:00

kaŝperanto: I'd guess a fair share of the errors are from editing a sentence to use a preposition after the verb.
I agree. When writing a text you tend to rearrange the words and change the structure of the sentences, and when you are busy moving or adding words you easily forget to fulfil the manouvre in all parts of the sentence.

se (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-31 00:22:30

Tempodivalse:
Do speakers of languages with no plural (e.g. Chinese, Indonesian) forget to add -j to plurals in similar circumstances?
I am the speaker of the mentioned two languages. These two languages do not have past tense stuff either, therefore, it is very difficult to remember the tenses. However, Esperanto is much easier compared to other languages in tenses as it is very much regular.

Language lover would not leave out thing, non language lover, like me, will often do it this way.

The first lesson is vital if it is taught properly. But if it is learning from here and there without proper guidance. It would.

Even in mother tongue, plural form sometimes is left our for the native speakers of English. Listen to BBC and you will find out.

Baliurel (Montri la profilon) 2015-marto-31 02:17:04

[First of all: Warning, I'm using here a foreign language, sorry]

My mother tongue has no accusative. But I feel comfortable with the accusative ending from the beginning of my Esperanto knowledge. I forget the accusative sometimes, of course, I'm not perfect, but there is something curious about how the grammatical error pops up. It's (generally) that way: making long sentences or/and speed, but just in the adjective(s), not in the substantive.
And not only the accusative but plural too!

I mean, my mistake specimen is that I unconsciously save -j and -n marks, adding them only once, at the end of the information pack.

(But don't be afraid, kara samideanoj, that's just a little little little bit of times. And despite the fact that there is no vaccine, it's not contagious)

Someone has or had the same curious symptoms?

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