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Adjectival agreement

by Vestitor, December 14, 2015

Messages: 39

Language: English

Vestitor (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 2:30:21 AM

I know it's an annoying question, but what exactly would go awry in terms of understanding if there was no adjectival agreement? What purpose does it serve that would be apparent if it wasn't there?

In pronunciation terms it makes things awkward and a bit ugly.

erinja (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 3:52:15 AM

In more complex sentences, I have sometimes used adjectival agreement to figure out what was going on. It is not always clear without this agreement.

And of course, without it, the highly fragmented word order of some poems would be impossible.

"Ĝi la homan tiras familion" is a well-known example.

Vestitor (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 4:11:58 AM

What about plural agreement of adjective and noun?

erinja (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 4:48:44 AM

Same deal.

I can't give an example from literature off-hand but to contrive a sentence, "Ni bona farigxos familio" implies that the meaning is "we will become a good family", whereas "ni bonaj farigxos familio" implies that if we are good (bonaj describes "ni" ), we will become a family.

Kirilo81 (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 8:51:11 AM

The agreement is not really necessary, but it can come handy, as
-it can add clarity until where an adjective reaches: mi surmetos miajn ĉapon kaj gantojn (there are better examples I don't remember quite now)
-it adds redundancy, which can be useful whenever the grammatical information of the noun is not perceptable (noise, typo, indeclinable proper name...): La grandan Goliat venkis David.

sudanglo (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 12:20:34 PM

Also, the fact that agreement is normal allows non-agreement to provide some further subtlety of meaning

Mi trovis la bonan okazon por mencii ke ...
Mi trovis bona la okazon por mencii ke ...

Mi aŭdis la forirantan trajnon ...
Mia aŭdis foriranta la trajnon ...

Vi konas mian filon Johano ...
Vi konas mian filon Johanon ...

Mi prenis ruĝajn krajonon kaj paperon ...
Mi prenis ruĝan krajonon kaj paperon ...

nornen (User's profile) December 14, 2015, 4:51:30 PM

While we are eliminating redundancies, we could also get rid off plural -j after numbers: tri filo instead of tri filoj. "Tri" is plural enough, no need for a -j.

sergejm (User's profile) December 15, 2015, 5:00:27 AM

nornen:While we are eliminating redundancies, we could also get rid off plural -j after numbers: tri filo instead of tri filoj. "Tri" is plural enough, no need for a -j.
Some languages do that, e.g. Hungarian, but not Esperanto. You must say tri filoj.

opalo (User's profile) December 15, 2015, 7:48:42 AM

While designing his language, Zamenhof spent a lot of time trying to translate European verse, including very complicated stuff. This is the explanation for many of the choices which people question.

English eliminates endings by enforcing very strict word order. This gives it a uncomfortable, stiff quality that many learners don't care for.

Vestitor (User's profile) December 15, 2015, 11:26:31 AM

opalo:While designing his language, Zamenhof spent a lot of time trying to translate European verse, including very complicated stuff. This is the explanation for many of the choices which people question.

English eliminates endings by enforcing very strict word order. This gives it a uncomfortable, stiff quality that many learners don't care for.
I wouldn't call English "stiff" at all. There is so much that can be done with the language in literature, and it gets done. Not that it always has immediate clarity, but English is not a constructed IAL.

I'm pretty certain Zamenhof went about the business of translating poetry for the main purpose of proving that Esperanto could function under most circumstances and quell the naysayers. Literature can be be beguiling, but communication should try to remain clear and as simple as is possible.

In George Cox's Esperanto book from 1906 he tells beginning students to try and refrain from 'improving' the language; to instead write such things down and then review them after having acquired mastery.
It's probably decent advice, but it represents becoming accustomed to something, not a true judge of whether it is functionally indispensable.

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