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A specific part of the accusative that I need help with

af Nala_Cat15, 13. dec. 2018

Meddelelser: 21

Sprog: English

Nala_Cat15 (Vise profilen) 13. dec. 2018 04.50.08

I was reading about the accusative and for the most part I understand it, but this part in particular doesn't make sense to me.I don't understand why the accusative isn't used in "grava afero", and this paragraph isn't making sense. Can someone please explain this? Thanks.
This is rule# 15 of the accusative

"Hieraŭ okazis grava afero. - Yesterday an important matter occurred.


The subject of the action okazis (happened) is grava afero (an important thing). Don't say: Hieraŭ okazis gravan aferon. When hearing that expression, the listener must ask, "what happened the important thing". But "okazi" (to happen) isn't an action that goes from the performer of the action to something affected by that action. The verb "to happen" only has one (primary) actor: that which happens. This actor always appears as a subject, and therefore should not have an N-ending." -lernu.net/en/gramatiko/akuzativo

Metsis (Vise profilen) 13. dec. 2018 08.31.22

It boils down to frazelementoj, constituents or sentence elements.

The rule you quoted explains it, but let me try in other words. In your example

Hieraŭ okazis grava afero

there are three constituents:
  • hieraŭ
    • adjekto, a single adverbial or an adverbial phrase, that describes the circumstance, where the verb takes place; in this case the adverbial defines the time frame
  • okazis
    • predikato, predicate, the verb, that describes the action of the subject; in this case the predicate states, that the subject took place, came into being
  • grava afero
    • subjekto, subject, a noun or a noun phrase, that describes the actor, the initiator of the predicate; in this case what came into being
What might throw you off, is the English grammar. The word order in English is very strict, mostly SVO (subject-verb-object). The example sentence can be written in English only in two ways:
  • An important thing occured yesterday
  • Yesterday an important thing occured
where the only moving part is the (temporal) adverbial. The key observation here is, that the subject and the predicate retain their order.

This order strickness allows or is a consequence of (I don't know which was first), that English has very minimal mark-up of grammatical roles. For instance in "I sent you a letter" only the word order defines what was sent and to whom (see a video by Langfocus on Youtube).

Thus you might be allured to think, that any noun phrase after the predicate must be object ("...okazis ..."), but E-o doesn't work that way. E-o uses a more explicit mark-up. The direct object is marked by being in accusative, other roles mostly by prepositions (there a couple of irritating cases where E-o lacks mark-up). And there are languages, that use almost exclusively grammatical cases for the mark-up.

In this case you can reorder the three constituents of the example sentence in any order in E-o:
  • Hieraŭ okazis grava afero
  • Hieraŭ grava afero okazis
  • Okazis hieraŭ grava afero
  • Okazis grava afero hieraŭ
  • Grava afero hieraŭ okazis
  • Grava afero okazis hieraŭ
and they are still valid sentences – just with different emphasises.

You might also want to take a look a longer discussion here on Lernu.

Nala_Cat15 (Vise profilen) 13. dec. 2018 19.39.43

Thanks,but It's not really making sense why "grava afero" isn't "gravan aferon" instead.

schnellfenster (Vise profilen) 14. dec. 2018 04.59.09

Grava afero is the subject of the sentence. In any case, okazi is an intransitive verb.

Metsis (Vise profilen) 14. dec. 2018 17.24.48

@Nala_Cat15,

As schnellfenster said more clearly than me. Grava afero is the subject, the one that occured/happened, in the sentence.

Someone here in Lernu gave a piece of advice to English-speakers, who have difficulties to pick up the objects. Replace the word or word pair with a personal pronoun other than "you" and see if you need an accusative form thus possibly being the object.

So replace "an important thing" in the "Yesterday an important matter occurred" with the word "them". You get "Yesterday them happened". Is that correct? No, so "an important thing " cannot be object. Since there is no particle and the word pair is in nominative (no mark-up) and it is a noun phrase it is a strong candidate for being the subject.

Now you might ask, what the alternative could be, if not the subject. Let's take a sentence "Donald Trump was elected president". What grammatical role "president" has? Let's test with a personal pronoun. Can you say "Donald Trump was elected him"? No, you can't. So "president" is not an object. It is a noun and seems to be in the nominative, but only because English has notoriously poor mark-up system. If you think closely, "president" is a property that the verb somehow "assigns" to the subject. That role in a sentence is played by predicative and the corresponding grammatical case is translative, it's the something the subject becomes. E-o uses the preposition "kiel" with nouns (nothing with adjectives like in English) for this: "Oni elektis Donald Trump kiel prezidento".

sudanglo (Vise profilen) 16. dec. 2018 12.40.05

Oni elektis Donald Trump kiel prezidento
Loud cough! Mistajpo?

Oni elektis Donald Trump kiel Prezidenton

Alternative: Oni elektis lin Prezidento. Compare - Mi trovis ĝin bona

If Donald Trump (as president) does the choosing, then nominative after kiel.

Donald Trump, kiel Prezidento, elektis min kiel vic-Prezidenton

Metsis (Vise profilen) 16. dec. 2018 13.55.01

sudanglo:
Oni elektis Donald Trump kiel prezidento
Loud cough! Mistajpo?

Oni elektis Donald Trump kiel Prezidenton
Eblas, ĉar ĉi tio estas malfacila por mi. Mi guglis denove kaj trovis
- Dilma Rousseff denove elektita kiel prezidento de Brazilo
- Nicolas Maduro reelektiĝis kiel prezidento de Venezuelo
do ŝajnas, ke mia verbo estis malĝusta, ne la "kiel + nominativo" mem por ĉi tiu signifo. Ĉiukaze la kerno estas, ke oni manke markas translativon en E-o kaj neniel en la angla.

Altebrilas (Vise profilen) 20. dec. 2018 11.43.20

Mi ne tre bone komprenis, kial tio postulas akuzativon: kiam iu esprimo ŝajnas malgramatika, estas pro tio ke iu parto de la frazo estas subkomprenata:

(mi deziras al vi) bonan tagon!
Kiel vi nomiĝas? Mi nomiĝas (per la nomo) Ludoviko.

Sed mi ne bone vidas pri "elekti".

Oni elektis Donald Trump kiel (oni elektus) Prezidenton (?)
Lernu-a gramatiko diras:
...por fari el li prezidanton
sed, tiukaze,
(?)"Oni elektis Donald Trump por Prezidenton " pli taŭgus laŭ tiu logiko.

sudanglo (Vise profilen) 20. dec. 2018 12.52.56

Altebrilas, klarigo en PMEG ĉi tie

Metsis (Vise profilen) 20. dec. 2018 13.32.50

Ankaŭ mi havas problemojn kompreni ĉi tion, ĉar E-o malhavas klaran montrilon por translativo. La diferenco inter "elekti kiel prezidento" kaj "elekti kiel prezidenton" estas tro subtila. Se mi estus certa Lernu-trolo ridulo.gif, mi proponus novan prepocizion, ekz. ki

Oni elektis Donald Trump ki prezidento.
Mi farbis muron ki blanka.

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