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Morti

av Momomomomo, 18 januari 2009

Meddelanden: 19

Språk: English

Momomomomo (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 11:11:56

Sorry about the morbid subject but I'm really rather annoyed with the verb morti. I know there's nothing I can do about it but I wanted to express my annoyance to see what people think.
Here we go:

morti = to die
morta = dead

Being dead is a state, so surly the general rule is that the verb and adjective should relate to each other like so:

blua = blue
blui = to be blue
bluigi = to make blue
bluiĝi = to become blue

So shouldn't it be similar for death:

morta = dead
morti = to be dead
mortigi = to cause to be dead (to kill)
mortiĝi = to become dead (to die)

Or you could take dying as an action, rather than a moving from one state to another, in which case morti could still mean to die but morta makes no sense as dead. Dead would have to be mortinta and morta would just mean death related, like deathly in The Deathly Hallows.

But it doesn't work like that malgajo.gif

Matthieu (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 11:36:52

You're right about blua, and this is true for other adjective roots (granda, bela, etc.). But morti is a verbal root.

Momomomomo:Or you could take dying as an action, rather than a moving from one state to another, in which case morti could still mean to die but morta makes no sense as dead. Dead would have to be mortinta and morta would just mean death related, like deathly in The Deathly Hallows.
I think you are right. But you should wait for someone who explains better than me, because I have trouble translating “dead” too.

Sebasities (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 13:13:20

The good word is "mortinta" : "The mortintaj homoj estas en la mortintejoj". Sed oni diras "la Maro Morta" (the Dead Sea).
The idea is that the Dead is "la morto" and a dead (a dead person) is "mortinto" : "a person who has died". So you have "mortinta" as adjective to "mortinto".
(You understand that the Dead Sea is not a dead person or animal !)

Kristine (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 14:42:08

Let's put together what Mutusen and Sebasities just said:

Blua is an adjectival root from which we derive other words:

blua --- blui (to be blue), bluo (the blue color)

On the other hand morti (to die) is a verbal root:

morti --- morto (death), mortinta (that/who/which died), mortanta (that/who/which is dying), mortonta (that/who/which shall die), mortigi (to cause to die = to kill), mortinto (he who died), mortanto (he who is dying), mortonto (he who shall die)

Morta is an adjective that usually means the same as mortinta which can function either as a verb or as an adjective.
The difference is that morta makes no reference to the time of death. When we say La Morta Maro we mean The Dead Sea but we do not state that the sea was previously alive or dying or just passed away, poor thing. It's simply in a dead state.
Thus you have to look up a word in the dictionary in order to know whether its root is a noun, an adjective or a verb.

The prefix -iĝ is usually applied to a transitive verb to make it intransitive (the action is performed on the subject itself):

Malfermi (transitive) = to close (something)
Malfermiĝi (intransitive) = iĝi malfermita, esti malfermata (per si mem) = to close itself

When -iĝ is applied to an intransitive verb it implies a change of state:

Morti = to die
Mortiĝi = to become dead (fariĝi morta)

Note that the difference is..hmm... generally neglectible. Bertilo Wennergren in his PMEG gives the following example:

"Mia onklo ne mortis per natura morto, sed li tamen ne mortigis sin mem kaj ankaŭ estis mortigita de neniu; unu tagon, promenante apud la reloj de fervojo, li falis sub la radojn de veturanta vagonaro kaj mortiĝis."

And he explains: the simple verb morti indicates a change of state (from life to death). Here -iĝ indicates that death happened unintentionally, by accident.

More about -iĝ at PMEG.

I hope I made it clear and not more confusing. rideto.gif

Taciturn_ (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 19:58:26

Momomomomo,
your thinking is extremely correct. The main point why it`s not handled this way is that the language founder was far from being a linguist, also the true professionals were not basicly open minds to see things deeper .Now it`s a morbid reality for the Esperanto learners to discover frustrating exeptions, where it had to be a rule.
In my opinion the Esperanto Guru`s try of explaining things like: there are adjective,verb and noun roots,- is nothing but a feeble exuse, just that adjectives and verbs are innerly the same thing.
Imagine the Esperanto be a true highly rational system, then we should better find a construction like:
iri - ira (iranta)
you ask me - why?
Just cause the root is verbal , guys n girls.
But this will be some other language but Esperanto.

zixhwizs (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 21:12:05

While we're on the topic of morti, how does one say someone won't die? For instance, I used something similar to:

"They poisoned him repeatedly, but he would not die."

"Ili venenis plurfoje lin, sed li ne mortus."

I used mortus for 'would not die,' but that drew a confused reaction, so I think that must not be correct.

Miland (Visa profilen) 18 januari 2009 21:28:24

The Fundamento, which is the unchanging foundation of our language, defines the roots of its vocabulary in the Universala Vortaro. This contains the following entries:

blu' bleu | blue | blau | синій | niebieski.

mort' mourir | die | sterben | умирать | umierać.

The existence of roots that are verbs (like mort'), adjectives (like blu') or nouns is therefore simply a fact. Rather than get annoyed about it, better to learn and use the language as it is.

melanija (Visa profilen) 19 januari 2009 03:42:36

zixhwizs:"They poisoned him repeatedly, but he would not die."

"Ili venenis plurfoje lin, sed li ne mortus."

I used mortus for 'would not die,' but that drew a confused reaction, so I think that must not be correct.
The use of 'would' here isn't really expressing the conditional. You could also get the same idea across in English by saying something like 'but he refused to die.' Both give a bit more emphasis than just saying 'but he didn't die', but there isn't really a corresponding verb tense for that. Unfortunately, I don't know Esperanto well enough to know what is a good way of expressing that emphasis.

ceigered (Visa profilen) 19 januari 2009 03:59:43

Well, there always is the method of enclosing one's self in a cryo tube and waking up 100 yrs in the future and hoping it's changed, but some might call that approach 'over the top'.

Personally, I think that it makes sense to me. Maybe my mind is just whacked and I can't seen the problem or frustration that this stem causes others lango.gif

Miland (Visa profilen) 19 januari 2009 10:54:05

zixhwizs:"They poisoned him repeatedly, but he would not die."
Here I would translate the thought. I'm sure that you don't really mean that he could not die (li ne povis morti), but rather that he did not. So we have Ili venenis lin plurfoje, sed li ne mortis.

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