Suppose that I want to describe an effect without implying anything specific about the cause. If for example, I notice a broken window, I could say

(1) Mi rimarkis la rompitan fenestron,

or

(2) Mi rimarkis la rompiĝintan fenestron.

Since "rompita" is derived from "rompi" I think that by using (1), I am implying an external cause, as in

(3) La pilko rompis la fenestron.

For this reason, "rompiĝinta" seems to be the better choice, i.e. the cause-neutral adjective. But most of the texts and dictionaries I've consulted give "rompita" as the default translation of "broken." Is it wrong to assume that "rompita" implies an external cause? Is there a default choice of adjective that implies nothing about cause?

Thanks, Steve

arkadio:Is it wrong to assume that "rompita" implies an external cause?

It depends on the way you use the passive participle. If you're using it in the passive voice of becoming then it is always assumed there is an external agent performing the breaking, for example la fenestro estis rompita, "the window was broken". You might not show the breaker, but there definitley exists one. PMEG describes this as "plenumiĝo de la ago".

For the passive voice of being and general stateful adjectives (the equivalent of "has been broken" / "is broken" forms in English) it dosn't always work that way. You might say La fenestro estas rompita and it could equally well mean the window has been broken by some agent, or that the window is just in a broken state, for what reason we don't know or care about. It's kind of similar in English too. In English, we'd say the window is broken, but broken here is a passive perfect form. Yet, we don't necessarily think of it in those terms. It can just mean the window is in a "broke" state, and it works that way too in Esperanto (and as I am told, some other European languages).

Rompiĝinta would work, although it may be worth noting this adjective would show more than the mere fact the window is broken. It shows the window came into a broken state some time in the past, which shows a change in state.. perhaps equally undesirable as inadvertenly implying a causer of the action when non exists or we don't want to mention it.

Rompi is a transitive verb, and we would use iĝ to make such a verb intransitive, so that it could indicate a change of state without an external agent. It would be a most unusual occurrence for a window to disintegrate spontaneously (though I have heard of it happening with drinking glasses). For this reason I would stay with the form rompita, which does not specify the agent responsible.

Thanks for the replies. For practical purposes, these two paragraphs answer my question:

It depends on the way you use the passive participle. If you're using it in the passive voice of becoming then it is always assumed there is an external agent performing the breaking, for example la fenestro estis rompita, "the window was broken". You might not show the breaker, but there definitley exists one. PMEG describes this as "plenumiĝo de la ago".

For the passive voice of being and general stateful adjectives (the equivalent of "has been broken" / "is broken" forms in English) it dosn't always work that way. You might say La fenestro estas rompita and it could equally well mean the window has been broken by some agent, or that the window is just in a broken state, for what reason we don't know or care about. It's kind of similar in English too. In English, we'd say the window is broken, but broken here is a passive perfect form. Yet, we don't necessarily think of it in those terms. It can just mean the window is in a "broke" state, and it works that way too in Esperanto (and as I am told, some other European languages).

This raises two academic questions.

(1) If I am talking about something in the past, but still prefer to be not specify a cause, would I still use the passive of being? For example:

"Hieraux, mi rimarkis ke, la fenestro estas rompita."

Is that okay? (I know that the Esperanto time sense is different from the English, but old habits die hard.)

(2) Although "rompiĝi" is intransitive, it doesn't preclude an external cause. As PMEG says, the -iĝi is often just a grammatical contrivance that allows you to turn an object into a subject. For example,

"La pilko frapis la fenestron, kaj la fenestro rompiĝis."

That is why the -iĝi verb seemed more cause-neutral to me in the first place. Why then is "rompita" the default choice for "broken"? Is it because "rompi" is the simpler verb from which "rompiĝi" derives?

arkadio:(1) If I am talking about something in the past, but still prefer to be not specify a cause, would I still use the passive of being?

I am not sure I understand what you mean here. The participles do not refer to a time but to a state. "rompita" does not mean that it had been broken in the past, but that its action of being broken is (was, will be) complete. "rompata" would mean that its action of being broken is (was, will be) in progress. A sentence like

Hieraŭ mi trovis la fenestron rompita

would be perfectly valid, and (at least to my experience in similar sentence patterns) quite common.

(2) Although "rompiĝi" is intransitive, it doesn't preclude an external cause.

The suffix -iĝ- shows a modification, a becoming. I don't want to step into the realm of the philosophical, but I guess it could be argued that there is a cause for everything. If I were to sunbathe, I would be perfectly allowed to say

Mi varmiĝis sub la suno

That is, "I became warm under the sun". Here the cause is the sun (or the warmth that it irradiates, or the reaction of that warmth on my skin, and so on and so forth...) but the key aspect in the sentence is that I have suffered a change of state; I was not warm, then I became warm. It would have been also perfectly valid to say "La suno varmigis min", although it would have been perhaps too specific for the message to be conveyed.

I hope I didn't cause any more confusion!

I am not sure I understand what you mean here. The participles do not refer to a time but to a state. "rompita" does not mean that it had been broken in the past, but that its action of being broken is (was, will be) complete. "rompata" would mean that its action of being broken is (was, will be) in progress. A sentence like

I know that "rompita" refers to a completed action. By "past" I meant the use of the passive of being in the past. (See tommjames' post below.)

It was asserted that the passive of being:

"La fenestro estas rompita," can mean that the window has been broken by an external agent or simply that the window is broken.

Moreover, the passive of becoming:

"La fenestro estis rompita," definitely means that the window was broken by an external agent.

(I am not an experienced Esperantist. I assume the cause to be external because "rompita" derives from the transitive verb
"rompi.")

What I want to know is this: Suppose I am using the passive of being to describe something that was true yesterday:

"Hieraux, la fenestro estis rompita."

It comes out exactly like the passive of becoming. The listener can't tell the difference.

In summary: Is it possible in Esperanto to say "The window was broken," or "The door was closed," that (like the English) can be interpreted as either the passive of being or the passive of becoming, without definitely meaning either one?

Thanks, and apologies for hair-splitting. Steve

arkadio:"Hieraux, la fenestro estis rompita."

It comes out exactly like the passive of becoming. The listener can't tell the difference.

You're right, and I understand your concern.

One of the problems with the passive in Esperanto is that it makes no distinction between the passive of being and the passive of becoming. Thus as you have just shown, "Hieraux, la fenestro estis rompita." could translate to either Yesterday, the window was broken, or Yesterday, the window had been broken, two quite different meanings. Unfortunately there is no grammatical way of making this distinction without resorting to the addition of extra clarificatory words. A lot of the time context will be sufficient to infer the correct meaning, but sometimes it won't. In those cases, it's basically tough luck.

The creators of some conlangs that came after Esperanto recognized this problem and introduced various solutions. For example in Ido there is the passive suffix es which is time-neutral and can be put into any simple verb form. In Ido, mi trovesis means the passive of becoming I was found, or I got found. In novial there is a seperate particle bli to show the passive of becoming, which you can see here.. It makes for somewhat interesting reading.

So the answer to your question:

In summary: Is it possible in Esperanto to say "The window was broken," or "The door was closed," that (like the English) can be interpreted as either the passive of being or the passive of becoming, without definitely meaning either one?

is yes, it can mean either.

Okay, I get what you mean now. The fact is that Esperanto's auxiliary verb is 'esti'. In retrospect, perhaps it would have been a better idea, at least to avoid this issue, if a different, independent verb had been chosen, to be used only to build compound verb tenses. In your example, English uses 'to have', which does not bring the same ambiguity.

However, if your goal is to provide a description of yesterday's state of the window, you can use 'trovi' or 'aperi' or 'ŝajni'. "Hieraŭ mi trovis la fenestron rompita". This removes the ambiguity, even though I can imagine that such a form might not be appropriate for the precise case that you had in mind.

mnlg:In retrospect, perhaps it would have been a better idea, at least to avoid this issue, if a different, independent verb had been chosen, to be used only to build compound verb tenses. In your example, English uses 'to have', which does not bring the same ambiguity.

The verb "to have" in English is used for the passive of being, which is essentially as stateful as it is in Esperanto so in my view esti is very much the right verb for those perfect forms and the uniformity is fine. It's the passive of -becoming- where esti is a nuisance, since in that form there is nothing stateful going on at all and it's all about showing an action upon the subject, the thing PMEG calls "plenumiĝo de la ago".

As an English speaker it appears to me as if Zamenhof simply followed the forms that exist in English (perhaps in some other languages too) such as the window was broken by the hooligan, which is unfortunate because in the case of the passive of becoming, the was in that English sentence is nothing to do with being in any state and simply shows that the window got hit by an action.

Esperanto would have been much better off in my view just doing what Ido did and having a time-neutral passive suffix for simple verbs, and indeed a need for such a suffix has long been felt in Esperantujo, particularly among the atistoj. La fenestro rompesis seems to me a much more simple and logical way of doing things than drafting in the verb esti and creating a compound form for something that isn't even connected to "being" in any meaningful way.

One way to highlight the possible usefulness of that is in this example. Technically, the following 2 sentences:

John F Kennedy estis murdita en la 1960-aj jaroj.
John F Kennedy estis murdita en la 1990-aj jaroj

..are both completely correct. Yet in another sense, one of them is wrong. The only difference is the first is the passive of becoming and the second is the passive of being. A person familiar with the demise of Kennedy may well be able to look at either of those sentences and work out the intended meaning of estis murdita, but someone who never heard of him is going to have a pretty hard time working out with any certainty what either of them really mean.

However, the Idist form of John F Kennedy murdesis en la 1960-aj jaroj leaves absolutely no room for ambiguity. (note: I know Ido forms plurals differently, I just wanted to emphasize the passive construct).

The suffix end was brought over from Ido. I propose we do the same with es!

Mnig, Tommjames,

Thank you again for the clarification. It actually isn't the ambiguity that bothered me, but the lack of it. If "La fenestro estis rompita," encompasses the passive of being and of becoming, that's fine with me.

The reason I prefer the ambiguity is this: If "estis rompita" is unambiguously the passive of becoming, then I lack a clear and easy way express the (past) passive of being. (Or vice-versa.)

The ambiguity is also useful to speakers who don't know how the window came to be broken.
If "estis rompita" is truly ambiguous, then they don't have to choose between "estis rompita" and "rompigxis" or "estis rompigxinta."

The only trouble now is that the two of you seem to disagree. I'd prefer to believe that tommjames is correct, so that I can use "estis rompita" ambiguously.

On the other hand, if Mnig is correct, then "rompita" makes a bit more sense to me. Since it derives from "rompi" shouldn't it mean "got broken by by an external agent"?
Maybe I just don't completely understand passive participals. Do they only describe ends, or do they include means and ends?

Thanks yet again for bearing with me. Steve