Messages: 56
Language: English
tommjames (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 6:09:22 PM
arkadio: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.)True, but then I'm not suggesting estis rompita ought to be unambiguously the passive of becoming... quite the reverse, I hate the fact that the participles are used in this way, as highlighted by my post above. In my view esti is for states, not showing that somebody got hit by an action.
arkadio: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.I'm not sure I see anywhere mnlg and I disgree in terms of your main question. What I was rambling on about above was just to do with potential fixes for the issue of ambiguity, a matter on which we do perhaps differ slightly, but for your question that isn't important.
Miland (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 6:20:15 PM
The problem of the distinction between the passive of being and the passive of becoming was raised as an 'academic' query. But Esperanto was never an academic exercise; it was designed to be practical from the word go. In my view it is not necessary to import an Idism for the passive of being into Esperanto, because the necessary meaning can be expressed in other ways if necessary, for example by using the verb trovi as mnlg suggested.
tommjames (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 6:42:52 PM
Miland:The context of a sentence will usually resolve the ambiguity between being and becoming. Thus Kennedy estis murdita en 1963 refers to becomingBut what is the context that allows you to make this determination? The answer presumably is that you already know Kennedy was shot in the 60's, so it's bound to be the passive of becoming. Someone unfamiliar with Kennedy, and hence unprivey to the context, would not know which of the two passives was meant.
You are of course right that there are other ways to express things. But when you get right down to it the same is true of practically any grammatical construct. In the rapid flow of thoughts and expression that characterises oral communication the mental burden of having to be aware of such potential ambiguity and search for workarounds with extra words is, I would suggest, unfortunate at best. Especially for a language that is meant to be "logical", and even moreso when it is plainly clear (as I like to think I have demonstrated), that it's unnecessary because there are more elegant alternatives available.
I agree that context is usually sufficient to determine the meaning (as I did mention), so in a sense this whole matter is of little importance. Nevertheless, I myself have been stumped by this on more than one occasion (in a practical setting, not an academic one) where real misunderstanding has resulted. There are in my view other important aspects to grammar than functionality, such as elegance and logical consistency/symmetry. As far as the passive of becoming goes Esperanto leaves a lot to be desired, particularly in respect of how easy it is/could have been to solve / do right in the first place.
mnlg (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 7:03:10 PM
I don't think tommjames and I are in disagreement. We both agree that the form is ambiguous. If you are fine with it, that's great. Personally I agree that it leaves room for improvement, but so far I never actually considered the problem, which means that I have never run into it, so I am quite content anyway.
Passivity merely shows that the action is suffered by the subject. It requires a transitive verb. A transitive verb has a direct object suffering the action; its reversal means that the subject is suffering an action. So I would say that the passive form describes an action more than a state. I don't know if this answers your question.
Miland (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 9:18:13 PM
tommjames:As far as the passive of becoming goes Esperanto leaves a lot to be desired..My main reason for not being too ready to accept that any feature of E-o could be `improved' is that Zamenhof spent much time testing his creation before its publication.
The natural evolution of the language in the community of speakers may well generate changes that are widely perceived as necessary, but I don't see it happening with this particular question.
andogigi (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 10:19:10 PM
It seems this might be a subtle distinction which probably wouldn't matter in everyday conversation but might be invaluable in a court of law.
mnlg (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 11:08:12 PM
rompita = that (has been / had been / will be ) broken
rompiĝinta = that has become broken.
I do not see it as a matter of knowledge but of emphasis. With rompita, the emphasis is on the completeness of the state. With rompiĝinta, the emphasis is on the fact that a transformation of state has occurred.
tommjames (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 11:11:34 PM
andogigi:Just for my own clarification, is it safe to say that both sentences would be alright but rompinta is a better choiceThe int suffix shows an active action as opposed to passive, so La fenestro estas rompinta would mean The window has broken [something], clearly not the intended meaning.
arkadio (User's profile) August 1, 2009, 4:54:11 AM
I'm not sure I see anywhere mnig and I disgree in terms of your main question. What I was rambling on about above was just to do with potential fixes for the issue of ambiguity, a matter on which we do perhaps differ slightly, but for your question that isn't important.
I don't think tommjames and I are in disagreement. We both agree that the form is ambiguous. If you are fine with it, that's great. Personally I agree that it leaves room for improvement, but so far I never actually considered the problem, which means that I have never run into it, so I am quite content anyway.Maybe I just misunderstood something several posts back. At any rate, that's not worth sorting out now. If Mnig and Tommjames agree that the form is ambiguous, I'll accept that it is. The main point then --- correct me if I'm wrong --- is that "estis rompita" can be a description of the past state of the window and/or of an act that resulted in that state.
If you are fine with it, that's great. Personally I agree that it leaves room for improvement, but so far I never actually considered the problem, which means that I have never run into it, so I am quite content anyway.Yeah, I am fine with it. It would be even better to have two unambiguous forms, one for being and one for becoming, but I can live with one form that covers both. We have the same ambiguity in English.
So I would say that the passive form describes an action more than a state. I don't know if this answers your question.That helps to answer it. In the abstract, I also feel that passive participles are more action than state. "Rompita," to me seems to mean "made broken by an external cause." In practice though, my first translation of "La fenestro estas rompita" would simply be "The window is broken." Maybe Zamenhof was aware of the ambiguity and left it in for the sake of flexibility. People speaking different native languages could interpret participles according their own habits of mind.
John F Kennedy estis murdita en la 1960-aj jaroj. John F Kennedy estis murdita en la 1990-aj jaroj ..are both completely correct.That's a good example. Can you clarify the first sentence by writing "murdigxis" instead of "estis murdita"?
Oŝo-Jabe (User's profile) August 1, 2009, 5:22:14 AM
arkadio:I'll give it a try, but I'm not entirely sure about this.John F Kennedy estis murdita en la 1960-aj jaroj. John F Kennedy estis murdita en la 1990-aj jaroj ..are both completely correct.That's a good example. Can you clarify the first sentence by writing "murdigxis" instead of "estis murdita"?
JFK murdiĝis en la 1960-aj jaroj.
JFK jam murdiĝis en la 1990-aj jaroj.