arkadio / Oŝo Jabe:Can you clarify the first sentence by writing "murdigxis" instead of "estis murdita"?

I'll give it a try, but I'm not entirely sure about this.

JFK murdiĝis en la 1960-aj jaroj.
JFK jam murdiĝis en la 1990-aj jaroj.

There's nothing wrong grammatically with something like JFK murdiĝis but it is slightly different from the passive participles. Where the passive shows that JFK actually -got- murdered (by somebody/thing), the iĝ suffix merely shows that he came into a "murdered state", which is similar but not really the same thing. You could say that with the act of murdering, the only way to "come into a murdered state" is to actually -get- murdered, but this is beside the point. The iĝ does not show the passivity, as explained in PMEG.

To make that slightly clearer, imagine a branch on a tree. You might say La branco estis rompita de la vento - the branch was broken by the wind. With the iĝ suffix however we get La branĉo rompiĝis - The branch broke. You can see there that there's nothing passive going on. The branch just breaks, or "comes into a broken state", perhaps under its own weight or something. This is known as the middle voice, somewhere inbetween active and passive.

Since rompiĝis is fundamentally not a passive form it would be (in my view) wrong to introduce the agent/causer of the transition to the broken state using the preposition de, and indeed that kind of usage almost never shows up in literature. A search at Tekstaro reveals no results at all for such usage. The best you can do is use some other preposition such as pro to show -how- or -why- the change in state occured, eg La branĉo rompiĝis pro la efiko de la vento or something to that effect.

There is a tendency among Esperantists, particularly beginners/intermediates to assume that iĝ can work as a true passive, which I guess is understandable because it would be reeeeeeeally useful if it could work that way (hence the invention of the es suffix in Ido, something which would be mighty useful in Esperanto). I would recommend not falling into that trap though.

There's nothing wrong grammatically with something like JFK murdiĝis but it is slightly different from the passive participles. Where the passive shows that JFK actually -got- murdered (by somebody/thing), the iĝ suffix merely shows that he came into a "murdered state", which is similar but not really the same thing. You could say that with the act of murdering, the only way to "come into a murdered state" is to actually -get- murdered, but this is beside the point. The iĝ does not show the passivity, as explained in PMEG.

Okay. I see that at best it is a partial solution. I noticed that many Esperantists (on the Lernu pages sometimes) make very free use of forms like "usiĝas." PMEG, on the other hand, seems to always use "estas usata(j)." Although "usiĝas" might not look passive, I can only translate it to something passive like "is used" or "gets used." Is there anything technically wrong with "usiĝas"?

Since rompiĝis is fundamentally not a passive form it would be (in my view) wrong to introduce the agent/causer of the transition to the broken state using the preposition de, and indeed that kind of usage almost never shows up in literature. A search at Tekstaro reveals no results at all for such usage. The best you can do is use some other preposition such as pro to show -how- or -why- the change in state occured, eg La branĉo rompiĝis pro la efiko de la vento or something to that effect.

Yeah. I can't say that the branch broke by the wind.

Early in my Esperanto days, I thought that (iĝi + passive participle) or (igi + passive participle) could be used to express the passive of becoming, but this only seems to work for completely stative adjectives: iĝi blanka = to become white. When I asked Lernu about "iĝi fermita" ("become closed") Bertilo informed me that that was an awkward, internally inconsistent construction. I think that, to him, it meant something like "the door becomes by itself closed by somebody else." (Later on, I came upon (iĝi + fermita) in PMEG. Maybe Bertilo was just using it for didactic purposes.)

Esperantists (on the Lernu pages sometimes) make very free use of forms like "usiĝas." PMEG, on the other hand, seems to always use "estas usata(j)." Although "usiĝas" might not look passive, I can only translate it to something passive like "is used" or "gets used." Is there anything technically wrong with "usiĝas"?

Very often it will be sufficient for your purpose just to show the change of state, without indicating any passive activity (as would often be the norm in English). For example in English we have the sentence I was born in 1978. Here, born is the passive participle of the transitive verb to bear. But it's not really necessary to show that I -got- born, by my mother, it would be sufficient just to say that I came into a born state. In English we don't really have a convenient way of saying that so we are compelled by convention to use the passive form. In Esperanto however there is no such restriction, hence something like Mi naskiĝis en 1978 is fine, even though the passive voice is missing.

For this reason you will see other such usages of iĝ (troviĝi, vendiĝi etc) where typically you might see a passive construct in English. So uziĝas is fine so long as you're not looking to -explicitly indicate- a passive action, which as the above example shows, very often isn't even necessary.

Thanks to everyone for the posts in this thread! Maybe not the easiest piece of reading in every single time - but interesting and informative anyway. I've learned a lot!

Robinast, Andogigi: I'm glad that the hair-splitting was more useful than irritating. These online forums have really helped me sort through the finer points of usage.

Tommjames, I meant to respond to your comments about Ido and Novial.

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.

There is a tendency among Esperantists, particularly beginners/intermediates to assume that iĝ can work as a true passive, which I guess is understandable because it would be reeeeeeeally useful if it could work that way (hence the invention of the es suffix in Ido, something which would be mighty useful in Esperanto). I would recommend not falling into that trap though.

Something like the es suffix seems like a good, natural idea that might work in Esperanto, and even be within the current rules of Eo grammar. "Rompesa"? "Fermesa"?
If we can use "rompigxi," why not "rompesti"? You might be on to something.

Some time ago, I did learn the grammar of Novial. (No great trick there. If you are an English speaker with a some language learning experience, you can digest the rules of Novial in an hour.) There were things to like and dislike about the language, but it did have those two features (missing from Esperanto) that we've been discussing. As you pointed out, it has "bli" for the passive of becoming. You can also give a participle a strictly adjectival identity by appending an "i". By this means, a Novial speaker distinguishes "murdered" the act from "murdered" the state.

Unfortunately, Novial isn't stable enough to justify (to me at least) any real effort. Jesperson himself revised it at least twice. In the mid 90's, a few Novial revision projects were launched, the main one being Novial 98. As far as I know, they were all defunct or in abeyance by 1999. I don't know for sure what happened, but some of their discussion threads suggest that they fell into the Ido ditch: Lots of tinkering, no "real world" use, no beta-testing, eventual disagreement, schism, disillusionment, etc. When I asked the leader of Novial 98 about the project's demise his response was something like "Thank goodness that's over. Good riddance." Too bad. They made some good changes, and I would have liked to have seen a stable Novial. But that Ido trap . . . so easy to fall into.

arkadio:Something like the es suffix seems like a good, natural idea that might work in Esperanto, and even be within the current rules of Eo grammar. "Rompesa"? "Fermesa"?

Indeed it is very natural, logical, simple, unambiguous etc. Frankly I'm amazed that Z and his compatriots didn't go down this route in the first place, opting instead to import the deficient form found in English and some other languages. Although perhaps that was exactly the point.. it would be familiar to many people right from the off.

I see no reason it couldn't be imported as an unofficial suffix but as Miland pointed out there's very little chance of that happening. There are good solutions out there to other more substantial niggles in Esperanto that never garnered any attention, and as this one usually doesn't cause a problem in practical usage the impetus will never be there I think. Still, from the point of view of elegance and logical consistency it is IMO highly desirable, especially considering that nothing has to be changed within the language to make it work.

As for forming adjectives by way of such a suffix, I don't really see the need and I've got no idea wheather or not they are used in Ido. I imagine an adjective like rompesa would describe a broken state at an indeterminate time. So any of has been broken, is being broken, or will be broken. I'd suggest that would be of dubious usefulness since we can already describe each of those things specifically with the participles.

arkadio:If we can use "rompigxi," why not "rompesti"?

As far as I know there's no rule against such a concoction, although I would take the verb rompesti to mean esti rompa. Since rompa is an adjective it could in theory mean anything related to breaking, but I beleive the perceived meaning would most commonly be something like "predisposed towards breaking", or rompema as it would usually be constructed. In which case it wouldn't really be applicable to your example.

Edit: Just to add, rule 6 of the Fundamento has the following:

Netuŝebla Fundamento:All forms of the passive are rendered by the respective forms of the verb est (to be) and the participle passive of the required verb; the preposition used is de, „by”. E. g. ŝi est'as am'at'a de ĉiu'j, „she is loved by every one”.

"All forms" would seem to preclude the possibility of any other way of rendering the passive, so we're eternally stuck with esti for the passive of becoming. *sigh*

I see no reason it couldn't be imported as an unofficial suffix but as Miland pointed out there's very little chance of that happening. There are good solutions out there to other more substantial niggles in Esperanto that never garnered any attention, and as this one usually doesn't cause a problem in practical usage the impetus will never be there I think. Still, from the point of view of elegance and logical consistency it is IMO highly desirable, especially considering that nothing has to be changed within the language to make it work.

Given the "original sin" of the Ido schism, I accept the wisdom of the conservative, pragmatic approach to Esperanto: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That doesn't preclude academic curiosity though. Zamenhof seems to have had a passion for precision and consistency. Why did he embrace certain features (e.g. the accusative) but not others, like the passive of becoming? Maybe his knowledge of languages like English led him to believe that there just wasn't much clarity to be gained that way. The point isn't to simply maximize clarity and elegance, but to maximize them subject to some constraint on the complexity of the language.

Edit: Just to add, rule 6 of the Fundamento has the following: Netuŝebla Fundamento skribis: All forms of the passive are rendered by the respective forms of the verb est (to be) and the participle passive of the required verb; the preposition used is de, „by”. E. g. ŝi est'as am'at'a de ĉiu'j, „she is loved by every one”. "All forms" would seem to preclude the possibility of any other way of rendering the passive, so we're eternally stuck with esti for the passive of becoming. *sigh*

I am ashamed to admit that I have never read the Fundamento. It is actually comforting to me to see the rule concerning the passive enshrined there. Zamenhof has given me permission to use "La fenestro estis rompita" in either sense. Your JFK example still bothers me. Could I clarify your first sentence by writing

"JFK estis murdita en ekzakte la 1960-aj jaroj"

and the second with

"JFK estis ankoraux murdita en la 1990-aj jaroj"?

I just noticed that "ekzakte" doesn't really clarify anything. I'll jsut leave it out there for comment.

I have also seen fixes using "perfectivizing" prefixes like "fin," as in "Mi finlegis la libron." I guess that wouldn't work here: "Finmurdita"? Nah. Is there a fancier fix employing the accusative?

"JFK estis murdita en la 1960-aj jaroj."

But,

"JFK estis murdita en la 1990-ajn jarojn."

I am using the accusative of direction (sort of) in the second sentence. In the first sentence, I think of the murder as occuring in the 60's, and the in second, the fact of the murder moves into the 90's. (Like the mouse who is under the table, running, as opposed to the one who runs "to under the table.") I admit it is ridiculous, but I am grasping at straws here.

arkadio:Your JFK example still bothers me. Could I clarify your first sentence by writing

"JFK estis murdita en ekzakte la 1960-aj jaroj"
and the second with
"JFK estis ankoraux murdita en la 1990-aj jaroj"?

For the passive of being, I'd go for

JFK jam estis murdita en la 1990-aj.

Jam is often used with simple verbs, as in Mi jam legis la libron as a translation for I have read the book. I think it does the trick here too.

To be honest I'm not sure how I would clarify the passive of becoming. In practice I think I would probably elect to drop the passive altogether and go for an active construction. Stylistically speaking this can often be a better approach.

I wouldn't elect to go with accusative usages on the date, as it dosn't really alter the underlying meaning. It's just another way of linking the time to the state/action of the murder. if you wanted to use it you'd need to drop the en from your sentence though.

For the passive of being, I'd go for JFK jam estis murdita en la 1990-aj. Jam is often used with simple verbs, as in Mi jam legis la libron as a translation for I have read the book. I think it does the trick here too.

Yes, I should have thought of "jam." You're right. It can function like a "perfectivizing" particle.

To be honest I'm not sure how I would clarify the passive of becoming.

Following the quotation from the Fundamento, it seems clear that Zamenhof didn't think it necessary to supply a distinguished passive of becoming. I can live with a passive that covers both passives.

In practice I think I would probably elect to drop the passive altogether and go for an active construction. Stylistically speaking this can often be a better approach.

Yes. This thread was spun out of my largely academic curiosity about compound verb forms and passive constructions. Most people don't really like those usages or consider them to be good style. One could always say

Oni murdis JFK-on en 1963.

Or, if you want to preserve the inversion,

JFK-on murdis oni en 1963.

Maybe that's why Zamenhof kept the accusative and didn't worry about the passive of becoming.

I'm not sure this is serious enough to require reform. All national languages have minor ambiguities in them which can be easily clarified without much effort. One of my favorites in English:

"I gave him his books."

In this sentence, we don't have any way of knowing the owner of the books without a clarification. Do they belong to the Indirect Object mentioned in the sentence or to someone else. The possesive is the same, so we would have to ask for a clarification.

In Japanese and Chinese, there are even worse ambiguities. Because both languages are written with characters that are usually short syllables, there are an enormous number of homonyms. For example, the word "kami" can mean:

God 神
Hair 髪
Paper 紙
Chew 噛み (And this is a short list)

Each of these has their own character, so their is no ambiguity when reading or writing. But imagine how confusing it can be when speaking. Chinese is the same. In fact, the pronouns for "he" and "she" in Mandarin are the same pronounciation but with different characters. (Ta)

The point is, how often do you think Japanese people have to ask "Does God's hair chew on paper?" (神の髪は紙を噛みますか?)

If these languages can thrive with far greater ambiguities, why reform Esperanto for such minor ones?