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de Greyshades, 2009-septembro-08

Mesaĝoj: 27

Lingvo: English

Ironchef (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-10 19:16:38

ceigered:
Minor question: is 'legante viaj retpoŝtoj' grammatically correct for saying 'reading your emails'?
surely "viajn retpoŝtojn" in the accusative as it's "your emails" that are being read, using legante as an adverbial action. Yes/no?

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-10 20:03:21

I think if we just post lolcats with bad Esperanto grammar, they will be like french esperantists.

philodice (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 01:23:32

Ironchef:
ceigered:
Minor question: is 'legante viaj retpoŝtoj' grammatically correct for saying 'reading your emails'?
surely "viajn retpoŝtojn" in the accusative as it's "your emails" that are being read, using legante as an adverbial action. Yes/no?
I agree with the second, as it is the emails that are being read, and the 'cat' is doing the reading. So jes, "viajn retpoŝtojn"

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 05:00:45

@ Ironchef and philodice: thanks guys, I thought about the accusative but was thinking a little too deeply (because technically, 'legante' isn't a verb, it's an adverb, and so you'd think that an adverb can't have an accusative, but obviously I missed the point lango.gif) and ended up editing my message and taking out the accusative lango.gif

Rogir:I think if we just post lolcats with bad Esperanto grammar, they will be like french esperantists.
That's the problem isn't it, unless you sufficiently slaughter the Esperanto text, it will always tend to look like some various 'dialect' of the language.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 09:43:32

ceigered:I thought about the accusative but was thinking a little too deeply (because technically, 'legante' isn't a verb, it's an adverb, and so you'd think that an adverb can't have an accusative, but obviously I missed the point
It's not just verbs that take the accusative, it works the same with adjectival participles too. Mi estas leganta libron has the adjective leganta but it still uses the accusative. You can also do the same with active nouns (agaj O-vortoj in PMEG's terminology), including ado forms like legado la libron as well as single act nouns like in dankon pro la elekto min. Although this is due to the leaving out of the preposition de, and as PMEG points out, is somewhat rare usage, despite being completely logical.

mnlg (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 10:47:02

tommjames:It's not just verbs that take the accusative, it works the same with adjectival participles too. Mi estas leganta libron has the adjective leganta but it still uses the accusative.
"estas leganta" can be seen as the full verbal form.

Adverbs, even non-participial, can require the accusative, as in, for example "rilate tion", "koncerne tion".

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 11:10:19

Blimey... Somewhat news to me (I mean, it makes sense, just never really thought of this stuff before).

Oh well, thanks for all that info guys.

I wonder.. what does 'estas leginta/legonta' translate to in English? E.g. Mi estas legonta tiujn librojn?

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 11:45:05

I wonder.. what does 'estas leginta/legonta' translate to in English? E.g. Mi estas legonta tiujn librojn?
Leginta means "have read". Legonta means "going to read" or the more prospective "about to read".

I would translate Mi estas legonta tiujn librojn as "I am going to read those books".

mnlg (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 11:55:09

-int-, -ant- and -ont- relate to the state of the action. -int- means that the action is completed; -ant- that it is in progress, while -ont- means that the action is yet to begin.

With compound verb tenses, the verb esti specifies the time of the action; the participle specifies the state. So "leganta" means "related to an action of reading that is/was/will be in progress". "leganta" by itself does not specify a time, only a state.

By using participles as adverbs, you have gerunds:

leginte mapon, ni trovis la vojon.
Having read a map, we found the way.

"legante" would therefore mean "being in the process of reading", and "legonte" would mean "being about to read"

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-septembro-11 14:03:36

Amazing, so basically when used with 'esti', you can only use '-anta' and not '-inta' etc otherwise it doesn't quite make sense?

What happens with 'estis leganta' vs. 'estis leginta'?

sorry if I'm helping to propel this thread further off topic ridulo.gif

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