Messages: 27
Language: English
Ironchef (User's profile) September 10, 2009, 7:16:38 PM
ceigered:surely "viajn retpoŝtojn" in the accusative as it's "your emails" that are being read, using legante as an adverbial action. Yes/no?
Minor question: is 'legante viaj retpoŝtoj' grammatically correct for saying 'reading your emails'?
Rogir (User's profile) September 10, 2009, 8:03:21 PM
philodice (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 1:23:32 AM
Ironchef: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:surely "viajn retpoŝtojn" in the accusative as it's "your emails" that are being read, using legante as an adverbial action. Yes/no?
Minor question: is 'legante viaj retpoŝtoj' grammatically correct for saying 'reading your emails'?
ceigered (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 5:00:45 AM
) and ended up editing my message and taking out the accusative 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 (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 9:43:32 AM
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 pointIt'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 (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 10:47:02 AM
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 (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 11:10:19 AM
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 (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 11:45:05 AM
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 (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 11:55:09 AM
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 (User's profile) September 11, 2009, 2:03:36 PM
What happens with 'estis leganta' vs. 'estis leginta'?
sorry if I'm helping to propel this thread further off topic
