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"Per," "-ad" and Gerunds

de arkadio, 2009-decembro-20

Mesaĝoj: 7

Lingvo: English

arkadio (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-20 17:18:08

I was following the Tommjames-Miland discussion of "-ad" in the "walking" thread, and got to wondering about certain gerund phrases in Esperanto. In particular, how do you render sentences like "He won by cheating ". A few things occurred to me:

(1) Li gajnis per trompo. (He won by a cheat, i.e. by a fraud or swindle.)

(2) Li gajnis per trompado. (He won by cheating.)

In (2) I am using -ad to make a gerund out of the verbal root "tromp-".

(3) Li gajnis per tio, ke li trompis.

The repetition of the "li" makes (3) a little awkward. Can it be done with an infinitive? As in:

(4) Li gajnis per tio: trompi.

ybogi (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-20 20:03:25

arkadio:(1) Li gajnis per trompo. (He won by a cheat, i.e. by a fraud or swindle.)
Senartikola "trompo" ne nepre signifas unufojan trompon. Ankaŭ povas temi pri ĝeneraligo (cheat in general).

Plia ebleco:
(5) Li gajnis trompa(da)nte.

aŭ eventuale [ne en la usonangla senco..]:
(4b) Li gajnis per trompi.

Mi ne kredas, ke la fundamento malpermesas infinitivon post prepozicio - maksimume iuj interpretaj gramatikaj gvidiloj.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-20 20:50:29

I'd say your 1) and 2) are fine, and I would go with either of them depending on what I wanted to emphasize. The difference between them would be that whereas 1) suggests (but as ybogi quite rightly points out, does not necessarily mean) a single action, 2) suggests a more extended ongoing process of cheating.

If you want to be clear about the fact the cheating was done in a more procedural or ongoing way then you can use ad to show that. If not then just leave it out.

As regards putting an infinitive after "per", personally I'd avoid it. Esperanto is fairly rigid in treating verbs as actual verbs and not semantic nouns, and that kind of usage hardly shows up. You would almost always see a nounified verb, with or without the ad suffix.

Miland (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-20 22:19:30

arkadio:(1)..a fraud
If the context you are thinking of is an isolated act, you don't need ad, which is used to indicate that an act is not isolated.

In (3), if you want to say "He won on account of the fact that he cheated", I would use pro instead of per: Li gajnis pro tio, ke li trompis. Per is used to say "by means of", e.g. "He won by means of a bribe", Li gajnis per subaĉeto.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-21 04:21:11

In regards to PER vs PRO, pro effectively means that the fellow won due to the results of a cheat - who was cheating is not really known, but somewhere a cheat affected his chances of winning (maybe by accident!).

Per however would insinuate that he won using a cheat (as if the cheat was a tool for him to win), not just because a cheat occurred (which could have been someone else's tool to win and they just stuffed up) - in other words it makes the person we're talking about more responsible (of course, the technicalities could be further discussed but it'll just get confusing).

horsto (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-21 13:49:28

tommjames:
As regards putting an infinitive after "per", personally I'd avoid it. Esperanto is fairly rigid in treating verbs as actual verbs and not semantic nouns, and that kind of usage hardly shows up. You would almost always see a nounified verb, with or without the ad suffix.
In PMEG is proposed to use the infinitive only after the prepositions por, anstataŭ, krom kaj sen, but it's not generally illogical to use it also after other prepositions.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2009-decembro-21 14:14:16

horsto:it's not generally illogical to use it also after other prepositions
Indeed, and a good point. Though I'd consider their infrequency to be reason enough to avoid them, since as pmeg says they povas krei miskomprenojn pro la malkutimeco (can create misunderstanding due to rarity).

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