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igxi + passive participle?

dari arkadio, 24 Februari 2010

Pesan: 40

Bahasa: English

arkadio (Tunjukkan profil) 24 Februari 2010 21.25.54

I was once told by a highly expert Esperantist that I should not use the combination (iĝi + passive participle). I had wanted to know whether
(1) La glaso iĝis rompita,
and
(2) La glaso rompiĝis,
had identical meanings. The expert told me that, not only was (1) was bad style, but that it didn't really make sense. To him, "iĝi rompita" meant something like "to become by itself broken by something else." I bowed to his greater wisdom and experience --- especially about the bad style --- but I have come across iĝi + passive participle in high places. From PMEG:
(3) "malfermiĝi = iĝi malfermita"
And from Jen Nia Mondo, Lesson 16:
(4) "...and we could say "La domo iĝis refarbita."
Is there a clear rule about this?

tommjames (Tunjukkan profil) 24 Februari 2010 21.41.49

In PMEG that iĝi malfermita is just an explanation of the function of the iĝ suffix by way of example, I wouldn't really take that as an endorsement of that kind of usage in normal speech or writing.

However I think what this experienced Esperantist is overlooking is that a passive participle adjective like "rompita" doesn't necessarily have to indicate that someone or something else did the breaking, you can describe a glass as rompita and it can just as well mean the glass is in a broken state, as much as it can mean the glass got broken by someone or something else. In light of that I wouldn't say that something like "iĝis rompita" necessarily indicates a becoming action caused by someone else, although I agree that it's a convoluted way of doing things when you can just say "rompiĝis" for the middle voice or "estis rompita" for the passive, in the normal way.

Rogir (Tunjukkan profil) 24 Februari 2010 23.57.21

I more or less disagree here. If you mean to say that a glass is broken, but that it is not necessarily caused by anyone, you should say rompiĝinta.

darkweasel (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 06.14.49

I think this is based on a misunderstanding of the rule "no iĝi + passive participle".

You cannot use *-iĝit. But you can well use -itiĝ, as in for example la pordo malfermitiĝis ("the door became opened"), which is an absolutely logical way of saying this.

jan aleksan (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 08.53.21

seems to me that (1) is correct, but maybe the expert esperantist meant that (1)-form is much more complex that (2)-form, and if you want to be understood (ex when you speak with a chinese), definitely prefer (2).

tommjames (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 10.35.51

Rogir:If you mean to say that a glass is broken, but that it is not necessarily caused by anyone, you should say rompiĝinta.
Not correct. It would be perfectly acceptable and indeed more usual to discover a broken glass and say something like "ho, la glaso estas rompita" in preference to rompiĝinta. The iĝinta forms are used to show that something came into a certain state. If you merely want to show the state itself, without any implication of how or why that state came into being, the ita forms are more usual. Search around in Tesktaro and you'll find numerous results for rompita where the emphasis is just on the state, and not on how the subject same into that state, and indeed where it would be against-sense to suppose an external agent for the breakage ("rompitaj kruroj" just one example, from Homoj sur la Tero).

That said, there's nothing wrong with the iĝintaj forms and they do tend to get used for some words more than others. Enamiĝinta, geeziĝintaj are ubiquitous examples. I think it's pretty clear though that adjectives like rompita, malfermita etc are perfectly fine for a general state. This is the very reason PMEG describes malfermiĝis as "iĝis malfermita"; malfermita is perfectly fine to show an open state, without implying an opener.

arkadio (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 15.55.06

Thank you all for your replies. Last summer I dragged several of you into an overlong, hair-splitting discussion of the passive of being/becoming, and I don't want to do that again. I think that it was Tommjames who terminated that thread by pointing out that the Fundamento was quite clear about the passive: All forms of the passive are rendered by (esti + passive participle). He makes the same point here and I think he's right. I saw the construction iĝi + passive participle as a version of the passive of becoming. Arguments in its favor, logical and appealing though they are, are trumped by the Fundamento.
For the record, I think the iĝi verbs are just fine. However, since pure adjectives like "blanka" commute with iĝi (i.e. iĝi blanka = blankiĝi) I wanted to extend that property to passive participial adjectives like "rompita." But, as has been pointed out, one can live without that construction.
However I think what this experienced Esperantist is overlooking is that a passive participle adjective like "rompita" doesn't necessarily have to indicate that someone or something else did the breaking, you can describe a glass as rompita and it can just as well mean the glass is in a broken state, as much as it can mean the glass got broken by someone or something else.
Yeah, I accept that. For practical purposes, that works well enough. It bothers me a little because it makes "rompita" into a quasi-homonym. (And I thought that Esperanto was supposed to be homonym-free.) And finally, if you can assign "rompita" these two shades of meaning, can you do that for "rompiĝinta" also?

darkweasel (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 15.59.16

arkadio:(And I thought that Esperanto was supposed to be homonym-free.)
It's not, and it's not supposed to be. Many Esperanto words have a few different meanings. Often that's because the respective word in national languages is ambiguous - like artikolo, which can be a grammatical article (English the, Esperanto la) or an article in a magazine.

tommjames (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 16.11.33

arkadio:can you do that for "rompiĝinta" also?
I would say no, "rompiĝinta" shows that the subject became broken, I think it's pretty clear in not having any connection to an agent who performed the breaking. In that sense it is perhaps the clearer word to use, but in my experience it isn't the usual way of showing a state of being broke. I wouldn't personally use it unless I wanted to somehow draw focus to the fact of having become broke, rather than simply being broke.

tommjames (Tunjukkan profil) 25 Februari 2010 17.48.52

Just to add, I did a little hunting about and found this little newsgroups message from Bertilo, in which he asserts that "malfermita" can be used for both "opened by someone" and just "open":

http://groups.google.be/group/soc.culture.espera...

Bertilo en soc.culture.esperanto:En Esperanto "malfermita" povas esti uzata, ĉu oni volas montri nur la staton de tia pordo, ĉu oni volas emfazi, ke iu ĝin malfermis. Ambaŭokaze oni diras: "La pordo estas malfermita."

Translated: In Esperanto "malfermita" can be used whether you want to show just the state of the door, or to emphasize that someone opened it. In both cases you say "La pordo estas malfermita".
Of course malfermi is a different verb to rompi, but hopefully the above should be enough to banish any doubt that may still exist as regards "broken by someone" and "broke".

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