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Accusative to mark dative case?

fra Durandal1717,2010 5 16

Meldinger: 5

Språk: English

Durandal1717 (Å vise profilen) 2010 5 16 23:07:41

I was thinking on how the objective/accusative case is used for indicating direction and direct objects, but what about objects of direction?

Such as:
Give me that pencil.

Which in an inflected language can retain the same basic sense, like:
Gib' mir jenen Bleistift.

Yet for the most part I see these cases in Esperanto as:
Donu al mi tiun krajonon.

I don't think there's any injunction against having more than one objective noun for the sake of brevity. 'Donu min tiun krajonon' would make the word order more important, but I really don't think it's ambiguous enough in these cases where one could mistake the pencil for the recipient. Or is it...?

erinja (Å vise profilen) 2010 5 16 23:13:46

You wouldn't mistake the direct and indirect object despite the ambiguous grammar. But the very fact that it's ambiguous makes it bad style. Esperanto is about clarity, so people try to speak in such a way that you don't need to worry about puzzling things out through context.

This example is not the only situation where Esperanto speakers avoid doing something that the grammar technically permits, for reasons of clarity.

ceigered (Å vise profilen) 2010 5 16 23:18:32

That said, we won't tie you up and burn you at the stake if we hear you say "Give that pencil me" lango.gif

(Erinja (or others), how about "Donu tiun krajonon mien"? While -en is normally used in things like with iri etc, could this function well (at least in groups of experienced/grammatically-nutty esperantists)?)

erinja (Å vise profilen) 2010 5 16 23:47:17

Technically you can only put the -en ending to indicate direction, on a root expressing a location.

I guess it depends on whether you think that you or I qualify as being locations.

This is why we could say that we are going "laborejen" (to the work place), but not "laboren" (to work - since "work" is an idea, not a location)

ceigered (Å vise profilen) 2010 5 16 23:53:12

erinja:Technically you can only put the -en ending to indicate direction, on a root expressing a location.

I guess it depends on whether you think that you or I qualify as being locations.

This is why we could say that we are going "laborejen" (to the work place), but not "laboren" (to work - since "work" is an idea, not a location)
Ah.. So technically it works, only from a slightly impersonal way (kind of like an army member saying "bring the ammunition to our location ASAP"), to a slightly oversimplified pidginy way (e.g. labor + en)? (and thus wouldn't be the best thing to recommend to a learner/normal person (eccentric people always do their own thing anyway lango.gif)).

Oh well thanks for explaining that Erinja, it seems like sticking with "al" is the best bet after all.

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