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Infinitive question

de angel32163, 2010-junio-24

Mesaĝoj: 34

Lingvo: English

angel32163 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 19:12:40

If I were to translate the sentence "Watch that man run." into Esperanto, would it be "Rigardu la viro kuri."? Or would I say Rigardu la viro kuras."? Or some other verb form?

horsto (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 19:49:23

Don't forget the accusative:

Rigardu tiun viron kuri.

Rigardu la viro kuras. would mean:

Look, the man is running.

angel32163 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 20:13:06

Dankon, Horsto! I thought about that after I'd posted, but had to leave for work (which is where I'm at now.) those darn accusatives get me every time! So, "kuri" would be the correct verb form here?

Roberto12 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 21:06:27

This is a good and difficult question, because it deals with predicates (in the English version at least), which are somewhat slippery in Esperanto. I myself would translate it as:

Rigardu la kuron de tiu viro

It seems to me that in "rigardu tiun viron kuri", the infinitive is really connected to the finite verb, so it actually says: "rigardu (por) kuri tiun viron".

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 21:41:35

Roberto:it actually says: "rigardu (por) kuri tiun viron"
That wouldn't be my reading of it, horsto's translation is quite correct here. When you say "rigardu tiun viron kuri" the placement of the infinitive does not have the same effect as it would for example in "mi iras manĝi", where there is an implied "por".

If you're interested there are many results for this usage in Tekstaro, with this string:
\\b(rigard|vid)[iaou]s? (\\w+ )?\\w+n \\w{3,}i\\b

I think you'll be hard pressed to find a single example that has the sense of "(por) kuri".

Chainy (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 21:54:17

tommjames:If you're interested there are many results for this usage in Tekstaro, with this string:
\b(rigard|vid)[iaou]s? (\w+ )?\w+n \w{3,}i\b
I just love these 'strings' that you come up with, tommjames! ridulo.gif I've no idea how you work them out! - but it seems pretty useful.

Horsto's suggestion is definitely good. Nice and simple and absolutely correct.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 22:14:34

Chainy:I just love these 'strings' that you come up with, tommjames! ridulo.gif I've no idea how you work them out! - but it seems pretty useful.
Hehe yes they are extremely useful. They are called regular expressions, which is a syntax for matching text patterns. They work kind of like wildcards; the website regular-expressions.info describes them as "wildcards on steroids", which I think sums them up perfectly.

They're certainly not as baffling as they can look once you learn the basics of the syntax. And they're perfect for a tool such as Tekstaro where you can cut down hours of searching into just a few seconds, and get much more accurate results too.

angel32163 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-24 23:40:18

Thank you, thank you!! I found several examples from Tekstaro that were helpful!
I've actually been writing out some short practice sentences to help me learn, and I have a few that sound like something from a first grade reader. You know, like "Rigardu la hundon kuri." (See the dog run.) Really trying to get a grasp on sentence structure.

Roberto12 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-25 09:12:53

I've learnt something new about Esperanto.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-25 09:26:15

Roberto12:Rigardu la kuron de tiu viro
For what it's worth, this is correct and all, and makes perfect sense. It's just a very interesting and creative way to phrase what essentially is "look at that man run" (which is now "look at the running of that man" - so the emphasis has changed from "look at the man (who's running)" to "look at the running (which is being done by that man)") rido.gif (also, I guess some find the evasion of a second verb somewhat unnatural, or a bit poetic).

Interestingly, I've just noticed something about English - it does the exact same thing as Esperanto, in that it uses an imperative verb, an object of sorts (in English's case, it's a bit different because of the preposition), and then an infinitive:

"look at the rabbit jump"
Regardu la kuniklo salti

Then compare with
"Regardu la kuniklon saltas"
Look at the dog runs <- shoko.gif

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