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Infinitive question

de angel32163, 2010-junio-24

Mesaĝoj: 34

Lingvo: English

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 04:27:02

angel32163:But...would you say "Diru al viajn infanojn..."?
Cheers for that angel32163 ("cheers for that angel" sounds like a bartender to me lango.gif), it does seem like it should be ludu after all, as it's sort of a pretend quote in a way isn't it?

Regarding "dur al viajn infanojn", technically no. Firstly, whatever "al" is attached to can't have the accusative. "En" can, but this is to imply the sense of "into" instead of just "in". So "al _-n" would be redundant.

The other thing is that while "diri" means both "say" and "tell", the word "tell (Mr Henriksson) something" in English is effectively the same as saying "say to (Mr Henriksson)". So in Esperanto it's "diru al (Sinjoro Henriksson) ke ____________" (say to Mr Henriksson that _________) (the noun clause introduced by ke/that acts as the accusative object, not the person being addressed). Another example would be "Diru "Saluton!" al sinjorino Henriksdottir!" (say hello to Ms Henriksdottir!)

Sorry if I rambled on there or mentioned things you already know ridulo.gif

angel32163 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 04:37:22

But...would you say "Diru al viajn infanojn..."?
Or - would "viaj infanoj" in this instance be an indirect object, since the direct object is actually what you are telling them, and not the children themselves. Indirect objects are actually something I've been wondering about also, and I haven't really found anything about them in Esperanto. The children in this sentence are perhaps objects of the preposition "al", but would they still be treated as accusatives?

angel32163 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 04:50:20

LOL, Ciegered, you posted at the same time I did, so you answered some of the questions in my latest post. I wasn't sure about objects of "al", as in this instance it doesn't show direction to somewhere or something.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 05:00:11

angel32163:
But...would you say "Diru al viajn infanojn..."?
Or - would "viaj infanoj" in this instance be an indirect object, since the direct object is actually what you are telling them, and not the children themselves. Indirect objects are actually something I've been wondering about also, and I haven't really found anything about them in Esperanto. The children in this sentence are perhaps objects of the preposition "al", but would they still be treated as accusatives?
No, the indirect object is seperate from the accusative/direct object. If it helps maybe pretend that the accusative is a type of preposition just like "al", only one you stick onto the bottom-end of the word okulumo.gif (basically, just like a "to" phrase can only really have "to", so can an accusative only really be addressed by "-n".). In fact, another way of looking at it is that the accusative's "preposition" is in fact the verb of the sentence...

(for what it's worth there's also "na", which is an unofficial but known amongst many middle-level and up esperanto speakers, and used by some of them, which replaces the function of -n and acts like any other preposition.)

Things only really get complicated with phrases like "iru en la domon", which means "go in the house-to (go into the house)", and "Iru ni hejmen...." (let's go home), which combines -e and -n to create a suffix which sort of means "to a location" (well, it CAN be used with things that aren't locations, but as another forum member here said, that's not common usage). So it could be said that -n has some reduced meaning of "al" somewhere in it, which is maybe another reason why -n isn't used with other prepositions to avoid contaminating the meaning.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 05:04:28

angel32163:LOL, Ciegered, you posted at the same time I did, so you answered some of the questions in my latest post. I wasn't sure about objects of "al", as in this instance it doesn't show direction to somewhere or something.
Ah sorry ridulo.gif but what you said here:
angel32163:Or - would "viaj infanoj" in this instance be an indirect object, since the direct object is actually what you are telling them, and not the children themselves.
Is spot on. So basically the indirect object is (in a perfect world) anything that has something going/sent/given to it, and the objects just having an action done directly to it.

And now my heads hurting from all the (in)direct objectness....

angel32163 (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 05:13:32

Hmm...that makes sense, as an accusative is the one the action is being directed "to" or "toward"
Like "I saw your mother" you would really be saying "I looked toward your mother"
something like that anyway.
but it's my bedtime, so my brain is slowly turning to mush.

johmue (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 09:47:49

angel32163:So I think that using "...ili ne ludu kun alumetoj" would be correct, as you are telling someone to command their children not to play with matches.
Almost. Just one point: ... ili ne ludu per alumetoj. The matches are the toy in that case, not other children or people the children are playing with.
But...would you say "Diru al viajn infanojn..."?
Of course not. After "al" never accusative.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 10:05:24

johmue:ili ne ludu per alumetoj. The matches are the toy in that case, not other children or people the children are playing with.
While I agree that "per" is the better preposition to use I wouldn't say that "kun" is wrong, it has been used that way in various classical works and appears in modern speech too. If context makes it clear what the sense is then I wouldn't worry about it too much.

horsto (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 10:06:37

johmue:
But...would you say "Diru al viajn infanojn..."?
Of course not. After "al" never accusative.
Or more general: The -n ending after a preposition is not an accusative ending, but an indicator for an additional direction:

Mi iras en la domo - I walk in the house
Mi iras en la domon - I walk into the house

Therefore words after a preposition, which already contains a direction (al, el, etc.), never get the -n ending.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2010-junio-26 19:53:00

ceigered:for what it's worth there's also "na", which is an unofficial but known amongst many middle-level and up esperanto speakers, and used by some of them, which replaces the function of -n and acts like any other preposition.
I just want to clarify here that among fluent Esperanto speakers, the number of people who use "na" is vanishingly small. "na" tends to be used by people who are past the beginner stage, knowledgeable enough to start experimenting, but not yet experienced enough to understand that "na" is truly unnecessary. To me, use of "na" practically screams out that this person grabs onto linguistic trends and doesn't really know what they're doing. I expect to hear "na" combined with grammatical mistakes. I have met only a very, very few Esperantists who speak well, and use "na". I could count them on one hand. The use of "na" is so limited that I don't even mention it as a possibility to my students. There are other linguistic innovations that I mention so that my students recognize them when they see them, whether they choose to use them or not; "na" doesn't even make the cut in that respect. Perhaps those who use it talk mainly to one another. Who knows? Off the top of my head, I can only think of one person I know who speaks Esperanto well (general good grammar, few mistakes) who elects to use "na".

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