The serious issue here is what takes priority in Esperanto. Usage or rules?

sudanglo:The serious issue here is what takes priority in Esperanto. Usage or rules?

Assuming you don't want the language to change- rules.

sudanglo:The serious issue here is what takes priority in Esperanto. Usage or rules?

That is definitely one important question. Another is what an indirect object actually is. I have the idea that Miland believes that the presence of the preposition al is sufficient to make what follows it an indirect object. That is not how it works.

Citing Wikipedia, "An indirect object is the recipient of the direct object, or an otherwise affected participant in the event. There must be a direct object for an indirect object to be placed in a sentence."

Yes, there are other constructions that use "to", in English, and al in Esperanto. These are not indirect objects; they are simply prepositional objects. In the English "I listened to music", "music" is not an indirect object. In Esperanto Muziko plaĉas al mi, mi is not an indirect object.

Another point is that even when the direct object is omitted, it doesn't follow that the verb has suddenly become intransitive. Ni manĝis antaŭ la prelego--still transitive, with no direct object in sight.

As for whether rules trump usage, or vice versa...it's a good question. I'd say that prohibitive rules trump usage, for certain, in a planned language especially. For example, we are told that adjectives must agree with their nouns, which entails that failure to do so is prohibited. La flava floroj just isn't acceptable, under any circumstances.

But where the rules allow a certain construction, but that construction is rare nonetheless, I think we have to give quite a lot of latitude. The fact that a construction is rare may simply be a by-product of the habits of certain populations, and there's no reason for that to become normative. Indeed, I'd argue that all Esperantists should be vigilant about this sort of thing, and the Akademio should provide leadership.

I grant that Ni vespermanĝis bovaĵon sounds odd to my anglophone ear, and even to my Esperantophone ear, but I don't attach any significance to that. As far as I can discern, it makes perfectly good sense, and violates no rule--excedpt NPIV's judgment that the verb suddenly becomes intransitive.

I don't particularly like "Mi vespermanĝis bovaĵon" myself, though I can't think of a specific reason why it would be wrong. My 'lingvosento' has always been that vespermanĝi was intransitive. This may be influenced by my native English. I may be wrong, and I never really investigated whether vespermanĝi should be transitive or intransitive, though I definitely noticed that the speaking community overwhelmingly uses it as intransitive.

However I think it would be a mistake to use English as an example to support or refute the idea of vespermanĝi as being transitive. Number one, as someone already mentioned, English isn't Esperanto, and things work differently.

Number two, even if you did accept the validity of using English as an example to prove the transitivity of the Esperanto word (I don't, but I'm just saying), "to dine" and "to feed" are bad examples, in that they don't prove the point.

"to dine" is intransitive in English, unless you use it in a sense like "to wine and dine someone". The normal sense of the word "to dine out", "to dine on pasta", is considered intransitive by Merriam-Webster. The definition is given as "to take dinner". If you were to translate 'vespermanĝi' as 'to eat dinner' (as I suspect many Esperanto speakers would translate it), then it would be intransitive, like "dine". But as I said earlier, I think it would be a mistake to say that the same rule applied to "dine" in English should be applied to vespermanĝi. The English verb comes from the French "diner", which is also intransitive.

"to feed" is also intransitive in English, in the sense of feeding on something. It's transitive if you feed your child. It's intransitive if a cow feeds on forage. That's according to Merriam-Webster. Therefore in ENGLISH (still not using English to prove anything in Esperanto), "to feed" and "to dine" do not take direct objects. You would say that the cow feeds on corn and the people dine on steak, the same way that you sleep on a bed [intransitive obviously] or live in an apartment [intransitive]. You're adding a preposition and a noun to explain the circumstances of your intransitive verb.

So argue what you want about how vespermanĝi works, but in English I think "to feed" and "to dine" are relatively clear cut, and they are intransitive in the senses that are being discussed here.

Transitivity can be tested with passive. I found a few occurrences of "vespermangxita" with Google (not all of them in perfect esperanto).

One may consider "paroli" as transitive, because "Esperanto parolata" is well attested.

On the other side, when it it not true transitivity, but only extended use of accusative, the passivation is not allowed:
Petro iras urbon
sed oni ne rajtas diri:
*urbo estas irata de Petro

mi venas lundon
sed ne
*lundo estas venota de mi

Por "obei" oni trovas kelkajn atestojn, interalie:
"Tiu regulo tre malofte estas obeita."

Tio pruvas, ke en la menso de iuj esperantistoj, "obei" povas esti transitiva.

sudanglo:The serious issue here is what takes priority in Esperanto. Usage or rules?

Well, if we're voting, I say "rules".

In English, using something incorrectly, repeatedly, over a relatively long period of time, to the point that it becomes common[1], makes the incorrect correct. English is governed by no central authority other than usage.

Esperanto does have a central authority, in the Fundamento and associated documents. What's incorrect in Esperanto stays incorrect. If that wasn't the case, Esperanto would destabilize in no time.

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[1] OR, get it published by a reputable newspaper[2]. People seem willing to accept practically anything if a newspaper prints it.
[2] Although newspapers seem to be in decline, so this may no longer hold as true as it did in the pre-internet days.

I vote for rules too.

It takes a few hours to learn the 16 fundamental "rules" - say 5 pages in the "Fundamento" - but it takes years to learn usage (as it is recorded in PAG or PMEG).

Esperanto would fail its purpose if "usage" were choosen.

By the way, why the most interesting discussions are in english and not in esperanto? Isn't the language rich enough to debate about linguistics?

T0dd:

Miland:Esperanto is not English.

Indeed it isn't, but if transitivity has something to do with the meaning, and isn't an arbitrary convention, then when the meaning is the same across languages, transitivity should be the same too.

Would that real life were so simple. In Esperanto, I would say that the universal or near-universal use of al shows that plaĉi is used as a statement about being rather than action. Therefore al makes the object indirect, and therefore, in muziko plaĉas al mi, mi is indirect, not direct. Other evidence of intransitivity: plaĉita is never used.

In case I haven't already mentioned it: according to PIV 2005, plaĉi is intransitive.

Good question Altebrilas. I just posted about this in another thread, not having seen your question.

Seems to me that the English forum should be for questions from beginners whose Esperanto isn't sufficient to allow them to compose their question in Esperanto - or about questions specific to English.

Aŭ eble, ni devus lanĉi temojn en la anglalingva forumo kun Esperanta titoloj, signalante ke la temo estas por pli spertaj Esperantistoj, sed samtempe permesante en la sekva diskuto la utiligon de angla vortoj kie la afiŝanto havas problemojn por trovi la ĝustan ekvivalenton en Esperanto.

Applying Altebrilas's test, the question becomes can you say La bovaĵo estis vespermanĝita'.

Now that is one peculiar sentence!