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erinja (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 03.57.59
razlem:But what I'm trying to ask is if each verb form of a noun root has a set meaning- with my example of "bovaĵi" earlier, and with "xxxxmangxi" now.Maybe you weren't paying close attention earlier in the thread but it was explained previously that context helps to determine the meaning of a verb form of a noun root. This is valid for Esperanto word building in general, not just noun roots in verb forms.
However I would say that in general a noun root with a verb ending gets translated as "to be a [noun]" or "to act like a [noun]". Context matters a lot, it's not a cookie cutter process.
razlem (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 04.31.22
You couldn't take it out altogether, but there are ways around it.
ceigered (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 04.43.50
.I guess it's because the other option (making everything a verb by definition, or better, making everything a noun by definition) isn't 1000% natural to humans, despite how efficient it is.
Nonetheless, if I could go back in time (and could repair any mistakes with CTRL+Z), I'd go to Zam and bring up the idea of things being noun roots by default
Hehehe. 
darkweasel (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 06.06.30
The marks of "transitivity" in dictionaries do serve a useful purpose: for example, if you translate komenci as "to start", you don't know that you sometimes have to use komenciĝi.
However, you can also learn the meaning of komenci as "to cause something to start" or something similar. Now you can use this verb correctly, without ever thinking about "transitivity", which is a term that confuses people.
3rdblade (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 06.24.09
Ampolinte la ĉambrojn de la hotelo, la juna viro panis lian fiŝhokon. (La fiŝoj de lia lageto preferas panon pro iu stranga kialo.)
Now if you'll excuse me I gotta go lightbulb my bedroom. I prefer 'em to them new fangled fluorescents. Glabron!
darkweasel (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 06.28.10
3rdblade:
Ampolinte la ĉambrojn de la hotelo, la juna viro panis sian fiŝhokon. (La fiŝoj de lia lageto preferas panon pro iu stranga kialo.)
3rdblade (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 06.46.19
darkweasel:Thankyou! I'm still having trouble with my 'si's3rdblade:
Ampolinte la ĉambrojn de la hotelo, la juna viro panis sian fiŝhokon. (La fiŝoj de lia lageto preferas panon pro iu stranga kialo.)
ceigered (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 09.34.04
darkweasel:Why do people think that "transitivity" is some grammatical category in Esperanto, comparable to grammatical gender in other languages?Well, transitivity is a grammatical category in every language.
The marks of "transitivity" in dictionaries do serve a useful purpose: for example, if you translate komenci as "to start", you don't know that you sometimes have to use komenciĝi.
However, you can also learn the meaning of komenci as "to cause something to start" or something similar. Now you can use this verb correctly, without ever thinking about "transitivity", which is a term that confuses people.
But indeed dictionaries don't help much and spur on a false sense that the problem's bigger than it really is. The other problem is that the human mind, for some people (if not many), searches for keywords and goes "OK, this keyword is critical to this word's meaning, so I'll make a note of it", but couldn't care much about the rest. Thus:
"komenci: to cause something to start" might only be remember as "to start".
I wouldn't see that as a flaw of the human mind though, since while many do get irritate at how imperfect and imprecise the human mind and human society are, that imprecision and flexibility is extremely important for our learning abilities and survival.
Thus, it's generally more beneficial to work around that fact, even if it means encouraging "fuzzy meanings" and ergativity. Not that it matters now for Esperanto...
sudanglo (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 10.52.18
In essence the dispute about tagmanĝi boils down to whether this word is 'tagmanĝ-i' or 'tag-manĝi' - or whether both analyses are to be permitted.
The netransitiveco of lunĉi seems to me to be natural, not arbitrary, Todd. It is then, from my point of view, odd to use a near synonym with a direct object.
It also seems natural to me, and not arbitrary, that 'kongresi' and 'kunveni' don't take direct objects.
erinja (Tunjukkan profil) 11 Maret 2011 14.23.08
Hardly any languages in the world seem to mark transitivity grammatically, and even then you would have to memorize which verbs were transitive and which not.
I think that people naturally categorize certain verbs as transitive and certain verbs as intransitive. It is hard to imagine "kill" being an intransitive verb, and it is hard to imagine "die" as transitive, though some languages may categorize them like that.
Ultimately, as someone already mentioned, if you memorize the Esperanto meaning of a verb, the transitivity is obvious.
The verb "boli" may seem to have unclear transitivity if you only consider the English translation, "to boil". However if you look at the definition of "boli" ("[about a fluid] to be in a state of becoming a gas, with masses of bubbles of vapour forming, bursting at the surface") the transitivity is obvious (it's intransitive).
If it were transitive, the definition would be something like "To put a fluid into a state of becoming a gas..."
English is so loosey-goosey about transitivity that I think this task is harder for anglophones than for speakers of other languages. But when you come down to it, it's relatively few verbs that are in doubt, and it's not that big a deal to just memorize them, or to memorize their Esperanto definitions.