Messages: 386
Language: English
RiotNrrd (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 6:40:41 PM
razlem:I consider it irregular when verbs are split into three categories with no formal rule or marker of how they're used.That's like saying that the prepositions are irregular because they start with a bunch of different letters, and are of different lengths. But we don't think of them as irregular, because their starting letters and lengths don't derive from any particular rule.
The verb categories don't follow from any rule. No rule, no exception to that rule. No exception, no irregularity.
erinja (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 7:24:56 PM
RiotNrrd:My observation is simply that given such an English verb, it is not possible to tell how Esperanto will handle it. ... There is no discernible pattern, and thus it seems arbitrary.I know that you think it's a facile explanation, that you simply have to learn the meaning of the verb.
But this is true anyway. This is true of the whole language. If you have an English word, there is no way to determine what the Esperanto word is for that English word, without going out, looking it up, and memorizing it. I see no way to fix this problem, beyond absolutely doing away with any worries about transitivity whatsoever, as mentioned earlier. Or arbitrarily declaring that all verbs are transitive, and coming up with some kind of setup for marking intransitive meanings.
It isn't Esperanto's fault that English verb have multiple transitivities, and that the English verb transitivity doesn't always match with the ostensible Esperanto translation of that word. Even if there were a grammatical marker of transitivity in Esperanto, you would have to memorize that.
You would have to memorize, for example, that all transitive verb roots end in e and all intransitive verb roots en in a. And then you would be wondering to yourself "to mix, is that miksai or miksei?"
RiotNrrd (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 8:16:08 PM
erinja:I see no way to fix this problem...There is no way to fix the problem without changing the language. Since we're not going to do that, rote memorization is the only course of action we have. I fully accept that. I don't have to like it, though.
razlem (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 8:31:25 PM
RiotNrrd:No rule, no exception to that rule. No exception, no irregularity."No laws, no crime." While technically true, it doesn't solve the problem.
But as I said before to Todd, this would require changing the whole verb system, which I don't think any of you are prepared to do.
T0dd (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 8:49:09 PM
No, it would be chaos, and the community would split into various factions. It wouldn't just be the two factions either, because this decree would send a signal that the time had come to let the bee out of everyone's bonnet!
A word of advice. If you do finish your Angos project, and decide to actually try to promote it as an auxlang, emulate Zamenhof in at least this one way: Create a Fundamento, including an extensive chrestomathy, and baseline vocabulary and declare them "locked", for better or worse. Your project probably won't get off the ground anyway, unless you are prepared to do what Z. did and make it your life's work, and spend years and years generating content in it. Even then, the prospects are dismal. But without a Fundamento, I think you are doomed from the start. Zamenhof got that part right.
One other comment: The transitivity issue isn't a matter of irregularity so much as an area where things aren't as systematic as one might prefer.
johmue (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 8:54:10 PM
razlem:So you'd like to have some kind of marker, that tells you wether a verb is transitive or intransitive. This would add an extra syllable to more or less every verb. Quite a bit of an overhead, don't you think?erinja:Unless you consider it 'irregular' to have to know the meaning of a word before you use it.I consider it irregular when verbs are split into three categories with no formal rule or marker of how they're used.
One major difficulty of Esperanto's grammar is that grammar of national languages are much more sloppy than Esperanto's. Esperanto's grammar is simple and regular, but it is very precise and unmerciful.
That leads us to the phenomenon that sometimes Esperanto's grammar feels more difficult than grammar of a national language. The transitivity problem is a good example for that. The common national languages are quite liberal and tolerant there. Esperanto is not.
This is sometimes somewhat dissapointing to novices. They think, that something that their native language or another national language known to them allows, must also be allowed by Esperanto because Esperanto is "easy".
Yes it is easy but its precise and unmerciful. It leaves much responsibility about ambiguity to the speaker, where national languages leave it to the listener.
Look at the english sentence: "Peter treated Andrew like a king." It is ambigous. Esperanto's grammar does not allow this ambiguity making it more difficult to set up the sentence correctly.
erinja (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 8:56:50 PM
T0dd:Your project probably won't get off the ground anyway, unless you are prepared to do what Z. did and make it your life's work, and spend years and years generating content in it.I agree with what Todd says, and I'd like to add that Zamenhof had an infusion of cash (his wife's dowry) to give Esperanto its first push, so it would help you with Angos if you could marry for money.
T0dd (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 9:26:03 PM
erinja:razlem, I'd like to suggest that you start dating Arianna Huffington immediately.
I agree with what Todd says, and I'd like to add that Zamenhof had an infusion of cash (his wife's dowry) to give Esperanto its first push, so it would help you with Angos if you could marry for money.
razlem (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 10:27:10 PM
johmue:So you'd like to have some kind of marker, that tells you wether a verb is transitive or intransitive. This would add an extra syllable to more or less every verb. Quite a bit of an overhead, don't you think?I would have no markers, but make every action ambitransitive.
@erinja, Todd
Thankfully, because of internet resources, money is not an immediate issue as far as the promotion of Angos.
Miland (User's profile) March 12, 2011, 10:45:09 PM
razlem:I would .. make every action ambitransitive..I have had a similar thought: if I had to make one reform in Esperanto, this would be it. But working it out in practice is another matter.
Take one example: naski means "to give birth". If a man said mi naskis en tiu lando instead of mi naskiĝis.., Esperantists might laugh, but would probably understand. But if a young woman said it, it could cause unfortunate misunderstanding.
Transitivity is bound up with the established meanings of words in the language as it has evolved over a century, and it's not possible to overhaul it in a simple way.
Perhaps this proposal to "abolish transitivity" is an example of the principle of the American writer H.L. Mencken: to every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong!