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Word and grammar confusion

di chrisim101010, 28 gennaio 2011

Messaggi: 21

Lingua: English

chrisim101010 (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 02:34:31

Saluton all

I keep hearing about "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions", but there are some words that do not appear to follow the grammar rules that i am aware of.

Ankaŭ, ambaŭ, and others that end in aŭ
apud, ĉar, eĉ, ol, sed, sen, tuj

plus many more that i wont bother to write.
Why are there a whole bunch of words with different endings? where do they fit in with the "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions"?

On another note, i was using the "Ek" program to get the special characters, and i noticed the "enter" button does not work when Ek is on. Is there a setting to change that?

danielcg (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 02:46:37

These words do not violate any of the 16 rules listed in the "Fundamento de Esperanto". They are either prepositions or original adverbs, not derived from other roots (in which case one should apply the rule of adding an -e ending), thus they are not subject to special endings.

As you see, it is not a matter of grammar, but of vocabulary instead.

Don't be discouraged and keep up the good work.

Regards,

Daniel

chrisim101010:Saluton all

I keep hearing about "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions", but there are some words that do not appear to follow the grammar rules that i am aware of.

Ankaŭ, ambaŭ, and others that end in aŭ
apud, ĉar, eĉ, ol, sed, sen, tuj

plus many more that i wont bother to write.
Why are there a whole bunch of words with different endings? where do they fit in with the "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions"?

On another note, i was using the "Ek" program to get the special characters, and i noticed the "enter" button does not work when Ek is on. Is there a setting to change that?

darkweasel (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 06:07:58

chrisim101010:
I keep hearing about "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions"
Don't misunderstand that. It does not mean that Esperanto has only 16 rules.

chrisim101010:, but there are some words that do not appear to follow the grammar rules that i am aware of.
First of all, the Esperanto words are divided into ordinary roots and particles.

Ordinary roots can be used (nearly) only if you add an ending to them that says if it's a noun, adjective, verb, ...

Particles can be used without any ending. The words you listed are particles. There are relatively few of them, but they exist.

ceigered (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 08:33:21

The 12/16/24 rules of Esperanto are basically a semi-helpful collection of rules to help learners get the basic feel of the language in a very short amount of time.

As for -aŭ words, they're sort of special in that Zam made them as sort of having an ambiguous classification. Nonetheless, most fit into a sort of adverb/preposition category.

"apud, ĉar, eĉ, ol, sed, sen, tuj", they're all adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions (or just particles). They can't really have an ending because of their small size. Actually, you can think of them as taking the role of what would be an ending. Only EO only has 5 vowels, and having a full case system would be confusing, so EO has particles instead except for the accusative.

sudanglo (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 11:13:31

It is not a question of length, Ceiger, that determines whether a root requires a gramatika finaĵo. Anstataŭ is a 3 syllable word.

There are few difficulties in the list of such roots.

Prepositions don't require a marker because there isn't one in Esperanto for this function for a start.

Words like 'ke', 'la', 'ĉu', 'kial' and 'sed' again have unmarked function. Which of the gramtikaj finaĵoj would be appropriate?

ceigered (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 11:20:00

sudanglo:It is not a question of length, Ceiger, that determines whether a root requires a gramatika finaĵo. Anstataŭ is a 3 syllable word.

There are few difficulties in the list of such roots.

Prepositions don't require a marker because there isn't one in Esperanto for this function for a start.

Words like 'ke', 'la', 'ĉu', 'kial' and 'sed' again have unmarked function. Which of the gramtikaj finaĵoj would be appropriate?
Well, no, but the point is that it's cumbersome to give the smaller prepositions extra endings, especially when all your endings have already been used up.

Plus it's not really a particle if it goes on for a couple of extra syllables because of endings and what not. Additionally, -aŭ vortoj are a big exception and sort of occupy their own "misc" category.

Essentially, for all these small words (the -aŭ words and ki/ĉi/neni words are exceptions as they do have their own systems), there's no real need for extra marking of their purpose, and it's not worth the energy to make a system for them that respects both brevity and sense.

T0dd (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 14:37:04

chrisim101010:Saluton all

I keep hearing about "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions", but there are some words that do not appear to follow the grammar rules that i am aware of.

Ankaŭ, ambaŭ, and others that end in aŭ
apud, ĉar, eĉ, ol, sed, sen, tuj

plus many more that i wont bother to write.
Why are there a whole bunch of words with different endings? where do they fit in with the "16 rules of grammar with no exceptions"?
First, don't get too excited about the 16 Rules. As ceigered pointed out, they are summary of some of the key points of morphology and grammar, and do not pretend to be complete or exhaustive.

I won't repeat what others have said about the words that you mentioned. I will add, however, that some of them can take additional part-of-speech endings and be usefully pressed into service.

ANTAŬ is a preposition, meaning "before", but ANTAŬA and ANTAŬE are also available, to give you "previous/prior" and "previously". See also TUJA, DUME, and APUDA, for example. The fact that these words have no grammatical ending to begin with makes it possible to add one, an ingenious feature of Esperanto.

erinja (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 15:11:03

To add to what Todd said and to clarify/expand on it a little, regular grammatical endings are used with practically all prepositions to give new meanings. It isn't limited to only a few prepositions or particles that can accept regular grammatical endings; they can all accept endings that create local new meanings.

Some more examples:
en = in
ene = inside ("Mi trovis ŝin ene" = I found her inside)
ena = interior

ekster = [preposition] outside - "Ŝi estas ekster mia domo" (She is outside my house)
ekstere = on the outside, in the outside - "Mi vidas ŝin ekstere" (I see her outside)
ekstera = [adjective] outside, exterior - "Ŝi loĝas en ekstera ĉambro" (She lives in an outside room)

Prepositions that inherently show movement don't seem to take grammatical endings, perhaps because logically you can't think of an appropriate meaning. For example I can't think of a good meaning for the prepositions "al" (to) and "el" (out of) plus a grammatical ending, but the rules of Esperanto don't preclude putting an ending on those, if you were able to devise a logical explanation for why the ending makes sense.

darkweasel (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 15:23:05

erinja:I can't think of a good meaning for [...] "el" (out of) plus a grammatical ending
I can: an ela strato could be a street that goes out of something.

ceigered (Mostra il profilo) 28 gennaio 2011 15:43:46

Ekster is a good example I reckon. Mi estas ekstere. Mi iras eksteren. Mi estas ekster la domo. La eksteraj lumoj de la domoj ne funkcias hodiaŭ ĉar la drataro estas difekta. (I am outside. I am going outside. I am outside the house. The house's external lighting doesn't work today because the wiring is defective)

(sorry, just saw Erinja's example. Oh well, there's more examples if someone so wants them).

'Bout "ela strato", I think a good definition could be "the street (from which something came)", thus "Do mi devas reiri returne laŭ la ela strato?!" "So I have to go again back through the street I just came from?!"

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