Ujumbe: 91
Lugha: English
Miland (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 20 Februari 2011 11:57:39 asubuhi
English freely uses complex tenses, but Esperanto is not English. In my view their frequent use in Esperanto is bad style and hinders communication.
I would certainly translate "I am X-ing" by Mi X-as, or "I have X-ed" by Mi X-is.
sudanglo (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 20 Februari 2011 1:50:51 alasiri
Just to check, I searched in Tekstaro. Not difficult to find examples there of 'estis -inta'.
I just wanted to make the point that when necessary, you should use them, They won't then make your sentence sound funny.
jchthys (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 23 Februari 2011 11:36:04 asubuhi
sudanglo:I just wanted to make the point that when necessary, you should use them, They won't then make your sentence sound funny.To me they would
sudanglo (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 23 Februari 2011 6:07:33 alasiri
Estis varma aŭtuna posttagmezo, kaj forta pluvo estis falinta
Sustitute 'falis' in this sentence and the meaning changes completely.
Miland (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 23 Februari 2011 7:21:29 alasiri
jchthys (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 23 Februari 2011 8:05:36 alasiri
Miland:I might prefer forta pluvo jam falis there.Or antaŭe falis.
darkweasel (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 23 Februari 2011 8:18:36 alasiri
It is possible to just use -is, but it is not always the clearest way to express things. If you add antaŭe it makes the meaning clear, but in my opinion jam doesn't because this can make sense even in the normal past tense.
(I'm aware that this message is somewhat obscure, but I hope you get what I mean.)
Miland (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 23 Februari 2011 9:15:37 alasiri
darkweasel:.. in my opinion jam doesn't because this can make sense even in the normal past tense..I grant you that jam, "already" suggests the recent past, but with rain that would usually be so.
In PMEG we have: "Jam signifas, ke antaŭe okazis ia ŝanĝo..". I translate: "Jam means that the change has happened in the past". Thus the information conveyed by it is adequate for a completed action.
In this case we are not relating the rain having fallen to some other action ("La vokaloj de la participoj", 2nd box and sentence above it). As I said, Esperanto does not use complex tenses as freely as English.
sudanglo (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 24 Februari 2011 12:08:05 alasiri
'Forta pluvo estis falinta' means that it had stopped raining, or at least that you are focusing on a prior time.
Of course, Esperanto doesn't use complex tenses as freely as English, but that's a different proposition to asserting that complex forms should be avoided even when they are necessary for clarity.
I'm afraid that the idea that Esperanto doesn't use complex verbs forms is one of those things that get repeated without thinking - like 'the word order in Esperanto estas libera'.
Miland (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 24 Februari 2011 3:02:56 alasiri
sudanglo:Miland 'forta pluvo jam falis' (it was already raining, had already started to rain) means that the pluvo is coming down 'now', at the time in question..PMEG states: IS montras, ke la ago okazis antaŭ la nuno. I translate: "IS shows that the action occurred before the present." Therefore forta pluvo jam falis means that the rain had already come down before the time in question. To show that the rain had already begun to fall (but was still going on) we might say forta pluvo jam ekfalis.
I wouldn't be dogmatic about asserting that PMEG implied that IS were not suitable for expressing the past continuous, and it wouldn't surprise me if examples of this were found in the tekstaro, but in my view it is quite suitable for the past perfect, particularly when used with jam.
Restraint in using complex tenses befits an international language. Exploiting the flexibie word order can also be an aid to clarity, as F.Faulhaber shows in his excellent little book Ne tiel, sed tiel ĉi!