Miland:

Epikuro57:..we also have aperteco meaning openness which seems to be equally official..

"Equally official" to what? And on what evidence do you base that opinion?

I'm going by the esperanto-panorama English-Esperanto dictionary, which lists aperteco right next to aperturo. Aperteco also conforms to proper word-building practice.

There is no -uro suffix. The construction of aperturo is apertur/o. Therefore in classical Esperanto, there is no root word apert/. So you can't say that classical Esperanto permits aperto, aperteco, aperti, etc. because there is no root of apert/. Apert/ exists now but it's a neologism that isn't yet in wide use. Time will tell whether it will reach wide use or not, and time will tell what meaning it ends up with. Esperanto speakers have to decide whether this root apert/ offers functionality that the traditional compound word mal/ferm/ doesn't offer.

Incidentally, this is why Esperanto dictionaries show the division between root word and suffixes; it makes it clear which part of the word is root and which is the suffix, to help the reader of the dictionary use the word correctly.

Epikuro57:
Adjectives are formed by adding -a to the root, thus since riĉa means rich aperta means open in just the same way. Singular nouns are formed by adding -o to the root and infinitive verbs are formed by adding -i to the root and this is valid for all roots, not just some. Thus gajno means a win and gajni means to win, amo means love and ami means to love, ŝato means like and ŝati means to like, etc. Applying these rules to apert gives us aperto meaning open and aperti meaning to open in exactly the same way. Conjugating aperti according to the standard conjugation rules gives us apertis, apertas, apertos, aperu, etc.

I suggest this is totally consistent with Esperanto's grammar rules.

Roots, however, are not words. For each root, there is a word that uses that root that is a "basic" dictionary entry, from which other words are derived.

So, for example, you can't take the root PLEN- and make the verb PLENI and have it mean "to fill." That's because the actual dictionary word is PLENA, an adjective. We get the root PLEN- from the word, and then make other words from there. Therefore, if you want the verb "to fill" you must use PLENIGI, because PLENI just means "to be full".

So the hierarchy is word:root:derived words. It's not root:all words. I think Ido may take the latter approach, but I'm not sure.

Consequently, the family of words using APERT- is in a state of flux until it is decided whether the basic dictionary word is the adjective APERTA or the transitive verb APERTI. At the moment, it looks like the adjective form is "trending", so if the word ever gets officialized, the verb will be APERTIGI. But since it's not yet in wide use, it could easily go the other way.

erinja:There is no -uro suffix. The construction of aperturo is apertur/o. Therefore in classical Esperanto, there is no root word apert/. So you can't say that classical Esperanto permits aperto, aperteco, aperti, etc. because there is no root of apert/. Apert/ exists now but it's a neologism that isn't yet in wide use. Time will tell whether it will reach wide use or not, and time will tell what meaning it ends up with. Esperanto speakers have to decide whether this root apert/ offers functionality that the traditional compound word mal/ferm/ doesn't offer.

Incidentally, this is why Esperanto dictionaries show the division between root word and suffixes; it makes it clear which part of the word is root and which is the suffix, to help the reader of the dictionary use the word correctly.

Thanks for the clarification, it's much appreciated. I've found a few sites listing affixes, is there one listing all the roots? I wasn't speaking of classical Esperanto, merely applying the derivation rules to the words being discussed. Whether a word is old or new it should still follow the rules of the language.

Based on apertur/, I think the derivations apertura, aperture and aperturi, and the conjugations aperturis, aperturas, aperturos, aperturu etc. would all be valid.

Epikuro57:I'm going by the esperanto-panorama English-Esperanto dictionary, which lists aperteco right next to aperturo. Aperteco also conforms to proper word-building practice.

That dictionary is okay for a quick lookup, but not good for really understanding the language, because it doesn't show you whether a given entry is a compound or not.

You're better off using ReVo.

T0dd:So the hierarchy is word:root:derived words. It's not root:all words. I think Ido may take the latter approach, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, Ido's system is called the principle of reversibility, and it's meant to help you avoid having to memorize the grammatical part of speech of a root.

Unfortunately this principle falls into the category of "easier said than done" and the internet tells me that you still have to memorize the inherent part of speech for some types of Ido roots. Ido has many more suffixes than Esperanto, so you have to learn more rules for when to use which suffix to get which meaning.

Epikuro57:Based on apertur/, I think the derivations apertura, aperture and aperturi, and the conjugations aperturis, aperturas, aperturos, aperturu etc. would all be valid.

They would all be valid forms of the word, but they would not necessarily mean what you think they mean. The meanings come from the Esperanto rules for derivation.

aperturi = to be an opening
aperturis = was an opening
apertura = related to openings
[etc]

Regarding the hypothetical root apert/, the meaning of apert/eco would depend on the meaning of the root apert/. Since the root isn't in wide use, the meaning of apert/eco isn't clear.

In most cases lernu's dictionary is better than the one at esperanto-panoramo. At any rate for translation between Esperanto and another language (like English), there's no substitute for a quality paper dictionary. The only online dictionaries that I would characterize as good are the Esperanto-Esperanto ones.

T0dd:Roots, however, are not words. For each root, there is a word that uses that root that is a "basic" dictionary entry, from which other words are derived.

So, for example, you can't take the root PLEN- and make the verb PLENI and have it mean "to fill." That's because the actual dictionary word is PLENA, an adjective. We get the root PLEN- from the word, and then make other words from there. Therefore, if you want the verb "to fill" you must use PLENIGI, because PLENI just means "to be full".

So the hierarchy is word:root:derived words. It's not root:all words. I think Ido may take the latter approach, but I'm not sure.

Consequently, the family of words using APERT- is in a state of flux until it is decided whether the basic dictionary word is the adjective APERTA or the transitive verb APERTI. At the moment, it looks like the adjective form is "trending", so if the word ever gets officialized, the verb will be APERTIGI. But since it's not yet in wide use, it could easily go the other way.

Surely the logical method (where applicable) is to make it the same category of root as its' opposite so they're consistent with each other. On that basis it would be apert/i to be consistent with ferm/i. There'd be less potential for confusion that way, don't you think?

T0dd:That dictionary is okay for a quick lookup, but not good for really understanding the language, because it doesn't show you whether a given entry is a compound or not.

You're better off using ReVo.

Thanks for the information, I'll check that one out.

Epikuro57:Surely the logical method (where applicable) is to make it the same category of root as its' opposite so they're consistent with each other. On that basis it would be apert/i to be consistent with ferm/i. There'd be less potential for confusion that way, don't you think?

I wholeheartedly agree. If apert/ is to become widely used, i think it should be a verbal root: apert/i, just like ferm/i, both transitive. If it's adjectival, apert/i would mean "esti aperta" (intransitive), which is confusing.

We already have some problems with transitivity. Look at these transitive|intransitive pairs:

komenci | komenciĝi
fini | finiĝi
(so far so good)

startigi | starti
ĉesigi | ĉesi
(ouch)

(to make matters more confusing, you can use an infinitive after ĉesi, in spite of its intransitivity)