Zamenhof didn't write detailed rules of grammar. He wrote the sixteen rules, which are authoritative, but which only sketch out the skeleton of the language. And he wrote a bunch of sample texts. Everything that we know of Esperanto grammar is a rule derived from Zamenhof's usage in those texts, along with the guidance provided by the sixteen rules.

Zamenhof was actually much less specific about his grammar, as far as providing written rules, than most conlangs of today.

erinja:There are very few Esperanto books that I've read that I felt were worth a second read, but I think Lingvo kaj Vivo is one of them..

This recommendation has made me think that I might have a look for Lingvo kaj Vivo among the brokantaĵoj in Eastbourne next month!

Can I put a word in for Miroslav Malovec "Gramatiko de Esperanto" (1988)? This is shorter than the others, but it treats Esperanto like the living language that it is. It tells you EVERYTHING you will ever need to know that you can find in a book.

PMEG is too comprehensive and too prescriptive. Its whole raison d'etre seems to be to provide a way of determining whether what perfectly competent speakers of Esperanto say or write is "correct" or "incorrect". Wennergren invents rules based on his personal preferences. Real languages don't work like this.

PAG is an attempt to square the circle, to try and reconcile the way the authors spoke and wrote with the decisions of the Akademio (or "Akademujo", as I prefer to call it) and all the stuff some long dead Polish guy ever said and wrote. Therefore it is overly complicated.

If your attitude is too concerned with whether things are "correct" or "incorrect", you are concentrating on the wrong thing. Just listen to competent Esperanto speakers and imitate them. That's what Esperanto is.

Also worth looking at, assuming you can speak English, is Chris Gledhill's "The Grammar of Esperanto: a corpus based description" (1998). Again, this is based on REAL Esperanto and not somebody's a priori rules.

EdRobertson:Can I put a word in for Miroslav Malovec "Gramatiko de Esperanto" (1988)?

This is in the UEA catalogue, with a detailed review.

EdRobertson:Chris Gledhill's "The Grammar of Esperanto: a corpus based description" (1998).

The UEA catalogue marks this as nehavebla. I must say that 37 euros (= £32= $52) sounds to me like daylight robbery for a book of 100 pages!

Ed, thanks for the reference to Gledhill's book. I'd be interested to look at that.

Is PMEG really so prescriptive. When I have looked at various bits of it, I usually find it agrees with my 'lingvosento'.

Can you give examples of where Bertilo seems to have invented a rule based on his personal preference?

Miland:

EdRobertson:Chris Gledhill's "The Grammar of Esperanto: a corpus based description" (1998).

The UEA catalogue marks this as nehavebla. I must say that 37 euros (= £32= $52) sounds to me like daylight robbery for a book of 100 pages!

I'm afraid this is an academic publisher and par for the course unfortunately. However, you can get a copy of Chris's book on the web.

EdRobertson:.. you can get a copy of Chris's book on the web.

Dankon!

sudanglo:
Is PMEG really so prescriptive. When I have looked at various bits of it, I usually find it agrees with my 'lingvosento'.

Can you give examples of where Bertilo seems to have invented a rule based on his personal preference?

There are very many, but here's one as an example:

PMEG Section 12.3.3.3 (Da - nekutimaj uzoj)

See the section on "Da-ismo". Here he makes up a rule banning the preposition DA except when expressing a complete prepositional phrase. Let us take an imaginary dialogue to show this usage:

Question: Cxu vi havas multe da mono?
Answer: Mi havas multe da.

Wennergren surrounds the second of these two sentences with asterisks to suggest that this is not Esperanto.

I'm sorry, but it is Esperanto. Ordinary competent Esperanto speakers say stuff like this EVERY DAY. There is nothing wrong with it, and it is stylistically superior to the cumbersome and unnecessary repetition of "mono" in "Mi havas multe da mono", and to the vaguer, pragmatically inadequate alternative Wennergren insists on, "Mi havas multe".

EdRobertson:Wennergren insists on, "Mi havas multe".

Mi havas multe da, though it may well be used often, does look odd to me. I wonder whether it is a naciismo. Multe or multo at least look like "lots" (without "of"). Wennergren might appear to lay down the law sometimes, but he is an authority, a member of the Akademio. As I believe were Kalocsay, Waringhien and M.C. Butler. Malovec and Gledhill are not.

EdRobertson:I'm sorry, but it is Esperanto. Ordinary competent Esperanto speakers say stuff like this EVERY DAY. There is nothing wrong with it, and it is stylistically superior to the cumbersome and unnecessary repetition of "mono" in "Mi havas multe da mono", and to the vaguer, pragmatically inadequate alternative Wennergren insists on, "Mi havas multe".

I agree with Bertilo entirely on this, and I definitely don't think he's making things up.

I almost never hear that "multe da" form that Bertilo warns against. Certainly speakers of English would not be tempted to use that form, and it would sound ridiculous to me.

Question: "Do you have a lot of money?"
Normal answer: "I have a lot."
Weird answer: "I have a lot of."

Contrast with:
A: I'm sorry to say, John has lost a lot recently.
B: A lot of what? [or even: "Of what?"]
A: Of money.

Therefore I'd say that "da" works very similarly to "of" in English. "of" doesn't go with "a lot"; grammatically, "a lot" is its own expression. "Of" goes with "money".

There are many cases in English where we would say "a lot" all by itself, just as there are many cases where we use "multe" or "multo" in Esperanto, without necessarily specifying of what. (note: "of what"; "of" goes with "what")

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A side note on 'ordinary competent Esperanto speakers' -- I have found that 'ordinary competent' Esperanto speakers frequently make certain errors, simply because they never learned better. There are certain aspects of Esperanto grammar that I didn't manage to pick up for myself, that I didn't use correctly until someone told me the rule for using a certain form. Conversationally, people tend to let a lot slide, and it's easy to fudge your way through if you aren't sure. However if you are writing something to be published, and you want it to be correct, you tend to learn your grammar in much more detail, because you are consulting grammatical references, rather than just winging it in a conversation with that cute Esperantist from Ukraine.

In particular errors on when to use -a and -e are common in 'ordinary competent' speakers who otherwise speak well. I have Esperanto-speaking friends, and I have met foreign Esperantists in my travels, who otherwise spoke with great ease fluency, but who persistently made certain errors. This includes some parents who speak Esperanto at home with their children.

Why would otherwise competent speakers make these errors? On the -a/-e question, my guess is that many Esperanto speakers only ever take a basic course. I have noticed that many basic courses (including the one I learned from) don't teach when to use -a and when to use -e. It is a simple rule but it isn't easy to pick it up based on context. I personally wasn't able to figure it out based on context and usage, and since it wasn't in the course I learned from, I had on idea (and PMEG didnt' yet exist). I didn't learn until someone told me the simple rule, when I mentioned in passing that I was never sure about when to use -a and when to use -e. At the point when that rule was taught to me, I probably met your criteria for 'ordinary competence.'

Incidentally -- another digression here -- I don't know if you have ever met Bertilo but he is serious about his grammar, and he would never just make something up. He also has spent a lot of time at Esperanto events, so he has an excellent understanding of common usage.

Plus, I don't know how much you've gone into depth with PMEG but I find that in cases where there is a doubt on usage, he mentions all of the possible viewpoints, and then says which he prefers, and why. Therefore PMEG contains not only his opinions, but also opinions that he disagrees with (but does not call outright wrong - at a maximum, he will recommend against doing a certain thing, but will say that it's technically correct and some people do it). It's hardly making up arbitrary rules and expecting people to follow them. If there were a mainstream view that it was acceptable to say "multe da" all alone, he would have put it in.

I'm sure you can send Bertilo a polite e-mail on this topic if you would like to discuss it with him. He's a nice guy.