EdRobertson:

johmue:"Ja, viel." is correct. "Ja, vieles." is wrong, no matter if with capital or not.

darkweasel:No, it shouldn't. However, actually in German I'd prefer viel, not vieles in such a case ... (although I doubt I'd even actually answer your question that way).

Ok, thanks for that. I accept I shouldn't say "vieles" with mass things like money, I have to say "viel". But I can say "vieles" with countable individual things, can't I? E.g. "Hast Du vieles vor?" and "Hast Du viel vor?" are both ok, yes?

I woudln't say "Ich habe vieles vor." though it doesn't sound completly wrong.

So have we established that "multe da" with no noun following it is not a germanismo, or is it?

Yes.

EdRobertson:I accept I shouldn't say "vieles" with mass things like money, I have to say "viel". But I can say "vieles" with countable individual things, can't I?

Actually it's somewhat difficult for me as a native speaker to tell you any rule, but I guess that you are right.

EdRobertson:E.g. "Hast Du vieles vor?" and "Hast Du viel vor?" are both ok, yes?

Yes, both of them seem okay to me, although the second one sounds more natural to me.

EdRobertson:So have we established that "multe da" with no noun following it is not a germanismo, or is it?

It definitely isn't. I can't think of any similar phenomenon in German.

I take the "da" issue and the tiom-kiom-ismo as two separate situations.

Bertilo is saying that it is flat-out wrong to use "da" without being followed by a preposition.

On tiom-kiom-ismo, if you look at this page, you will find the following text:
Estas rekomendinde utiligi tiun ĉi eblon tre ŝpare, por ke la emfaza efekto de tiom kaj kiom ne eluziĝu, kaj por ke la distingo inter kvantaj kaj gradaj vortoj ne fariĝu malklara.
In translation:
It is recommended only to use this possibility [using tiom and kiom for emphasis] very sparingly, so not to 'wear out' the emphatic effect of tiom and kiom, and so not to blur the distinction between words of quantity and of grade.

Therefore I would say that on tiom-kiom-ismo, Bertilo is suggesting not to do it because you lose something of the language's precision. In fact he is not saying that it's wrong to use tiom/kiom in situation where the Fundamento uses tiel/kiel. He is saying that you can do it, but that it indicates extra emphasis, and if you EMPHASIZE EVERY SINGLE OCCASION WHEN YOU DO IT, you eventually loose the power of emphasis. Therefore, like typing in all-caps (), and like using exclamation points, you don't want to overdo it.

As someone who is inclined naturally to say tiom/kiom rather than tiel/kiel, I find his argument interesting and relatively persuasive, though I wouldn't consider someone wrong (as I believe he also would not) if someone consistently used tiom/kiom in every occasion.

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On the da issue, I think perhaps it is influenced mainly by languages that have a version of the French "en" or the Italian "ne" or "ce".

"Je n'en ai plus" (I don't have any more [of it]) - French
"Non ce l'ho" (I don't have [any of] it) - Italian
"Non ne ho una" (I don't have one [of it]) - Italian

Being an educated (I hope) native speaker of (General American) English, having studied three non-native languages in school, and having been around the auxiliary language movement for many years, I am familiar with the descriptivist versus prescriptivist argument. However, I think that in the matter of constructed international auxiliary languages such as Esperanto, one can make a case for prescriptivism.

Potential learners and users -- at least post-adolescents -- come from many different native languages and even many different (one would hope) language families, and not just Indo-European. They need to have a stable base to the language, a standard, if the language is not to wander off (and break up) into regional dialects (which would defeat the purpose of a worldwide auxlang), as has been the case with most "national" languages of any size. (For example, I have noticed a tendency in recent times for British authors to use a construction which seems "odd" to me as an American, although it is still, fortunately, fully intelligible.)

Yes, E-o has "drifted" (for lack of a better term), particularly in terms of addition of vocabulary for concepts and things unknown in Z's day, but the structure of the language has remained stable. To me this is a Certified Good Thing, so that potential learners and users from many language families can have something to depend on in their learning and use.

So with respect to conIALs, I am something of a prescriptivist.

Paŭlo

erinja:
On tiom-kiom-ismo, if you look at this page, you will find the following text:
Estas rekomendinde utiligi tiun ĉi eblon tre ŝpare, por ke la emfaza efekto de tiom kaj kiom ne eluziĝu, kaj por ke la distingo inter kvantaj kaj gradaj vortoj ne fariĝu malklara.
In translation:
It is recommended only to use this possibility [using tiom and kiom for emphasis] very sparingly, so not to 'wear out' the emphatic effect of tiom and kiom, and so not to blur the distinction between words of quantity and of grade.

Personally, I'm also a TIOM-KIOM person, and I don't really accept Bertilow's reasoning here. Grade is a kind of quantity, as I see it, so there's no real distinction to be lost. The TIEL-KIEL pair should be limited to manner, not degree, in my opinion.

I'm not, however, Pope of Esperanto, so my opinion has no weight at all, so I bow to authority and try to remember to use TIEL-KIEL.

erinja:Bertilo is saying that it is flat-out wrong to use "da" without being followed by a preposition.

You meant noun, of course. But he doesn't, he says it's acceptable to say "Mi volas skatolon da." That's ok because we're specifying a quantity and not an actual box. Look, the point of language is to express what the speaker thinks is important. If I think it's important to stress the quantity, and not the contents or the container, by using "da" as a prepositional "phrase" on its own, I'm allowed to do that - there is is NO rule against it. Like overuse of "tiom/kiom", this is a stylistic issue, not a grammatical well-formed-ness issue.

More generally, I'm happy to have issues of non-trivial syntax in Esperanto dealt with by big thick books like PMEG and PAG but I don't want personal tastes passed off as rules. Is Esperanto an easy language or not? It's a bad idea to frighten the learners. And piss off people who can already speak the language.

erinja:On the da issue, I think perhaps it is influenced mainly by languages that have a version of the French "en" or the Italian "ne" or "ce".

Yes, I probably have been hanging around with a lot of Italians recently. On the other hand, pretty much everything that has ever gone into Esperanto came from somewhere else.

bartlett22183: ... I am familiar with the descriptivist versus prescriptivist argument. However, I think that in the matter of constructed international auxiliary languages such as Esperanto, one can make a case for prescriptivism.

Potential learners and users ... need to have a stable base to the language, a standard, if the language is not to wander off (and break up) into regional dialects (which would defeat the purpose of a worldwide auxlang) ...

This break-up-into-dialects-bogeyman has been around for a while, and there's no evidence of it ever happening. Esperanto people are anxious and willing to adjust their language to how people in other countries speak it. Take the average good competent Esperanto speaker. You might be able to tell from their accent roughly where in the world they're from, but what they actually say is pretty much the same. Occasionally you might think "Aha, you're dropping your personal pronouns more than average, I think you must be Lithuanian, or that neck of the woods". But no way will this ever develop into separate dialects. Our hypothetical Lithuanian will simply try to stick in more personal pronouns in future if somebody mentions it to them, or if they notice unprompted on their own. Still less can such division and separation happen now when we have easier travel, Skype, YouTube etc.

This is not what happens with real dialects, which are a badge of identity, of difference.

If I imagine an Esperantist greengrocer selling apples to an eksterlanda kliento, I can picture a dialogue in which 'Kiom vi volas?' and 'Kiom da, vi volas?' have different answers.

Kiom vi volas - tri sufiĉos.

Kiom da, vi volas - donu al mi kilogramon.

But, maybe, my lingvosento isn't good in this case.

Anyway, I don't find PMEG's comments about 'da' to be something I would want to argue strongly with.

With his example of 'skatolon da' contrasting with 'skatolon' he leaves the door open for uses where we wish to emphasize the quantity.

T0dd:Grade is a kind of quantity, as I see it, so there's no real distinction to be lost. The TIEL-KIEL pair should be limited to manner, not degree, in my opinion

I would say it's actually the distinction between manner and degree that isn't worth worrying about as it's not really something we frequently need and Esperanto seems to get along perfectly ok using "kiel" for both ideas. And nobody's really bowing to authority when they use kiel that way; they're just following established usage.

Auld's idea is one that has an attractive logic to it but it doesn't sit too well with me because it ignores how tiel/kiel actually function. PMEG quite rightly points out that grade is a basic meaning of tiel/kiel and that they are the normal pair used. I just did a search in Tekstaro and the tiel/kiel pair gets 253 hits, compared to only 22 for tiom/kiom, and some of the latter may arguably have only been there for the emphasis effect which PMEG mentions, with intense adjectives like vasta, forta, drasta, arda etc. Several of the tiel/kiel usages come from the Fundamenta Krestomatio; a model of Esperanto style.

So IMO advancing the "kiel=manner kiom=grade" paradigm does a disservice to beginners who are liable to taking such things as the facts of Esperanto usage. Of course it's possible to think of grade as a quantity because their meanings overlap. When you ask "how good is it?" you could think of that as "what is its quantity of goodness?". But for me this is just a reason not to say tiom-kiom-ismo is wrong, not really grounds to promulgate it as the right way of speaking.

Having said all that, Esperanto may well evolve to favour the tiom/kiom pair for grades and tiel/kiel exclusively for manner, and if that happens I won't have a problem with it. What we'd lose in the ability to create emphasis we'd gain in a slightly more logical set of meanings, and in any event you're still free to create emphasis by other means if you want to.

Actually saying something like *mi estas tiom forta kiom vi violates another rule - the one described here: Komparaj esprimoj — ĉu mallongigitaj frazoj?

That is, even if you say that kiom is also for grade, you'd have:
Mi estas tiom forta, kiel vi.
but:
Mi estas tiom forta, kiom vi estas malforta.
(I know, not the best examples in the world, but you get what I mean.)