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Predicate infinitives

de Roberto12, 18 de marzo de 2011

Aportes: 51

Idioma: English

ceigered (Mostrar perfil) 21 de marzo de 2011 13:19:02

sudanglo:The relationship between an Esperanto word whose dictionary entry is defined first as a noun, and any usage in verbal form, follows no secret rule, Ceiger
I had suspected so ridulo.gif T0dd's bit about how we see what we do with the telephone affects our thinking about in in Esperanto seems to explain why it has the definition that it has.

sudanglo (Mostrar perfil) 21 de marzo de 2011 13:30:41

Telphoning is not parallel to saying and writing in so much as what you say and what you write tends to be important in a way that the content of a phone call is not.

The important idea with telephone calls is often the destination of the call. Therefore it is not surpising that many sentences with 'telefoni' contain 'al'.

PS Todd did you see (another thread) what I found in NPIV for denotacio and konotacio?

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 21 de marzo de 2011 14:11:18

sudanglo:Telphoning is not parallel to saying and writing in so much as what you say and what you write tends to be important in a way that the content of a phone call is not.
I disagree. The contents of a writing and the contents of a phone call are equally important. I think you are drawing a false distinction between calling and writing. You seem to be assuming that everyone places phone calls just to chat, whereas they send letters to pass important information.

I place a telephone call because I need to tell someone something, just as I would write a letter to tell someone something. In fact, if I just wanted to chat, I would be FAR more likely to send an e-mail than to call, because I tend to feel that phone calls are intrusive, whereas they can read my e-mail at their leisure. I only make a phone call on appointment, or to people who don't have e-mail, or to get a quick response when I don't feel I can wait for an e-mail response.

The object of telefoni is the information I am telling, just as the object of skribi is the information I am writing. The recipient of my letter, or of my telephone call, comes after "al". I write a letter to you. I place a telephone call to you.

Few people write letters to correspond anymore, but in my opinion, writing e-mails is a close equivalent to the old letter-writing. Just as some people place a phone call "just to talk", for no real reason, lots of people send e-mails "just to talk", just to discuss whatever random crap they want to talk about. In the past people wrote letters for this purpose, people corresponded by letter all the time. Today, most people use e-mails for the kinds of correspondence that used to require a letter. And even that new-fangled innovation, the telephone, seems to be falling out of use to some extent, due to the rise of text messaging.

ceigered (Mostrar perfil) 21 de marzo de 2011 14:25:13

I dunno - I don't think telephones are something you use for simple data transmission. Normally my reason for using a telephone is because I want a dynamic conversation - perhaps there's a big reason why, but there's never something like "I will telephone you a response/the info/etc (I mean, those sentences are valid in English, but it's not something I'd use by default really, I'm more likely (if by a small amount) to say "I'll ring you about (blah blah blah)", since it's assumed the reason I'm bothering with a whole expensive phone call is because there's other issues I want to clarify).

If there's only something small or a single thing I want to let the other person know, that's what I'd use an SMS or email for, unless it was for some formal or restrictive reason that I had to use the phone, which isn't too often. Even emergency calls to family members are about diverse topics.

So, in closing I guess a lot of it depends on ones personal circumstances but quite importantly the shift in the way that the public thinks of different communication services, and the changes in technology.

(plus, unlike writing where your action is responsible for words being formed, or speaking where your action is responsible for words being sounded, telephoning does not result in words being formed - rather it acts as a relay between your action of speaking and the other's listening, thus I guess it makes more sense to think of "telefoni" more like "sendi" than "diri/skribi", but also the thought comes to mind that the action of "telefoni" is being done to the listener, the receiver.)

Miland (Mostrar perfil) 21 de marzo de 2011 17:02:49

ceigered:Normally my reason for using a telephone is because I want a dynamic conversation
To me this real-time nature of telephone communication is at the heart of the reason for the meaning of telefoni to evolve to permit the recipient as an object; a telephone message is not like a letter or even email, that someone else reads in its entirety and then responds to at leisure.

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 21 de marzo de 2011 20:11:05

I think that telefoni works fine as it is, and it has worked fine as it is for a hundred years now. I see no good reason to change it just because someone can't be bothered to drop in an "al".

ceigered (Mostrar perfil) 22 de marzo de 2011 05:08:19

Well it ain't a complete change in the way we think about phones, so the current status quo is pretty good then eh? But in scientific, not colloquial or casual, texts, "telefoni" laŭ the original meaning as asserted by Erinja is probably the best idea if we're to think about letting "telefoni (iun)" live on in any other form.

sudanglo (Mostrar perfil) 22 de marzo de 2011 10:40:24

Well, not appealing to logical argument, but just to my lingvosento, and setting aside sentences like 'Mi telefonis la rezultojn al', where there is no argument about what to say, my feeling is that an accusative is OK with people (particularly personal pronouns), not with places.

So Kiom kostas telefoni al Francujo would be my preference. But Telefonu min morgaŭ doesn't shock me. Here, I think I am in agreement with Miland.

What about phoning for a taxi (or a doctor). Even in French, this whould not use 'à' - téléphoner un taxi.

Actually, from what I've heard on French TV, it seems that 'appeler' is much more common than téléphoner and this takes a direct object in French.

Miland (Mostrar perfil) 22 de marzo de 2011 11:12:36

There have been a number of such verbs over which more or less ink has been spilt, as it were, in such debates - matenmanĝi, plaĉi, now telefoni.

Time will tell whether their use with direct objects will become popular, particularly in the last case, with the present-day prevalence of mobile phones. I am less sure about the first two.

ceigered (Mostrar perfil) 22 de marzo de 2011 13:20:26

Regarding accusatives and locations, it seems like in EO that speakers in all parts of the language avoid putting places in the accusative when direction is concerned, unlike in English.

Thus Esperanto might be a very "locative/manneristic" language, with great care taken in describing locations, the manner of actions, etc.

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