Oops, sorry for non-intentional language switching, I shouldn't discuss about E-o in other languages.

Altebrilas:

ceigered:I'd guess there'd be plenty who're open minded, only they just don't all care enough to bother getting in an argument with those who aren't overminded just for the sake of a language with anywhere between 200 000 and 2 000 000 speakers .

So it would be honest for them to say: "I don't care about esperanto. I didn't take the time to look at it. So I can't tell at all if esperanto is a good solution or not. Maybe it is. But at first view -and I'm not speaking as a linguist- it seems not serious, although this may be wrong. I'm still waiting for more evidence about the credibility of this solution"

Yeah, but you'd have to ask them about their thoughts on Esperanto first, and that alone might upset the balance in their subconscience and make them LOOK for problems Otherwise, why would they randomly go express their non-opinion?

A) "EVERYONE, I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT: I HAVE NO OPINION ON ESPERANTO WHATSOEVER!"

B) "Ur, Sir, we didn't ask for your opinion about this Esperanto. We never even mentioned it. We don't even know what Esperanto is. And if you have no opinion on Esperanto, why are you bothering telling us?"

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A parallel example might be that I have no opinion in particular about drinking wine in moderated amounts. But it's not like I'm going to tell anyone, simply because it doesn't matter to me. If you bring up the subject though, I might mention my lack of an opinion, but otherwise there's no point.

If you ask me to think about it however, I might decide that winedrinking altogether is a bad idea, and we should simply extract the good parts of wine and get rid of the nasty alcohol.

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And those who are calling Esperanto a joke with little reason to obvious to take the topic to heart and do care about Esperanto (in a negative way). Perhaps though it's over something minor, like a rude Esperantist begging them for their opinion on Esperanto, and then they snapped and went "ARGH DAMMIT I DON'T CARE ABOUT IT! IN FACT I HATE ESPERANTO"

Kirilo81:

Altebrilas:"fisxi" seems strange in that meaning. Does "birdi" mean "to catch bids"? Or "krokodili" to hunt crocodiles? "fisxumi" would have been a better choice.

It's a cultural thing. What's the prototypical action you do with fish? You catch them. That's not what you usually do with birds or crocodiles.

"birdi" estus bela germanismo.

(en la germana 'Vogel' estas birdo, sed la verbo 'vögeln' signifas fiki).

What's the prototypical action german people do with birds?

(sorry, it was too tempting! )

More seriously, if it (the relation with something) is a cultural thing, it can be used as a rule because it is not universal. Prefere oni elektu kiel signifo "esti fisxo" aux "agi kiel fisxo", kio validas por cxiuj animalaj kreajxoj.

ceigered:

Yeah, but you'd have to ask them about their thoughts on Esperanto first, and that alone might upset the balance in their subconscience and make them LOOK for problems Otherwise, why would they randomly go express their non-opinion?

A) "EVERYONE, I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT: I HAVE NO OPINION ON ESPERANTO WHATSOEVER!"

I didn't quite understand your objection: Of course, I assumed that the topic must be esperanto when a linguist gives his opinion about it (Either somebody asked him for this opinion, or he talks himself about esperanto).

Altebrilas:

ceigered:

Yeah, but you'd have to ask them about their thoughts on Esperanto first, and that alone might upset the balance in their subconscience and make them LOOK for problems Otherwise, why would they randomly go express their non-opinion?

A) "EVERYONE, I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT: I HAVE NO OPINION ON ESPERANTO WHATSOEVER!"

I didn't quite understand your objection: Of course, I assumed that the topic must be esperanto when a linguist gives his opinion about it (Either somebody asked him for this opinion, or he talks himself about esperanto).

AH ok I must have misunderstood what you were saying. That's probably why my comment doesn't make sense .

Altebrilas:
What's the prototypical action german people do with birds?

(sorry, it was too tempting! )

It seems that the prototypical action birds do is not flying.
I just looked it up, it's very interesting (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vögeln): Antaŭ 500 jaroj 'vogelen' signifis kaj "kapti birdojn" (kion oni ne plu faras en Germanio) kaj "fiki", sed nur rilate al birdoj (inter si, kompreneble!).

Altebrilas:More seriously, if it (the relation with something) is a cultural thing, it can be used as a rule because it is not universal. Prefere oni elektu kiel signifo "esti fisxo" aux "agi kiel fisxo", kio validas por cxiuj animalaj kreajxoj.

But that simply shows, that Esperanto is not neutral. The derivation rule of denominal verbs just says "prototypical action or state of the noun"*. What is prototypical, you can't say without the cultural background.
Surely, for people who don't fish at all, the word "fiŝi" is irregular, but the introduction of Ido-like rules, which would regulate the derivations, would also dprive us of a huge amount of common words like "marteli", "kroni" etc.

*It's not written anywhere, just al linguistic (back on topic) observation.

Kirilo81:But that simply shows, that Esperanto is not neutral.

*GASP*

Instead of a prototypical verb, what if the action was based on context? "Fisxi" or "birdi" would have multiple meanings depending on the situation.

razlem:

Kirilo81:But that simply shows, that Esperanto is not neutral.

*GASP*

Instead of a prototypical verb, what if the action was based on context? "Fisxi" or "birdi" would have multiple meanings depending on the situation.

re-*GASP*

If moreover esperanto is not clear and its words have multiple meanings...

razlem:
Instead of a prototypical verb, what if the action was based on context? "Fisxi" or "birdi" would have multiple meanings depending on the situation.

Hm, I would prefer a conventional (arbitrary) meaning to a fuzzy/wobbly one. In the latter case a denominal verb would always be like a verb in '-um'. Especially in intercultural communication context (!= cotext here) is not reliable.
But this is academic, as linguistis we should look, how the language works, not how it should work, also in planned languages. Except one wants to make up a new language or collects point for improvement for the Fina Venko.

T0dd:But it's simply not obvious that Chomsky is correct in asserting that Esperanto lacks a GG, or the right kind of speech community to norm it. It's pretty clear that he hasn't done the actual research that would be needed to warrant such a claim. Maybe somebody else has, or will? My guess is that Esperanto does have a proper GG, and I think it would be more than interesting to see it described.

It would be interesting to see if it is possible to make a GG from the Fundamento.

It contains 3 parts:
- the 16 rules (mainly morphology)
- ekzercaro: a list of positive examples
- Universala vortaro: a list of words and particles, whose grammatical status can be induced from national languages.

According to Chomsky, it would be easy for a child to establish the GG-rules of esperanto in his brain. (maybe with a larger set of sentences). It should be possible to a computer program to do the same, palliating the restricted corpus by proper statistic algorithms...