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pluralization

від Kalantir, 27 травня 2011 р.

Повідомлення: 12

Мова: English

Kalantir (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 21:14:31

So, I've been seeing a lot of sentences like the following.

Miaj infanoj estas grandaj.

Why is it necessary to add 'j' to everything. I feel like "Mia infanoj estas granda" would be simpler and gets the point across just the same. Am I the only one who feels this way or is there a good reason for this?

mjdh1957 (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 22:07:29

Actually, the English language is the unusual one, in that it doesn't have agreement in case and number between adjectives and nouns. Most European languages such as French, German, Italian and Spanish do.

Esperanto follows the majority in this case.

geo63 (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 22:11:50

Kalantir:So, I've been seeing a lot of sentences like the following.

Miaj infanoj estas grandaj.

Why is it necessary to add 'j' to everything. I feel like "Mia infanoj estas granda" would be simpler and gets the point across just the same. Am I the only one who feels this way or is there a good reason for this?
Don't judge the Esperanto from English point of view. Due to the lack of adjectival agreement English is ambigous where Esperanto is not. And for me it is English that is strange not to have this feature.

Kalantir (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 22:22:42

Regardless of what point of view I'm seeing the language, I still think that it is just as easy to understand without adding 'j' to the end of all those words. Is there any cases where a sentence would become ambiguous if it was done the way I suggested? If so, could someone give an example?

geo63 (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 22:32:24

Kalantir:Regardless of what point of view I'm seeing the language, I still think that it is just as easy to understand without adding 'j' to the end of all those words. Is there any cases where a sentence would become ambiguous if it was done the way I suggested? If so, could someone give an example?
Here you are:

"The French (sing. or plural) and German (sing. or plural) handbooks, approved by the Academy"

We don't know if there are more than one French or German handbook. In Esperanto this could not happen:

La franca kaj germana manlibroj.... (one French and one German handbook)

La francaj kaj germanaj manlibroj... (more than one of each kind).

Kalantir (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 22:38:03

I feel like rephrasing the sentence would make it work still.. but I suppose my argument about making things simpler doesn't apply anymore. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

geo63 (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 22:44:19

Kalantir:I feel like rephrasing the sentence would make it work still.. but I suppose my argument about making things simpler doesn't apply anymore. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Everything can be said clearly if you are aware of the ambiguity, but in English a simple sentence could be very ambigous:

I met Mary walking to the station.

Who was walking to the station? me or Mary?

In Esperanto:

Mi renkontis Marian irantan al la stacio (Maria iris)
Mi renkontis Marian irante al la stacio (mi iris)

Languages which have cases and adjectival agreement with nouns are far less ambigous than English. On the other hand they are more difficult. But Esperanto is very easy, because all this stuff is perfectly regular. So if you master it, you will be using it automaticly without even thinking of this rule.

Dominique (Переглянути профіль) 27 травня 2011 р. 23:33:59

Kalantir:So, I've been seeing a lot of sentences like the following.

Miaj infanoj estas grandaj.

Why is it necessary to add 'j' to everything. I feel like "Mia infanoj estas granda" would be simpler and gets the point across just the same. Am I the only one who feels this way or is there a good reason for this?
As already pointed out, it avoids ambiguities in some cases.

Furthermore, it also adds redundancy which helps listening comprehension, especially when your ears are not not accustomed to a foreign language: you get more than once chance to understand that there is a plural or singular.

ceigered (Переглянути профіль) 28 травня 2011 р. 04:09:33

Obviously it can be easily rephrased in the same was as we can rephrase things in English to remove ambiguity (no sentence in English has to be ambiguous after all), but the idea is that because Esperanto was made originally for international use, unlike English which is merely drifting along in history, it would be a great idea for Esperanto sentences to be made less ambiguous using a variety of methods to cater for the diversity of people that would be using it.

Slavs like to disambiguate using declining grammar, Englishmen like to disambiguate using either more words or different word order, Romance-speakers are sort of inbetween and some fellow disambiguate by adding context in different ways. Esperanto was made so that all could be done, or should be done.

darkweasel (Переглянути профіль) 28 травня 2011 р. 10:04:01

mjdh1957:Actually, the English language is the unusual one, in that it doesn't have agreement in case and number between adjectives and nouns. Most European languages such as French, German, Italian and Spanish do.
No, German doesn't - at least not in the sentence Kalantir is asking about.

German does have adjective-noun agreement when the adjective stands before its noun: ein großes Kind (one big child), zwei große Kinder (two big children). However, if you use a copula to link adjective and noun, there is no agreement: mein Kind ist groß (my child is big), meine Kinder sind groß (my children are big).

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