LM59650:This gives interesting possibilities for litterature.
Consider the phrase : "la neĝo intense blankis"...

This is, in fact, precisely the appeal the language has for me.

nornen:RiotNrrd, I congratulate you on these two excellent and concise posts.

Thank you very much for this statement.

I have read a lot of your posts, and am quite sure that within the realms of grammar and general language-knowledge, you are playing Chopin while I am pecking out chopsticks. Any disagreement between you and I on any topic within this area, you automatically win without question. I am not the master here.

But not being a master of something doesn't mean I don't know anything, so I help where I think I can. Please correct me whenever I say anything too idiotic.

RiotNrrd:

nornen:RiotNrrd, I congratulate you on these two excellent and concise posts.

Thank you very much for this statement.

I have read a lot of your posts, and am quite sure that within the realms of grammar and general language-knowledge, you are playing Chopin while I am pecking out chopsticks. Any disagreement between you and I on any topic within this area, you automatically win without question. I am not the master here.

But not being a master of something doesn't mean I don't know anything, so I help where I think I can. Please correct me whenever I say anything too idiotic.

I don't think it is about who is the "master" and who will "win". Maybe the really helpful thing for new learners on this forum is, that several "old-timers" answer their questions from their own point of view and their own experience. And without doubt your explanations will be more helpful to certain learners than mine, and vice versa. I think the synergy is what helps most.

Also bear in mind, that linguistics is not a precise science. Ask five linguists a question and you will get seven different answers. For instance the thing about what a "word" is. PrimeMinisterK's approach, that "he" and "him" are two different words is as valid as the approach that they are merely two distinct forms of the same lexeme.

Please correct me whenever I say anything too idiotic.

Please do the same, I beg of you.

@PrimeMinisterK

I totally forgot about yet another usage of the accusative: the accusative of time. This is basically a special case of the accusative of measure, but with a little twist. While the accusative of measure is generally governed by an adjective (longa, larĝa, alta, peza, granda, ktp), the accusative of time appears naked without any adjective or other word governing it.

So, when you want to express a duration of time (not a point in time), you simply use a naked accusative, e.g.:

Ĉi-matene mi hakadis brullignon tri horojn.
Tiu ĉi vegetaĵo kreskas tri monatojn, kaj poste floras nur du tagojn.
Mi boligas matenmanĝajn ovojn kvar minutojn, sed mia edzino boligas ilin ok minutojn.

And you can combine all the different usages as you see fit:
Hieraŭ mi tri horojn portadis 50 kilogramojn pezajn sakojn el la ĝardeno en la domon.

tri horojn = accusative of time
50 kilogramojn = accusative of measure
pezajn sakojn = accusative of direct object
la domon = accusative of direction.

PrimeMinisterK:
The fact that "Ŝi estas bela" can be restated as "Ŝi belas" is very strange and I have not run into anything like that. Is the language actually used this way very often, or is it more of a theoretical possibility that you don't actually see much in the wild?

and

RiotNrrd:
It gets used constantly.

Remember that in Esperanto, there are no nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs*. There are only roots with those endings.

Unfortunately here I have to disagree with RiotNrrd. While in theory you verbify adjectives ("ŝi estas bela" → "ŝi belas"), that isn't a good idea for most of time. Read the article in Esperanto Language Blog by Tomaso a.k.a Salivanto (i.e not me) for an explanation.

I respectfully disagree with Tomaso.

He is correct that there is an additional (although I think limited) element of agency implied by using a verbal form, and that this may not make literal sense when applied to things that can't be said to have agency. "La lago bluas" vs "la lago estas blua". He says that since the lake can't really be said to have the agency to actually act blue, but instead merely is blue, we shouldn't use the first form. Tomaso indicates that while the verbal form is technically correct, its intent is "poetic" and therefore shouldn't be used outside of poetry.

Well... if he doesn't want to use it outside of poetry, that's up to him. But it's not a defined "poetical" form, the way final apostrophe's are, and one could make the argument that "existing" is an action (certainly the most passive one possible, but still). So I wouldn't give that advice out to everyone in general at all. I would certainly be aware of the additional emphasis on agency, but expressions don't have to be 100% literal, and I find the application of agency to things that don't necessarily have it to sometimes perfectly express what I mean. When I say "la lago bluas", I do say it with a metaphorical kick. The lake isn't just blue. It radiates blue (again, metaphorically - it's not infused with plutonium). Saying "la lago estas blua" does mean basically the same thing, but in my mind has less of a kick to it - it's a more passive form. I may mean the latter, but I may also mean the former, and which form I pick will express that. And not just in a poem.

Also, in the case of a sentence like "ŝi belas", she certainly does have agency, and the form is unarguably correct.

In general, I think of an intransitive "[X]i" as meaning "to be [X]" or "to be in a state of [X]", and the implied agency is actually rather minimal in most cases. But it is there. To some extent. But "blui" means "to be blue", and is a perfectly usable form whether you interpret the lake as "doing the blue thing" (active) or "being blue" (passive) (which, if there's a difference in the real world, is pretty hairsplitty).

The argument really boils down to: what roots can I make verbs out of, and what roots can I make adjectives out of? Tomaso is implying that for each root we choose which ones are the "right" ones for verbs and which ones are the "right" ones for adjectives and we consistently use them one way and one way only. The root "bel" can only be used for "bela", for example, and never for "beli". I disagree with this.

My take is that all forms are available for use, depending on what you need them for.

The argument about agency is moot due to several reasons. The two most obvious are in my opinion:
a) Not all subjects are agents. In order to argue about agency in "la lago bluas", we would first need to establish that in this clause the subject is really an agent, which I strongly doubt.
b) Inanimate objects, which by definition lack agency, appear in agent slots all the time in Esperanto. If we disallow "la lago bluas" because of agency, we must also disallow "la ŝtono rompis la fenestron" and "pafiloj mortigas homojn", because "rompi" and "mortigi" without a doubt have agent subjects and also without a doubt stones and guns lack agency.

- - - -

Having grown up speaking a mayan language, the sentences "la ŝtono rompis la fenestron" and "pafiloj mortigas homojn" do indeed have a very weird ring to them, because in mayan languages these sentences are ungrammatical. Inanimate objects like stones and guns cannot appear as agents in mayan languages. One would rather say "the windows was broken with a stone" or "somebody broke the window with a stone". But Esperanto doesn't care about agency and animacy at all, hence these two sentences and "la lago bluas" are perfectly fine.

Zam_franca:
'easy' does not mean "without any efforts to make".
Please read the following article : http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenfrancais/stru...

(it's in French, so you will have to use Google translation, sorry)
Esperanto's structures aren't senseless.

Anyway I keep saying this : don't start with the most complicated things. Just do the course, and all will be fine.

I took a look at that article, but will have to go back when I can really focus on it.

And there's a difference between requiring efforts and simply being difficult to grasp. Picking up the very basics requires effort, but it's not hard to understand. Besides, I talked to someone yesterday and they said that to truly become fluent in Esperanto would likely take years of practice. So again, while Esperanto may be easiER than other languages, I wouldn't exactly call it easy.

And LOL, you keep hyping this course, so it better be DAMN GOOD bro! I better pop out of it speaking the King's Esperanto!

nornen:@PrimeMinisterK

I totally forgot about yet another usage of the accusative: the accusative of time. This is basically a special case of the accusative of measure, but with a little twist. While the accusative of measure is generally governed by an adjective (longa, larĝa, alta, peza, granda, ktp), the accusative of time appears naked without any adjective or other word governing it.

So, when you want to express a duration of time (not a point in time), you simply use a naked accusative, e.g.:

Ĉi-matene mi hakadis brullignon tri horojn.
Tiu ĉi vegetaĵo kreskas tri monatojn, kaj poste floras nur du tagojn.
Mi boligas matenmanĝajn ovojn kvar minutojn, sed mia edzino boligas ilin ok minutojn.

And you can combine all the different usages as you see fit:
Hieraŭ mi tri horojn portadis 50 kilogramojn pezajn sakojn el la ĝardeno en la domon.

tri horojn = accusative of time
50 kilogramojn = accusative of measure
pezajn sakojn = accusative of direct object
la domon = accusative of direction.

Oh great! Another usage! That's fantastic!

So time, measure, direct object and object? Is that the official, full list?

Why exactly is the -n necessary here? What does it do exactly? I'm not sure I understand its actual purpose.

What is hakadi, by the way? The dictionary here doesn't seem to have that one.

hak/i + /ad/i = hak/ad/i - repeated action