Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!news.alpha.net!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: One point against Esperanto
References: <D66K6p.83o@indirect.com>
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Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 16:02:48 +0000
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In article <D66K6p.83o@indirect.com>
           stevemac@bud.indirect.com "Pascal MacProgrammer" writes:
> Not so very long ago, rsimmons@piglet.uccs.edu (Richard Simmons) said...
> >But there *is* agreement in English --- not between nouns and adjectives,
> >but between nouns and *verbs*:
> 
>   Whoa!  This is =really= off-track!
>   What was being discussed was whether a constructed language =must= have 
> adjective-noun accord, or must =not= have it.

Clearly, either is perfectly possible.

> The designer of Eurolang 
> claims that Esperanto is wrong, 

I more accurate statement of my position would be to say that I think 
that adjectives are slightly easier to recognise if they don't have 
inflexions. This is important to me, since one of EL's goals is to be
easy to read by new users. Eg:

Eurolang:  aqua    "watery"

Esperanto: akva    (uninflected)
           akvaj   (+plural)
           akvajn  (+plural+accusative)

"akva" is easier to recognise than "akvajn". "aqua" is probably easier
recognise than either.

> because it has that type of accord, while 
> others say that Eurolang is wrong,

Perhaps "unnatural" would be a better word here.

> because it doesn't have it, while 
> virtually all Indo-European languages do (English being the only notable 
> exception).

-- 
Phil Hunt....philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
