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From: antony@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Antony Rawlinson")
Subject: Re: ka la .espon. na logji se jicmu (Re: One point against Esperanto)
Message-ID: <D680oK.IEu@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: ABC                           
References: <D64E7D.I3A@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 21:21:56 GMT
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Ivan,

I found your posting interesting, but I don't think it changes my basic 
point that Esperanto is designed to follow logic.  By this I did not mean 
to a rigorous mathematical degree, but that word-formation and grammar 
are not subject to arbitrary exceptions.

This contrasts with Occidental, for example, in the translation of the 
words "youth", "freedom" and "ownership" (O: yun/it, liber/t, 
propri/et; E: jun/eco, liber/eco, propr/eco).  Occidental compromised 
uniformity here and in other ways, specifically in order to seem 
"natural" to those familiar with European languages, and my point was 
that E-o does not make this mistake, and can therefore claim not to be 
Eurocentric.

I don't know anything about Lojban, I'm afraid, and if you think that it 
improves on Esperanto in the logic stakes, who am I to disagree?  I will 
though, comment on some bits of your analysis:

> Let's begin by looking at the basic order.  E-o is SVO (unmarked); ... 
> Now, SVO is neither more nor less logical than the other two major
> orders, VSO and SOV, so I contend that SVO was chosen because SAE is
> SVO.

Esperanto is not SVO.  Word-order is whatever is chosen by the speaker or 
writer (the accusative ending allows this).  It's true that SVO is mostly 
used, but that is not the same thing as saying that it is inherent in the 
language.

> ...
> 
> The table of correlatives is rather well designed, I must say, 
> although I find it most remarkable that the interrogative pronouns
> are used as relatives, blindly imitating Russian and some other
> European tongues.

This is a fair point.  Another similar one is that the word "de" means 2 
different things ("of" and "from", as in French).  This doesn't put me 
off the language, though.

> ...
> 
> On to the conjugation of the verb.  There are 3 synthetic participles
> of each voice.  Oddly, all other synthetic forms are active.  Would
> logic not have suggested deriving a passive verb instead?
> 
>   (2)      (present tense)
>            indicative  participle
>   active   _Xas_       _Xanta_
>   passive  _Xesas_     _Xesanta_
> 
> (2) is what could have been, and (3) is what is,
> 
>   (3)      (present tense)
>            indicative    participle
>   active   _Xas_         _Xanta_
>   passive  _estas Xata_  _Xata_

Functionally, the suffix -ig^- serves this purpose.  The passive form in 
your (3) is not often used in E-o, and expressions using it in English 
are generally rendered using -ig^-, for example:

"I was born" is "mi naskig^is", and not "mi estis naskata";
"they were married" is "ili geedzig^is";
"he was injured" is "li vundig^is" and not "li estis vundata";
but "he is injured" is "li estas vundita", because it refers to a state 
of being, so "vundita" is used as an adjective.  There is a difference in 
the meaning of the English expressions, so E-o is not being inconsistent.

> ... What does _neebla_ mean?  Is it a negation of _ebla_
> (`impossible') or a potential of _ne-_ (`deniable')?  If it can
> mean either, then E-o derivation is unnecessarily ambiguous,
> otherwise it is subject to random restrictions.

"Neebla" means "impossible", simply because the primary meaning of the 
word "ne" is "not".  "Nei" (to deny, or contradict) is a secondary 
meaning.  "Deniable" is "disputebla" (a word not often used, in English 
or in E-o, except in its own negated form, "undeniable/nedisputebla").  
Hardly a random restriction.

> ...
> Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk)

regards, Antony Rawlinson.
