bartlett22183:

Christa627:

Fenris_kcf:

Christa627:… at first, they say "bringed," as if it beed a regular verb …

Here i'd have make another mistake: I thought it would be "if it was".
Or is this an attempt to regularize "to be"?

Yeah, it's just me goofing off; don't worry about it. "If it was" is the officially correct phrase. Sorry if I confused anyone.

??? In my dialect/idiolect of (General American) English, the correct form would be "If it were" not "If it was."

"If it was" and "If it were" both sound normal to me, but what do I know? I think I vaguely remember something in a grammar book about "If [pronoun or noun] were" being some kind of subjunctive mood or something.

bartlett22183:This ever again points up the confusion of so many (most?) "natural" languages, their confusing inconsistency and even irrationality. Yes, Esperanto is not "perfect" (whatever that might even mean), but it is far more consistent and rational than so many natlangs.

I totally agree! Venu la Fina Venko!

sudanglo:Oh no it's not Nornen. That thread is about making a valid distinction. You can share a room without dividing it (ie erecting a partition).

Isn't it more about the difficulty to accept that "dividi" doesn't necessary mean dividing?
Some languages use different words for "divide" and "share" (like English and Spanish) and other use the same word (like German and Esperanto).
Is it a "valid" distinction, because this distinction exists in English, and we have to think of words like "kundividi" and "kunhavi" when a simple "dividi" does the job?

There is a "valid" distinction in many languages between they males and they females.
Does this also force us to think of words like "ili kaj ilinoj"?

That thread isn't about making a valid distinction. It is about not accepting that concept A in language X maps to both concept B and concept C in language Y. And this brings us back to the topic of this thread: the heavy and undenyable influences of our vernacular tongue on foreign languages.

Same reasoning happened to my 6-yrs-old son while studying his English vocab. He said something like: "Cousin" can't mean "prima", because it already means "primo".

the heavy and undeniable influences of our vernacular tongue on foreign languages.

But it is to over-egg the pudding, to suggest that this undermines the viability of international communication in Esperanto.

As you have already pointed out, the better the command of Esperanto, the less the practical consequence of this tendency.

But over and above this, Esperanto is in a special position because the esprimaj deziroj of any particular mother tongue group are constantly being subject to testing against international comprehensibility/acceptablity. And new vocabulary (or the limiting of the semantic coverage of a particular term) or new structures - like pri + infinitive for example - can readily emerge from this process.

When English is used a second language it is constantly subject to the strait jacket of the preferences of the native speakers.

It is much better to just be clear

Granted, Christa - and that is the tradition in Esperanto. Nevertheless it surprises me that sen tute ne voli diri ke..' is not readily understood as 'sen voli diri ke.. (kaj tute ne tiel). And this doesn't seem to me to be a copy of something from English.

I agree and this is very much the problem of any national language being used internationally - just listen to Eurenglish speakers in public discourse - uff! I experience this daily while watching Deutsche Welle and often I find that since I know some of the native languages of the speakers, I clearly see what they intend to say and what they do indeed say. With Esperanto this is also a problem but at least everyone is fairly aware that they are dealing with a language the pragmatics of which they must try to meet. Language does not only consist of syntax and morphology as my school would have it (and they try to force me to teach English this way). Semantics is an important field and pragmatics (as well as discourse analysis) - but most language classes ignore this problem.

All this talk about double negatives makes me curious, are there more languages in which double negatives cancel each other, or in which they reinforce each other? Which languages are one way, and which the other? As a discussion about this wouldn't be quite on topic here, I've made a new thread in the E-o forum; please tell me how double negatives work in your language, especially if you speak a language other than English .

That thread is revealing, Christa. But, setting aside whether sen nenia timo is as illiterate in Esperanto as 'I don't know nothing about that' is in English, I am not sure that the appropriate analysis of 'sen nenia' is as a double negative.

I seems to me that in sen nenia timo the sen is strongly linked to the timo so that the effect is sentime and the nenia just emphasises this (really fearless) in much the same way as ajna would, and that this doesn't undermine the general principle in Esperanto of how two negatives combine.

But even with two negatives in Esperanto, it is not quite the same as a straight positive.

How's your egg? Ĝi ne estas ne-bona. Not quite the same as saying Ĝi estas bona.

Edit: sen has a different force to ne kun. Ne sen iu timo mi alproksimiĝis al la leono is not quite the same as kun iu timo mi ... The latter seems to me to raise the question of what was that fear.

Christa627:It is very interesting how kids handle the past tense of "to bring" as they learn to talk; at first, they say "bringed," as if it beed a regular verb. Then later on they get a little more sophisticated, and say "brang," following the example of "sing, sang" and "ring, rang" and similar. And everyone understands what they mean, so why can't* we all do it that way? But they won't, and that is the main reason I don't like English very much, and why I persisted in learning Esperanto, despite the weird looks.

Actually, you're missing an important step in language acquisition. When children start to speak, they begin by generally using the proper, irregular forms of verbs. This is because they learn primarily through imitation, and the most common verbs are irregular (which is no accident; uncommon irregular verbs tend to be regularized over time). As they begin to learn the standard morphological rules of the language, that you add -ed to the end of verbs to make the regular past tense ending, they start to overapply the rule and say things like "I goed to the store" when previously they were able to say "I went to the store" with little difficulty. I've never heard of kids changing to "bring, brang," as that was not one of the words we discussed, but it seems plausible. In any case, as children continue to learn the language they re-learn the irregular verb forms and all is well.

Most irregular verbs that are not among the most common words become regular over time. This has happened and is happening to many verb forms - people generally say "dreamed" instead of "dreamt" nowadays, for instance. The irregularities only remain in verbs common enough for those irregularities to get drilled into the brains of speakers.

bartlett22183:??? In my dialect/idiolect of (General American) English, the correct form would be "If it were" not "If it was."

Use of the subjunctive (which is what "If it were" is) in English is very fuzzy, as even natives tend to use it inconsistantly and it's on its way out in many dialects. I believe technically in this instance you're right and the subjunctive is the "proper" form, but it's so near obsolete that even the grammar pedants generally ignore it.

I don't agree with this. The non-standard nature of English in Scotland is one of the few things which protects Scottish culture against being wiped out completely.

Few people here know Gaelic, and the majority are ignorant of their own culture.

Most of the world thinks we're English already, but getting rid of that would be the beginning of the end.

sparksbet:

Christa627:It is very interesting how kids handle the past tense of "to bring" as they learn to talk; at first, they say "bringed," as if it beed a regular verb. Then later on they get a little more sophisticated, and say "brang," following the example of "sing, sang" and "ring, rang" and similar. And everyone understands what they mean, so why can't* we all do it that way? But they won't, and that is the main reason I don't like English very much, and why I persisted in learning Esperanto, despite the weird looks.

Actually, you're missing an important step in language acquisition. When children start to speak, they begin by generally using the proper, irregular forms of verbs. This is because they learn primarily through imitation, and the most common verbs are irregular (which is no accident; uncommon irregular verbs tend to be regularized over time). As they begin to learn the standard morphological rules of the language, that you add -ed to the end of verbs to make the regular past tense ending, they start to overapply the rule and say things like "I goed to the store" when previously they were able to say "I went to the store" with little difficulty. I've never heard of kids changing to "bring, brang," as that was not one of the words we discussed, but it seems plausible. In any case, as children continue to learn the language they re-learn the irregular verb forms and all is well.

Well, I haven't noticed that, except in the case of the most common verbs (to be, to do, to have), and I have six younger siblings, although most of my conclusions are based on observations of only two of them, as I don't remember the early childhood of the oldest two very well, and the youngest two are still toddlers, so they say "Mama" and "ball," and that's about it. The 5yr old still says "brang" and "goed," and I don't recall her ever saying "brought" and "went." The 9yr old spends a lot of time intentionally talking wrong, so it's hard to tell what his actual current status is. But I do remember him saying "bringed" before "brang," and "brang" and "goed" before "brought" and "went." And he still says "brang" fairly often. Of course, every child develops differently, so the speech of two related children may or may not show the tendencies of children in general.

Christa627:Well, I haven't noticed that, except in the case of the most common verbs (to be, to do, to have), and I have six younger siblings, although most of my conclusions are based on observations of only two of them, as I don't remember the early childhood of the oldest two very well, and the youngest two are still toddlers, so they say "Mama" and "ball," and that's about it. The 5yr old still says "brang" and "goed," and I don't recall her ever saying "brought" and "went." The 9yr old spends a lot of time intentionally talking wrong, so it's hard to tell what his actual current status is. But I do remember him saying "bringed" before "brang," and "brang" and "goed" before "brought" and "went." And he still says "brang" fairly often. Of course, every child develops differently, so the speech of two related children may or may not show the tendencies of children in general.

The top 12 most common English verbs are all irregular. Of the top 100, 53 or 54 are irregular (depending on whether you consider "learnt" or "learned" for the verb "to learn"}. Of the 1000 least frequent verbs, 982 are regular. Additionally, infrequent irregulars can even fall out of vocabulary - "dreamt," for instance, while still understood as correct by native English speakers, is used far less often than "dreamed" nowadays. Although the opposite is happening with "dived" and "dove," so such matters are obviously more complex than simply removing irregularity.

I cannot seem to find the source for the research on children's acquisition of irregular verb forms; it was discussed in my linguistics lecture but unfortunately the professor didn't cite a particular study.