Hi all,

Thomas grafid:

"I just wanted to mention this real-life example of how the absence of a
so-called superfluous grammatical trait, such as pronoun number, could lead
to misunderstanding."

It's interesting that you make such a point of this example, while only a
little while ago you refused to acknowledge the (admittedly small) potential
for misunderstanding in the ambiguous Eo 'sukero'.

I read over your example at least 4 or 5 times, and have to say I cannot see
what you saw. I doubt almost anyone would. The fact is that there is always
the potential, in every language including Eo, for some sort of
misunderstanding.

If by your email, you were attempting to defend Eo's use of separate 3rd
person singular pronouns and plural marking, you made no case at all. Many
languages have existed and presumably succeeded for far longer than Eo
without the need for such features. Evidently, you yourself find it
exceedingly difficult to come up with good real-life examples to defend
their usage.

You have to be careful not to make it sound as if you consider many natlangs
to be somehow inferior to Eo, because they do not find need for such
features and are, in your opinion presumably, therefore less 'clear' or
'unambiguous' or 'grammatically sound'. The simple fact remains that they
are not.

I am reminded of the time that I was teaching English in Lithuania. One
astute student queried the English sentence: 'I am just tying up my
shoelaces'. Why, she pondered, was it necessary to include the word 'my' in
that sentence, when real-life context makes it absolutely clear that YOU are
tying up YOUR shoelaces anyway! Lithuanian does away with such redundancy. I
wonder, does Eo?

I think the important point to make here is that IALs, such as my own, that
use a unified third person singular pronoun and no plural, are not
attempting to have less 'grammatical redundancy' as such, but rather to be
more truly representative of the world's linguistic heritage than Eo is. It
is worth also stating that such features make the language easier than Eo
for (esp. non-European language speakers) to learn and use freely.


Daniel


----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Alexander" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 11:44 AM
Subject: Pronouns and redundancy


> Hello,
>         One of my recent new students in the Esperanto 10 lesson
> course questioned a few features of Esperanto.  For example, since
> his native language doesn't distinguish between he and she, he didn't
> see why Esperanto should either.  There have been recent discussions
> in Auxlang about how plural is not necessary.  I suppose one could
> argue that the distinction between "it" and "they" is unnecessary.
>         My son is alergic to peanuts and my wife left me a note which
> said something like the following:
>
>         In the kitchen there is a foil-wrapped plate
>         which contains 4 pieces of peanutbutter fudge.
>         All yours.  Please take to work so that Jonah
>         doesn't find.
>
>         There is only one explicit pronoun in that note ("which").
> The rest are implied.  The problem is that she meant to imply "they"
> (the fudge) and I had inferred an "it" (the plate.)  It wasn't till
> I got to work (with the plate) that I realised that there was more
> than one way to understand the message.
>         When I got home, I was told that my understanding of the note
> was not only not reasonable and not likely, but not possible.  (But
> clearly it was possible, since I had done it.)  Perhaps if I mention
> that Mrs Alexander doesn't like it when people eat cookies which may
> contain *traces* of peanuts around my son, it could help to explain
> why I had thought it likly she wanted me to take away a plate which
> had been contaminated by peanutbutter - but it is not my intention to
> draw others into our (friendly) domestic dispute.  I just wanted to
> mention this real life example of how the absense of a so-called
> superfluous grammatical trait, such as pronoun number, could lead to
> misunderstanding.
>
> Hey, I just remembered.  On the subject of "Cxu vi havas radio" (with
> no accusative marker), there was a point which I started to make, but
> never stated clearly.  That is, just as "Radio Igor hammer smash"
> communicates the idea "Igor (has/is/will) smash(ing/ed) the radio
> with a hammer" - simply by the nature of the objects listed (i.e. nobody
> would assume that a hammer will smash a radio with Igor), the sentence
> "cxu vi havas radio" can be put in various word orders and will still
> communicate "cxu vi havas radion" because radios never posess people:
>
>         - cxu vi havas radio?
>         - cxu havas vi radio?
>         - cxu havas radio vi?
>         - cxu radio vi havas?
>         - cxu vi radio havas?
>         - cxu radio havas vi?
>
> In this example, symantics plays a bigger role than syntax and
> can be understood in the absense of grammar (with the exception
> of -as, which shows tense), so it's not a very good example to
> demonstrate the necessity of any grammatical feature.
>
> Thomas