Case system in Esperanto (was: Poetic translation (was

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Tom Wier wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
>
> > I wrote:
> >
> > > > E-o prepositions govern the nominative.
> >
> > Tom Wier and others point out that prepositions signifying movement
> > take the accusative.
I'm not sure the IE terms Nominative/accusative really fit
Esperanto.  It
seems to me that Esperanto has four "cases" (though I'm not sure
the term
quite fits):

no -n ending, no preposition  (true nominative or vocative)

-n ending but no preposition (accusative, more or less)

preposition but no -n ending (genitive, dative, instrumental, etc)

preposition and also -n ending (allative?)

> >   I think, however, that "in" in "I fart in
> > your general direction" posits a direction only, not movement.
> > The methane moves, but I do not; I merely, aim it.
That's a hard one. :)   Maybe "Mi furzas je via proksimuma direkto"
or "Mi
furzas je vin."


> > Would "I shot the bullet at the man" demand an accusative for "the
> > man"? Doesn't sound right to me, though I am no E-ist.
> The example above is somewhat misleading for English speakers,
> because "at" normally indicates location, but here it clearly carries an
> idiomatic meaning of direction, so "to" or "toward" would be better,
> more literal ways of translating those sentences in Esperanto.
> You'd thus have to say "Mi pafis la kuglon al la viron."  If you used
> the nonaccusative form, it would mean more "I shot the bullet while I
> was sitting by the man" or something like that.
More natural would sound "Mi pafis la viron per kuglo".   "pafi"
normally
takes the target as its direct object.

Also, "Mi pafis la kuglon al la viron."  would be incorrect; "al"
already indicates motion towards, so -n wouldn't appear.  Instead
(grammatical but slightly odd because we're shifting the object of
"pafi"):

"Mi pafis kuglon al la viro."  or

"Mi pafis la kuglon en la viron."
 (shot a bullet into the man)



Jim Henry III
Jim.Henry@pobox.com
http://www.pobox.com/~jim.henry/gzb/gzb.htm
*gjax zaxnq-box baxm-box goq.