Modern Evolution of Esperanto - Syntax

Syntax

An early debate in Esperanto syntax was whether phrases such as "he was born" should use the present participle -at- (naskata for "born"), preferred by native speakers of Germanic and Slavic languages, or the past participle -it- (naskita), preferred by native speakers of Romance languages. The debate partially centered on whether the essential difference between the suffixes was one of tense or aspect, but primarily followed the conventions of speakers' native languages. Eventually a work-around using the inchoative suffix -iĝ- as a mediopassive became common as a way to avoid the debate entirely.

More recently, stative verbs have been increasingly used instead of copula-plus-adjective phrasing, following some poetic usage, so that one now frequently hears li sanas for li estas sana "he is well". This may have been inspired by Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese which treat adjectival concepts as essentially verbal. There was resistance especially in the case of participles (li falantas "he is falling", li falantis "he was falling", li falintas "he has fallen", li falintis "he had fallen", etc.), which many Europeans found overly complex. Although still minority usage, the debate over such forms has largely subsided.

A few new prepositions have been introduced by removing the part-of-speech ending from existing roots. The most common of these is far "by", an abbreviation of fare de "done by". The phrase fare de helps avoid sometimes ambiguous readings of the preposition de "of, from, by". Another neologism is cit from the verb citi "to quote", and used to introduce quotations. (Sometimes je or na (below) is seen instead.)

An occasional difficulty in Esperanto is using the accusative with noun phrases which do not readily accept the accusative suffix -n, such as correlatives like ties "that one's", quotations (see cit above), or phrases which already include an accusative suffix, such as provoj savontaj ĝin "attempts to save it", forpelado hundon "driving away the dog". Traditionally, the preposition de has been used in the latter situation, but this is highly ambiguous: forpeladon de hundo could mean the dog was driven away (accusative case), something was driven away by the dog, or something was driven away from the dog. An accusative preposition na has been proposed and is widely recognized. However, the existing indefinite preposition je might be used just as well: forpeladon na hundo, je hundo.

conditional participles -unt-, -ut- have been created by analogy with the past, present, and future participles -int-, -it-; -ant-, -at-; -ont-, -ot-, by extending vowel equivalences of the verb tenses -is, -as, -os to the conditional mood -us. For example, la reĝunto is "the man who would be king"; a hakuta arbo is "a tree that would be chopped down" (if it weren't spiked, etc.). However, while these forms are readily recognized, they are uncommon. Similarly, a nonce active participle with gnomic tense has been created by analogy with existing pairs of noun and verb such as prezidento "president" and prezidi "to preside", and the resulting participles prezidanto "one who is (currently) presiding", etc. There is no passive equivalent apart from the inchoative suffix -iĝi mentioned above.