After the thoughts on the article, a new episode of “trying to make Esperanto more logical”, this time about the fundamental mechanism of composition.
General Esperanto rules
Esperanto composes roots mostly according to a "determiner-determined" order:
- ĝojkrii (ĝoj/kri/i) 'to shout [-krii] with joy [ĝoj-]' (not 'to rejoice shouting');
- plorsaliko (plor/salik/o) 'weeping [plor-] willow [-saliko]’ (not 'weeping of the willow');
- atombombo (atom/bomb/o) 'atomic bomb' (not 'atom of the bomb');
- vaporŝipo (vapor/ŝip/o) 'steamship' (not 'steam of the ship'),
- strikrajto (strik/rajt/o) 'right to strike' (not 'strike of the right').
However, it sometimes reverses this order (except for the ending, which remains final), particularly when prepositions are integrated into the compound. For example, with the prepositions ekster, inter, sub:
- eksterordinara (ekster/ordinar/a) does not mean 'ordinary [-ordinara] outside [ekster-]' but 'outside [ekster-] the ordinary [-ordinar-]';
- interpersona (inter/person/a) does not mean 'of the person/people [-persona] who are in between [inter-]' but rather 'that is among/between people';
- subluna (sub/lun/a) does not mean 'of the moon [-luna] below [sub-]' but rather 'that is below the moon'.
As can be easily seen, this is presumably done for naturalistic purposes, aligning many Esperanto compounds with the international Graeco-Latin lexicon of many languages. It suffices to compare the above terms with their English counterparts:
| Esperanto | English |
|---|---|
| eksterordinara | extraordinary |
| interpersona | interpersonal |
| subluna | sublunar |
The similarity is clear.
This inversion, however, does not happen only for easily recognizable international terms: it happens generally in the language. E.g.:
- senpere (sen/per/e) ‘without [sen-] intermediary [-per-]’,
- vizaĝaltere (vizaĝ/al/ter/e) ‘with the face [vizaĝ-] to [-al-] the ground [-ter-]’,
- perforto (per/fort/o) ‘action through/by [per-] physical force [-forto].
Analysis
Given that the most "fundamental" element of the Esperanto word is the grammatical ending, on which the rest is built, in these words we have a sort of leap and then a reversal of direction: semantically, the final /a of eksterordinara is primarily determined by the initial ekster/ (ekster/…/a ‘[adj.] that is outside…') and the term is then further determined by the central ordinar/ ('...the ordinary'):
Similarly, subluna means ‘[adj.] that is below [sub/…/a] the moon [lun/]’:
and interpersona means ‘[adj.] that is between [inter/…/a] people [person/]’:
This represents a complication if compared to the linear order of the “determiner-determined” terms, like vaporŝipo or atombombo:
The matter becomes more complicated when compounds are lengthened. Esperanto takes pride in its compositional possibilities, which allow specific words to be created on the fly by freely combining roots, giving the language a creative swiftness. For example, one could desire a verb to mean ‘to deprive of wings, to remove the wings [from]’, which could be useful in various contexts: when talking about an airplane to be scrapped, a once-winged statue whose wings have been removed, a whole chicken to be cut up in the kitchen, or even in a metaphorical sense (‘to deprive of wings’ meaning ‘to deprive of opportunity, freedom of movement and development’). In Esperanto, ‘wing’ can be said in two ways: alo or, using the expression from the Fundamento, flugilo (flug/il/o), literally ‘instrument [-ilo] for flying [flug-]’. Assuming we use this second term, our verb would be senflugiligi (sen/flug/il/ig/i). Sen means ‘without’. The logical order in which it should be constructed is as follows:
My reader may say that I have deliberately constructed a lexical "monster", but terms of the form "sen-something-igi" are quite normal: the PIV lists eight of them under sen (III-2), all used by Zamenhof: senarbigi, senhomigi, senhaŭtigi, senmebligi, senheredigi, senkuraĝigi... Here, to make the bidirectionality more visible, I simply inserted a "something" formed by two roots instead of one.
A simpler logic
As a system, it does not seem ideal. It would seem simpler and more logical to follow the determiner-determined order even with prepositions such as sen, and therefore say *flugilsenigi:
Thus, even those who are not particularly talented at linguistic acrobatics could understand relatively easily what is being discussed, simply by going through the elements backwards (i.e. according to the normal compositional order of Esperanto): 'verb (-i)... to render something (-ig-)... without (-sen-)... instruments (-il-)... for flight (flug-)': 'to deprive of wings'. Going from one element to the next in a linear fashion from one end to the other is, of course, much easier than starting at one end, moving to the next element, then making a jump, then changing direction and making a second jump, and then changing direction again, ending up in the middle of the word.
This double possibility of compositional order, presumably due to reasons of naturalism, appears therefore not optimal. Languages that share a large part of their vocabulary with the international language already have an advantage over others: if the IAL is to be for all peoples, at least the rules of the language should be logical, not modelled on certain natural languages, even in their avoidable complications and counter-rules. Those who speak a Romance language will learn the rule and soon understand the word for 'extraordinary' even if the element for 'ordinary' comes first and that for 'extra-' comes after.
Leuth tries to linearize, almost always using the determiner-determined order. So in Leuth we’d have something like this:
- lunsubo (lun/sub/o) ‘sublunar’ = that is below (-subo) the moon (lun-);
- ordinaryextero (ordinary/exter/o) ‘extraordinary’ = that is outside (-extero) the ordinary (ordinary-);
- personintero (person/inter/o) ‘interpersonal’ = that is between (-intero) people (person-)’.
Note, however, that this reversal only affects a part of the Graeco-Latin lexicon; for many other terms the schematic rule and naturalistic order match smoothly:
- triuplo (tri/upl/o) 'triple';
- mexikana (mexik/an/a) 'Mexican';
- aquadukta (aqu/a/dukt/a) 'aqueduct';
- psichologa (psich/olog/a) 'psychologist';
- insektivoro (insekt/ivor/o) 'insectivorous';
- homsexaylitha (hom/sex/ayl/ith/a) 'homosexuality'.
Etcetera.
[Partly] off topic: what if…
I’m thinking I should open a dedicated subreddit for Leuth. It would make things easier for questions, development, discussion, research, collaboration… But would it be interesting for other people beside me? Hard to say before trying… 🤔
As always, awesome idea. I remember struggling a little bit with Esperanto's compounding system when prepositions were used at the beginning of a word instead of its end ("perforto" and "sensenca" used to be my greatest enemies), therefore seeing that this logical flaw is solved in Leuth is surely nice. As for the subreddit, I personally am interested in joining if it ever is created.
You're too kind! :-)
Thanks for the answer. I'll see if I can do something, after Christmas...
As you noted, words like plorsaliko and atombombo differ from such words as interpersona and subluna in that words of the latter group begin with prefixes (typically related or even identical to prepositions) whereas words of the former group do not. This is why words of the latter group operate with a different morphosyntax in Esperanto.
Prepositions, and the prefixes based upon them, precede their own objects. Determiners precede their own determined subjects. If you want to align the ordering of morphemes in these very different word groups, perhaps replacing prepositions with postpositions, in addition to replacing prefixes with suffixes, would be helpful.
That is to say, if the object of an affix precedes the affix, then perhaps the object of an adposition should precede the adposition too. This would offer phrase-internal typological consistency that parallels word-internal parsing order consistency.
Thanks. :-) I had though about doing something like that, but in the opposite direction: that is, completely reversing Esperanto normal order to a determined-determiner one, with the grammatical regular endings turned into "beginnings" of words. It was very interesting and very good on the schematic side, but destroyed the sorta-Romance naturalistic face that Zamenhof was able to build. I fear the same thing would happen with your proposal, even if maybe not with such strength. I think the current solution, however not perfect, could be an adeguate compromise. But I'll think about the idea...