Objects, Accusative, and Transition (Help! No, wait, it's not that complicated...)
How to master the dreadful N-ending, and other stories
Mi donas aferon al vi
Meaning: I give a thing to you
Mi estas studento
Meaning: I am a student
What’s the difference between the use of verbs in these two sentences?
The first one is using a transitive verb, the second one doesn’t. And with the transitive verb, you’ll have to use the accusative; with the other – not.
Transitive is such a word that makes language students run away, because we don’t use that word in normal language. It is special linguistic word, and it’s meaning may not be immediately understood.
But it’s not that bad, really: transitive means that a verb transfers an object from a subject to someone or something1. “To give” certainly transfers something from the giver to the receiver. It transfers an object. When I give a thing to you, that thing is being transferred – it is the object of the action.
In contrast, “to be” doesn’t transfer anything – we are just adding more description to something or someone. “I am a student” simple tells more about me, and I am myself in reality the both the subject and the object, even though we normally don’t say so – this sentence simply doesn’t have a grammatical object, and “am” doesn’t really do anything to “student”, which is just a description.
In both of those example sentences, “I” am the subject, meaning “the one who does something”, while “give” and “am” are the verbs, meaning “what is being done”. And then we have “thing” as an object.
In Esperanto, "thing” is called “afero” – when being the object of a transitive verb, it needs an n in the end, thereby becoming “aferon” in this sentence. That’s what we call accusative. It’s that simple!
Some verbs are natural transitive, others are natural non-transitive.
Think about it: when could “I am” ever be about someone or something else than yourself? Never! “Am” is a natural non-transitive.
And “give” is always transitive, because you always give whatever you are talking about to someone. There is always an object being given away.
Of course, you can make a sentence that doesn’t show the object – such as “I like to give”,2 and then you have no place to but that n, so, you won’t.
You can also have a sentence that shows only the object. Think about “Saluton!” – a very short sentence, I admit, but it is a sentence nevertheless. What is the case here is that something more is understood, even if it is not explicitly being said – something like “Mi donas saluton al vi”, meaning “I give a greeting to you”.
All languages have such special cases, and a great feature of Esperanto is that even then, even when the language is being bent and twisted, you still follow the few, simple grammar rules.
That’s actually the essence of it! There’s no more to learn. Almost.
Only, which verbs are transitive, and which are non-transitive? When can you expect to look for an object that you can put an n on?
While some verbs are simple to understand, like give and be, as I mentioned, others can be a bit more tricky. It’s all logical, of course, and it all makes sense when you think about it, but seeing that logic and understanding that sense when you are in the process of saying or writing something may not happen.
For that reason, it is important to learn if a verb is natural transitive, when you learn the verb. Make it a habit to think of a verb in the context of a full sentence when learning it, so that you’ll have that n in memory as well, together with the verb itself and its meaning. It is best to try writing a few sentences whenever you learn a new verb, so that you get it into your fingers as muscle memory.
And there is actually something more to learn, sorry, I was too fast before:
I have spoken about a verb being a natural transitive and a natural non-transitive verb. Why that? Why the “natural”?
Because, you can change a verb, so that it fits your needs.
Esperanto is very logical. As a somewhat morbid example, I could say:
La birdo mortas
Meaning: The bird dies
And, alternatively:
La kato mortigis la birdon
Meaning: The bird is being killed
The difference here is that little “ig” that has been placed near the end of “mortas” in the second sentence, making it “mortigas”. That affix, as such a little block of letters squeezed into the word is called, simply changes the verb from being non-transitive to being transitive.
Instead of something that happens to the substantive itself, it is now, with the ig affix, being done to an object. The bird changes status from subject to object for this to make sense, and therefore, in the second sentence, I had to put a new subject – then we know who is doing this to the bird.
You can, of course, also change a natural transitive verb to become non-transitive, i.e., the opposite way around:
Mi donas aferon al vi
Meaning: I give a thing to you (like in the top of this article)
can be changed to
Afero doniĝas al vi
Meaning: A thing is being given to you
Now, we use the affix “iĝ” to show that the verb speaks about the subject instead of the object. You could say that it is doing it to itself, like the bird in the previous example. We are looking at the thing, not at you, when we write this sentence.
So, in summary: verbs are natural transitive or natural non-transitive but can be changed by the help of the affixes ig and iĝ – if you end up with having, in the sentence, an object for what your verb does, then that object needs an n in the end.
The n is used for the whole object, also if it consists of several words.
Mi donas al vi ruĝan ŝtrumpeton
Meaning: I give (to) you a red sock3
Normally, socks don’t come individually but in pairs, but you could also have a lot of individual sock (like in my sock drawer):
Mi donas al vi multajn ruĝajn ŝtrumpetojn
Meaning: I give (to) you many red socks
Since the “many” and “red” belong to the object as properties to it (called “adjectives” in linguistics), they are, in fact, also part of the object. Therefore, they must also have an n in the end, and we see here in addition an example of how the plural j in a similar way spreads over the whole set of object words.
So, that’s accusative. Now you know it :)
Some languages then calls whatever the object is being transferred to for “dative” – Esperanto represents dative in these example sentences simple by “al”, which meant “to”. No further endings or similar are needed.
“I like to give” could, logically, be said to have like as the verb and then “to give” as the object – that’s what you like. But as there is no receiver of this, it points back yo yourself and, hence, isn’t a transitive sentence, even though the word for “like”, which is “ŝatas”, in itself is a transitive verb, so that logical object cannot be accusative – therefore, no n in the end of anything here.
In English you can, and would normally, omit that little “to” from the sentence. In Esperanto you can’t. So, when translating between the two languages, it is always necessary to consider if there must be such one, or not, to make the sentence grammatically correct.
And remember: making a sentence grammatically correct is not about being a language fascist, or anything like that – it is simple about making it immediately understandable to the person you speak to.
In natural languages, grammar has evolved for this purpose, and in a conlang, like Esperanto, this had to be created as well, so that the words, with their endings, there placement in the sentence, the use of punctuation, etc., all help in bringing forward whatever message you have to the one or those who you are talking or writing it to.