Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 03:51:23 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710290851.DAA16846@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Geoffrey Hacker Sender: Lojban list From: Geoffrey Hacker Subject: Ser/estar (was: Re: What's going on here?) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EIS00552K2V7X@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3965 Lines: 73 On Sun, 26 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > >Well, you tell me, Jorge. Did you learn or notice anything significant or > >deep and meaningful when you first learned that there was one kind of > >hacer represented by "to do" and another kind represented by "to make"? > > I don't remember. I certainly see a difference now, as I see a > difference between "ser" and "estar", and in many other distinctions > that one language makes explicitly and the other doesn't. I've always seen a difference between "ser" and "estar" as it was taught to me in high school. My point *isn't* whether the two senses are different as such. Lemme see, how can I explain this that will make it clear? Possibly in terms of the language of an *essential* distinction versus an *incidental* distinction. Suppose that you look up "hacer" in the dictionary. Does it have one definition, or many? If many, then does it have one that reasonably corresponds with English "to do", and one that reasonably corresponds with English "to make"? If so, then that seems an *essential* distinction between the two different forms of "hacer". Otherwise, it just seems incidental. "Moegen" and "lieben" nicely correspond with two real definitions of the word "love" in English, so this also seems to be an essential distinction to make. "Ser" and "estar", if they have two roughly corresponding definitions of the word "to be", would also be essential distinctions of "being". However, I think think of at least one way in which the definition of being seems exactly the same whether you use "ser" or "estar", and that's with "be" just being used as a copula. That's what I'm talking about with respect to "being" in a place and "being" an Australian. In both these cases, "being" is the same thing: a word that joins a subject to its predicate. It could join that subject to any old predicate. In that case, "ser" and "estar" would be incidental distinctions of the copula, because one type of being in each case can't really be confused for the other, becuase it's just a plain copula and a plain copula, six of one and half a dozen of the other. But that "ser" and "estar" are different in the first place in a way that is significant to the Spanish language-web seems undeniable. > >If some distinctions weren't deeper than others, there would seem no point > >in learning any other languages to try to expand the mind. > > I don't know. I enjoyed very much learning English and Esperanto, > which are the languages besides Spanish in which I can "think" > (meaning that I can formulate my thoughts directly in those > languages without going through a process of translation). I haven't > reached that point yet with Lojban, except for some short sentences > with some often used constructions. Learning other languages has > taught me a lot about my native language as well, things that I > wouldn't have noticed otherwise. I enjoy learning about other languages, and it teaches me a lot about my own language and others, but I would have thought that was separate from the kind of "mind expansion" Chris Bogart was originally talking about. The latter has to do with improving thinking more than knowledge. Still, maybe learning languages can do that in other ways. I don't know... I'm getting tired... By the way, exactly what IS the distinction being made with the headline, "Somos o estamos indeciso?" My Spanish is practically nonexistant, and that was the first time that I had ever seen "ser" and "estar" joining the same predicate. The distincion, according to Chris, was whether the public was indecisive, or merely undecided. Does that mean that "estar" picks out nonce states of being, whereas "ser" picks out relatively permanent states, or it is more context-dependent than that, or...? I'm just getting confused now. What are the different possible definitions of "ser" and "estar"? Geoff