Re: Rules and Guidelines: word order with "u"

Kim–

A good start is

http://glosa.org/en/gramm.htm

and look under “Synt= ax.”

Saluta,

_ _ /. /\ Gary #

— In glosalist@yahoogroups.com, “Kim” = <kimesperanto@…> wrote:

Karo Glosa-pe,

I have been reading the G= losa Internet Dictionary much lately, and have a program that can parse ‘gl= en.txt’. A huge thank you to Marcel and the other contributors for their w= ork! When my program (written in Python) is sufficiently developed, I can = make it available, if desired. My initial goal is to produce an HTML versi= on that has bold main entries. I plan to rerun it as new releases appear f= rom Marcel.

The next question I have for you all concerns the grammar = rules of Glosa. I know that Wendy Ashby and Ron Clark rarely stated them. = Learning from examples, as presented in “18 Steps”, is an excellent way to= learn. But afterwards when I have a question about usage, it is painful t= o scan through lots of text to discover if usage X is ever done. So I woul= d like to try to deduce what rules of the grammar there seem to be, as well= as what are simply guidelines, and present them to you all for review and = correction. Loosely, a ‘rule’ is always followed, and a ‘guideline’ is = usually followed, and may have to do with good style (however that is defi= ned) more so than correctness. (I hope not to get into prescriptionist vs = descriptionist discussions. :)

For example, a rule would be: “u” alw= ays precedes the noun it modifies, possibly with intervening modifiers.

=

So, to begin: is this a rule?

1. When ‘u’ is used with a noun= that also has one or more adjectives, “u” always precedes the adjectives. = This applies equally to “un” and “plu”.

   Correct: un hedo = prince u mega kali religio-do Incorrect: hedo un prince = mega u kali religio-do

I scanned “18 Steps” and did not find any = counterexamples, but I could have missed one, and even absence there is not= a proof. Please send your thoughts, corrections, discussion. For now I a= m trying to stay strictly with the documents produced by W.A. and R.C from = 1985 onwards, i.e., the official defining docs of the language. I know out= side of that there seems to be a lot of variation…

Saluta e Gratia!=

Kim