(Extensive discussion about whether sen ‘without’ plus an infinitive is admissible in Esperanto derives from this same Slavic quality. The fact that the structure in question is quite frequent in Romance languages (Spanish: sin olvidar, French: sans oublier) and in Germanic languages (German: ohne zu vergessen) has led to widespread use of this structure in Esperanto. But, because it does not occur in Slavic languages (where one expresses the idea by using ‘not’ plus an adverbial participle, as in Russian ne zabyvaja ‘not forgetting’), it was generally alien to Zamenhof’s own usage and thus was thrown out by the purists.)
3) in various non-Western distinctions of nuance (aspects):
| konstruata domo | a house under construction |
| konstruita domo | a house constructed |
| flugis | flew |
| ekflugis | took flight |
| flugadis | flew around, kept flying |
4) in the obligatory distinction between transitivity and in transitivity:
| Esperanto: | komencas (tr.) / komenciĝas (intr.) |
| Russian: | načinaet (tr.) / načinaetsja (intr.) |
| English: | begins |
| French: | commence |
5) in many turns of phrase:
| siatempe | in his time |
| se konsideri | if one takes into account |
| po du glasoj | two glasses apiece |
| elpaŝi kun iu propono | to step forward with a proposal |
6) in the meaning of many roots even if they are from Romance languages:
The semantic field of plena ‘full’ is the same as that of Russian polnyj, and does not coincide with that of French plein, Italian pieno or Spanish lleno. Esperanto plena verkaro ‘complete collection of works’ corresponds to Russian polnoe sobranie sočinenij. In no Romance language would the word derived from Latin plenus be used in such a case.
| Esperanto: | okazo | a) event (French: évènement) |
|---|---|---|
| Russian: | slučaj | b) case (French: cas) |
| c) opportunity (French: occasion) |
(Note the Slavic semantics attached to a Romance root, clearly cognate with English and French ‘occasion’.)
7) in the forms taken by loanwords:
| Esperanto: | mateno | martena forno |
|---|---|---|
| French originaclass="underline" | matin | four Martin |
| English: | morning | blast furnace |
(The French forms, matin and four Martin, without Slavic influence, would have yielded the non-existent forms *matino and *martina forno. The transmutation of French -i- to Slavic -e- can be seen in the Russian term for four Martin: marten or martenovskaja peč’. Similarly Polish transcribes the name of Chopin as Szopen.)
| Esperanto: | studento /s/ | stato /š/ |
| Italian: | studente /s/ | stato /s/ |
| German: | Student /š/ | Staat /š/ |
| Russian: | student /s/ | štat /š/ |
| English: | student | nation state |
(Note that the alternation between /s/ and /š/ is identical in Esperanto and Russian, though both have borrowed both words from languages where the alternation does not occur in this way.)
8) in the writing system:
Accent-marked consonants occur in Czech, Slovak, Croatian and Slovenian. Esperanto has ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, and ŝ. The invariant pronunciation of c, even in front of a, o, and u, occurs in no Western language, but does occur in Romanized Slavic languages. The traditional way to abbreviate in Esperanto, with a hyphen, follows the Russian model, unused in the West:
| Esperanto: | d-ro | s-ino | prof. |
| Russian: | d-r | g-ža | prof. |
| English: | Dr. | Mrs. | Prof. |
The Extrinsic Plane
As far as the origin of its root words is concerned, Esperanto is mostly Romance and Germanic, with a predominance of the Romance (specifically French) element. In the Germanic element one notices a prevalence of the German contribution. The word-initial clusters /šp, št, šm/, for instance, occur only in German and Yiddish.
The Esperanto sound system approximates that of the Romance languages, specifically Italian, but with some Eastern European features. The latter include the complete series of palato-alveolars /č, š, dž, ž/ and perhaps also the frequency of the sequences /oj, aj/, although in this case one might postulate concomitant influence of Yiddish and of the traditional pronunciation of Ancient Greek. Stress follows the Polish model.
It would be interesting to test the following “law” in detaiclass="underline"
Except in those cases where only the two basic principles of invariance of autonomous roots and readily available grammatical analysis apply,
• if a linguistic feature is shared by Germanic and Slavic languages, Esperanto has it;
• if a linguistic feature is shared by Romance and Slavic languages, Esperanto has it;
• if no two of the three groups share a way to solve a particular problem, Esperanto follows
(a) Slavic languages if the matter pertains to the middle-plane (syntax, style, idiom) or
(b) either Germanic or Romance languages if the matter pertains to the extrinsic plane (phonetics, word shapes).
The word ‘law’ is obviously too strong. Rather it would be more accurate to say that, when the conditions it indicates are not met, tensions show up in the language. We have already cited the case of sen + infinitive. Other examples can be found. The current forms jarcento ‘year-hundred’ and jarmilo ‘year-thousand’ for ‘century’ and ‘millenium’, for example, follow the Germanic model, not the Slavic and Latin models which underlay the older forms centjaro and miljaro.
Another example of strain is the passive participles. When one means “the contract was signed at 10 o’clock”, should one say la kontrakto estis subskribita je la 10ª or estis subskribata? Subskribata seems to mean ‘being signed’. (The most logical form would probably be the German/Dutch form iĝis subskribita ‘became signed’. At a few seconds before ten, the contract is being signed; at a few seconds after, it has certainly already been signed; at the second when the last pen leaves the paper, it is transformed from the state of ‘being signed’ to that of ‘having been signed’, and thus it ‘becomes signed’. Hence if one speaks about it later, one ought logically to say, ‘at ten it became having-been-signed’: ĝi iĝis subskribita. But the usage habits of Slavic, Romance and English speakers are perhaps too strong for them to accept such a form.) The -ita form seems to be winning now, although only after facing serious resistance. In the usage of the first speakers of Esperanto, who mostly lived in Eastern Europe, the -ita form perfectly corresponded to the Slavic past passive participle of the perfective aspect (subskribita = Russian podpisannyj) and the -ata form to the present passive participle of the imperfective aspect {subskribata = Russian podpisyvaemyj). In that system, endings indicate more than time; they intertwine notions of time and aspect: -ata stresses the fact that the action takes place over time, without regard to a definite end point, if any, while -ita underscores the reaching of a definite end point.