When Zamenhof, in the years 1881-1882, considered the introduction of the accusative into his language (it may be remembered that at that time only the pronouns were declined), he was apparently led to that by practical experiments. He ceaselessly tested his language through translations, especially from German (Heine, Andersen, Schiller) and from Hebrew (the Bible); during that translation, he certainly was struck by the possible confusions that the lack of a noun accusative dragged along with it; I will quote as an example only the first line from his translation of that period from Heine's famous poem:
Mo bella princino in sonto vidá
(= I saw a beautiful princess in-the dream)
in which the words bella princino might equally be understood as an apposition to the pronoun (= I, a beautiful princess, saw...). It must not, then, be supposed that, at the time he introduced the accusative for nouns, Zamenhof defined for himself the various uses of this new case in theory and detail. And it would seem that, in the beginning, he intended to us it to sign only the direct object, just as it already indicated that with the pronouns.
A. In all those languages which he took as models, the main and essential value of this case is really to show the person or object targetted by the act expressed by the verb (or, as Zamenhof said, "the one who suffers from the deed"); Hebrew: 'eth-harasa ishpot haelohim (God will judge the impious one); Latin: pasce capellas (pasture the nanny-goats); Russian: ya vizhu tsarya (I see the tsar); German: den Frieden liebe ich (I love peace).
But right from the start we encounter points that make us hesitate. In the language mentioned, the rule about accusativation of the direct object is not always equally applied: in Hebrew, for example, the accusative preposition is not used before indefinite nouns; in Russian, the accusative is replaced by a genitive in negative sentences. But here the remedy is easily found: use the accusative in a uniform way.
B. A second difficulty was more important. Of the verbs that show an action impinging upon some sort of object, not all of them show that object with an accusative; some point to it with other cases, or with prepositions. Grammarians name this "the indirect object" and make of it their food and drink. What makes the matter even more complicated is that it is not the same verbs that behave so in all languages: in Russian you may desire, await, beg, fear "of someone" (genitive), you may help, serve, flatter, threaten, revenge yourself "to someone" (dative), you may own, respect, sacrifice "by something" (instrumental) etc., while in French all those verbs are used with a direct (preposition-free) object. Contrariwise, Hebrew says: "to be ill the feet, to flow milk and hony, to abound grain" etc., while after that sort of verb the European languages ordinarily use an indirect object, which even some grammarians view as an adject. Here the solution is, then, more difficult to find, the more so because no logical principle rules those various manners of expression.
It seems that, in the first years of his language, Zamenhof leaned in those cases toward using systematically only the accusative: as early as a translation from Schiller (1880), we read: to sciidz'uj koj malmadz'al (1) (= vi sciiĝos nur malmulton / you will become aware of only a little). Apparently we owe to that first viewpoint the many similar examples that can be found in the works of the years 1887-1888: ni devas lin helpi (Unua Libro); ili rigardigis iliajn legantojn, kiel malbonsona...; ili rigardigis, kiom da malfacillaboro kredeble la afero min kostis; se ia kompetenta akademio min sciigos, ke...; tion ĉi vi ne povas respondi!; mi miras la saĝecon de tiu ĉi homo; li ne parolas eĉ unu vorton; kion li babilas?; ŝi ofte sonĝas mortintojn; plori la perdon... (Dua Libro); multaj ... koleras min; mi respondas ĉiun leteron; tiam la tuta afero ja nenion taŭgos; la publiko povu koniĝi tiun ĉi lingvon; la nuna grandeco de la vortoj povas resti en la lingvo kaj neniu sentos la bezonon ĝin plendi... (La Esperantisto).
Zamenhof always maintained this wide concept about the use of the accusative: as late as 1908 he writes, in his translation of the Psalms: tiu gravediĝis malbonon (Ps. VII, 14); and, because a few people argued from this that the voice-indicating suffixes -ig- and -iĝ- were no longer needed, Grabowski, at that time Director of the Academy Section for Grammar, published the following note in the Official Gazette: "According to an explanation by the Maestro, the opinion, that in Esperanto every verb can have both an active and a passive meaning, is not correct. The fact is that every verb can be followed by a direct complement, without any change in the meaning of the verb." (2)
C. But after the stage of 1882 Zamenhof tried another solution. In fact, he was more and more conscious of the fact that such generalized use of the accusative would bother many people, at least in the beginning: accustomed to using a preposition after this or that verb, they would seek in every way some kind of means of translating it, and if a means was not given to them, they would simply use their own national-language, not necessarily logical form. This is what probably inspired Zamenhof to think up an abstract, meaning-empty, merely formal preposition, the Esperanto je. (3) This creation occured, it would seem, not too long before 1887, because in the Unua Libro he stresses its merits more than he would later do in the Esperanto translation from the Fundamenta Krestomatio: "Every preposition has a definite and permanent meaning; but, if we have to use a preposition and the direct meaning does not show us what sort of preposition we must take, (4) then we use the preposition je, which has no independent meaning; e.g. ĝoji je tio, ridi je tio, enuo je la patrujo. The clarity of the language in no way suffers from this, because in all languages we use in these cases whatever preposition, if only it is sanctioned by use. The international language makes use, in this case, only of the preposition je. But instead of the preposition je we can also use the accusative without a preposition."
Despite this attractive advertisement, the use of je before the indirect object did not prosper: in the Unua Libro we find only one example: je kia lingvo li skribis? (it was really possible to hesitate between en and per; it was to be en that would triumph (5)). In the Dua Libro we find a je-object after the verbs: respondi (je letero), labori (je afero), sin okupi (je malsaĝeco), eksedziĝi (je ŝi), fianĉigi (iun je iu), morti (je malsano), enamiĝi (je li). The following sentence from the Unua Ekzercaro even looks like an advertisement: Koniĝinte je tiu ĉi nobla homo, mi tuj amikiĝis je li. In the Aldono al la Dua Libro only: senigi sin (je privilegio). (6)
D. These first two solutions, although convenient and easy to use, did not come into systematic use. Here is where we can determine the unsuppressable force of the linguistic substratum. Systematic use of the accusative in such ases was annoying because it replaced a usual instrument of expression with something quite different, and it looked like a hole in the sentence-weave; the systematic use of je did not give that annoying impression, but on the other hand it did not satisfy the need for concrete, colorful expression. Zamenhof experienced these reactions during the first years of propaganda, and for this reason initiated a change in style and even in syntax. It has not yet been pointed out that in several points such as the use of sia, of the adverbial form of the subject-free predicative, of iĝi instead of -i sin etc., Zamenhof's linguistic habits evolved deeply around the year 1894; the translation of Hamlet shows us a language in many ways more modern than the texts of the previous years; a result of contact with the public and a coming to life of the language thanks to widespread correspondence and polemics on the pages of the magazine. (7)
As early as the third page of Hamlet we meet the line:
Ne kredas li pri la fantom' terura...
in which the je makes way for a more correct and more exact preposition. And from that time on we see that tendency have more and more effect. From the verbs quoted under B., almost all regained the right to a concrete preposition, whenever it was shown to be used with sufficient internationality: kosti, dolori, rigardigi, komprenigi, sciigi al iu; koleri kontraŭ iu; miri, respondi, paroli, babili, sonĝi, koniĝi pri io; taŭgi por nenio etc. From the verbs quoted under C., almost all evolved in the same way: respondi al, labori super aŭ pri, sin okupi pri, ridi pri, fianĉigi kun, amikiĝi kun, morti de etc. In the same way, instead of enamiĝi je iu (a reprint of La Ombro, in the Fabeloj) Zamenhof later preferred enamiĝi en iun. We can find a conclusion to be drawn from his experience with the preposition je in the following sentence from La Esperantisto (1894, no. 2): "the more competent Esperantists have in recent times, and not without some justice, avoided this word," and in a later piece of advice from the Exercises (1894): "it is well to use the word je as rarely as possible."
E. Another curious influence of national-language customs was that with some verbs neither Zamenhof nor the first Esperantists ever used the permission about the substitute accusative, although sometimes, for example in poetry, that would have been very convenient for them: we always read aparteni al iu, plaĉi al iu etc. An exceptionally characteristic fact is that for the pronouns the substitute accusative, initiated by Zamenhof (see the examples under B.), almost immediately disappeared; Russian and German very clearly distinguish the accusative and dative forms (Russian: menya -- mnye; German: mich -- mir etc.). If Esperanto had spread on French or English territory in the beginning, both of them languages in which the same form serves for the two cases (F me or moi; E me), it is apparent that modes of speaking such as diru min, kion vi pensas or skribu lin tuj veni would have prospered.
F. The remains one more aspect of the problem about the object accusative, i.e. the increase of its use after words other than verbs. This is a problem which does not appear in the Indo-European languages, because these languages sharply distinguish the verb system from the noun system (the so-called "accusative of relation" is not here under consideration). But Esperanto is a language in which the roots remain invariable and independent, and consequently preserve their verbal value even under the clothing of a noun or adjective ending. As a result, the spirit of the language itself militates toward use of an object accusative after non-verb word forms. In this Zamenhof may also have been influenced by Hebrew, which knows such contructions: abhdeakh haya yare' 'eth-yahwe (=your-slave was pious [toward] God); male' a haarets de'a 'eth-yahwe (= is-full the-earth of-knowledge [of] God).
We shall distinguish the examples according to the grammatical category of the word with a verb root:
1) Name of the actor. -- An object accusative after the name of an actor would seem to be the first step toward the widening of use of this case: from li skribas leteron we immediately corss to la skribinto leteron. But I find only one example of this in the texts that I know of from that period:
Mortu ĉiu intriganto
Kaj malamon konservanto
Longe en la koro!
(Dua Libro -- reprinted in F K, p. 329)
And that was to be the only manner of speaking against which Zamenhof would later advise (cf Lingvaj Respondoj, 3rd edition, p. 67) -- although he did not declare it incorrect.
2) Name of the action. -- Contrariwise, the object accusative after a noun expressing an action is to be found a number of times in the texts of the early years: Tre grava por la progresado de l' lingvo internacia estas diligenta uzado ĝin en korespondado (Aldono al la Dua Libro); La gazeto havos la celon labori por la progresado de tiu ĉi lingvo kaj por la vastigado ĝin en la mondo; La Ligo havas la celon zorgadi pri la disvastigo kaj enkondukado en la tuta mondo unu neŭtralan lingvon; multaj artikuloj, anstataŭ paroli pure pri nia lingvo, sin okupas de la komenco ĝis la fino je komparado ĝin kun Volapŭuml;k (La Esperantisto). Nor did Zamenhof ever give up on this way of speaking, and as late as two years before his death he wrote: Ĉi tiu devigata konstanta alkalkulado sin al ia speciala gento... (Alvoko al la Diplomatoj, 1915). But for the above mentioned reason, it was nowhere imitated, nor the analogous use of je: la juĝo de l' publiko je l' lingvo proponita de mi (Dua Libro). Such constructions remained merely curious Zamenhofisms.
3) Adverb. -- We find this construction in researched texts only after the adverb danke: danke la fantazian punkton de l' vodono... (Dua Libro); danke tiun vastan liberecon...; vortoj, kiujn mi danke la gramatikon ne bezonis presi en la vortaro (Aldono al la Dua Libro). It is curious that this way of speaking disappeared precisely after that particular adverb (it was replaced, as early as 1893, by the form dank' al, which can grammatically present only danko al with an irregular "absolute nominative", and which is a simple copy of the French grâce à and the German dank Ihnen (8)), but prospered after the analogous adverbs: koncerne, rilate, spite etc. After other similar adverbs that originate from verbs, nevertheless, we have long since grown used to using a preposition.
4) Adjective. -- An object accusative after an adjective of verbal origin is not to be found in the texts of the first period. But following 1900 it is found in one single situation, after the adjective inda, whose meaning at that time became assimilated to that of a participle such as meritanta. In Esenco kaj Estonteco... we read: infanaĵo, kiu estas inda nenian atenton, and Zamenhof conserved that way of speaking, for example in Marta (1910): mi fariĝis inda vin. But general usage preferred the prepositional form inda je or inda de.
A. Alongside its own value as a means of expressing the object, the accusative also has in the Indo-European languages two other values which it is difficult to reduce to the first. From these two, Esperanto adopted the first, which expressed the destination of a motion.
It is remarkable that no distinction between the location-adjects with and without movement existed, at least as far as we know, in the ur-Esperanto of 1881; Zamenhof made no distinction there between il nokto la mortagoj allé il sengo (= in the night the dead go into-the synagogue), and igno mo santé il kordo (= I feel fire in-the heart). But in another test of the same period, the only one in which he used the accusative with the nouns, he is already writing in accord with the future Esperanto formula: kadental ba sal sellol (= falling onto his chair).
At a later stage, he no longer hesitated about the need to distinguish the destination to which a movement aims from the place within which a movement takes place. But then he had to choose between two remedies, either a pair of prepositions or an accusative with the possible use of one proposition. (9)) He decided on the latter solution in Esperanto's definitive form. We effectively find in texts from the first period the following examples of a purely accusative destination-adject: Kolektu sin la akvo de sub la ĉielo unu lokon!; Sendu ĝin ĉiun vilaĝon, ĉiun urbon kaj urbeton (Unua Libro); li eniris la ĉambron; mi veturos Hamburgon (Dua Libro). These examples are even more interesting since, in the first, the Hebrew original presents a preposition ('el maqom 'ekhadh = to place one), and since, for all of them, the Russian or German languages, too, use a preposition. So we find here a form unique to Esperanto, a form which, on account of national-language customs, could not take root: it is conserved today almost only in proper place names (veturi Parizon).
It will furthermore be noted that the use of the pure accusative can, after certain verbs, cause confusion with the object accusative: in Grabowski's sentence: la sortigiton ni per ĉevalo ne forkuros (La neĝa blovado, 1888) it might be doubted whether the accusative is the destination of a movement or, contrariwise, the point of departure, and one might hesitate at first sight between the two meanings: "we shall not flee from our fate" or "we shall not flee to our fate."
B. This direct accusative seemed so convenient to Zamenhof that he did not hesitate to apply it even to the positional adverbs -- which classical grammarians would consider a monstrosity: declinable adverbs! We find very early on, for example: la afero sin movas antaŭen; mi rigardis, kien neniu povis rigardi; li tien ĉi venis; mi kuris supren kaj malsupren (Dua Libro). And usage up through the present time has faithfully conserved this audacity, using it even more widely than Zamenhof himself. In fact, the double tendency toward shortening and toward avoidance of purely accusative goal-names has had the effect that many Esperantists simply change the noun to an adverb: supreniri ĉielen, kuri hejmen, sendi eksterlanden, sin ĵeti teren seem less annoying than supreniri ĉielon etc.
It is remarkable, on the other hand, that if Zamenhof applied the accusative of direction to adverbs, he was more conservative with respect to the object accusative; and nevertheless the parallelism between Esperanto trovis multegon da amikoj and nia afero postulas tre malmulte da oferoj would have allowed, by analogy, the attribution of the object sign to that category of adverbs (postulas tre *malmulten...).
C. By analogy with the constructions shown in I F. 2), Zamenhof used the directional accusative not only after verbs, but also after nouns with a verbal origin. Examples are lacking, by chance, in the works from the years 1888-90, but afterwards it is not uncommon to find sentences of the type: ni trinkis... por mia feliĉa reveno hejmen (Fabeloj de Andersen, III, p. 109). And present-day Esperantists, who definitely avoid the use of an object accusative after a noun, have preserved and continue to use the directional accusative in the same construction (mia vojaĝo Hispanujon); furthermore, with words of other types than country names, they prefer the adverbial form: punata per morto estas la aeroplana fuĝo eksterlanden.
D. The directional accusative is also found after certain prepositions of place, at least after those which do not in themselves express the idea of movement: Ne konduku nin en tenton; la junecon... metis mi sur la altaron; li kuris sur la kampon (Unua Libro); li kondukis la kolegojn en sian loĝejon (Dua Libro); ...prenu en siajn manojn la sorton de la lingvo (Aldono al la Dua Libro).
But these examples should not be misinterpreted: contrary to the situation in the Russian or German language, this accusative does not depend on the preposition; it is completely the same, in meaning and function, as in the examples quoted under II A., and simply is added to a proposition, which shows only that the goal is not an object but a position relative to an object. This very convenient means of expression is completely preserved in today's usage -- but with the reservation, which Zamenhof himself expressed (Lingvaj Respondoj, 3rd edition p. 52) that the nominative can often be used after positional prepositions "if the sense of direction concerns not the noun about which we speak but some other word, which we tacitly understand; for example, we can easily say oni metis antaŭ mi manĝilaron, understanding an additional sur la tablon".
If we define the accusative in principle as the case of the object, it may seem illogical to use the same case for certain adjects. Such an illogicality was, nevertheless, known by the Indo-European languages, which used this case to show spatial or temporal extent, i.e. distance (Latin: negat se a ie pedem discessisse "he says that he did not draw one step away from you") or duration (tres annos regnavit "he ruled for three years"). A similar situation was preserved in Russian and partially in German. But Hebrew is more instructive for us: in fact, it knows a very wide usage of the absolute nominative (traditional grammar even calls it the accusative, but the characteristic preposition 'eth is absent) by means of which it expresses nearly all kinds of adjects, of location, distance, weight, measure, duration, date, result, etc.: nihag ruakh-qadhim ba'arets kol-hayyom hahu wekol-hallayla (he-directed an east wind on-the-land all-the-day that and all-the-night: Exodus X 13); hikkitha 'eth-kol-'oyebhay lekhi (you-struck all-my-enemies jaw: Psalms III 8); wayyibhene 'eth-ha'abhanim mizbeakh (he built the stones altar: I Kings 18, 32) etc. In this two final examples, Zamenhof, in his translation of the Bible, inverted the construction: Vi frapis al ĉiuj miaj malamikoj la vangojn, and li konstruis el la ŝtonoj altaron.
A. The above facts probably inspired him the the same usage of an absolute nominative in the ur-Esperanto of 1880-81: un dio o jam kompá rol mortaga (= for one day one had already counted him dead); ec' mianto o ne lassá mol i kvilo (= even for a moment one did not leave me in peace); sej kaŭ s'o allá malmagna denco (= but scarcely had she gone a short distance); il kalaj guroj la s'emmo rajis'é alia prekalo el di no (= in-the hot countries the sun radiates another superhead than at us). When he systematized the accusative with the adjectives and nouns, he quite naturally made these absolute adjects accusatives, as we can see from the following examples from 1889-90:
1) Time: elirante aknoraŭ unu fojon...; kelkajn fojojn mi eĉ legis longajn artikulojn...; G. Vaŝingtono estis naskita la dudek duan Februaron; ricevinte kelkajn fojojn tiujn leterojn...; la elpelito malsatas jam la trian tagon (Dua Libro).
2) Duration: servinte en la militistaro tridek jarojn...; li babiladas la tutan tagon; mi restis tie tri semajnojn; laborante dekkvin horojn ĉiutage... (Dua Libro).
3) Manner: ĉiu hajlero pezis pli ol kvindek gramojn; ĉu vi ludas violonon? -- Ne, mi ludas kartojn; en la varmegaj landoj la suno radias alian varmegon ol ĉi ni; ni trinku nian fratecon! (Dua Libro).
B. Of course, in the same texts we also find for this function the more recently invented preposition je:
1) Time: je l' fino de la jaro...; je unu bela tago ni sciiĝos...; je l' deka horo; je kioma horo...?; je l' vespero...; je unu vespero... (Dua Libro)
2) Duration: mian laboron mi prezentas je l' tempo de unu jaro; je eterne (Dua Libro).
Concerning this alternative, Zamenhof did not then distinguish between the object or the adject occurrence: for both he formulated the same rule: "in all occasions when we do not know what preposition to use, we can use the accusative instead of the preposition je" (La Esperantisto, 1892). And he himself certain showed a preference to avoid this empty preposition: in the reprint of La Ombro, for example, he corrected the above quoted Je l' vespero to Vespere and Je unu vespero to Unu vesperon.
C. As for the indirect adject, the complete freedom of choice left by Zamenhof to his disciples has evolved into more and more precisely defined customs. On the one hand we do not use the permission for the adjects whose meaning is quite exact and whose means of expression can be found without hesitation: we never find the substitute preposition or the accusative to mean togetherness, lack, movement from, cause, instrument, etc. The substitute accusative is limited almost only to the adjects of duration (li restis du horojn), of point in time (la dekunuan jarcenton okazis la unua krucmilito) and of measure (pezi cent gramojn, marŝi tri paŝojn etc.). The use of je has narrowed even further: it is used almost only: 1 -- to express the date, before the name of a festival (je Pasko) or an hour-indicating numeral (je la dua posttagmeze), rarely on other occasions; 2 -- to express the difference measurement with the comparative (li estis je tuta kapo pli alta ol ĉiuj aliaj).
From the above exploration we come to several interesting conclusions:
A. Zamenhof apparently introduce the accusative into the language to give it greater clarity, flexibility and uniformity. But from the very beginning, he wanted to make full use of the convenience of this grammatical tool, and did not limit its role to that of a means of expressing the direct object: he assigned to it two other important roles: first to show direction -- and so avoid a double series of prepositions for the meaning of destination and for that of position; second to replace every sort of other preposition -- and so avoid the difficulty of choice in doubtful cases. If for the second of these functions he found many precedents in the natural languages, the third was purely his own invention, by which he proved his linguistic genius one more time (as with the creation of the preposition je). So the accusative became not simply one of the various elements of the morphology, but the main and essential means of support of the entire Esperanto syntax, and passibly its most characteristic trait. In no other language does this case play an analogous and equally important role. (10) So much so that, if the Esperanto syntax is considered in complete independence of the grammatical tradition of the west European languages, we should not speak of an accusative -- a case which is linked with certain definite grammatical functions, and is contrasted with one or several parallel cases -- but with a sign of a complement, the n-ending, to be used with every word (except, of course, for the subect and the predicative) which is not signed by a preposition, whatever the grammatical role of that word may be. In Esperanto the contrast is not between a nominative, an accusative, or a genitive, for example, but between the subject (and the word which is identified with it, e.g. the predicative) and the complements, from which each must be shown by a phonetic signal, either by a preposition before it or by an n-ending after it.
B. If we then consider, from that side, the construction of the language, the value of the accusative will appear to us in a new light. Whatever Zamenhof's motives, propagandistic or otherwise, he gave the language that he offered to the public in 1887 a character completely original and absolutely different from the character which the ur-Esperanto of 1881 had, or which his reform project of 1894 was to have. Esperanto was presented as built of invariant elements, all independent: from these elements, some have a concrete meaning and correspond to the "words" of our European languages; others mean only a grammatical relationship, and express, in the form of independent words, what our languages express sometimes by inflections, sometimes by endings, sometimes by word-order. In summary, it can be said that Esperanto is the perfect type of a language which puts its entire grammar into the lexicon.
In this sort of language it is natural that the chief among the grammatical relationships, that which stands between the predicate and the object, must be expressed phonetically: the existence of an accusative was forced by the language-system itself. This was ignored by the reformers who, in various eras, have demanded the removal, or the making non-obligatory of, the accusative: This reform would bring not just a change in a detail, but a radical modification of the language's structure. We can indeed construct other types of planned language without an accusative; Esperanto without an accusative is not imaginable.
C. The natural consequence of the assignment of such a universal function for the n-ending is its remarkably great frequency of use. The n-ending, as we have seen, has somehow become the everything-doing servant-girl of the language. In books of the first period there is no lack of short sentences with two n-complements of different function (la venontan Dimanĉon mi veturos Hamburgon [Dua Libro]) -- and it would not be difficult to arrange an entire orthodox sentence in which all words besides the subject would have this ending (tutan horon la hundo, la voston supren, postkuris en ĉiujn ĉambrojn ŝian ducent frakojn kostintan kateton kaj ĝin tri fojojn ekmordis). Zamenhof warned against the danger of this sort of overuse: "Ŝajnas al mi, ke estus bone, se ni alkutimiĝus en ĉiuj okazoj dubaj preferi la nominativon" (Lingvaj Respondoj, 3rd edition, p. 53, 1908); but he himself, later, never hesitated to accumulate accusatives: Li kolektis de ĝi koloĉintojn plenan sian veston (II Kings 4, 39) or: tio alkondukis min ĉi tien la duan fojon (Andersen, III, p. 15).
D. Considering these facts, it was interesting to research how more modern authors have related to this very wide Zamenhofian use of the accusative. For that purpose, I developed some statistics about the frequency of the n-words with respect to the entire number of words in a definite piece; if we take care to count sufficiently large numbers, we can attain almost constant proportions; my calculation covered 10,000 words apiece. On the other hand, we have to choose for comparison the same kind of writing: the number of accusatives is really somewhat higher in poetry, somewhat lower in oratory. I chose two types of text: I took one from translated fairy tales or stories, which deliver a good type of concrete language; I took the other from original treatises, which deliver a type of abstract language. Furthermore, I used for comparison with the Zamenhofian language-state works by authors who have never claimed to imitate Zamenhof's style slavishly, and have been more or less viewed as heretics. The pieces explored have been taken from:
For the 1st type: ZAMENHOF, La Ombro (1888), La Virineto de l' Maro (c. 1890), both translated from Andersen; LANTI, Kandid (1929), translated from Voltaire; MIJAKE-ŜIHEJ, Letters from My Mill (1939), translated from A. Daudet.
For the 2nd type: ZAMENHOF, Second Book (1888), Addition to the Second Book (1888); K. KALOCSAY, The evolution of our poetic language (1930), The perspectives of Esperanto literature (1936); W. MANDERS, Interlinguistics and Esperantology (1950).
Here are the percentages I found (7.65 means: 765 n-words out of every 10,000 words):
| 1st type (concrete) | 2nd type (abstract) | ||||||||||||
|
|
Although we must always be somewhat careful about statistics, we can at least draw from the table above the conclusion that, despite the diversity of their origins, national languages and stylistic ideals, the modern authors have essentially preserved Zamenhof's system, and have even exploited its possibilities more completely. We can also determine something else: despite the many critics who have asserted over and over again that the Esperanto accusative is archaic ballast, opposes the spirit of the main European languages, and is destined for inevitable ruination, it nevertheless seems to have suffered not at all from the evolution of the language. And we may respond to these gentlemen with the words of Molière:
Les gens que vous tuez se portent assez bien!