Passing into the beyond
Welcome to the first post on the Ghost platform!
The focus of the day is preter:
preter
past, beyond, by
ŝi vojaĝis preter la regno de la vivantaj
she journeyed beyond the realm of the living
The question is... Does preter already imply motion? Or is it purely a positional thing, and therefore the above sentence would require the "-n" on regno to indicate that there was motion beyond it? I thought that my translation was the obvious answer, but I recently saw a very experienced Esperantist favour the "-n" in a particular case. So it got me wondering!
For example al "to" always indicates motion so no need for "-n":
ŝi vojaĝis al infero
she journeyed to hell
Whereas en "in" only talks about position so we need the "-n" for motion into:
ŝi grimpis en infero
she climbed in hell (she was climbing on things in hell)
ŝi grimpis en inferon
she climbed into hell
The PMEG suggests that the motion is already encoded in the word. However, it suggests there are circumstances where you wish to make absolutely clear that the motion is well beyond the target - not simply just past it, and while preter does encompass that meaning, the "-n" specifies clearly that sense.
Which is a little unexpected for me, and it's possibly my English influence, but I would have assumed in the opposite direction - that preter is always well beyond, and that maybe some word for "just" to say "just beyond" would be needed (would the closest thing be nur "only"?
Either way, another neat thing to notice from that page, is: what do you do if you only want the complement of preter to be implicit? For example, look at this clunky sentence:
li marŝis preter mi, ne rimarkante min.
he walked past me, not noticing me
The repeating "me" is very clunky - ideally we shouldn't have to repeat ourselves here - and in English you wouldn't. What do we have to do to preter to make it usable in this fashion? Make it an adverb with the "-e"!
li marŝis pretere, ne rimarkante min.
he walked past, not noticing me
Noice.