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Expressing "-ingly", where "" happens to be transitive

Esperanto Language Asked on August 23, 2021

Suppose I have this intentionally strange-sounding (and perhaps ungrammatical) sentence.

Finante faru ĝin!

Maybe even this one.

Faru ĝin! Sed finante!

That is to say, "Do it, but finishingly so!" or "Do it, and finish the task!". Beware that this is only a question about grammatical correctness and not about good practice. If I were to actually communicate the idea, I would not say it like that.

That aside, in my question, the adverb here does not necessarily need to pertain to "fini", but any transitive verb. Why transitive? Because I feel like the "finante" in the two sentences are missing an object, unless it shares it with the "faru", and I am curious about what the rule here is, when the adverbized verb is transitive.

Unrelated to transitivity, the "-ant" in the "finante" implies the present tense, when I am using the volitive mood. Dunno what to do about that one without using a neologism.

Speaking of which, if I really had to come up with something, here’s something wild, even stranger-sounding, and probably should not be used in actual conversation.

Finentece faru ĝin.

With a "-entece" ending analogous to "-antece" and "-ontece", as in words like "estontece". This way, it would no longer seem to require an object (or subject complement in the case of "estontece"), and would no longer imply the present. But, again, I know this is probably kind of abusive of the language, but hey, it’s fun!

2 Answers

The active adverbial participle forms (a/i/onte) are best understood as frazekvivalentoj, i.e. as replacements for subclauses. The tense is always in relation to the ĉefverbo (predicate).

  • Finante faru ĝin! : While finishing do it.

Being a transitive verb the participle form also requires an object. As far as I can see there is none. To summarise, the sentence as such doesn't make sense.

Correct answer by Juha Metsäkallas on August 23, 2021

Eat the meal but finish it = Tamen finu manĝi ĝin
                           / Manĝu tamen finu
                           / Manĝu tamen ĝisfine.
Do it and finish the task = Faru kaj finu la taskon

Fini can function as help verb, being followed by a verb. Which seems to relate to your V-ingly question. For lack of good examples, I have added some variations one sees in living language.

Answered by Joop Eggen on August 23, 2021

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