A note on the word “yora’tu”

In his comment in the previous post, Plumps noted that yora’tu ‘winner’ surprised him; he expected yora’yu.

He’s right—it is surprising. As you know, the general rule for forming an agent (the one who does the action) from a verb is to add the suffix –yu:

karyu ‘teacher’; ngopyu ‘creator’; täftxuyu ‘weaver’; taronyu ‘hunter’; etc.

In contrast, -tu is generally added to non-verbs:

fnawe’tu ‘coward’; fyeyntu ‘adult person’; lomtu ‘missed person’; ultxatu ‘meeting participant’; wätu ‘opponent’; etc.

Those are the general rules, and they apply perhaps 95 percent of the time. But –tu can be unpredictable. You’ve already seen examples of that:

In spe’etu ‘captive,’ –tu has been added to the verb spe’e ‘capture’ to indicate the recipient of the action, rather like the –ee suffix in English (honoree, interviewee).

In frrtu ‘guest,’ it’s not clear what –tu has been added to, since there’s no word *frr in modern Na’vi (although it may be an archaic form); the verb for visit is frrfen, so frrtu replaces the expected *frrfenyu.

And there are places where you expect –tu but find –yu instead: ‘warrior’ is tsamsiyu, not *tsamtu. (Compare: tsulfä ‘mastery’; tsulfä si ‘to master’; tsulfätu ‘master of an art, craft, or skill—not *tsulfäsiyu.)

The words for ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ are further additions to the list of oddly behaved –tu words:

yora’tu (n., yo.RA’.tu) ‘winner’

snaytu (n., SNAY.tu) ‘loser’

Note that snaytu is doubly exceptional, since snaytx ‘lose’ ends in a pxorpam. So *snaytxtu > snaytu.

Frauvanìri lu yora’tu, lu snaytu.
‘For every game, there’s a winner and a loser.’

The bottom line is that –tu words are sometimes unpredictable. The –tu suffix is not productive, so don’t try to coin these words yourself—you need to find them in the dictionary.

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7 Responses to A note on the word “yora’tu”

  1. SGM (Plumps) says:

    Eltur tìtxen si… thanks for explaining that 😉

    mipa zìsìt lefpom alu kop etrìp lefpomtokxsì ngaru livu, ma Nawma Karyu 🙂

  2. Carborundum says:

    Ma Karyu, ngeyä tìoeyktìngìri oe ngaru seiyi irayo!

    And we even get another example of asyndetic coordination! Very, very interesting, that.

  3. Prrton says:

    Fìtxeleri, oe kop päperawm. Tìoeyktìngìri sieyi irayo!

  4. Sxkxawng says:

    Tse, txt → t, but not tx. Could this apply generally throughout the language and also to pxp and kxk? How would sequences like ppx, ttx, kkx contract?

    Eltur tìtxen si. I sometimes wonder if we’re going to start seeing more of those rare -siyu words 🙂

  5. Sxkxawng says:

    Kop, Mipa Zìsìt Lefpom Ngengeru, ma Karyu Pawl! 😀

  6. Carborundum says:

    I thought of a question related to this. The -yu suffix is entirely productive on verbs (except for si-verbs), correct? What is then the status of words such as *yora’yu, *snaytxyu and *frrnenyu? Are they non-standard but acceptable, or are they exceptions to the rule and thus illegal?

    • SGM (Plumps) says:

      That’s what I was wondering myself as well…

      But that is also a question concerning the contrasted nì- forms, i.e. we know that it is nìk’ong but would *nìkì’ong also be acceptable, albeit not very good (contemporary) Na’vi.

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