Kaltxì nìmun, ma frapo! Sìlpey oe, ayngaru livu fpom nìwotx.
It’s too late to say Mipa Zìsìt Lefpom, but perhaps not too early to wish you Zìskrrmipaw Lefpom. Spring is officially still three weeks away, but here in Los Angeles it feels as if it’s already arrived. Blossoms and young leaves are on the trees, the weather is warm, and after a horrible start to the year, it feels as if we’re finally ready for a new beginning. The pandemic situation here seems to be getting a little better as well. John and I just received our second shots of COVID vaccine (there are a few advantages to being “of a certain age” 😊 ) and we’re feeling very fortunate indeed. I hope things are improving wherever you are as well.
From time to time, I receive emailed questions relating to Na’vi. Let me share some recent ones with you, along with my answers.
Q: You’ve stated that the patientive (objective) ending after -ey is either -t or -ti. But we’ve seen examples where it was -it. Is that correct as well?
A: No. There are two cases we know of where the t and i were incorrectly transposed. But a word like kifkey is, in the patientive case, either kifkeyt or kifkeyti, not *kifkeyit.
Q: The verb tawng (vin.) is listed in the dictionary as ‘duck, dive.’ Is it (a) ‘dive’ in the sense of jumping into water to swim, or (b) strictly the action of jumping or throwing yourself to the ground?
A: It’s (a). Tawng refers to jumping into water. It could be used for jumping into water from the outside, as Olympic divers do off a diving board, or it could also be used when you’re already swimming in the water and want to dive down deeper. A typical phrase would be, tawng nemfa pay, ‘dive into the water.’
Q: To say, “Hello to my young friends in Germany,” we can say:
(1) Kaltxì oeyä ’ewana eylanur a tok Toitslanti.
But can we also say it this way?
(2) Kaltxì oeyä eylanur a’ewan a tok Toitslanti.
A: Yes. This is an exception to the rule that two “connecting a’s” can’t be on the same side of the noun—that is, that a must be adjacent to the noun being modified. For example, for “five big black cats” we can’t say *mrra palukantsyìp atsawl alayon but rather mrra palukantsyìp atsawl sì layon. However, when a connects not a simple adjective but a relative clause, that clause doesn’t always have to be adjacent to the noun it modifies. We’ve had a number of precedents for this structure. For example: . . . ulte Na’viru set lu nawma eyktan amip a larmu Tawtute, ‘and the Na’vi now had a great new leader who was a Skyperson.’
Q: What is the ordinal form of zam?
A: It’s zave. Here’s a set of reference tables that gives the cardinal and ordinal forms of numbers. For completeness, I’ve also included charts for personal pronouns and verb forms.
Q: Does the rule about sno that you announced in the last post hold up?
A: Unfortunately, no. The situation is more complex than I had initially thought, and the rule needs to be modified. Interestingly, there’s a somewhat parallel situation in Latin (!), which has two possessive pronouns, eius and suus, that correspond to Na’vi’s peyä and sneyä respectively. I asked my friend who’s a noted Classics professor to send me some textbook material on how those words are used and distinguished in Latin; I now have many pages of complicated grammatical discussion, which may throw light on the Na’vi situation. So stay tuned. I hope to be able to clarify the question in the not-too-distant future.
Finally, some of you who attended OmatiCon online early this year may have seen and heard my Zoom presentation on SLA—Second Language Acquisition—which I illustrated with a little sample Na’vi lesson. If you missed it, it’s available on YouTube here. I enjoyed doing it, and I hope it was fun for the participants.
Hayalovay, ma eylan.
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl!
Lu txantsana fmawn fwa ngaru Tsanursì fìsäspxin ke tsun kxu sivi nulkrr. Kop pxaya sìpawm sì’eyngsì a eltur tìtxen si! Tsari irayo seiyi.
Mllte Eanahu, menga set kxuke lu a fì’u teya si oeru nìngay! Sìlpey oe tsnì tìfkeytok tsan’ìyevul ulte tsasäspx[äng]in* ‘ìyevìp fìkifkeyftu ye’rìn.
* Even if ungrammatical, I feel the [äng] is justified in this particular case 😉
Faylì’u ngeyä oeru teya soli nìteng, ma tsmuk. Ulte kezemplltxe, oe kop sìlpey tsnì tsasäspxängin (exception noted and accepted 😊 ) ’ìyevìp ye’rìn kifkeyftu.
Irayo nìtxan, ma E.U. Srane, syayvi moeyä etrìp lolu nìngay. Ulte fula fìpostì sunu ngar oeti nitram sleyku.
Kaltxì ma Pawl!
Fìpostìri irayo 🙂 Really cool stuff in here!
I found this to be an interesting new structure:
(1) mrra palukantsyìp atsawl sì layon
I didn’t realize that this was valid. Previously, this would have been written as
(2) mrra palulukantsyìp a lu tsawl sì layon
or any valid word order of the same. This was the solution you came up with during the October 2010 Ultxa for the rare occasion of multiple attributives, answering the question of “what if I want to use a whole lot of attributive adjectives, but there are only two slots, one on each side of the noun?” (see https://wiki.learnnavi.org/index.php/Canon/2010/UltxaAyharyu%C3%A4#Multiple_Attributives)
This 2010 solution of
(3) [adj.] sì [adj.] … lu a [n.]
or
(3a) [n.] a lu [adj.] sì [adj.] …
Frees up a slot on one side and allows for any number of attributive adjectives to be on the other side.
Also, now that it is acceptable to say
(4) [n.] a[adj.] a [clause]
(and I assume therefore that
(4a) [clause] a [adj.]a [n.]
is also possible), does this mean that this structures is now possible?
(5) [clause] a [adj.]a [n.] a[adj.] a [clause]
I previously thought that there is exactly one slot on each side of the noun for “any attributive thing”, to include an adjective, or a clause. (As this is what you said in the latest email I have from you on this subject). Just so that I understand better the history of this, did you change your mind on things like (4), (4a), and (5) because there was some precedent from the past brought up recently, or was it always like this, or were you up to now in a state of deciding whether these are valid or not?
For what it’s worth, I don’t remember having seen the “(noun) a(adj.) sì (adj.)” structure before either. But personally I like it, it sounds very natural to me and as far as I know, does not contradict anything stated in the past.
I guess it could have naturally developed from “(noun) a lu tsawl sì layon” > (drop lu) > “(noun) a tsawl sì layon” > “(noun) atsawl sì layon”.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Irayo, ma T.A. Txantsana sìpawm, nìfrakrr.
So yes, my thinking has evolved on this question since 2010. At this point I’d change only one word in the earlier pronouncement that you linked to: must –> may. That is, “For more than two adjectives, or if you want to place both adjectives on the same side, they may be pulled out into an attributive clause with lu: yayo a lu lor sì hì’ì ‘a pretty, small bird’.” In other words, nothing in the past needs to be considered incorrect. It’s just that now there are additional possibilities.
The reason for this is that I realized that over time, a structure like (noun) a lu tsawl sì layon, while remaining a possibility, especially in more formal language, would naturally evolve to (noun) atsawl sì layon in casual speech, exactly as Wllìm has indicated above. It’s as if tsawl sì layon has been reanalyzed as a single modifier: (noun) a[tsawl sì layon], ‘a big-black (whatever).’
That said, when you have only two adjectives, it’s still best to put them on either side of the noun. That’s the most idiomatic way to do it. So while I wouldn’t rule out yayo atsawl sì layon, it’s preferable to say tsawla yayo alayon. However, if there’s a third modifier, like mrr in the example I had in the post, then mrra yayo atsawl sì layon is fine, alongside mrra yayo a lu tsawl sì layon.
Now, to flesh out the clausal structures you asked about, some examples would be:
(3) ’ewana eylan a tok Toitslanti ‘young friends (who are) in Germany’
(3a) tok Toitslanti a eylan a’ewan ‘young friends (who are) in Germany’
(3) and (3a) are, of course, the most expected and idiomatic forms.
(4) eylan a’ewan a tok Toitslanti ‘young friends (who are) in Germany’
As I indicated in the post, (4) seems like a natural development to me. (It’s possible my instincts here are influenced by English, since in English we “postpose” relative clauses all the time: “a man who met you called me” –> “a man called me who met you.”) All other things being equal, (3) is preferable, but if the slot before the noun is taken up, as in tstunwia eylan a’ewan a tok Toitslanti, then (4) is fine.
(4a) tok Toitslanti a ’ewana eylan ‘young friends (who are) in Germany’
(4a) is to (3a) as (4) is to (3).
(5) tok Toitslanti a ’ewana eylan atstunwi a ngal ultxarolun ‘kind young friends (who are) in Germany, whom you met’
Yes, I guess that’s possible!
Sìltsana fmawn a mengal kolaneiom ’umtsat a wä fìsäspxin! Vivar mivakto nìzawnong!
Irayo, ma tsmukan. Sìlpey oe, frapo tsìyevun tsa’umtsat kivanom ye’rìn.
Fmawnìri alu set menga ke zene sngum sivi tsasäspxinteri, oer teya si. Kop, sänumviri a ayfya’oteri tìkusarä, new oe irayo sivi ngaru nìtxan, ma Karyu Pawl.
Irayo ngar, ma tsmuk, ulte nìprrte’.
Wiya! *irayo sivi*… Kawkrr ke latem lì’ukìngit a tengkrr pamrel seri nga…
Ngari txe’lan livu mawey. Tsat oel zosleykolu. 😊
Irayo ma Karyu.
I’m happy to have a new video to listen to. I play your Na’vi 101/102/103 lectures in the car when I’m driving so I’ll add this one to the playlist.
Nìprrte’, ma Kärol. Glad you’ve been finding those little lessons useful.