Reef Na’vi part 2: Morphology, Syntax, Lexicon . . . and more

Kaltxì nìmun, ma frapo!

Srane, oe tolätxeiaw. Some personal issues kept me away, but now that they’ve been resolved, I’m very happy to be back.

So let’s see . . . where were we?

The last couple of posts dealt with the phonetics and phonology of Reef Na’vi. This one concerns the morphology, syntax, and lexicon—and at this point there’s less to say about those aspects of the dialect. I talked about most of this material in my January 2023 OmatiCon presentation, but I’ll repeat the information here, for the record. I’ll also introduce a few new words and expressions relevant to both Forest and Reef Na’vi.

Reef Morphology

FN and RN have virtually identical morphology (that is, the rules for building words out of meaningful elements). One difference—more of a tendency than an absolute requirement—is that for the patientive (objective) suffix, which as you know can take three forms (-ti, -it, and -t), RN favors -ti. So, for example, the Na’vi for ‘I’m looking for this man’ can take two forms:

    1. Oel fwew fìtutanit.
    2. Oel fwew fìtutanti.

In FN, A and B are both used, with A perhaps a bit more frequent. In RN, B is considerably more likely, although A is understood and sometimes used.

Reef Syntax

Na’vi word order, as you know, is remarkably free, and many reorderings of the elements of a given sentence remain grammatical. One exception, however, concerns the topical. Up to now, we’ve seen that a noun phrase in the topical case must come at the beginning of its clause. The major syntactic difference between FN and RN is that in RN, the topical is not restricted in this way. So consider these two translations of ‘Thanks for this beautiful gift’:

    1. Fìstxeliri alor irayo.
    2. Irayo fistxeliri alor.

In FN, only A is possible. In RN, they’re both fine, even though in B, the topical comes at the end of the sentence. The structure in this case is comment+topic rather than topic+comment.

Another syntactic difference is that in RN, lu is often omitted:

[REEF OLO’EYKTAN]
Fìtutan a rììrmì ftu na’rìng.
‘This man in the reflection is from the forest.’

The exact circumstances under which this omission is likely to occur remain to be investigated.

Reef Lexicon

Along with pronunciation, vocabulary differences between dialects are the ones most noticeable to speakers. Looking at American vs. British English, for example, AE apartment = BE flat, AE elevator = BE lift, AE trunk (of a car) = BE boot, and so on ad infinitum.

There are also cases where two different terms for the same thing appear in both dialects, but either the usage is different, or one is strongly favored over the other. Take the word “brilliant,” for example, which is found in both AE and BE. In AE, it can mean ‘bright’ or ‘radiant’ (“A brilliant spotlight lit up the actor on stage”) or it can mean ‘extremely clever or talented’ (“What a brilliant student your son is!”). In BE, however, “brilliant” can also be a general term for anything very good or excellent (“I’m having a brilliant day”); it’s not used in that way in AE.

Since we know less about RN than about FN, we don’t yet have a lot of examples of such lexical differences. There will be more to come. For now, however, the most notable difference we’ve seen is the word for ‘know.’ Both FN and RN use the two terms omum and syawm (pronounced shawm in RN). However, omum is much more common in FN, while syawm is the usual term in RN.

[REEF OLO’EYKTAN]
Kehe, faysuteri ke shawm ayoel keut.
‘No, we know nothing of these people.’

As you know, the other big area of lexical difference is in the u/ù distinction, which has been retained from the parent language in RN but lost in FN. A comprehensive list of these distinctions is coming.

And now for some things pertaining to both dialects:

Back in the A1 script, Tsu’tey angrily said the following:

Fayvrrtep fìtsenge lu kxanì.  Fìpoti oel tspìyang fte tìkenong lìyevu aylaru!
‘These demons are forbidden here. I will kill this one as a lesson to the others!’

To date, I don’t believe we’ve had an explanation for aylaru ‘to the others.’

The paradigm for alahe ‘others, the others’ (animate or non-animate) is as follows:

            Full                  Shorter
S          aylahe               ayla
A          aylahel             aylal
P          aylahet(i)         aylat(i)
G          aylaheyä          ayleyä
D          aylaher(u)       aylar(u)
T           aylaheri           aylari

lante (vin., LAN.te, inf. 1, 2) ’wander’

Fo ka na’rìng lerante tengkrr syuvet fwerew.
‘They’re wandering across the forest looking for food.’

ketartu (n., ke.TAR.tu) ‘outcast’

This word is based on tare ‘connect, have a relationship with.’ An outcast is a person or being that has been disconnected from society and no longer has a relationship with others.

pxazang (n., PXA.zang) ‘akula’

The akula is the fierce shark-like creature found in the seas of Pandora. In terms of its name, there’s been some confusion, because the word akula certainly sounds as if it’s Na’vi! In fact, however, it’s the Russian word for ‘shark,’ акула. That word has been borrowed into English as the name for the Pandoran creature, but of course the Na’vi have their own term. Keep in mind that in RN, it’s pronounced bazang.

Finally, a useful idiom:

Ngari peu? ‘What’s wrong? What’s the matter?’

Lam fwa nga sti nìtxan. Ngari peu?
‘You seem very angry. What’s wrong?’

That’s it for now. Hayalovay!

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11 Responses to Reef Na’vi part 2: Morphology, Syntax, Lexicon . . . and more

  1. Tekre says:

    Kxì ma Karyu!

    it’s really nice to read something new again! Like you said yourself, most of the information about the dialect actually already had been covered in the presentation in January, but still it is good to see it written out here on the blog, now I don’t have to refer people to the video or the dialect page on my website anymore when they ask about these things. The piece of information about ommiting lu actually is really interesting, because Wllìm and I just had a discussion about ommiting it in Forest Na’vi today during dinner, so reading about it in Reef Na’vi today is a great coincidence hrh

    I really like the new words, especially ketartu, it describes the meaning perfectly!

    I’m really looking forward to the list of u/ù distinction, even though I’m also kind of scared for the day it comes as it means relearning hundreds of words for the few occasion I wanna speak Reef Na’vi 😀

    Fìpostìri a eltur tìtxen si nìtxan irayo!

    Ta Tekre

  2. Pawl says:

    Nìprrrte’, ma Tekre. I’m very glad to be in touch again.

  3. elongater says:

    Tolätxeiaw nìprrte’! That’s incredibly amazing to see a new post here. ^^

    I think, besides clarification of akula name in Na’vi, it’d be nice to see one about other new but yet unconfirmed words, such as tsakarem and marui. They certainly appeared on official sites, so it’d be just nice to learn about them too.

    Mipa postìri irayo nìtxan!!!

  4. Wllìm says:

    Kaltxì ma Pawl, tolätxaw nìprrte’ ulte fìpostìri irayo!

    I really like the shape of the word lante. It reminds me of the Dutch word lanterfanteren, meaning something like “not doing much; wasting time”. Makes it easy to remember, like when you’re wandering slowly through the forest to waste time 🙂

    One question: Tirea Aean and I were wondering how aylahe et al. should be put in the dictionary. Do melahe and pxelahe also exist? And can you also just use lahe on its own as a pronoun meaning “someone else”? (I would guess not because we already have lapo for that. So is aylahe simply the plural of lapo?)

  5. Tan Jala says:

    Kaltxì!

    Happy to see a new post. I have a question: since Reef people tend to skip “lu”, do they do it with its negated version “ke lu”?

  6. Eana Unil says:

    Tolätxaw nìprrte’ ma Pawl ulte aylì’uri amip säomumìrisì irayo! Kemlì’u amip alu lante oeru txasunu.

  7. Vawmataw says:

    Toledeiaw nìprrte’ ma Karyu Pawl!

    Some interesting information and words here 🙂
    We can now fully translate Lo’ak’s dialogue with Tsireya, although it doesn’t translate well. Aysäomumìri aylì’urisì amip irayo nìfrakrr!

    Hayalovay!

  8. Satikre says:

    Ma Pawl. Tawsìp lu zum alu plane srak.

  9. Tìtstewan says:

    Fìpostìri amip oe seiyi irayo ngaru nìtxan, ulte tolätxeiaw nìprrte’!

    As elongater mentioned, it would be interesting to know more about the Na’vi words one can read – for exaple – in the Avatar: TWoW – The Visual Dictionary:
    marui – tent, marquee (?) (page 89+)
    tsakarem – tsahìk in training (page 283)
    Ranteng Utralti – Spirit Tree (of the Metkayina) (page 314, 315)
    txampaysye – gil mantle, “sea breather” (page 339, 340)

    Finally a Na’vi name for that Akula fish and of course, new words, yay! I’m also looking forward to see the u/ù list.

  10. Ma Karyu, ohel ngengal kameie. Tsoleri oel fìlì’ukangit a pamrel sawni:

    “Lam fwa nga sti nìtxan.”

    Pamrelìri tsun oe liveyn tsat fifya, kefyak?

    “Peyìri ngeyä ’ur fkan (oeru) sti nìtxan. Ngari peu?”
    (your face)

    “Voìkìri ngey ’ur fkan sti nìtxan. Ngari peu?”
    (your behavior)

    “Mokriri ngey pam fkan sti nìtxan. Ngari peu?”
    (your voice)

    –> You look very angry. What’s wrong with you?

  11. Zángtsuva says:

    Does the word saylahe also take these case endings?

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