Kxì, ma frapo.
Zìsìtnuntrr Lefpom! Happy Leap Year Day!
A bit of explanation:
I realized there was a gap in the lexicon in the area of words relating to long and short. Here’s what we’ve had up to now:
TIME SPACE, PHYSICAL EXTENSION
SHORT yol pup
LONG txan (?) ngim
The problem is with txan—as you know, a widely used adjective meaning ‘great’ or ‘much.’ It can mean ‘long’ for time, when used specifically with the word krr. (Txankrr, by the way, is an adverb meaning ‘for a long time.’) For example, we have the iconic Yola krr, txana krr, ke tsranten, ‘It doesn’t matter how long it takes’—literally, ‘Short time, long time, doesn’t matter.’ But what about ‘a long speech’ or ‘a long song’? Txan doesn’t work for those.
Instead, we have nun:
nun (adj.; RN: nun) ‘long (of time)’
The paradigm is now:
TIME SPACE, PHYSICAL EXTENSION
SHORT yol pup
LONG nun, txan (with krr) ngim
Sunu oer Ralu, slä fìsäfrrfen peyä lu nun nìhawng.
‘I like Ralu, but this visit of his is too long.’
nunyol (n., NUN.yol) ‘length (of time)’
penunyol (pe.NUN.yol) / nunyolpe (NUN.yol.pe) (inter.) ‘what length, how long (of time)’
Nga harmahaw penunyol?
‘How long were you sleeping?’
For completeness:
pengimpup (pe.NGIM.pup) / ngimpuppe (NGIM.pup.pe) (inter.) ‘what length, how long (of physical extension)’
zìsìtnun (n., zì.sìt.NUN) ‘leap year’
zìsìtnuntrr (n., zì.sìt.NUN.trr) ‘leap year day’
On to other things:
Here are some more new words I hope you’ll find useful, some of which stem from the contributions of the Lexical Expansion Project. (Irayo nìtxan!) I have quite a few more of these suggestions, which I’ll get to for future posts. Here I’ll also say something about a recent presentation I put together that I’ve now given a couple of times.
First, an idiomatic expression:
eltut heykahaw (EL.tut hey.KA.haw) ‘be boring’
Literally, this is ‘puts the brain to sleep,’ heykahaw being the causative of hahaw ‘sleep.’ Compare this with the familiar expression eltur tìtxen si, ‘be interesting,’ which literally means ‘awakens the brain.’ (Question: Would you classify eltut heykahaw as vin., vtr., or neither? 🙂 )
Tsasäftxulì’ul peyä eltut heykolahaw nìtxan.
‘That speech of his was very boring.’
For someone to be bored, as opposed to something being boring, a separate word is used:
skeykx (adj.) ‘bored’
Oe ’efu skeykx ulte new tivätxaw ne kelku.
‘I’m bored and I want to go home.’
nga’prrnen (vin., nga’PRR.nen, inf. 1,1) ’be pregnant (for people)’
This word came up in the recent talk I gave (see below). It’s clearly a compound of nga’ ‘contain’ and prrnen ‘infant.’
Zun ngal oey tsmuket tsive’a, zel am’aluke ivomum futa poe nga’prrnen.
‘If you saw my sister, you’d certainly know she was pregnant.’
To say someone is pregnant with offspring, just use nga’ in a normal transitive construction.
Pol pxeya prrnenit ngeia’.
‘I’m delighted to say she’s pregnant with triplets.’
Krra ngal oeti ngarma’, ’efu pefya?
‘How did you feel when you were pregnant with me?’
Since we distinguish between prrnen ‘infant, baby (person)’ and lini ‘young of an animal,) we likewise have separate words for pregnant.
nga’lini (vin., nga’.LI.ni) ’be pregnant (for animals)’
tìnga’prrnen (n., tì.nga’.PRR.nen) ‘pregnancy (for people)’
tìnga’lini (n., tì.nga’.LI.ni) ‘pregnancy (for animals)’
kakmokri (adj., kak.MOK.ri) ‘mute’
Compare this with other kak– words like kakpam ‘deaf’ and kakrel ‘blind.’
tìkakmokri (n., tì.kak.MOK.ri) ‘muteness’
nìkakmokri (adv., nì.kak.MOK.ri) ‘mutely’
Kllkxolem fo nìkakmokri luke fwa ’awa lì’uti plltxe.
‘They stood there mutely without saying a word.’
säfpìlyewn (vin., sä.FPÌL.yewn, inf. 3,3) ‘communicate’
This is a compound of säfpìl ‘thought’ and yewn ‘express, convey.’ Communication is expressing and conveying your thoughts to others.
tìsäfpìlyewn (n., tì.sä.FPÌL.yewn) ‘communication’ (colloquial pronunciation: tsäfpìlyewn)
Txo po lu kakmokri, fyape säfpìlyewn?
‘If he’s mute, how does he communicate?’
pamtseovi (n., PAM.tse.o.vi) ‘musical piece’
Awnga tìng mikyun aylì’uluke a pamtseovir ko!
‘Let’s listen to some music without words.’
pxawtok (vtr., PXAW.tok, inf. 2,2) ‘surround’
This word and its syntax are based on tok. Rather than occupying a place in something, however, here you’re occupying a place around it—that is, surrounding it.
Pxawtolok snanantangìl yerikit.
‘The nantang pack surrounded the yerik.’
ehetx (n., e.HETX) ‘excuse’
ehetx si (vin., e.HETX si) ‘make an excuse, make excuses’
Furia nga ke tsan’ul, var nga ehetx sivi nì’aw.
‘Regarding your lack of improvement, you only keep making excuses.’
ken (adp.) ‘despite, in spite of’
Ken tìnawri peyä, ke flolä.
‘Despite her talent, she didn’t succeed.’
Ken fwa lu por ’awa nari nì’aw, lu Mati taronyu aswey.
‘In spite of having only one eye, Mati is the best hunter.’
räptulì’u (n., räp.tu.LÌ.’u; RN: räptùlì’u) ‘coarse or swear word’
räptulì’fya (n. räp.tu.LÌ’.fya; RN: räptùlì’fya) ‘coarse, vulgar language’
These compounds derived from räptum, the adjective meaning coarse or vulgar. Unlike N + lì’u compounds such as kemlì’u, syonlì’u, and tilì’u, where the stress is on the first syllable, this ADJ + lì’u compound has stress on lì’. That stress pattern has contributed to the m of räptum dropping over time.
nìräptum (adv., nì.räp.TUM) ‘coarsely, vulgarly’
Fyape yawne lu fkoru tute a frakrr voìk si fìtxan nìräptum?
‘How does one love a person who always behaves so coarsely?’
To refer to speaking vulgarly or using vulgar language, the expected plltxe nìräptum has evolved into a shorter idiomatic form:
plltxe räptum (idiom) ‘to speak vulgarly, use vulgar language, swear’
katìng (vtr., KA.tìng, inf 2,2) ‘distribute’
Eykyul ayswizawti katolìng ayhapxìtur tsamponguä.
‘The leader distributed the arrows to the members of the war party.’
tìkatìng (n., tì.KA.tìng) ‘distribution’
tsyang (n.) ‘swarm’
You can speak of tsyang ayhì’angä, ‘a swarm of insects,’ but also metaphorically of tsyang suteyä, a swarm of people. The difference between snahì’ang, a group or collection of insects, and tsyang ayhì’angä is that the latter conveys a somewhat negative feeling, in that the insects are experienced as annoying and perhaps threatening. Sna– is neutral and doesn’t have that connotation.
luan (vtr., LU.an, inf. 1,2; RN: luan) ‘owe’
Luan refers to having a moral obligation to give something to someone.
Fol ngeyä tsmukeru luan tskoti amip.
’They owe your sister a new bow.’
Oey voìkìri alewnga’ luan oel ngar tìoeyktìngit.
‘I owe you an explanation for my shameful behavior.’
Among a very helpful collection of items for clarification (irayo, ma Txonpay!), there’s a list of 37 flora and fauna I need to post here along with stresses and derivations so they can be entered into our dictionaries. I was waiting for them to appear on Pandorapedia so you’d be able to see the pictures and read the detailed descriptions. I’m sure these will be available at some point. In the meantime, since these names have already been made public via the video games, I’ll get to them in the next post.
One more thing: Some of you may have seen and heard the recent talk I gave to the lì’fyaolo’ on the topic of language and thought, concentrating on the (in)famous Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. After that presentation, I revised and expanded the talk a bit before I presented it to the University of Victoria (Canada) Underlings, UVic’s student-run undergraduate linguistics club. (I love “Underlings”!) If you missed the original talk or wanted to refresh your memory and also see a bit of new content, you can watch the revised presentation here (Google drive link) or here:
Hayalovay, ma eylan!
irayo ma Pawl, oel faylì’ut so’ha
Irayo, ma Kawnu. Ngeyä tìso’hal oet ‘eykefu nitram.
Fìtìsäfpìlyewnìri zìsìtnuntrrä Irayo, ma Pawl! Great leap day post (and a namedrop)! We’re well on the road to 3000 Na’vi words! 😁
Although a few people and I searched for “internal” gaps in the language (as in words implied by the existence of other words), I didn’t even think of the “long in time” gap. 🙂 We’ll have the ckeanest dictionary ever once we fill those gaps!
Also, small typo: Googol Drive should be Google Drive (the search engine company, not the Base10 number with 100 zeros between the 1 and decimal point)
Thanks! Google it is!!! 😅😅😅
Tewti! Kerìsmìsì amuve leren! hrh
It’s very kind that you took some time to fill some of the gaps that I think were pointed out by some of the lì’fyaolo’tu, and of course it’s great to see the LEP alive and well after several years of relative dormance.
I think the only mystery remaining about nga’prrnen/nga’ [child’s name]it is how to introduce the father, is it with fa (the father helps the mother become pregnant) or ta (the father is the other source of the baby)? It’s food for thought.
Ngaru livu zìsìtnuntrr lefpom nìteng!
About your question: I mean, you kinda spoiled it by giving us an example sentence where the subject got the -l ending 😀 But also without that, I’d classify it as a vtr with the object slot always being taken by eltut, not unlike pawm always using tìpawmiti as direct object, if a direct object is used (even though I guess pawm is a bit more free in syntax as it looks like following the eltur tìtxen si example, the eltut always comes in front of the heykahaw?).
I guess that’s also why you classified it as idiomatic expression rather than a verb – it uses an already possible grammar concept to express something unexpected, instead of being a new word/a usually impossible combination/way to use words that really acts as a new unit (thinking of tìng verbs that also kinda have a direct object, but where the direct object has become so much part of the verb that it is not seen as such anymore by native speakers and therefore also the subject loses the -l ending)
One question about one example sentence:
Zun ngal oey tsmuket tsive’a, zel am’aluke ivomum futa poe nga’prrnen. – ‘If you saw my sister, you’d certainly know she was pregnant.’
We were actually confused about the usage of zun/zel here during the talk already as in the past this had seemed to be a sentence we would use txo(/tsakrr) for. From what I (and other in the lifya’olo) understand, there is the possiblity that the condition is real, which made it feel weird to us that zun/zel is used, as we previously thought it is only used in clearly counterfactual situations.
If this indeed is a kinda new usage of zun/zel, a few more examples would maybe help clearing up the confusion where txo ends and zun starts 🙂
Thanks for all the new words! They’ll certainly be extremely useful.
Ta Tekre
As for the nga’lini example, it makes sense to me because the counterfactual part is the seeing and knowing. If you were to see her (but you don’t), you would know she’s pregnant (but you don’t know this fact because you don’t see her). The pregnancy isn’t counterfactual, if that’s the confusion.
Or is it about tsive’a being translated ‘saw’? Perhaps tsimve’a/tsilve’a was expected instead? I read it as the ‘were to see’ sense of ‘saw’.
Kolan nga’prrnen example
The point is that in Karyu Pawl’s presentation he presents that sentence as something less than counterfactual, which he calls “imaginative hypothetical”, which I take to mean a condition that is unlikely but not entirely impossible. In terms of the English versions of the sentence the categories in his presentation make sense to me, but the mapping to the Na’vi constructions seems off. According to our past information, I would have translated the “imaginative hypothetical” using «txo», maybe with something like «iv» or «ats» in the main clause, and reserved «zun» and «zel» for the counterfactual.
Záng can explain it better than me, that’s exactly what I mean hrh
After loading Fwew’s dictionary with new words, I have some comments and clarifying questions.
I would classify eltut heykahaw as a vin, given I can’t see it taking another direct object. Plus tswìk kxenerit is classified as a vin.
Also, what are the infix positions for eltut heykahaw and nga’lini? I assume they go eltut heykahaw (pre-first already filled) and nga’lini. Is kakmokri (mute) for people only (maybe kakpam and kakrel too)? Are nìräptum and (pe)ngimpup(pe) ù-words in reef Na’vi? (The root words seem to say so)
Oops. I didn’t realize the comments would eat my brackets. Here are the infix positions again:
eltut heyk.ah.aw (does not accept other pre-first infixes) and ng..a’lini
Irayo nìtxan, nìfrakrr!
> Question: Would you classify eltut heykahaw as vin., vtr., or neither? 🙂
Personally, I’d say “neither”. If eltut heykahaw were vin., then it could take an unmarked subject, which doesn’t make sense with the eyk infix. And if eltut heykahaw were vtr., then it could take an object in the patientive, but something like *tsakemìl eltut heykahaw tsat doesn’t make sense either.
So I think I would just classify it as a phrase or idiom.
A question back to you: is katìng actually from the adposition ka “across” + tìng “give”?
This seems to make such clear sense that I can’t imagine it would be anything else. Either that, or this is one of the most convenient coincidences ever hrh
I agree, but I’d like confirmation before I put it in my etymology database 🙂
and I agree with that too 😀 I see now why it might look like I was suggesting the opposite.. hrh
I thought the exact same thing, and same syntax as tìng. Infix positions being kat••ìng support this origin too.
Oh yeah. In Fwew, txe’lanti wrrzärìp, tìpe’ngayt wrrzärìp and tìpe’ngayt wrrzeykärìp are listed as ph., but tswìk kxenerit is listed as vin. Maybe they should all be ph. along with eltut heykahaw (which would mean it wouldn’t need to list infix positions)
Makes sense to me, if Pawl agrees 🙂
Although I suspect that even if considered phrases due to being packaged with a noun, the verb element of these could still be fair game for infixes. Such as perhaps tense/aspect. We saw even here in the example in this post for eltut heykahaw, the ol infix (eltut heykolahaw).
If we change these to ph., then we will need to handle infixes where appropriate in the verb part. (most likely in such a way where putting eyk in again when it’s already there isn’t valid?)
We can change the PoS to vp. (verb phrase), but would we want to write down transitivity in the part of speech like we do with normal verbs? 🤔
I would classify “eltut heykahaw” as an idiomatic phrase, consisting of a transitive verb and the related direct object in patientive.
Based on how I understand causative all these years, heykahaw itself is a transitive verb (and hahaw without eyk infix is intransitive).
It’s hard to say what verb transitivity type a “transitive verb plus its direct object noun” or even “intransitive verb plus its indirect object noun” phrase would have.
Because it’s not a verb but instead a verb phrase?
I just think that the verb (heykahaw) is transitive.
In the example sentence, we see a typical use of heykahaw as a transitive verb as far as syntax goes: The subject clearly gets -l, and a direct object with -t is specified, as expected by normal rules.
Do you think we need a new part of speech classification type for these idiomatic lexical items where it’s a verb and an object of some kind?
ph. for phrase is in use, but some normalizing may be needed for consistency across all the words of this sort (I think some may still be marked as verb types)
Just a bit of insect trivia pertaining to “swarm” in case anyone is interested… A swarm also implies movement of the collection of insects from one place to another, usually in search of a new home or feeding ground, although the motion of individuals within the swarm is chaotic and disorganized, unlike a skein of geese or a wolf pack.
And thanks for the many new useful words, as always, ma Karyu!
Is it intentional that there’s a stress shift from «ngimPÙP» to «peNGIMpùp/NGIMpùppe»?
Whether or not teyngta-question constructions should be used almost everywhere?
They appear to be introduced as a way to convey reported questions and then became a way to place almost anything into question-like subclause, whether it is a question or not, whether it is reported or not.
Can it always be only reported questions? Are there only situations where it should be questions?
Very few examples for comparison:
Oel ke omum teyngta peseng po za’u.
Oel ke omum tsengit a tsane po za’u.
Oel ke omum kea tsengit a tsane po za’u.
Pol lawk nìno teyngta pefya sar fko pxìm.
Pol lawk nìno ayfya’ot a sar fkol pxìm.
Po peng nìno ayfya’oteri a sar fkol pxìm.
Oel ke stawm teyngta pefya pol poltxe tsaylì’ut.
Oel ke stawm fya’ot a pol poltxe tsaylì’ut.
Those without teyngta possibly give another sense than those with it. Are they at all an appropriate way of expressing ideas close to those question-like? Do they convey different ideas?
Are we limited to teyngta only in all similar cases?
As of now, eltut heykahaw is classified as a phrase (ph.) in our dictionaries. But some phrases have infix positions labeled and some of them don’t. And any word that’s not a verb wouldn’t intuitively take infixes.
So I propose a new part of speech for Na’vi words: verb phrase. It would have transitive (vtrp.) and intransitive (vinp.) variants just like normal and modal verbs, and both would intuitively accept infixes and subjects/agents. Intransitive ones would be any verb phrase that includes an object and/or otherwise can’t take direct objects. Transitive ones would be any that has more than one word, is not a bare si-verb (or säpi-verb) and has no objects. So far, the only transitive one is txopu sleyku (to frighten). Here are the intransitive ones:
– Eltur tìtxen si (be interesting)
– Eltut heykahaw (be boring, bore)
– Tìpe’ngayt wrrzärìp (infer)
– Tìpe’ngayt wrrzeykärìp (imply)
– Tswìk kxenerit (smoke (verb))
– Txe’lanti wrrzärìp (greatly move emotionally)
I hope this helps! 😁
Oops, I realized I was a few steps ahead of Pawl. 😅 I realized that most of these phrases aren’t given parts of speech in their sources, and we added “phrase” to their part of speech when putting them in the dictionary. The only ones with parts of speech in Na’viteri are komum (coll.), maite/maitan (ph.) and to tìtseri (idiom;). I guess I’m basing this off the community’s organization, not the primary sources.
Also, another question tswìk kxenerit is labeled as a vin. but appears to contain a direct object. The example sentences don’t give it a subject or an agent, so would the proper Na’vi clause be oe tswìk kxenerit or oel tswìk kxenerit? (I strongly suspect it’s the latter).
I hope we’ll get consistent parts of speech for verb/object pairs in the dictionary 😁
Kaltxì!
I noticed that in this post’s title, the Na’vi seems to translate more to “Newer words and expressions” instead of “Additional words and expressions”. Come to think of it, we have no Na’vi adjective for more/additional/extra. 😅 And I think there should be.
(I also put this questions on the spreadsheet of requested clarifications)