Kaltxì, ma frapo–
As you may know, I’m giving a talk this Saturday at the Southern California Undergraduate Linguistics Conference at UCLA. Since the audience will largely be linguistics students, I thought I’d take the opportunity to expand my standard presentation to include a bit more about Na’vi grammar. One of the example sentences I’m planning to discuss is this simple one:
Sempulìl ngeyä wutsot yolom.
So my question to you is, why did I choose this sentence, and what is its significance? 
1. Weeks and months
As you know, the days of the ’Rrtan week are:
Trr’awve Sunday
Trrmuve Monday
Trrpxeyve Tuesday
Trrtsìve Wednesday
Trrmrrve Thursday
Trrpuve Friday
Trrkive Saturday
But what about “week” itself and related words? Here’s some useful vocabulary:
kintrr (n., KIN.trr) ‘(7-day) week’
mrrtrr (n., MRR.trr) ‘5-day workweek’
muntrr (n., MUN.trr) ‘weekend’
Don’t confuse muntrr with mesrr, which simply means ‘(any) two days.’
Just like trr itself, these words take fì-, -am, and -ay with the obvious meanings:
fìkintrr ‘this (present) week’
kintrram ‘last week’
kintrray ‘next week’
fìmuntrr ‘this (present) weekend’
muntrram ‘last weekend’
muntrray ‘next weekend’
As for ‘month,’ the word is:
vospxì (n., vo.SPXÌ) ‘month’
It’s derived from the phrase vosìpxì zìsìtä, ‘a twelfth of the year.’ And we also have:
fìvospxì ‘this month’
vospxìam ‘last month’
vospxìay ‘next month’
The names of the months? We’ll save that for another time. But keep in mind that all of these calendar expressions reflect the situation here on earth; they’re used by the Na’vi when they want to or need to talk about how the Sawtute reckon time (and of course by us here ’Rrrtamì). Time-reckoning on Pandora is a matter that awaits further research.
2. Must and should
As you already know, zene ‘must’ and zenke ‘must not’ work as follows:
Nga zene kivä. or Zene nga kivä.
‘You must go.’
Nga zenke kivä. or Zenke nga kivä.
‘You must not go.’
Nga ke zene kivä. or Ke zene nga kivä.
‘It’s not necessary/obligatory that you go.’
(You can also use these words impersonally: Zene kivä. ‘I/you/she/one/etc. must go. or It’s necessary to go.’ Note also the ‘hybrid’ variant: Ngari zene kivä. Literally: ‘As for you, it’s necessary to go.’ There’s usually more than one way to skin a cat in Na’vi! And I wonder if anyone can come up with the Pandoran equivalent of that expression . . .)
‘Should’ works a bit differently. The word is:
sweylu (v., SWEY.lu) ‘should’
This is a development of swey lu ‘it’s best,’ which has fused into a single word that acts somewhat like a modal . . . a quasi-modal, if you prefer, but without the hunchback. (Oeru txoa livu.)
The syntax depends on whether ‘should’ refers to something that hasn’t yet happened (the more common situation) or something that’s already happened. For the former, use txo ‘if’ plus the -iv- (subjunctive) form of the verb:
Sweylu txo nga kivä. or Nga sweylu txo kivä.
‘You should go.’
Sweylu txo nga ke kivä. or Nga sweylu txo ke kivä.
‘You shouldn’t go.’
(Other word orders are possible too, of course. For example, Sweylu txo ke kivä nga. And then there’s the impersonal form: Sweylu txo kivä. ‘I/you/she/one/etc. should go.’)
For something that’s already happened, use fwa (= fì’u a) or tsawa (= tsa’u a) with the past or perfect indicative (that is, non-subjunctive):
Sweylu fwa nga kolä.
‘You should have gone.’
Slä nari si! This is not the most common use of English ‘should have’—i.e., the counterfactual one, as in: “You should have gone, but you didn’t, ma skxawng!” Rather, it’s more like, “You went, and in fact it was the right thing to do.” Example:
Tsenu: Spaw oe, fwa po kolä längu kxeyey.
‘I believe it was a mistake for him to go/have gone.’
Kamun: Kehe, kehe! Sweylu fwa po kolä!
‘No, no! He should have gone!’
(Note: Tsenu’s sentence above is colloquial and conversational. A more formal version would be: Spängaw oel futa fwa po kolä lu kxeyey.)
So how does one say “should have” in the counterfactual sense? Zene maweypivey, ma eylan. I’m working on a post about counterfactuals in general . . .
One more thing before we leave this topic:
In English and some other languages, words like should and must have developed secondary meanings. In addition to the basic sense having to do with obligation, right and wrong, better and worse, etc. (the “root” sense), there’s also a sense having to do with probability, likelihood, etc. (the “epistemic” sense). An example of the latter is, “He’s on his way. He should be here any minute.” As another example, consider the sentence, “You must be a doctor.” That can have both a root and an epistemic interpretation:
Root: “Son, your greatgrandfather was a doctor, your grandfather was a doctor, and I’m a doctor. It’s our family tradition. Whether you like it or not, I’m afraid you have no choice. You must be a doctor too.”
Epistemic: “I see you’re wearing a white coat and you have a stethoscope around your neck and a prescription pad in your pocket. Hmm . . . You must be a doctor!”
The point of all this is that Na’vi does not allow epistemic interpretations of zene and sweylu. They’re purely root. If you want the epistemic senses, you need to use probability words like skxakep.
And finally, thanks to the vocabulary committee for:
3. ye (adj.) ‘satisfied, content; satiated, “full”’
This is an adjective of feeling, so it’s used with ’efu ‘feel’ in the same way as keftxo, nitram, ohakx, väng, etc.
Tsaria fkol pole’un futa Loak slu taronyu, sempul ’efu ye.
‘Father is content that it’s been decided Loak will be a hunter.’
Ngeyä tìkangkemìri ’efeiu oe ye nìtxan. Seysonìltsan!
‘I’m very satisfied with your work. Well done!’
Note the following vocabulary:
hasey si (v., ha.SEY si) ‘accomplish, bring to a conclusion’
Nì’i’a po tsatìkangkemvir hasey soli.
‘She finally completed the project.’
seysonìltsan (sey.so.nìl.TSAN) ‘well done!’ (a conversational expression derived from hasey soli nìltsan)
Note these two derived forms:
yehakx (adj., YE.hakx) ‘satisfied from hunger by food, “full stomach”’
yeväng (adj, YE.väng) ‘satisfied from thirst by drink, feeling quenched/slaked’
Srekrr ’amefu väng, set yeväng.
‘Before, I was thirsty; now my thirst has been quenched.’
Tsenu:
Srake yehakx? ‘Did you get enough to eat?’
Kamun:
(a) Stum. ‘Almost. (What’s for dessert?)’
(b) Ye. Tsun tivam. ‘Yes. That’ll be enough.’
(c) Nìtxan! ‘Very! I’m quite full.’
(d) Nìhaawwwng. ‘Oooh. I ate too much.’
More weather expressions are coming . . . Hayalovay!
Edit 05 April: Added the necessary fwa to Spängaw oel futa fwa po kolä lu kxeyey. Corrected spelling of zìsìtä.
Here’s the first of several posts about weather language. Thanks to the Vocabulary Committee for some great ideas!
To begin with, the subject of our discussion:
yafkeyk (n.: YA.fkeyk) ‘weather’
To understand the derivation of this word, note the following:
fkeytok (v. intr.: FKEY.tok, infixes 2, 2) ‘exist’
Ngal fwerew a tute ke fkeytok.
‘The person you’re looking for doesn’t exist.’
(Fkeytok comes from kifkeyti tok, ‘be in the world.’)
Derived form:
tìfkeytok (n.) ‘state, condition, situation’
Tìfkeytok lefkrr lehrrap lu nìtxan.
‘The current situation is very dangerous.’
Kilvanä tìfkeytok lu fyape fìtrr?
‘What’s the condition of the river today?’
Now phrases like kilvanä tìfkeytok were common, and these eventually developed into shortened forms such as kilvanfkeyk ‘condition of the river.’ So while the above sentence is perfectly correct, the more usual way to say it in present-day Na’vi is:
Kilvanfkeyk lu fyape fìtrr?
‘What’s the condition of the river today?’
In this way a new suffix developed, -fkeyk. It’s widely productive. For example:
Sawtuteri ronsemfkeykit ke tsun kawtu tslivam.
‘No one can understand the state of mind of the Sky People.’
Some very common -fkeyk words have been lexicalized with special meanings, most notably yafkeyk, which originally meant ‘the state of the atmosphere’ but is now used to mean ‘weather.’
To ask about the weather, use za’u:
Yafkeyk za’u fyape? / Yafkeyk za’u pefya? Etc.
‘How is the weather?’
(Note: Be sure to place the stress in the right place with fyape and pefya: FYA.pe and pe.FYA.)
In colloquial conversation, za’u may be omitted:
Yafkeyk pefya?
‘How’s the weather?’
To answer this question, Na’vi breaks weather up into several categories. The one we’ll discuss in this post is precipitation.
A. Precipitation
When things fall from the sky, Na’vi uses, naturally enough, the verb zup ‘fall’:
Zerup tompa.
It’s raining.
Here are some other forms of precipitation:
tompameyp (n.: tom.pa.MEYP) ‘drizzle’ [Comes from tompa ameyp ‘weak rain’]
tskxaytsyìp (n.: TSKXAY.tsyìp) ‘hail’ [Comes from tskxepay + tsyìp (diminutive): ‘little ice.’]
Note: tskxepay (n.: TSKXE.pay) ‘ice’ (literally: stone water)
herwì (n.: HER.wì) ‘snow’
tomperwì (n.: TOM.per.wì) ‘sleet’ [Comes from tompa + herwì]
Example:
Herwì zereiup fìtrro nìwotx!
‘It’s been snowing all day!’ (Said by, for example, a skier.)
When precipitation is particularly bad, you can use the verb ’eko ‘attack.’
Fìrewon tompameyp zarmup, slä set ’ìmeko nìtxan nang!
‘It was drizzling this morning, but it’s really started coming down now!’
Related vocabulary:
txanfwerwì (n.: txan.FWER.wì) ‘blizzard’ [Comes from txan + hufwe + herwì ‘much wind (and) snow’]
hermeyp (n.: her.MEYP) ‘snow flurry’
hertxayo (n:. HER.txa.yo) ‘field of snow’
ìlva (n. ÌL.va) ‘flake, drop, chip’ Note: When this word is used in compounds, the l drops. So:
txepìva (n. TXE.pì.va) ‘ash, cinder’ (Don’t confuse with txepvi ‘spark.’)
herwìva (n. HER.wì.va) ‘snowflake’
payìva (n. PAY.ì.va) ‘drop of water’
tompìva (n. TOM.pì.va) ‘raindrop’
And now you know what this means: Oeri aysompìva sìn re’o var zivup.
Next time: “steady state” weather terms, including temperature.
Hayalovay, ma eylan.
P.S.—I need to respond to some comments on the previous post. Zaya’u ye’rìn.
“Receptive Ability”
What’s the Na’vi equivalent of English -able/-ible? That is, how do say that something is capable of “receiving” the action of a verb? For example, given yom ‘eat,’ how would you say, “This animal is edible”—i.e., can be eaten?
One obvious way is:
1. Tsun fko yivom fìioangit.
‘One can eat this animal.’
But there’s another way:
2. Fìioang lu tsukyom.
‘This animal is edible / can be eaten.’
Here the prefix tsuk- (a development of tsun + fko; no connection with tsuksìm) is attached to the ROOT of the verb to form an adjective. So, for example, you can say things like:
3. Tsukyoma ioang lu lesar.
‘An edible animal is useful.’
Note that the stress is on the root, not the prefix: tsuk-YOM.
For the negative, ke- attaches before tsuk-: ketsuktswa’ ‘unforgettable.’
Tsuk- is widely productive, considerably more so than English -able/-ible. For one thing, you can attach it to virtually any transitive verb: tsukrun ‘findable,’ tsuktxula ‘constructible,’ tsukfrrfen ‘able to be visited (visitable?)’, tsuktaron ‘able to be hunted, (huntable?),’ etc.
Additionally, you can often attach tsuk- to intransitive verbs as well:
4. Fìtseng lu tsuktsurokx.
‘One can rest here. / It’s possible to rest here. / This place is “restable.”’
5. Lu na’rìng tsukhahaw.
‘One can sleep in the forest. / It’s possible to sleep in the forest. / The forest is “sleepable.”’
Hesitation
To my knowledge, all spoken languages mì ’Rrta have words or sounds that indicate the speaker is hesitating, pausing, thinking, buying time, etc. In English, we have “um,” “uh,” “er,” and for some people “like” and “y’know.” Na’vi is no exception.
The Na’vi “hesitation marker” in speech is ìì. Unusually, it’s written with a doubled vowel. (Since it’s not a word any more than “er” is in English, it can flout the phonotactic constraints of the language, just as conversational expressions like oìsss and saa do.) It’s pronounced like a prolonged ì.
6. Lu oeru . . . ìì . . . tìngäzìk ahì’i.
‘I have . . . um . . . a slight problem.’
[Note: If you're a glutton for punishment, I added some further explanation about case marking with modals at the end of the previous post.]
Edit 23 Mar.: In examples of transitive verbs with tsuk-, tsukftang deleted, tsukrun added.
A couple of posts ago, in a response to a comment, I mentioned that the following example sentence was correct:
Pol säfpìlit verar wivan.
‘He’s keeping his idea a secret.’
Here the verb var ‘persist in a state, continue to perform an action’ is used as a helping verb or modal, with the meaning ‘keep on doing something.’ A more literal translation of the sentence would be, ‘He’s continuing to hide the idea.’
The question was whether the first word should be po or pol. Several people suggested that pol was incorrect, based on the evidence to date. For example, ‘He sees you’ is Pol tse’a ngati, since tse’a is transitive, but ‘He CAN see you’ is Po tsun tsive’a ngati, since here, po is the subject not of tse’a but of tsun, and helping verbs like tsun (also new and var) are intransitive.
So I thought it would be useful to clarify some things about case marking—and also word order—with modals.
First, word order.
I have a slide in my PowerPoint presentation about Na’vi that shows how the words in a simple sentence like the one for ‘Eytukan sees Neytiri’ can be permuted in all possible ways, with all the versions grammatical and without altering the semantics of who is doing what to whom. In this case there are 3! = 6 possible permutations:
a. Eytukanìl tse’a Neytirit.
b. Eytukanìl Neytirit tse’a.
c. Neytirit tse’a Eytukanìl.
d. Neytirit Eytukanìl tse’a.
e. Tse’a Eytukanìl Neytirit.
f. Tse’a Neytirit Eytukanìl.
This is not to say that all six sentences are completely interchangeable in discourse. As in the vast majority of natural human languages, the word orders where the subject precedes the object (a, b, and e) are the most common; the others are grammatical but are generally used for special emphasis. For example, suppose someone thought Mo’at saw Neytiri, but you know that it was actually Eytukan who saw her. The conversation could go like this:
–Spaw oel futa Mo’atìl tsole’a Neytirit.
‘I believe Mo’at saw Neytiri.’
–Kehe. Tsole’a Neytirit Eytukanìl.
‘No, the one who saw Neytiri was Eytukan.’
Here the speaker has chosen a word order that puts Eytukanìl at the end of the sentence to highlight the important, contrastive information—just as the English translation does, but less concisely than the Na’vi.
With a modal verb in the mix, however, the situation becomes more complicated.
Let’s take as our example sentence ‘I want to eat teylu.’ One way of saying that is Oe new yivom teylut. How many possible word orders are there? Well, in this case we have four words, so there are 4! = 24 logically possible orders. Bear with me as I list them all. (For brevity, I’ll just use the initial letters of the four words.)
1. N O T Y 7. O N T Y 13. T N O Y 19. Y N O T
2. N O Y T 8. O N Y T 14. T N Y O 20. Y N T O
3. N T O Y 9. O T N Y 15. T O N Y 21. Y O N T
4. N T Y O 10. O T Y N 16. T O Y N 22. Y O T N
5. N Y O T 11. O Y N T 17. T Y N O 23. Y T N O
6. N Y T O 12. O Y T N 18. T Y O N 24. Y T O N
Are all 24 orders grammatical? Actually, no. The rule is that except in poetry or special ceremonial language, the modal has to precede the dependent verb. This means that in these examples, N = new must come before Y = yivom. So that knocks out half of the 24 logical possibilities. We’re left with these 12 word orders:
1. N O T Y 7. O N T Y 13. T N O Y
2. N O Y T 8. O N Y T 14. T N Y O
3. N T O Y 9. O T N Y 15. T O N Y
4. N T Y O
5. N Y O T
6. N Y T O
Now what about the case marking? Well, it’s clear that T is teylut throughout. As for O, oe is correct in all cases. But here’s where it gets interesting: one of these sentences, number 9, has an alternate form where O is oel. That is, 9 can be either of the following:
9a. Oe teylut new yivom.
9b. Oel teylut new yivom.
In fact, 9b is more common than 9a. Why is that? Well, the combination of Agentive/Ergative (the “l-case”) followed by Patientive/Objective (the “t-case”) is so frequent in Na’vi (e.g., Oel ngati kameie) that sentences like 9a are uncomfortable for many speakers. So a reanalysis takes place, where new yivom is thought of as a single, transitive verb, making 9b possible.
And that explains why the ‘keeping secret’ sentence we started out with is OK with either po or pol.
Sìlpey oe, fìtìoeyktìng law lilvu!
Ta Pawl
P.S.—The event with Marc Okrand in Boise was a blast! I really enjoyed meeting him, and I think our joint appearance went well. It was also great to meet ’Eylan Ayfalulukanä, an active member of the Community, who drove a long way to be there. Oh, and I got to see and talk with my first Klingon!
Addendum—March 22, 2011
Thanks to everyone who contributed astute questions and comments both here and elsewhere. Let me try to clarify some of the points I made above, although I can’t promise to offer definitive yes-or-no rules in all cases: constructions like this are inherently fuzzy.
There are four word orders in contention for reanalysis (which I’ll expand on in a bit); I’ll repeat them here for convenience:
5. N Y O T
6. N Y T O
9. O T N Y
15. T O N Y
What defines these four is that in all of them, (a) NY (new yivom) is an uninterrupted sequence, and (b) O (oe or oel) and T (teylut) are contiguous.
The question is, Does O = oe or oel? As I indicated above, in all cases O = oe is grammatically correct. So it boils down to whether or not O = oel is also acceptable to native speakers of Na’vi in any of these sentences.
I’ll address that question in a moment, but first some general thoughts on linguistic variation, a large topic about which books have been written.
As language learners, we feel most comfortable with definite rules: “It’s A, not B.” But real language doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes A and B are equally correct, with no difference in meaning or usage, although some speakers might be more likely to use one than the other. (In English, how do you pronounce the first syllables of either and economics? How do you contract He is not here—He isn’t here or He’s not here?) As you know, Na’vi is particularly rich in such “free variation” (mì fay vs. paymì; awnga vs. ayoeng; lora syulang vs. syulang alor; to say “Who are you?” even if “you” is simply nga, you have 12 choices!). Another kind of variation is not within a given speaker but among speakers: For some, A is right, B is wrong, and that’s that. For others, A and B are both fine. For still others, A sounds better than B but B is still acceptable to some degree. That is to say, grammaticality judgments can vary among native speakers. (I just took a look at a textbook of mine from my graduate school days. In one of his seminal articles, Chomsky had “starred” an example sentence, *It is easy for there to be snow in June, indicating that it was ungrammatical. I wrote in the margin that I thought the sentence was perfectly fine.) There’s no reason to think the situation is any different on Eywa’eveng. Unfortunately communication with Pandora has been difficult lately, and I haven’t been able to ask any native speakers of Na’vi how they feel about these sentences. (Oh for a Na’vi Maltz!) So I’ve had to use my intuition. That being said, here are my best guesses:
The one most likely to be judged grammatical with oel is 9:
9b. Oel teylut new yivom.
That’s judged acceptable by almost all Na’vi in all but the most formal situations.
The next most likely is 15:
15b. ?Teylut oel new yivom.
I’d put that at 50-50—that is, half the Na’vi will accept it, half won’t.
The next is 6, which I’d put at 30% acceptable, 70% unacceptable:
6b. ??New yivom teylut oel.
Finally, 5 is generally judged unacceptable with oel:
5b. *New yivom oel teylut.
I spent some time trying to justify these intuitions, but after reading what I wrote, I didn’t find the results coherent. And as they say, your mileage may vary. So I’m just going to leave it there, at least for the time being. Bottom line: If you don’t want to take any chances, use the intransitive-subject case in all such sentences. But in sentences like 9, feel free to choose either case.
Just one more thing:
As I mentioned, for 9b to be judged acceptable, new yivom has to be reanalyzed in the speaker’s mind as a single complex verb (or “super-verb,” if you like). That kind of thing is not unknown in English. For example, take the passive construction, which (at least under some theories of syntax) changes a sentence like The mouse ate the cookies into The cookies were eaten by the mouse: the original object of the verb has become the new subject, along with other changes. But what about:
a. The researchers didn’t think of that outcome. –> That outcome wasn’t thought of by
the researchers.
b. Her friends spoke badly about her. –> She was spoken badly about by her friends.
c. His boss took advantage of him. –> He was taken advantage of by his boss.
If passive works on objects of verbs, then how are these passive sentences possible? After all, the new subjects are not the old objects of the verbs—that is, if you think of the verbs as, respectively, think, speak, and take. But instead, speakers appear to be reanalyzing the word sequences. Rather than considering “think of” as verb + preposition, they’re taking it to be the super-verb “think-of.” Likewise with “speak-badly-about” and “take-advantage-of.” If you do that, then these super-verbs do have objects, which allows the passive transformation to apply.
The big question is, Under exactly what conditions do such reanalyses take place? If you come up with a complete answer to that question, please let me know!
Kaltxì, ma oeyä eylan—
I wanted to fill you in on my Na’vi talks for the first few months of this year, both those in the recent past and those coming up.
It’s been gratifying to see that interest in Na’vi continues. The invitations to speak about the language are still coming in—not at the hectic pace of a year or so ago, of course, but still quite steadily. I haven’t solicited any of these appearances; rather, people have looked me up and contacted me about speaking at their events. When it’s been feasible, I’ve been pleased to do so.
In the recent past:
§ Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa)—Feb. 3.
My talk at ISU was at the intersection of two different programs: the Quentin Johnson Lecture Series in Linguistics and the National Affairs Lecture Series, which this year has the theme of innovation. It was my best-attended talk ever: almost 400 people in the audience—students, faculty, and interested people from outside the university! Prior to the evening presentation I talked informally with members of the linguistics faculty and graduate students in applied linguistics. It was bitter cold outside, but my reception at ISU was very warm.
§ University of Southern California (Los Angeles)—Feb. 18
This was a lecture for the undergraduate Engineering Honors Colloquium at the Viterbi School of Engineering at my graduate alma mater, USC. There were about 120 students in the auditorium and everything went quite smoothly. (For once I didn’t run over the allotted time!) Afterwards a number of interested students came up to continue the conversation, including a conlanger working on his own language, one with a very interesting pronominal system.
Coming up:
§ Boise State University (Boise, Idaho)—Mar. 3
Ngaytxoa—I should have mentioned this earlier, although I think a number of you already know about it. I’m leaving tomorrow for Boise, Idaho, where I’ll be sharing the spotlight with none other than Marc Okrand, creator of Klingon! It won’t be a lecture but rather a panel discussion titled “Linguists in Hollywood,” presented by the Boise State Linguistics Association and the English Majors Association. I’m looking forward to getting to know Marc a bit and sharing experiences and war stories, both on mike and off. I’ll let you know how things go.
§ University of Rochester Alumni Event (Los Angeles)—Mar. 12
This fundraising event for the University of Rochester, my undergraduate alma mater, will be held at Sony Studios in Culver City, a separate city that’s an “island” inside Los Angeles (like Beverly Hills). It’ll be pretty much the same presentation I gave on the UR campus back in October, when I attended my 45th college reunion. I mentioned to the organizers that anyone who heard me back in October and is also planning to attend this event will have a strong sense of déjà vu, but they didn’t seem to think that would be a problem.
§ University of California (Los Angeles)—Apr. 9
I’ll be the keynote speaker at the second annual Southern California Undergraduate Linguistics Conference at UCLA. As you may know, UCLA is a linguistics powerhouse, so I’m expecting a lot of challenging questions.
§ California State University (Fullerton, California)—Apr. 18
I’ll be the keynote speaker at the 20th CSUF linguistics symposium. (I couldn’t find an announcement on the Internet—maybe I googled the wrong search terms.) This will be a return to the university where I taught linguistics way back in 1978-79, when I was working on my Ph.D. dissertation. I haven’t been back since, and I suspect things have changed a bit in the interim.
If anyone is in the neighborhood and would like to stop by any of these events to say hi, by all means do. To my knowledge they’re all open to the public, and, with the exception of the Rochester fundraiser, free of charge.
The Vocabulary Committee has been working overtime! The February submission was particularly rich, inventive . . . and massive. It’s going to take me a while to work through all the suggestions, discussions, and examples, and getting out the results will require more than a few blog posts. But I wanted to get in one more post before February turns into March, at least here in California. So for the time being, here are a couple of innovations I liked, which are now officially part of Na’vi. Much more to follow. Livu faylì’fyavi lesar ayngaru!
1. wan ‘hide’ (vtr.)
Pol sä’oti wolan äo ayrìk.
‘He hid his tool under the leaves.’
As reflexive (with the –äp- infix), ‘to hide oneself’:
Wäpan! Sawtute za’u!
‘Hide! The Sky people are coming!’
Nga pelun wäperan?
‘Why are you hiding?’
Idioms and derivations:
Pol säfpìlit verar wivan.
‘He’s keeping his idea a secret.’
nìwan (adv.) secretly; in hiding, by hiding
Samsiyu perey nìwan.
‘The hunters lie in wait, prepared to ambush.’
tìwan (n.) ‘obfuscation, cover-up’
letwan (adj.) ‘dodgy, sneaky (of a person)’
2. slele ‘swim’ (vin.) (SLE.le; infixes 1,2)
Lehrrap lu fwa evitsyìp slele mì hilvan luke fwa fyeyntu terìng nari.
‘It’s dangerous for tiny ones to swim in the river without an adult watching.’
Derivations:
nìslele ‘by swimming’
Tsun fko tsatsengene kivä nìslele fu fa fwa ikranit makto nì’aw.
‘You can only get there by swimming or riding an ikran.’
Edits Mar. 1: Changed n. to adj. for letwan. Corrected Samsiyul to Samsiyu in example sentence for nìwan.
Here’s Part 2 of the new vocabulary post from last time. Some of these words, I think, will turn out to be quite useful.
1. li (adv.) ‘already’
Tìkangkem li hasey lu.
‘The work is already finished.’
Li pol terok fìtsengit srak?
‘Is she already here?’
Ayfohu li oe ultxa soli.
‘I’ve already met with them.’
What does li add to a sentence? To paraphrase the lucid analysis of one of the vocabulary committee members, li does two jobs: (1) it indicates completion, and (2) it’s a way for speakers (or writers) to react to their reasonable assumptions about what listeners (or readers) are thinking.
For example:
A: Srake new nga oehu yivom wutsot?
‘Do you want to have dinner with me?’
B: Oer txoa livu. Li yolom.
‘Sorry. I’ve already eaten.’
Here, B sees from A’s question that A is assuming she (B) hasn’t yet eaten. B’s response says, in effect, “You evidently think I haven’t had dinner, but in fact I have.”
For the negative, Na’vi doesn’t use a separate lexical item like English (already ~ not yet) or French (déjà ~ pas encore) but simply negates li:
A: Fo li polähem srak?
‘Have they already arrived?’
B: Ke li.
‘Not yet.’
Li has some idiomatic uses as well:
A. In imperatives to convey strong urgency:
Ngal mi fìtsengit terok srak? Li kä!
‘You’re still here? Get going!’.
(Note: It’s the verb that gets the sentence stress, not the li: li KÄ!)
Also note the set phrase:
Li ko.
‘Well, get to it, then.’ OR ‘Let’s get on it.’
(Here li gets the stress: LI ko.)
B. As a somewhat hesitant or weak ‘yes,’ as in colloquial English “Well, yeah, kind of.”
A: Nga mllte srak?
‘Do you agree?’
B: Li, slä …
‘Well, yes, I guess so, but . . .’
The negative of this usage is simply ke li, which could be translated in colloquial English as ‘not really.’ This overlaps the ‘not yet’ usage above, but in most cases the context will disambiguate.
C. Combined with sre (ADP+) to indicate ‘by’ in the time sense—that is, ‘before or up to, but not after.’ For example:
Kem si li trraysre.
‘Do it by tomorrow.’
If sre comes before the time expression, it fuses with li into lisre (LI.sre), an adposition that is still ADP+ . . . i.e., that will cause lenition:
Kem si lisre srray.
‘Do it by tomorrow.’
Regarding ‘already,’ I want to say a big irayo to the vocabulary committee for an extremely rich discussion from which I learned a lot. I got great examples of how the corresponding words for ‘already’ are used in Japanese, Thai, Spanish, Irish, German, Swedish, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Nahuatl. Tewti, ma eylan! Lì’fyari lu aynga sulfätu nìwotx.
2. ronsrelngop ‘imagine, envision’ (vtr., infixes 33) (RON.srel.ngop)
Tsat ke tsun oe ronsrelngivop.
‘I can’t imagine that.’
Oel ronsrelngop futa Eywevengit tok.
‘I imagine that I’m on Pandora.’
The etymology of this word is probably clear: ronsem + rel + ngop, ‘mind-picture-create.’ Note, however, that in colloquial as opposed to careful or formal speech, ronsrelngop is usually pronounced ronsrewngop. (The sound change vowel + l –> vowel + w has occurred in Earth languages as well, for example in the history of French. Compare “salsa” and “sauce”!) This has led to a popular misunderstanding, or “folk etymology,” where the word is connected to srew, ‘dance,’ as if imagination were a dance in the mind. It’s a nice idea, but that’s not where the word actually comes from.
Derivation: ronsrel (n.) ‘something imagined’ (RON.srel)
Ayronsrel peyä hängek nìtxan.
‘His imaginings are (unpleasantly) weird.’
Derivation: tìronsrel (n.) ‘imagination’ (tì.RON.srel)
Lu poru tìronsrel atxanatan.
‘She has a vivid imagination.’
Note: txanatan (adj.) ‘bright, vivid’ (TXA.na.tan, from txan + atan)
Derivation: leronsrel (adj.) ‘imaginary’
Oe new sivop ne tsakifkey leronsrel.
‘I want to journey to that imaginary world.’
Derivation: nìronsrel (adv.) ‘in/by imagination’
Oe pxìm pängkxo ngahu nìronsrel.
‘I often talk with you in my imagination.’
OR
‘I often imagine I’m talking with you.’
3. srefey ‘expect’ (vtr., vitr., infixes 22) (sre.FEY, from sre and pey)
This verb can be transitive or intransitive, so there are alternate structures to express the same idea:
Set srefey oel futa tsampongu tätxaw maw txon’ong.
OR:
Set srefey oe tsnì tsampongu tätxaw maw txon’ong.
‘I’m currently expecting the war party back after nightfall.’
Note the useful idiom srefereiey nìprrte’, ‘looking forward’:
Tsaria ngahu ye’rìn ultxa si nìmun, oe srefereiey nìprrte’.
‘I’m looking forward to getting together with you again soon.’
You can use this phrase by itself as a positive response to someone’s offer:
A. Oeng rewonay ’awsiteng tivaron ko.
‘Let’s you and I go hunting together tomorrow morning.’
B. Srefereiey nìprrte’.
‘I’ll look forward to that.’ OR ‘I’d love to.’
FRACTION PARADIGM
mawl (n.) ‘half’
Tsu’teyìl tolìng oer mawlit smarä.
Tsu’tey gave me a half of the prey.
As you see, to say ‘half of something’ you simply use the genitive of the noun.
pan (n.) ‘third, one third’
Tsu’teyìl tolìng oer panit smarä.
Tsu’tey gave me a third of the prey.
Two thirds is simply mefan (me.FAN), with the dual me effecting lenition in the usual way.
For fractions with denominators higher than 3 we use the prefix form of the number plus the suffix pxì, derived from hapxì ‘part.’ Hapxì is stressed on the second syllable (ha.PXÌ), and this has influenced the fraction words, which retain the stress on pxì.
tsìpxì ‘one-fourth’ (tsì.PXÌ)
mrrpxì ‘one-fifth’ (mrr.PXÌ)
pupxì ‘one-sixth’ (pu.PXÌ)
kipxì ‘one-seventh’ (ki.PXÌ)
vopxì ‘one-eighth’ (vo.PXÌ)
To make higher fractions from these, use simple numbers:
munea mrrpxì – ‘two-fifths’
kipxì atsìng – ‘four-sevenths’
Tam. Hayalovay, ma oeyä eylan.
Edits, 21 Feb.: Example with hek corrected. “A’s response” corrected to “B’s response” in li discussion.
Kaltxì, ma eylan oeyä—
As some of you may know, we now have a structure in place whereby members of the community are submitting not only requests for new vocabulary but actual suggestions for new Na’vi words. (You’ll find information about the process at learnnavi.org.) I received the first such submission several days ago and was very impressed. A lot of thought and creativity went into the document, not to mention the time and effort it took to put it all together, with illustrative examples, etymologies, grammatical discussions, alternatives . . . Tìkangkem atxantsan, ma frapo! Thanks to everyone involved, and especially to the project’s very able coordinator, Lawren. Irayo nìtxan, ma tsmuke!
In looking at the committee’s suggestions, I found myself responding in several ways. For example:
1. Perfect! I love it!
2. Great idea—I’ll just make a few changes.
3. Interesting and potentially very useful, but I need to think through the ramifications
and/or get some clarification before I commit to it.
4. I see the need, but I’d rather do it differently.
Below you’ll find the items in categories 1 and 2. In some cases I’ve pretty much just cut and pasted from the doc that Lawren sent, since I didn’t think I could improve on it. In other cases I’ve made a few changes. If I haven’t included something, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve rejected it. Some things will require more time and thought than I’ve been able to put in in the last few days. So please consider this Part 1, with Part 2 to follow.
And even though 1/12 of 2011 is history, since I haven’t yet said it: Mipa Zìsìt Lefpom, ma frapo!
ta Pawl
1. taKRRa / aKRRta (conj.) ‘since’ (temporal)
Aylì’fya yawne leru oer takrra ’eveng lamu.
OR:
’Eveng lamu akrrta aylì’fya yawne leru oer.
‘I’ve loved languages since I was a child.’
Using the imperfective (leru) conveys the sense that the activity is ongoing; if it has ended, use the perfective:
Sawtute zola’u akrrta po ke ’olefu nitram.
‘Since the Skypeople came, she had not been happy [and this has now changed].’
When other time words are used in the sentence, the adposition ta- is sufficient to convey the concept of “since.”
Trr’ongta Txon’ongvay po tolìran.
‘He walked from dawn until dusk.’
2. few (ADP-) ‘across, aiming for the opposite side of’
NOTE: This new adposition is distinct from the existing adposition ka-, which means “across” in the sense of “covering thoroughly” (e.g., “Mother spread frosting across the entire top and sides of the cake.” OR “He wanted nothing more than peace across the entire world.”)
Po spä few payfya fte smarit sivutx.
‘He jumped across the stream to track his prey.’
Utral a lu few payfya a eo kelku oeyä tsawl lu nìtxan.
‘The tree on the other side of the stream in front of my house is very tall.’
~Derived form: FEWtusok (adj.), “opposite, on the opposite side”
Note: In casual speech, the word is often pronounced fewtsok. In writing, however, the full form is used.
Oe kawkrr ne fewtusoka pa’o kilvanä ke kamä.
‘I never went to the opposite side of the river.’
3. SLA’tsu (vtr., infixes 12) ‘describe’
Pol sla’tsu ayioangit a tse’a fkol mì Eywa’eveng*.
‘She describes animals seen on Pandora.’
*Note: In informal contexts, Eywa’eveng can be shortened to Eyweveng.
~Derived form: tìsla’tsu (n.), “description”
4. ’en (n.) guess (informed guess; hunch; intuition)
Note: This word only covers informed guessing, not a “shot in the dark” sort of guess.
-Pelun fìtsengne nga zola’u fte tivaron?
-Lolu ’en.
‘-Why did you come here to hunt?’
‘-It was a guess (hunch).’
Fìuvanìri lu ngaru pxen nì’aw.
‘You only get three guesses in this game.’
~Derived form: ’en si ‘make an informed guess’
Ke sterawm oel ke’ut mì na’rìng. ’En si oe, Sawtuteol tìlmok fìtsengit.
‘I don’t hear anything in the forest. I guess some Skypeople were just here.’
~Derived form: le’en (adj.), “speculative, intuitive” (of an action, not a person)
Eltu si. Hem le’en tsun lehrrap livu.
‘Watch out. Speculative moves can be dangerous.’
~Derived form: nì’en (adv.), “making an informed guess, acting on intuition”
Pol pole’un futa pehem si nì’en.
‘He decided what to do on a hunch.’
5. SÄ’o (n.) ‘tool, utensil’
Na’viri txina sä’o tìtusaronä lu tsko swizaw.
‘For the Na’vi the bow and arrow is the main hunting tool.’
6. pamtseo si (vin.) ‘play music’
To convey that one plays a musical instrument, use the adposition fa-.
Po pamtseo si fa au nìltsan nìtxan.
‘She plays the drums very well.’
Note that one can also use reykol, but this idiom is considered more “poetic,” and perhaps may not apply to all instruments.
Tewti, nga lu tsulfätu i’enä. Ngal tsat reykìmol!
‘Wow, you are a master on the i’en. You just made it sing!’
7. väng (adj.) ‘thirsty’
Menga ’efu väng srak?
‘Are you two thirsty?’
~Derived form: tìväng (n.), “thirst”
Apxa tìvängìl poti steykoli.
‘(His) great thirst made him angry.’
8. sngum (n.) ‘worry’
For verb (worry, be worried, be anxious), uses “lu DAT” construction:
Lu oeru sngum a saronyu ke tìyevätxaw.
‘I’m worried that the hunters will not return (soon, as expected).’
~Derived form: nìsngum (adv.), “worryingly, fretfully”
Swey lu fwa nga fìkem ke sivi nìsngum.
‘It’s best that you not do this fretfully.’
(It’s best that you don’t freak out about doing this.)
9. yaYAYR (n.) ‘confusion’
For verb (be confused, be puzzled), uses “lu DAT” construction (same as sngum)
Sawtuteyä hemìri lu awngaru yayayr.
‘The Skypeople’s actions confuse us.’
[I love this word! For some reason it just sounds like confusion.]
10. wäTE (vtr., infixes 22) ‘argue, dispute’
Sawtute lu ayvrrtep nìwotx a säfpìlit oel wäte.
‘I dispute the idea that the Skypeople are all demons.’
~Derived forms:
tìwäte (n.) (dispute, argument)
säwäte (n.) (point of contention, source of argument, thing disputed)
lewäte (n.) (disagreeable, argumentative [of an agent])
nìwäte (disagreeably, begrudgingly)
Edit, Feb 21: “fko” corrected to “fkol” in example sentence for #3.
Mehapxìtul lì’fyao’loä pxestxelit alor tolìng awngaru.
Two members of the German Na’vi community, Plumps (Stefan Müller) and Maksìl (Maximilian Reinhart), have translated three Christmas carols into Na’vi and recorded them. The wonderful singer is Maksìl. Please listen:
Maria Kxamlä Na’rìng Kä Maria Kxamlä Na’rìng Kä (Maria durch den Dornwald Ging)
Tewti Ma Utral Tewti Ma Utral (Oh Christmas Tree)
Txon Amawey Txon Amawey (Silent Night)
I think you’ll agree that these carols are astonishingly beautiful and gorgeously sung.
Irayo, ma meylan. Lora fìtìkangkem mengeyä meuia luyu awngaru nìwotx.
ta Pawl
