{"kind":"task","effective_mode":"full","benchmark":{"kind":"benchmark","effective_mode":"full","slug":"longbench-v2","formal_name":"LongBench v2","introduction":"LongBench v2 evaluates deep understanding and reasoning over long contexts through multiple-choice questions. Its official description lists 503 questions spanning tasks such as single-document and multi-document QA and code-repository understanding.","introduction_ja":"","introduction_en":"","category":"Category not supplied","task_count":null,"acquisition_status":"Acquisition status not supplied","official_url":"https://huggingface.co/datasets/zai-org/LongBench-v2","indexing_mode":"noindex","profile":{"resources":[],"task_format":"","scoring":"","metric":"","size":"","answer_access":"","license":"","citation":"","maintainer":"","released":"","why_hard":"","related":[]}},"task_id":"a90046f7-3dfb-55bc-b632-65863bb54b5b","task_key":"train--66f2b546821e116aacb2b152","task_revision_id":"3","upstream_id":"66f2b546821e116aacb2b152","short_description":"How to translate the following Quenya sentence into English: I Nauco uva anta…","config":"","split":"train","body":"{\"choice_A\":\"The Dwarf didn't give a white sheep to the Man.\",\"choice_B\":\"The Dwarf gives a yellow horse to the Man.\",\"choice_C\":\"The Dwarf will not give a white sheep to the Man.\",\"choice_D\":\"The Dwarf didn't give a yellow horse to the Man.\",\"context\":\"Contents\\n0\\nIntroduction\\n6\\n0.1\\nThe question of copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n12\\n0.2\\nWhat is Quenya like?\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n18\\n0.3\\nThe sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n19\\n0.4\\nA word of warning regarding parts of the corpus\\n. . . . . . .\\n26\\n0.5\\nSpelling conventions\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n31\\n1\\nLesson One\\n39\\n1.1\\nGeneral remarks\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n39\\n1.2\\nBasic terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n40\\n1.3\\nThe sounds of Quenya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n42\\n1.4\\nPronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n44\\n2\\nLesson Two\\n65\\n2.1\\nThe Noun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n65\\n2.2\\nThe article\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n69\\n3\\nLesson Three\\n74\\n3.1\\nDual number\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n74\\n3.2\\nStem variation\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n76\\n4\\nLesson Four\\n81\\n4.1\\nThe Adjective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n81\\n5\\nLesson Five\\n92\\n5.1\\nThe Verb\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\\n92\\n5.2\\nMore about adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100\\n6\\nLesson Six\\n105\\n6.1\\nThe past tense\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105\\n7\\nLesson Seven\\n116\\n7.1\\nThe future tense\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116\\n7.2\\nThe Aorist\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119\\n3\\n\\n\\n8\\nLesson Eight\\n127\\n8.1\\nThe perfect tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127\\n8.2\\nPronouns\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133\\n9\\nLesson Nine\\n142\\n9.1\\nThe infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142\\n9.2\\nThe negative verb\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145\\n9.3\\nActive participles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147\\n10 Lesson Ten\\n152\\n10.1 Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152\\n10.2 The pronominal endings -nt¨\\ne and -t\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155\\n10.3 Infinitives with object pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157\\n10.4 The past tense of intransitive verbs in -ya . . . . . . . . . . . 159\\n10.5 Passive participles\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162\\n11 Lesson Eleven\\n170\\n11.1 Cases\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170\\n11.2 The Genitive\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172\\n12 Lesson Twelve\\n183\\n12.1 The Possessive\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183\\n12.2 Various notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188\\n12.3 Verbal or Abstract nouns\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191\\n13 Lesson Thirteen\\n197\\n13.1 The Dative case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197\\n13.2 The Gerund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202\\n13.3 The pronoun “we” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206\\n13.4 An indefinite pronoun\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207\\n14 Lesson Fourteen\\n212\\n14.1 The Allative and Ablative cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212\\n14.2 Equ¨\\ne and auta: two peculiar verbs\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217\\n14.3 Possessive pronominal endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220\\n15 Lesson Fifteen\\n232\\n15.1 More about possessive pronominal endings . . . . . . . . . . . 232\\n15.2 The Locative case\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236\\n15.3 Relative sentences\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238\\n15.4 Third Person obscurities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242\\n4\\n\\n\\n16 Lesson Sixteen\\n249\\n16.1 The Instrumental case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249\\n16.2 Verbs with an unaccented vowel + -ta\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . 253\\n16.3 The imperative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257\\n16.4 The nai formula\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258\\n17 Lesson Seventeen\\n263\\n17.1 Quenya demonstratives\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263\\n17.2 Inflecting the “Last Declinable Word”\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . 266\\n17.3 U-stem nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268\\n17.4 Ordinals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272\\n18 Lesson Eighteen\\n276\\n18.1 Independent pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276\\n18.2 Impersonal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282\\n18.3 U-stem verbs\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284\\n18.4 The various uses of l´\\na\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287\\n19 Lesson Nineteen\\n293\\n19.1 Pronouns in imperative phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293\\n19.2 Emphatic pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295\\n19.3 Question-words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299\\n19.4 Postpositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300\\n20 Lesson Twenty\\n305\\n20.1 The verb “to be” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305\\n20.2 Ma: An interrogative particle?\\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311\\n20.3 Sa introducing nominal clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313\\nA Keys\\n317\\n5\\n\\n\\nLesson 0\\nIntroduction\\nOf all the languages invented by British author and philologist J.R.R.\\nTolkien (1892–1973), the most popular has always been Quenya. It also\\nseems to be the most highly developed of all the languages Tolkien devised.\\nIndeed only two of them – Quenya and Sindarin – are so complete that one\\ncan with some ease write substantial texts in them without resorting to mas-\\nsive invention of one’s own. Until recently, Sindarin was poorly understood,\\nand its complex phonology may daunt fresh students (especially if they have\\nno linguistic training). My advice to people who want to study Tolkien’s lin-\\nguistic creations would definitely be that they start with Quenya. Knowing\\nthis tongue will facilitate later studies of the other languages, including Sin-\\ndarin, since Quenya represents just one branch of the Elvish language family:\\nThe Elvish languages are not “independent” entities, but all evolved from\\na common ancestral tongue, and in many respects, Quenya stands closer to\\nthis primitive original than the other languages.\\nIn reality as opposed to this fictional context, Tolkien knew well what\\nkind of style he was aiming for, and having sketched a “primitive Elvish”\\nlanguage, he cleverly devised sound-shifts that would produce a tongue with\\nthe desired flavour: Quenya resulted from his youthful romance with Finnish;\\nhe was, in his own words, “quite intoxicated” by the sound and style of\\nthis language when he discovered it (The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien, p. 214).\\nHowever, it should be emphasized that Finnish was an inspiration only;\\nQuenya is in no way a garbled version of Finnish, and only a few words of\\nits vocabulary display any semblance to the corresponding Finnish words.\\n(See Harri Per¨\\nala’s discussion at http://www.sci.fi/˜alboin/finn que.htm;\\nthe writer is a Finn himself.) Tolkien also mentioned Greek and Latin as\\ninspirations; we can evidently add Spanish to the list as well.\\nThe fictional or “internal” history of Quenya is synopsized in my regular\\nArdalambion Quenya article (see http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/quenya.\\nhtm) and does not have to be repeated in any detail here. Very briefly,\\nwithin Tolkien’s mythos Quenya was the language of the Elves that dwelt\\nin Valinor in the Uttermost West; being spoken in the Blessed Realm, it\\n6\\n\\n\\nwas the noblest tongue in the world. Later one of the clans of the Elves, the\\nNoldor, went into exile in Middle-earth, bringing the Quenya tongue with\\nthem. In Middle-earth it soon fell out of use as a daily speech, but among\\nthe Noldor it was ever preserved as a ceremonial language, and as such it\\nwas also known to Mortal Men in later ages. Hence in The Lord of the Rings\\nwe have Frodo delivering the famous Quenya greeting elen s´\\nıla l´\\numenn’\\nomentielvo, “a star shines on the hour of our meeting”, when he and his\\nfriends run into some Elves (and the Elves are delighted to meet “a scholar\\nin the Ancient Tongue”). If one studies Quenya as a way to immerse oneself\\nin Tolkien’s fiction, it may indeed be best to picture oneself as a mortal\\nstudent in Middle-earth in the Third Age, about the period covered in The\\nLord of the Rings. (Picturing oneself as an Elvish native speaker in Valinor\\nback in the First Age may be overly ambitious.) The particular form of\\nQuenya taught in this course is – by intention – precisely the “late Exilic”\\nor “Third Age” variant. This is the kind of Quenya exemplified in The Lord\\nof the Rings, with Galadriel’s Lament (Nam´\\nari¨\\ne) as the most substantial\\nexample.\\nNumerous enthusiasts have brought forth a limited, but steadily growing\\nbody of Quenya literature, especially since a substantial amount of vocabu-\\nlary finally became available with the publication of The Lost Road in 1987,\\nfifteen years after Tolkien’s death. Thanks to this and the fifteen other books\\nof Middle-earth material that Christopher Tolkien in the period 1977–96\\nedited from the manuscripts his father had left behind, we now know very\\nmuch more about Tolkien’s languages than we ever did during the lifetime of\\ntheir inventor. We certainly can’t sit down and readily translate the works\\nof Shakespeare into Quenya, but we do know a few thousand words and\\ncan infer the general outlines of the grammar Tolkien envisioned. Still, you\\ncannot really become “fluent” in Quenya, not matter how hard you study\\nwhat is presently available. But it is eminently possible to write quite long\\nQuenya texts if one deliberately eschews the unfortunate gaps in our knowl-\\nedge, and we can at least hope that some of these gaps (especially regarding\\ngrammatical features) will be filled in by future publications. In the future,\\nwe may be able to develop Quenya into a more fully “useable” language. But\\nwe must obviously start by carefully internalizing the information provided\\nby Tolkien’s own material, as far as it is available to us.\\nMany have wanted a regular “course” or “tutorial”, with exercises and\\nall, that would allow them to study Quenya on their own with some ease.\\nOne such effort has been made before: Nancy Martsch’ Basic Quenya. All\\nin all, this was certainly a good work; the fact that material that has been\\npublished after it was written now reveals certain shortcomings, cannot be\\nheld against the author. However, many would like to have a more updated\\ncourse, and I have repeatedly been approached by people suggesting that I\\nwould be the right person to write it. It is of course nice when others call me\\nan “expert” on Tolkienian linguistics; actually I would say that it is difficult\\n7\\n\\n\\nto be an “expert” in these matters, due to the scarcity of source material.\\nNonetheless, I have been so privileged that I have been able to spend much\\ntime studying these matters (starting more than ten years ago), and I see\\nit as my duty to record and pass on whatever insights I may have gained.\\nHence in the end I sat down and started writing this course, intended for\\nbeginners. (This conveniently allows me to fill the uncritical, vulnerable\\nminds of fresh students with my interpretation of Quenya grammar, which\\ninterpretation I inevitably hold to be the best and most accurate. Ha ha ha.)\\nHowever, this course does not seek to imitate a Linguaphone-like format\\nwith long dialogues etc. to help the student to acquire “basic fluency” in\\nvarious situations relating to everyday life. This would be quite pointless in\\nthe case of an “art-language” like Quenya, which is to be used for carefully\\nprepared prose and poetry rather than casual chatting. Rather these lessons\\ntake the form of a series of essays on various parts of Quenya grammar,\\nreviewing and analyzing available evidence in an attempt to reconstruct\\nTolkien’s intentions, with some exercises appended.\\nWhy study Quenya? Obviously not because you are going to Valinor on\\nholiday and need to be able to communicate with the natives. Some may\\nwant to study this language to somehow get in better accord with the spirit\\nof Tolkien’s authorship. He referred to\\n. . . what I think is a primary ‘fact’ about my work, that it is all of\\na piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. [. . .] It is not\\na ‘hobby’, in the sense of something quite different from one’s\\nwork, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the\\nfoundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for\\nthe languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the\\nstory follows. I should have preferred to write in ‘Elvish’. But, of\\ncourse, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and\\nonly as much ‘language’ has been left in as I thought would be\\nstomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked\\nmore.) [. . .] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in ‘linguistic\\naesthetic’, as I sometimes say to people who ask me ‘what is it\\nall about’. (The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien, pp. 219–220)\\nIn light of such strong statements made by the author, studying his in-\\nvented languages cannot be dismissed as some kind of silly escapism for\\nromantic teenagers. It must be considered a crucial part of scholarship re-\\nlating to Tolkien’s authorship, or indeed his work in general: The languages\\nconstructed by Tolkien are part of his output as a philologist, not necessar-\\nily less serious than his writings on pre-existing languages like Anglo-Saxon;\\nnotice that he refused to call his “fundamentally linguistic” work a mere\\nhobby. One may call Quenya and the other languages works of art, but no\\nmatter what word we use to describe them, in the end it all boils down\\n8\\n\\n\\nto this: Tolkien was not just a descriptive linguist, passively exploring and\\ncontemplating pre-existing tongues – he was a creative linguist as well.\\nObviously fluency in Quenya or Sindarin is not a prerequisite before you\\ncan say anything intelligent about Tolkien’s narratives; yet it is clear that\\nsome critics and scholars have woefully underestimated the crucial role of\\nthe invented languages, finding themselves unable to take even very clear\\nstatements like the one quoted above wholly seriously. To fully appreciate\\nthe scope and intricacy of Tolkien’s linguistic sub-creation one has to actively\\nstudy it for its own sake. It should certainly be able to command interest\\nfor its own sake. Some years ago, recognized Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey\\nobserved that\\n. . . it’s clear that the languages Tolkien created are created by,\\nyou know, one of the most accomplished philologists of all time,\\nso there is therefore something interesting in them, and I think\\nalso in them there is poured much of his professional knowl-\\nedge and thought. [. . .] I’ve often noticed that there are really\\nvery valuable observations about what Tolkien thought about\\nreal philology buried in the fiction. And I would not be at all\\nsurprised if, you know, there were valuable observations buried\\nin the invented languages. So there may be, in fact, something\\nwhich emerges from it. [From an interview conducted during the Arda\\nsymposium in Oslo, April 3–5 1987, published in the journal Angerthas, issue\\n31.]\\nEven if one does not believe that there are great new philological insights\\nwaiting to be unearthed from the structure of Tolkien’s languages, I cannot\\nsee why conducting detailed studies of these languages should necessarily be\\nseen as escapism, or at best a somewhat silly pastime for people who are too\\nlazy to find something better to do. The languages constructed by Tolkien\\nhave been likened to music; his biographer Humphrey Carpenter observes\\nthat “if he had been interested in music he would very likely have wanted\\nto compose melodies; so why should he not make up a personal system of\\nwords that would be as it were a private symphony?” One may study one of\\nthe languages Tolkien painstakingly developed as one may study a musical\\nsymphony: a complex work of many interrelated parts woven into intricate\\nbeauty. Yet the symphony is fixed in its form, while a language can be\\ninfinitely recombined into ever new texts of prose and poetry, and yet retain\\nits nature and flavour undiminished. One of the attractions of Quenya is\\nthat we can compose linguistic “music” ourselves just by applying Tolkien’s\\nrules, so Carpenter’s comparison is too limited: Tolkien did not just make a\\nsymphony, he invented an entire form of music, and it would be a pity if it\\nwere to die with him.\\nOf course, others may want to study Quenya to immerse themselves in\\nTolkien’s fiction, with no pretensions of “scholarship” of any kind: Tolkien’s\\n9\\n\\n\\nvision of the Elves (Quendi, Eldar) is no doubt the main achievement of his\\nauthorship, and Quenya was – at least in the somewhat biased opinion of\\nthe Noldor – “the chief Elvish tongue, the noblest, and the one most nearly\\npreserving the ancient character of Elvish speech” (The War of the Jewels\\np. 374). But one may grope towards “Elvishness” in a deeper sense than just\\ntrying to immerse oneself in fiction. Happily abandoning the all too classical\\nidea of Elves as tiny, overly pretty “fairies”, Tolkien instead achieved the\\nvision of Elves as something more: “I suppose that the Quendi are in fact\\nin these histories very little akin to the Elves and Fairies of Europe; and\\nif I were pressed to rationalize, I should say that they represent greater\\nbeauty and longer life, and nobility – the Elder Children” (The Letters of\\nJ.R.R.Tolkien, p. 176). The quintessence of Tolkien’s vision of “Elvishness”\\nis contained primarily in the languages, “for to the Eldar the making of\\nspeech is the oldest of the arts and the most beloved” (The Peoples of\\nMiddle-earth p. 398). In a way, the study of Quenya can be a quest for\\nthis vision of something beautiful and noble beyond the normal capability\\nof our mortal and finite selves: “The Elves represent, as it were, the artistic,\\naesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane raised to a higher level\\nthan is actually seen in Men” (Letters, p. 176). The seeking for such a “higher\\nlevel” transcends all fiction. Tolkien’s inner vision of this level he translated\\npartly into pictures, much more prominently into narratives, but (to him)\\nmore importantly still, into the words and sounds of language. In Quenya\\nhis vision of Beauty lives on, awaiting those capable of comprehending and\\nappreciating it.\\nOn their web-pages, the Swedish Tolkien-linguists of the Mellonath Daeron\\ngroup try to justify their study of Tolkien’s languages:\\nOur activity has been described as the ultimate luxury. We study\\nsomething that does not exist, just for fun. This is something you\\ncan afford when you have everything else; food, shelter, clothes,\\nfriends, and so on. The Tolkien languages are well worth studying\\nfor their high aesthetic values alone. And knowledge of the lan-\\nguages is a key to a fuller appreciation of the beauty of Tolkien’s\\nsub-creation, his world, Arda.\\nI heartily agree with the last two sentences, but I cannot agree that\\nQuenya or Sindarin “does not exist”. Obviously we are not talking about\\nphysical, tangible objects, but that goes for any language. These are not fic-\\ntional languages, but languages as real as Esperanto or any other constructed\\nlanguage. Tolkien himself noted about his languages that they “have some\\nexistence, since I have composed them in some completeness” (The Letters\\nof J.R.R.Tolkien, p. 175).\\nUnlike Esperanto, Quenya is however strongly associated with a fictional\\ninternal history. (Tolkien once stated that Esperanto had been more suc-\\ncessful if there had been an Esperanto mythos to go with it!) The associated\\n10\\n\\n\\nmythos certainly enriches Quenya and helps us to understand what kind of\\nlinguistic “flavour” Tolkien was aiming for, and the fact that this language\\nhas a role to play in the most famous fantasy novels ever written obviously\\nprovides it with much “free publicity” that Esperanto can only dream of.\\nYet it must be emphasized that Quenya does exist as an actual entity in\\nour own world, and as mentioned above, it indeed has a steadily growing\\nliterature, mostly in verse: The texts presently in existence must already be\\nhundreds of times more comprehensive than all the Quenya texts Tolkien\\never wrote himself. He endlessly refined the structure and imaginary evo-\\nlution of his invented languages, but he wrote remarkably few substantial\\ntexts in them. Though he stated that he “should have preferred to write in\\n‘Elvish’” (see quote above), he actually wrote about the “Elvish” tongues\\nrather than in them. “Delight lay in the creation itself,” Christopher Tolkien\\nobserves (Sauron Defeated, p. 440). His father made the languages just be-\\ncause he loved making them, not because he needed to “use” them for any\\nspecific purpose. To be sure, Tolkien wrote a number of poems in “Elvish”,\\nbut they amount to very little compared to the thousands of pages he wrote\\nabout the structure of his languages.\\nTolkien had his fun in sheer invention; that was his privilege as the original\\ncreator. However, I daresay quite few people are capable of deriving much\\npleasure from mere passive contemplation of the structure of a language,\\nor from reading the grammar of an invented language as if it were some\\nkind of novel. I imagine that most people who want to study Quenya have\\nsome intention, however vague, of putting this knowledge to use by writing\\nQuenya texts themselves, or at least by reading other people’s texts (at the\\nvery least Tolkien’s own). Really learning any language in any case requires\\nactive participation: Even if you wouldn’t dream of ever publishing anything\\nin Quenya but rather want to assess Tolkien’s “Elvish” for purely academic\\npurposes, you will still have to work yourselves through some exercises to\\ninternalize grammar and vocabulary. Such exercises are provided in this\\ncourse.\\nMy favorite angle on the study of Tolkien’s languages is probably this\\n(building on the “musical” analogy suggested by Carpenter): I’d say we\\nare in somewhat the same situation as if a genius composer were to invent\\na new form of music, writing a great deal about its structure, but making\\nrelatively few actual compositions – some of them not even published during\\nthe lifetime of the composer himself. Yet these few compositions gain a\\nsteadily growing international audience, an audience that would very much\\nlike to hear more – much more – music of this kind. The original composer\\nbeing dead, what are we to do? There is only one way to go: We must carry\\nout a thorough study of both the published compositions and the more\\ntheoretical writings, to make out and internalize the rules and principles for\\nthis kind of music. Then we can start to compose ourselves, making entirely\\nnew melodies that yet comply with the general structure devised by the\\n11\\n\\n\\noriginal inventor.\\nThis, of course, has a rough analogy when it comes to Tolkien’s narratives\\nas well. Tolkien’s themes and principles of story-telling have been taken\\nover by generations of new authors, resulting in the modern fantasy genre\\n– though it would not be very controversial to say that far from all authors\\nhave been able to live up to the high standards set by the master. In some-\\nwhat the same manner, the quality of the numerous post-Tolkien Quenya\\ntexts varies greatly. In the case of some early attempts, written when very lit-\\ntle source material was available, it is now easy to spot various shortcomings\\nand misinterpretations of what Tolkien really intended. Today, with much\\nmore material available, I would say it is possible to write texts that Tolkien\\nprobably would have recognized as at least roughly correct Quenya (though\\nI think reading Quenya texts not originating with himself would have been a\\nstrange experience for him; his invented languages were originally something\\nvery private).\\nThis course should in any case be useful no matter what your angle on\\nthis study may be – whether you want to learn Quenya to immerse yourself\\nin Tolkien’s fiction, to better appreciate a crucial side of his authorship,\\nto learn about the intricate creations of a talented linguist, to accept the\\nintellectual challenge of trying to master a sophisticated system, to go on a\\nmeditative quest for “Elvishness”, or simply to enjoy Quenya aesthetically.\\nNone of these are mutually exclusive, of course. Whatever your angle is, I\\nhope you would like to have a part in making Quenya literature grow and\\nflourish.\\nAnother Tolkien quote may be in place here: “No language is justly studied\\nmerely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes,\\nphilological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself” (MC:189).\\n0.1\\nThe question of copyright\\nThis is an issue I shall have to devote quite a few paragraphs to, though this\\nwill probably surprise any fresh, innocent student who has never given much\\nthought to this at all. However, debates revolving around copyright issues\\nhave sadly caused a great deal of bitterness among students working in the\\nfield of Tolkien-linguistics; such debates essentially blew apart the TolkLang\\nmailing list, leading to the establishing of Elfling instead. If Tolkien’s heirs or\\ntheir lawyers ever read what follows, I hope they are not offended. This really\\nis not about stealing anything from them, but about directing attention to\\none highly important part of Tolkien’s work and help people learning about\\nit, so that it can live and grow and stand as a lasting testimony to his efforts,\\nand as a dynamic memorial to himself. Talking about his father, Christopher\\nTolkien in a TV interview described Quenya as “language as he wanted it,\\nthe language of his heart”. Students of Quenya merely want this special\\n12\\n\\n\\npart of Tolkien’s heart to live on. Nobody is trying to make any money or\\notherwise profit from this. (If the Tolkien Estate, or rather HarperCollins,\\nmight ever want to publish this course in book form, I would be happy to\\nlet them do so, and I would not expect to receive any royalties.)\\nIn 1998 and early 1999, on the TolkLang list, lawyer W. C. Hicklin vo-\\nciferously argued that publishing “unauthorized” grammatical descriptions\\nof a Tolkien-language would be a blatant violation of the copyright of the\\nTolkien Estate, asserting that any such publication would undoubtedly make\\nthe Estate react with “money, guns and lawyers”. (One hopes the part about\\nfirearms was a figure of speech.) I cannot agree with such an interpretation\\nof copyright law, especially considering that what we know about Quenya\\nwe have for the most part learnt by studying the examples we have – not\\nby reading Tolkien’s explicit grammars, that still have not been published.\\nI cannot imagine that when studying available Quenya texts, is it illegal for\\nus to put our conclusions into words and tell others about them. If this is\\nwhat copyright means, then all sorts of scholarly commentary and literary\\ncriticism immediately go down the drain. While Hicklin said he reported the\\nposition of Christopher Tolkien (whom he claimed to know on a first-name\\nbasis), the Tolkien Estate itself has so far declined to present its opinion\\non these issues, even when asked to do so by TolkLang moderator Julian\\nBradfield. It may be noted that copyright law is not the area Mr. Hicklin\\nspecializes in, and I think he pressed the concept of “character” rather far\\nby asserting that every individual word in the invented languages must be\\nconsidered a literary character of Tolkien’s, apparently on par with such\\ncharacters as Aragorn or Galadriel. Mysteriously, Hicklin still agreed that it\\nis OK to write fresh texts in Tolkien’s languages, though in Hicklin’s world\\nthis would seem to be the analogy of writing new stories involving Tolkien’s\\ncharacters (which everybody agrees would be a copyright violation).\\nHicklin’s obvious problems in putting together a consistent argument, as\\nwell as subsequent legal inquiries conducted by myself and others, have led\\nme to the conclusion that copyrighting a language as such would be quite\\nimpossible. The language “itself” is not to be likened to a fixed text in or\\nabout it; it is an entirely abstract system, and for anything to enjoy copyright\\nprotection it must first of all have a fixed form to be protected. Arguing that\\nthe very grammatical structure and vocabulary of the language is its “fixed\\nform” is no use, for this is an abstract system, not a “form”. Any actual\\ntext about (or in) a language is indeed protected, but not the language\\n“itself”. To return to the analogy of our genius composer who invents a new\\nform of music: His copyright to his own compositions, and to his writings\\non this form of music as fixed texts, cannot and should not be disputed by\\nanyone. But he or his heirs cannot well assert that publishing entirely new\\ncompositions, or wholly original descriptions of the principles of this kind of\\nmusic, would somehow violate their copyright.\\nThis course is written and published (for free on the Internet) by me as\\n13\\n\\n\\na private person. The Tolkien Estate has not been asked to endorse it or\\neven comment on it, it is in no way “official”, and I must take full respon-\\nsibility for the quality of the contents. No disrespect is intended when I\\npoint out that any endorsement by the Estate would not have meant much\\nin the way of a quality guarantee, since certain earlier works on Quenya\\nthat were published with explicit permission from the Estate can now be\\nseen to contain certain obvious shortcomings and misinterpretations. There\\nis little reason to believe that Estate lawyers or Christopher Tolkien himself\\nare capable of judging the quality of a Quenya grammar (and likewise no\\nreason to hold this against them; learning Quenya from the primary sources\\nis a long and challenging study reserved for the especially interested). In\\nsuch a situation I hope and believe that the Tolkien Estate respects the\\nright of scholars to carry on their studies undisturbed, and to present the\\nresults of such research – especially when the relevant publications are en-\\ntirely non-commercial. Despite the strong claims made by Hicklin and a\\nvery few others, there is presently no concrete evidence that the Estate or\\nChristopher Tolkien see such studies as a violation of their copyright. If they\\ndo, let them contact me and we will talk.\\nThe interpretation of Quenya grammar that it here set out is based on a\\nstudy of the available sources, mostly analysis of actual Quenya text, and on\\nexegesis of the relatively few explicit notes on grammar that are presently\\navailable. I hold it to be obvious that this is primarily a work of analysis\\nand commentary (presented in a didactic fashion), and in terms of copyright,\\ndiscussing the structure of Quenya cannot be much different from discussing\\n(say) the plot structure of The Lord of the Rings: In either case it is clear\\nthat anything I can say must ultimately be based on Tolkien’s writings,\\nbut the resulting study still is not a “derived work” in terms of copyright\\nlaw. What we are doing here is not retelling Tolkien’s fiction (though I will\\ncertainly refer to it – but then from the perspective of a critic, or better com-\\nmentator, to demonstrate how Tolkien’s fiction and language-construction\\ninterlock). Primarily we will be studying one of Tolkien’s languages as an\\nactual rather than a fictitious entity. The fact that this language was first\\npresented to the world in a context of fiction does not make it a “fictional\\nlanguage”, and use or discussion of it is not necessarily “derivative fiction”.\\nAs already mentioned, Tolkien himself observed that his languages as such\\n“have some existence” simply because he had actually devised them – they\\ndo not exclusively reside within a fictitious context (The Letters of J.R.R.\\nTolkien, p. 175).\\nMuch of Quenya vocabulary is not wholly “original”; Tolkien readily ad-\\nmitted that the vocabularies of his “Elvish” languages were “inevitably full\\nof . . . reminiscences” of pre-existing tongues (The Peoples of Middle-earth\\np. 368). Though usually not so obvious that it is disturbing to those who\\nwant to study Quenya as a highly exotic language, the fact remains that the\\nknowledgeable easily discern Indo-European (and sometimes even Semitic)\\n14\\n\\n\\nwords and stems underlying many of Tolkien’s “invented” words. This is not\\nto be seen as some sort of failure of imagination on Tolkien’s part; he noted\\nthat “it is impossible in constructing imaginary languages from a limited\\nnumber of component sounds to avoid such resemblances” – adding that\\nhe did not even try to avoid them (Letters, pp. 384–385). Even where no\\nplausible “real-world” inspiration for a Quenya word can be cited, the fact\\nstill remains that there is no legal tradition whatsoever to allow a person\\ncoining new words to somehow claim them as his personal property. Tolkien\\nhimself was aware that names cannot be copyrighted (Letters, p. 349), and\\nthen one cannot well copyright common nouns, verbs, adjectives or preposi-\\ntions either, precluding “unauthorized” use of them. Some words in common\\nuse today, such as robot, first occurred in a context of fiction. One cannot\\ntherefore claim that they are “fictional” words, protected on par with fic-\\ntional characters, and not to be used, listed or explained without explicit\\npermission from the one who first coined them (or his heirs).\\nLegal inquiries conducted after Hicklin made his flamboyant claims have\\nconfirmed that words as such automatically enter public domain the second\\nthey are coined, and nobody can monopolize them or claim exclusive owner-\\nship to them. You can register a word as a trademark, of course, but that is\\nsomething entirely different: Apple Computers can’t stop anyone from using\\n“apple” as an everyday word. It is also irrelevant that the manufacturer of\\nsome kind of fantasy game had to remove all references to “balrogs”, for\\nhere it is not the Sindarin word balrog, but balrogs as characters that lie in\\nTolkien’s copyright. The fact that Tolkien coined the word alda for “tree”\\nhardly implies that trees are his literary characters. It is not just a tree\\ngrowing in Middle-earth that can be termed an alda; the word works just\\nas well if I write a Quenya poem about a tree growing outside my house.\\nI agree, though, that Quenya and the other languages enjoy some protec-\\ntion in their capacity as parts of the Middle-earth setting. If anyone were to\\nwrite new fantasy stories involving Elves speaking a language called Quenya,\\nand there were samples demonstrating that this is indeed Tolkien’s Quenya,\\nthis would obviously be the same kind of plagiarism as if any fantasy writer\\nwere to “borrow” a city called Minas Tirith, and the description in the book\\nmade it clear that this city happened to be built on several levels and was\\noverlooked by a white tower. But again: this course is most certainly not in-\\ntended as derivative fiction. This is about studying and using one of Tolkien’s\\nlanguages largely irrespective of the fictional context as such – though since\\nI also aspire to present Quenya as a part of Tolkien’s authorship, I shall of\\ncourse have to mention, refer to and sometimes even quote the narratives\\nas well as presenting mere technicalities. Nonetheless: It is obviously untrue\\nthat Tolkien’s languages cannot in any way be separated from his fictional\\nworld (as Hicklin seemed to claim). Vicente Velasco was for instance able\\nto write a Quenya poem (R´\\nıanna) commemorating Princess Diana after her\\ntragic death, but this does not imply that the accident where she was killed\\n15\\n\\n\\nmust actually be a plot point in a Tolkien novel. Indeed Tolkien himself made\\na Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer, a text that obviously belongs to\\nour own reality and could not occur within the Middle-earth setting.\\nWhen discussing copyright issues, we must distinguish very clearly be-\\ntween the fictional context and actual use of systems or ideas described\\nwithin this fiction; the latter is quite irrelevant for a discussion of copyright.\\nBy way of comparison: I fully agree that if anyone were to write new fantasy\\nstories involving a race of small people with hairy feet living in underground\\nstructures called smials, then this writer would clearly plagiarize Tolkien\\nand possibly even violate his copyright. But I cannot imagine that I violate\\nanyone’s copyright if I dig out a smial in my garden – or for that matter,\\nif I have a head-to-feet hair transplant. Similarly, one shouldn’t feel free\\nto write fantasy stories about Elves speaking Quenya, but actually using\\nthe linguistic structures dreamed up by Tolkien to write new texts that by\\ntheir contents have nothing to do with his fiction cannot be a violation of\\ncopyright. The new Quenya texts are copyright to no one but their writers.\\nHappily, Tolkien’s heirs seem to agree to this; at least they have never\\ntried to stop anyone from publishing their Quenya poems. If the Estate has\\nno problems with this, I can only assume that their lawyers also agree that\\nit is perfectly legal for anyone to write Quenya grammars or compile Quenya\\nwordlists. Otherwise we should be left with the rather absurd notion of a\\nlanguage that can be used, but not taught or in a scholarly way described.\\nI cannot imagine that the Estate would assert that the by now quite large\\nnumber of Quenya texts that are not written by Tolkien and have nothing\\nto do with his fiction cannot be subjected to grammatical or lexicographical\\nstudies simply because they happen to be written in Quenya. This would\\nbe an attempt to block and veto certain kinds of scholarship relating to an\\nentire body of literature, and I don’t think this could be sustained, legally\\nor even morally. I don’t know that Tolkien’s heirs disagree.\\nI have no intention, however, of disputing the Estate’s copyright to Tol-\\nkien’s actual writings (on the languages or otherwise), and though it is an\\ninteresting exercise to “reconstruct the Elvish original” supposedly under-\\nlying some of Tolkien’s poems or stories, one should not publish “Elvish”\\ntranslations of a great amount of continuous Tolkien text. All of his texts\\nlie in the copyright of the Tolkien Estate until it expires in 2023 (or was\\nit 2048?), and publishing substantial translations or close retellings thereof\\nwould require the permission of the Estate: No matter how exceedingly es-\\noteric the target-language is, any translation is still directly derived from\\nTolkien’s own, copyrighted text. Neither should one write long stories set in\\nTolkien’s world; that would be a violation of copyright no matter what lan-\\nguage you use. However, making translations of a limited amount of Tolkien\\ntext can probably pass as fair use (but please don’t publish your own Quenya\\nrendering of the Ring Poem; there are all too many competing versions al-\\nready. . . ) Neither is there much reason to believe that the Estate would take\\n16\\n\\n\\nany action against short Quenya-language novelettes even if they do seem\\nto be set in Middle-earth, since it should be obvious that the real purpose\\nis to demonstrate the use of Quenya, not to write new stories to compete\\nwith Tolkien’s own (I wouldn’t publish even such novelettes in any way that\\ncould conceivably be seen as commercial publishing, though). Poems about\\npersons or events in Tolkien’s world (like Ales Bican’s Roccalassen or “Song\\nto ´\\nEowyn”) I think can pass as a branch of commentary or synopsis, as long\\nas you don’t include any fresh fiction of your own. But please don’t push\\neven that too far; Tolkien’s heirs are in their good right when they assert\\ntheir copyright to his stories.\\nIn exercises made for this course, I have in any case deliberately avoided\\nany direct references to persons, places or events in Tolkien’s fictional world\\n(except for one reference to the Two Trees because the Quenya word pro-\\nvides such a good example of dual number). Instead of referring to Tolkien’s\\nfiction I have in most cases resorted to a wholly generic fantasy world or me-\\ndieval world; there is nothing to preclude the possibility that this is Tolkien’s\\nworld, but nothing concrete to confirm it, either. There are lots of Elves and\\nDwarves in these exercises, but though we inevitably use words like Eldar\\nand Naucor for these peoples when talking about them in Quenya, they\\nare really just “generic” Elves and Dwarves. Feel free to imagine that these\\n“Elves” are Tolkien’s Eldar if you like, but there is nothing that definitely\\nties them to any specific mythos.\\nDespite the fact that I don’t think the Tolkien Estate could legally stop\\npeople from doing pretty much what they want with Quenya as an actual\\nlanguage (separated from Tolkien’s fiction), I urge students to use whatever\\nknowledge they may obtain in a respectful way. We should feel some kind\\nof moral obligation, or even gratitude, towards Tolkien as the creator of\\nthis language. Quenya as we know it is the result of decades of painstaking\\nwork and endless refinement; its creator intended it to have an august or\\neven sacred flavour, and it is not to be used for unworthy or downright silly\\npurposes. (Please don’t publish your Quenya compositions on toilet walls,\\nfor instance.) There is an old TV interview where Tolkien says he would\\nnot necessarily mind others knowing and enjoying his invented languages,\\nbut he would not like to see any of them turned into some sort of “secret”\\nlingo used to exclude others. This is a wish I urge any and all students to\\nrespect. As a student and user of Quenya one should also be committed to\\npreserving the integrity of Tolkien’s system, taking great care not to distort\\nit or needlessly dilute it. Occasionally we have to coin new words, but in such\\ncases one should eschew arbitrary invention and instead work from Tolkien’s\\nown stems, using his methods of derivation.\\nWrote Tolkien, “Of course the L[ord of the] R[ings] does not belong to\\nme. It has been brought forth and must now go its appointed way in the\\nworld, though naturally I take a deep interest in its fortunes, as a parent\\nwould of a child. I am comforted to know that it has good friends to defend\\n17\\n\\n\\nit” (The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien, p. 413–14). Perhaps he would have felt\\nthe same way about the invented languages exemplified in the book he is\\ntalking about: They have been brought forth and do already go their “way\\nin the world”, studied and even used by many – but now Quenya and the\\nother languages must live their lives independently of their “parent”, for he\\nis no longer among us. So let students and users be their “good friends” and\\n“defend” their systems, true to the vision of the man who spent a lifetime\\ndeveloping them. And this brings us back to the structure of Quenya itself.\\n0.2\\nWhat is Quenya like?\\nWhat kind of language is this, structurally speaking? It seems that Finnish\\nprovided considerable inspiration not only for the sound-patterns, but for\\nthe basic structure as well. Tolkien described Quenya as a “highly inflected\\nlanguage” (The Road Goes Ever On p. 69). That is, words appear in many\\ndifferent forms depending on their precise function in any given grammatical\\ncontext. The differing forms are for the most part constructed by employing\\na plethora of endings, endings with meanings that in English would often\\nbe expressed as separate words instead. Hence an English translation of a\\nQuenya text will normally consist of more words than the Quenya original:\\nIn Unfinished Tales p. 22, 51, we learn that three words of Quenya may\\nwell require a seven-word English translation: Anar caluva tielyanna =\\n“the sun shall shine upon your path”. Some may see this as evidence that\\nQuenya is a more efficient language than English, but whether one uses one\\nlong word or several shorter words to express a given meaning is not very\\ncrucial. (It may be noted that if one counts syllables instead of words, it\\nis suddenly English that is the most “efficient” language in the example\\nabove: The English text has one syllable less than the Quenya version!)\\nQuenya should be enjoyed for its own qualities, not by comparing it to\\nother languages. But the word tielyanna “upon your path” illustrates the\\nmain difference between English and Quenya: small independent words like\\n“your” or “upon” frequently become endings instead – in this example -lya\\nand -nna, respectively.\\nIs Quenya a “difficult” language? Speaking of Quenya and Sindarin, the\\ntwo main languages of his mythos, Tolkien wrote that “both languages are,\\nof course, extremely difficult” (Letters:403). Undoubtedly there are many\\npresently unsuspected complexities waiting for us in the vast amount of\\nunpublished material. But as far or short as our knowledge goes today, I\\ncertainly wouldn’t call Quenya “extremely difficult”. It may be an involved\\nand intricate construct, but certainly less complicated than Sindarin, and\\nthe acquisition of Quenya as we know it is in no way a superhuman feat. Any\\ndevoted student should be able to achieve basic mastery of the grammatical\\nsystem in relatively short time, weeks or even days rather than months.\\n18\\n\\n\\nGeneral knowledge about linguistics would certainly be helpful in such a\\nstudy, but hardly a prerequisite; in this course I have tried to make the\\nexplanations so simple that any reasonably bright teenager should be able\\nto understand what is going on. (Bearing in mind that some people who\\nwant to study Quenya are quite young, I have tried to pre-suppose virtually\\nno knowledge about linguistics, and I will explain even elementary linguistic\\nterms – more knowledgeable students may feel that I sometimes go into\\nboring baby-talk.)\\nIt must still be understood that it is not a streamlined Esperanto we are\\ndealing with here. Tolkien deliberately tried to make his languages “natural-\\nistic”; hence there are some irregular verbs and the like, though I would say\\ntheir number is quite manageable. Quenya probably stands about midway\\nbetween an absolutely regular “Esperanto” and a typical “real” language\\nwith its spate of complexities and irregularities, yet perhaps closer to the\\nformer. Indeed Quenya is probably too simple to be entirely “credible” as a\\nsupposedly non-constructed language, at least if we compare it to the messy\\nlanguages of Mortal Men in our own age. But then Quenya wasn’t really\\n“non-constructed” within the scope of the fictional history either; it was\\nconstructed and refined by the Elves, “and the Eldar know their tongue,\\nnot word by word only, but as a whole” (The Peoples of Middle-earth p.\\n398). So perhaps the Eldar, being very much conscious of the structure of\\ntheir speech, would tend to make languages with a relatively tidy grammar.\\nAnyway, from the viewpoint of students it is difficult to regret the absence of\\nmore irregular forms to be memorized, so if this simplicity does indeed make\\nQuenya less “credible” as a natural language, Tolkien is easily forgiven!\\n0.3\\nThe sources\\nWe know that Tolkien wrote literally thousands of pages about his languages.\\nUnfortunately – and here I must ask fresh students to brazen themselves for\\ntheir first big shock, though the shocking fact has already been alluded to –\\nvery little of this material is available to us. However, Christopher Tolkien\\nhas apparently tried to make arrangements for its publication. Throughout\\nmost of the nineties, he was sending photo-copies of his father’s linguistic\\nmanuscripts to a group of Americans often (but unofficially) referred to as\\nthe Elfconners, apparently because of their prominence on the “cons” or\\nconventions of ELF, the “Elvish Linguistic Fellowship”.\\nHowever, the most outspoken member of the group seems to have con-\\nvinced himself beyond refutation that the term “Elfconners” was always\\nmeant to be derogatory, associating it with “conning” or deception. As\\npointed out by TolkLang moderator Julian Bradfield, it may be that this\\nmember of the group is inventing insults against himself, but currently it\\nis politically correct to refer to this group simply as the Editorial Team,\\n19\\n\\n\\nabbreviated ET. Whatever we call them, the group consists of Christopher\\nGilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick Wynne and Arden R. Smith (in recent\\nyears, Bill Welden has also joined in). Before they started to receive Tolkien\\nmanuscripts, these people quite regularly published the Tolkien-linguistic\\njournals Vinyar Tengwar (edited by Hostetter) and Parma Eldalamberon\\n(edited by Gilson), generally maintaining a high standard. This, we must\\nassume, was the reason why Christopher Tolkien wanted them to publish\\nhis father’s linguistic manuscripts in the first place.\\nThe very strange and most unfortunate fact is that after they started re-\\nceiving Tolkien manuscripts for publication, the group’s rate of publication\\ndropped disastrously. They began to receive manuscript copies in 1991; a\\ndecade later they have managed to get a few hundred pages of new material\\ninto print (most of it wordlist material pertaining to the very earliest stages\\nof Tolkien’s work, far removed from the LotR scenario). Some of us are not\\nimpressed. What little material has appeared has been nicely presented, but\\nwith the present rate of publication, the completion of the project must be\\nvery far offindeed. In 1996, Christopher Gilson stated that “next year”,\\nhis group planned to publish “fairly comprehensive” grammars for the two\\nmain languages of Tolkien’s mythos. In early 2002 they finally published\\nsome material relating to certain stages of “Gnomish”, an early conceptual\\nancestor of the language Tolkien later called Sindarin; we are still waiting\\nfor a really substantial amount of material about Quenya. Most other dead-\\nlines that the members of Gilson’s group have set for themselves has proved\\nequally worthless, and since about 1998 they have largely refrained from\\nstating any deadlines at all. Still, we must hope that in ten (or twenty, or\\nthirty. . . ) years, we will know more – but if the Editorial Team is able to\\never commence efficient, regular publication of Tolkien’s material, they have\\nyet to demonstrate this ability.\\nWe must work, then, from sources already available – sources that often\\ntouch on the languages more or less incidentally. The linguistic aspect of\\nTolkien’s authorship luckily permeates his works to such an extent that if\\nyou bring together all the scattered pieces of information and analyze them\\nthoroughly, you will be able to figure out much about his languages even\\nwithout access to his explicit grammars. Unfortunately this method of study\\nwill leave many gaps in our knowledge, gaps most irritating to people who\\ntry to actually use these languages. In other cases, the material is so scarce\\nthat we can formulate not just one but all too many theories about what\\nthe underlying grammatical rules look like, and we don’t have any further\\nexamples that would allow us to identify the correct theory. Nonetheless,\\nwe do know a great deal about Quenya, though some of our knowledge is\\nmore tentative than we would like. A survey of the sources is in place here;\\nat least I should explain the abbreviations used in this work.\\nThe primary narrative works, The Lord of the Rings (LotR, 1954–55)\\nand The Silmarillion (Silm, 1977) need no further introduction. (Of course,\\n20\\n\\n\\nthere is also The Hobbit, but this book contains little linguistic information,\\nand hardly anything at all about Quenya.) Most of the Elvish names of\\npeople and places found in LotR (such as Aragorn, Glorfindel, Galadriel,\\nMinas Tirith) are Sindarin, but there are substantial samples of Quenya as\\nwell. In LotR, we find one of the longest Quenya texts known, the poem\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne near the end of chapter VIII (“Farewell to L´\\norien”) in Book Two\\nin the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring. Also known as Galadriel’s\\nLament, this is the poem commencing with the words Ai! lauri¨\\ne lantar\\nlassi s´\\nurinen. . .\\nVarious shorter samples of Quenya are also sprinkled throughout LotR,\\nsuch as Frodo speaking in tongues in Shelob’s lair (“Aiya E¨\\narendil Elenion\\nAncalima! he cried, and he knew not what he had spoken”), the praise that\\nthe Ringbearers received on the Field of Cormallen (part Sindarin, part\\nQuenya), Elendil’s Declaration as repeated by Aragorn at his coronation,\\nand Treebeard’s greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel. The Quenya parts of\\nthe Cormallen Praise (as I shall refer to it), as found in volume 3, Book\\nSix, chapter IV (“The Field of Cormallen”), go like this: A laita te, laita\\nte! Andave laituvalmet! . . . Cormacolindor, a laita t´\\narienna! (Cf.\\nSauron Defeated p. 47.) This is translated in The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien,\\np. 308: “Bless them, bless them, long we will praise them.” – “The Ring\\nbearers, bless (or praise) them to the height.”\\nIn the next chapter (V) we have Elendil’s Declaration, repeated by Ara-\\ngorn at his coronation: Et E¨\\narello Endorenna ut´\\nulien. Sinome maru-\\nvan ar hildinyar tenn’ Ambar-metta. This is translated in the text as\\n“out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide,\\nand my heirs, unto the ending of the world.” Treebeard’s Greeting in the\\nchapter after that (VI) goes a vanimar, vanim´\\nalion nostari, translated\\nboth in Letters p. 308 (“o beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children”) and\\nSauron Defeated p. 73 (“fair ones begetters of fair ones”; this rendering is\\nthe more literal).\\nQuenya material (though mostly isolated words only) also occur in the\\nAppendices to LotR, in particular Appendix E.\\nIn the Silmarillion, we also have a few short Quenya sentences. In chapter\\n20 there are some battle-cries: ´\\nUt´\\nulie’n aur¨\\ne! Aiya Eldali¨\\ne ar Atanat´\\nari,\\nut´\\nulie’n aur¨\\ne! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers\\nof Men, the day has come!” – Auta i l´\\nom¨\\ne! “The night is passing!” – Aur¨\\ne\\nentuluva! “Day shall come again!” Near the end of chapter 21 there is the\\ncry a T´\\nurin Turambar turun ambartanen, “o T´\\nurin master of doom by\\ndoom mastered” – but Unfinished Tales p. 138 indicates that turun should\\nrather read tur´\\nun’ (evidently shortened from a longer form tur´\\nuna, the\\nfinal -a dropping out because the next word also begins in a-). The Silmar-\\nillion Appendix, “Elements in Quenya and Sindarin names”, also mentions\\nmany words belonging to these two languages.\\nIn the case of other sources, a more summary survey will suffice, since\\n21\\n\\n\\nthese books and journals (unlike LotR and Silm!) have not appeared in too\\nmany editions and translations. Hence I can simply refer to the relevant\\nbook and page when quoting from them, and that reference will hopefully\\nbe precise enough. We will list them by the abbreviations used hereinafter:\\n• RGEO: The Road Goes Ever On (our page references are to the Second\\nEdition of 1978, ISBN 0-04-784011-0). The first edition was published\\nin 1968; this is thus one of our very few sources outside LotR that were\\npublished in Tolkien’s own lifetime, which lends it extra authority (for\\nwhen something had been published, he would normally consider it\\na fixed and unchangeable part of the mythos). While RGEO is ba-\\nsically a song cycle (Tolkien’s poems with music by Donald Swann),\\nTolkien also included quite extensive notes on two Elvish poems occur-\\nring in LotR, Nam´\\nari¨\\ne and the Sindarin hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel\\n(RGEO:66–76). Besides writing them out in F¨\\neanorian script, he also\\nprovided an interlinear translation of both; this allows us to know\\nwith certainty which word means what. He also rearranged Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\ninto a clearer “prose” version, as an alternative to the poetic version\\nin LotR – providing us with a unique opportunity to compare poetic\\nstyle and prose style in Quenya. Hence I will sometimes refer to the\\n“prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne ”.\\n• UT: Unfinished Tales (1980, ISBN 0-04-823208-4). A posthumously\\npublished collection of material supplementing and sometimes fleshing\\nout the stories of LotR and Silm, though as the title implies, not all of\\nit was ever finished by the author. Of particular interest to students\\nof Elvish is Cirion’s Oath found in UT:305: Vanda sina termaruva\\nElenna·n´\\nor¨\\neo alcar enyalien ar Elendil vorondo voronw¨\\ne. Nai\\ntiruvantes i h´\\narar mahalmassen mi N´\\numen ar i Eru i or ily¨\\ne\\nmahalmar e¨\\na tennoio. The (not entirely literal) translation given\\nin the text goes: “This oath shall stand in memory of the glory of the\\nLand of the Star, and of the faith of Elendil the Faithful, in the keeping\\nof those who sit upon the thrones of the West and of the One who is\\nabove all thrones for ever.” Tolkien added some interesting notes about\\nthe Quenya words (UT:317), allowing us to analyze the Oath itself.\\n• Letters: The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien (1981, ISBN 0-04-440664-9).\\nEdited by Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien’s biographer, this collection\\nof letters also contains some linguistic information. Readers of LotR\\noccasionally wrote to Tolkien asking questions touching on the samples\\nof Quenya and Sindarin found in that work, and this being Tolkien’s\\nfavourite subject, he often wrote fairly detailed answers. Among other\\nthings, Letters provides translations of some Elvish samples that are\\nnot translated in the LotR itself, e.g. Aiya E¨\\narendil Elenion Ancal-\\nima = “hail E¨\\narendil brightest of stars” (Letters:385; we have already\\nquoted the translation of the Cormallen Praise in Letters:308).\\n22\\n\\n\\n• MC: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983, ISBN\\n0-04-809019-0). This book contains Tolkien’s essay A Secret Vice (MC:\\n198–223), in which he sets out his thoughts and theories about lan-\\nguage-construction in general. He also included some “Elvish” poems,\\nmost notably Oilima Markirya or “The Last Ark”, which is listed in\\nseveral versions. The version of Markirya that is most interesting to\\npeople studying the kind of Quenya exemplified in LotR, is found in\\nMC:221–223 (including some valuable annotation).\\nHaving edited and published Silm, UT and MC from the papers his fa-\\nther had left behind, Christopher Tolkien commenced what would become\\na highly ambitious project. In the period 1983–1996, he published a series\\nof no less than twelve volumes, demonstrating how his father had developed\\nhis world-famous narratives over many years. The History of Middle-earth\\nseries (HoME) presents the many “layers” of manuscripts, chronicling how\\nthe Silmarillion and LotR as we know them gradually came into being, and\\nalso presenting other materials relating to Tolkien’s vast mythology. For con-\\nvenience I will list all the volumes of HoME by their standard abbreviations,\\nthough I will not actually quote from each and every one of them:\\n• LT1: The Book of Lost Tales 1 (1983, ISBN 0-04-823231-5)\\n• LT2: The Book of Lost Tales 2 (1984, ISBN 0-04-823338-2)\\n• LB: The Lays of Beleriand (1985, ISBN 0-04-440018-7)\\n• SM: The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986, ISBN 0-04-440150-7)\\n• LR: The Lost Road (1987, ISBN 0-04-440398-4)\\n• RS: The Return of the Shadow (1988, ISBN 0-04-440669-X)\\n• TI: The Treason of Isengard (1989, ISBN 0-261-10220-6)\\n• WR: The War of the Ring (1990, ISBN 0-261-10223-0)\\n• SD: Sauron Defeated (1992, ISBN 0-261-10305-9)\\n• MR: Morgoth’s Ring (1993, ISBN 0-261-10300-8)\\n• WJ: The War of the Jewels (1994, ISBN 0-395-71041-3)\\n• PM: The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996, ISBN 0-216-10337-7)\\nEach of these books provide clues to the structure of Tolkien’s languages,\\nthough often in a somewhat incidental fashion (Christopher Tolkien included\\nrelatively little of his father’s narrowly linguistic writings, which being highly\\ntechnical would be of limited interest to the general readership). For people\\ninterested in Tolkien’s languages as they appear in LotR, the most important\\nvolumes of HoME are LR, WJ and SD, which any serious student of these\\nlanguages should have in his or her private library. The only long Quenya\\ntext occurring in HoME, F´\\nıriel’s Song, is found in LR:72 – but more im-\\nportantly, these books reproduce three important source documents that I\\n23\\n\\n\\nwill often refer to simply by name (as do most students of Tolkien’s linguis-\\ntic creation). Therefore, they will be briefly described here. We are talking\\nabout the Etymologies and the essays Quendi and Eldar and Lowdham’s\\nReport.\\n1. The Etymologies (called “Etym” for short) is found in LR:347–400. (I\\nshould mention that there are different editions of LR around, so there\\nis unfortunately more than one pagination; my page references are to\\nthe edition normally used by Tolkien-linguists.) To casual readers un-\\ndoubtedly the most baffling document in the entire HoME series, this\\nis our most important single source of “Elvish” vocabulary. However,\\nit is not a regular dictionary. It is an alphabetical list of about six\\nhundred primitive “bases” or roots, the various entries listing actual\\nwords derived from these roots as they appeared in later Elvish lan-\\nguages (sometimes the actual ulterior “primitive Elvish” form is also\\nmentioned, closely reflecting the “base” itself). For instance, under\\nthe entry ´\\nalak (LR:348), itself defined “rushing”, we find this series:\\n“*alk-w¯\\na swan: Q alqa; T alpa; ON alpha; N alf.” Tolkien’s idea is\\nthat the Primitive Elvish word alk-w¯\\na developed into Q[uenya] alqa,\\nT[elerin] alpa, O[ld] N[oldorin] alpha and N[oldorin] alf. The Ety-\\nmologies was written in the second half of the thirties, and the spelling\\nand general concepts differ somewhat from the scenario of the LotR\\nas published in the early fifties. (If we were to “update” the sample\\njust quoted, we must read Sindarin for Noldorin, and Quenya alqa\\nand “Noldorin”/Sindarin alf should rather be spelt alqua and alph,\\nrespectively – both words, so spelt, are actually attested in later writ-\\nings.) Despite the fact that the Etymologies in some respects reflects a\\nsomewhat “outdated” linguistic scenario, Tolkien undertaking impor-\\ntant revisions after he wrote Etym, it is still a gold-mine of information\\n(and as we have just demonstrated, it can to some extent readily be\\n“updated” in accordance with Tolkien’s later ideas). Of all the lan-\\nguages Tolkien mentioned in Etym, Quenya is in any case among the\\ntongues that were not very significantly affected by his subsequent re-\\nvisions. (In the case of “Noldorin”, on the other hand, he would tinker\\nwith its phonology and imaginary evolution, and drastically alter its\\ninternal history, to produce Sindarin as we know it from LotR.)\\n2. Quendi and Eldar (sometimes “Q&E” for short) is found in WJ:360–\\n417. This is ostensibly an essay on the “Origin and Meanings of the\\nElvish words referring to Elves and their varieties. With Appendices\\non their names for other Incarnates”. This ground is certainly cov-\\nered, but luckily (from our point of view!) there are many digressions,\\nappendices and notes that provide much extra information about the\\nElvish languages as Tolkien had come to see them in the post-LotR pe-\\nriod: This essay dates from ca. 1959–60. Christopher Tolkien felt that\\n24\\n\\n\\none substantial section departed too radically from the stated subject\\nof the essay, and edited it out (see WJ:359, 396). Luckily, the omitted\\nsection was later published in the journal Vinyar Tengwar, issue #39.\\nWhen I quote from Quendi and Eldar, I will therefore sometimes refer\\nto WJ and sometimes to Vinyar Tengwar (VT). “Digressive” though\\nthe section that appeared in VT may be, it is of course of immense\\ninterest to people studying Tolkien’s languages.\\n3. Lowdham’s Report, or in full Lowdham’s Report on the Adunaic Lan-\\nguage, can be found in SD:413–440. As the title implies, this report is\\nmainly concerned with another language than Quenya: Adunaic (in the\\nLotR appendices spelt Adˆ\\nunaic), the vernacular of N´\\numenor. However,\\na little information about Quenya, which in this report is referred to\\nas “Avallonian”, can also be gleaned – the two languages sometimes\\nbeing compared or contrasted. (“Lowdham” is just a fictional char-\\nacter of Tolkien’s. Tolkien sometimes presented even quite technical\\ninformation about his languages as if he were merely quoting or refer-\\nring the observations and viewpoints of various people residing within\\nhis mythos. Among his favourite fictional “sources” we find F¨\\neanor,\\nthe greatest but also the proudest of the Noldor, R´\\numil the sage of\\nTirion, and Pengolodh the loremaster of Gondolin: Many of Tolkien’s\\ncharacters seem to share their author’s interest in mysterious scripts\\nand strange languages.)\\nThe sources so far mentioned are the ones published or edited by Tolkien\\nhimself or by his son – except for Letters, that was edited by Humphrey Car-\\npenter. In addition there are a few works edited and published by others.\\nSome very brief scraps of information can be extracted from J.R.R.Tolkien\\n– Artist and Illustrator, edited by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull.\\nThe results of the Editorial Team, scarce but not unimportant, must also be\\nmentioned. The journal Vinyar Tengwar (VT), edited by Carl F. Hostetter,\\nhad its “golden age” in the period 1988–93, when the editor managed to up-\\nhold continuous bimonthly publication. When Hostetter and the other ET\\nmembers in the early nineties started to receive original Tolkien material of\\nthe utmost interest to be edited and published, the rate of publication mys-\\nteriously dropped to about one issue a year, and this situation has continued\\nthroughout the latter half of the nineties and into the new decade. Not all of\\nthe few issues that have been published include any new Tolkien material,\\nand those that do are usually devoted to very short scraps (that are moreover\\nsamples of very early material that is often clearly not LotR-compatible).\\nA few issues do stand out, however, and one of them has already been\\nmentioned: In issue #39, July 1998, Hostetter published the part of Quendi\\nand Eldar that Christopher Tolkien left out of WJ, as well as the companion\\nessay ´\\nOsanwe-kenta (the latter is not strictly linguistic by its subject, but\\nTolkien nonetheless mentioned quite a few Quenya words). Some useful ma-\\n25\\n\\n\\nterial also appeared in issue #41, July 2000, filling certain annoying gaps in\\nour vocabulary (in particular regarding the verb “can”) and providing inter-\\nesting new information about the formation of the present tense. In January\\n2002, various Quenya translations of the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria\\nwere published in issue #43; Tolkien the Catholic produced more than one\\nElvish version of these texts.\\nThe other main results of the ET’s editing efforts for the most part con-\\nsist of wordlist material: the Gnomish Lexicon (GL) and the Qenya Lexicon\\n(QL, a.k.a. the Qenyaqetsa, abbreviated QQ). The GL also mentions a few\\n“Qenya” words (just like the QL mentions some Gnomish words; the lan-\\nguages are not infrequently compared or contrasted). Regarding “Qenya” as\\nopposed to (LotR-style) Quenya, see below. These Lexicons were published\\nin issues #11 and #12 of the journal Parma Eldalamberon, 1995 and 1998,\\nrespectively. They were originally written during World War I, when the ear-\\nliest form of Tolkien’s mythos began to take shape: The QL manuscript is\\nusually dated to 1915, the GL to 1917. Substantial excerpts were published\\nalready in 1983–84, Christopher Tolkien drawing heavily on the Lexicons in\\nthe appendices to LT1 and LT2. Prefixed to each Lexicon, Parma also pub-\\nlished some related material: a never finished Gnomish Grammar in #11,\\nand some phonological descriptions for “Qenya” in #12.\\nOf the actual Quenya samples so far mentioned, I shall often refer to\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, Treebeard’s Greeting, Elendil’s Declaration, Cirion’s Oath, F´\\nıriel’s\\nSong and Markirya simply by title or “name”, not always providing a ref-\\nerence to book and page. From the discussion above the student will know\\nwhere they are found (if you feel the urge to check the accuracy of my\\nquotes!) In most other cases I will provide a reference when I quote some-\\nthing, since it will usually be found in one of the sources that do allow a\\nprecise reference to book and page (since there is not a spate of different\\neditions with differing pagination around). When I refer to entries in the\\nEtymologies (in LR), I simply quote the entry-head, which can easily be\\nlocated in all the various editions (irrespective of differing pagination).\\n0.4\\nA word of warning regarding\\nparts of the corpus\\nScattered in the sources listed above we have a total Quenya “corpus” that\\nwould amount to very roughly 150 pages if it were all brought together\\n(though most of this would unfortunately just be unconnected wordlist ma-\\nterial; the samples of actual text are much rarer and could probably be\\nfitted into no more than two or three pages). But here a word of warning is\\nin place: If you want to learn the kind of Quenya that you have encountered\\nin LotR, not all of the samples found in this corpus are entirely “reliable”\\n– even though they are certainly genuine Tolkien. To avoid what is poten-\\n26\\n\\n\\ntially a quagmire of confusion, the student should immediately internalize\\none fact: The kind of Quenya exemplified in LotR is not the only kind of\\nQuenya there is. If you start analyzing all the samples of Quenya that we\\nnow have, you will soon realize that they do not form a homogenous mass.\\nMost samples certainly “look” much the same, never straying too far from\\nthe Finnish-inspired word-shapes, but much of the early material (never\\npublished during Tolkien’s lifetime) can be shown to employ or presuppose\\nwords, inflectional endings and grammatical rules that differ from the sys-\\ntem of LotR-style Quenya. By all means, no sample is entirely different from\\nLotR-style Quenya – but in material predating the mid-thirties, neither is\\nthere any sample that is entirely identical.\\nTolkien was, so to speak, all too good when it came to devising languages.\\nFixing them in one clear-cut and unchangeable form was an almost impos-\\nsible task form him. There were ever new ideas that he wanted to work into\\ntheir structure, even if these ideas contradicted and obsoleted things that\\nhe had written earlier. We can be sure that his fictional character Lowdham\\nspeaks for Tolkien himself (SD:240):\\nIn making up a language you are free: too free [. . .] When you’re\\njust inventing, the pleasure or fun is in the moment of invention;\\nbut as you are the master your whim is law, and you may want\\nto have the fun all over again, fresh. You’re liable to be for ever\\nniggling, altering, refining, wavering, according to your linguistic\\nmood and to your changes of taste.\\nWith the posthumous publication of many of Tolkien’s writings, we got\\nevidence for plenty of ‘niggling, altering, refining, and wavering’ on his part.\\nIt is now evident that Quenya appeared in many incarnations, and while they\\nall share the same general “style” and would probably look the same to a\\nfresh student, they actually differ in many details of grammar, vocabulary\\nand even phonology. A powerful demonstration of the extent of Tolkien’s\\nrevisions is provided by the Markirya poem, which exists in one version\\ndating from the early thirties (MC:213) and another that is about forty\\nyears younger, dating from the last decade of Tolkien’s life (MC:221–223).\\nBoth versions have (almost) the same meaning, but the late version is in\\nthe full sense of the word a translation of the former, not a mere rewriting:\\nOnly a few words and inflectional endings are common to both texts.\\nSince Tolkien in pre-LotR sources typically used the spelling Qenya in-\\nstead of Quenya (though the intended pronunciation is the same), I and\\nothers often use “Qenya” (preferably in quotes) as a name of early variants\\nof Quenya that are more or less different from the form that appears in LotR\\nand later sources. The first version of Markirya I would thus call a “Qenya”\\npoem; only the later version is Quenya as we know it from LotR. Some\\nother poems reproduced in MC (Nieninqe and Earendel, pp. 215–216), as\\n27\\n\\n\\nwell as an alternative “Last Ark” poem of another meaning than the clas-\\nsical Markirya (MC:221), are also decidedly “Qenya” rather than Quenya.\\nThese texts may certainly be enjoyed for their own qualities, but as source-\\nmaterial for students trying to figure out the structure of LotR-style Quenya\\nthey exclude themselves.\\nAs we would expect, the language generally becomes more and more sim-\\nilar to its “final form” the closer we get to Tolkien’s writing LotR. For\\ninstance, the relatively late text F´\\nıriel’s Song is almost, but not quite LotR-\\nstyle Quenya. However, one should not have a simplistic view of these things,\\nthinking that Tolkien started out in 1915 with a language that was wildly\\ndifferent from the Quenya of LotR and that it “gradually” evolved into LotR-\\nstyle Quenya in a nice and tidy evolutionary line. The scarcity of published\\nmaterial does not allow us to follow the process in any detail, but it is al-\\nready evident that Tolkien kept changing his mind back and forth, not only\\ndoing revisions but frequently also undoing them later: Indeed some of the\\nvery earliest material, written during WWI, gives an overall impression of\\nbeing more similar to LotR-style Quenya than certain “Qenya” poems of the\\nearly thirties. It may seem that Tolkien, rather than boldly “progressing”\\ntoward LotR-style Quenya, made a series of detours on the way, sometimes\\nventuring offinto radical revisions that eventually proved dissatisfying and\\nwere rejected. Yet in other cases certain revisions proved durable, Tolkien\\nevidently perceiving them as genuine improvements – but the whole process\\nwas wholly unpredictable, for in a game like this there could be no imagin-\\nable objective criteria for what constitutes an improvement: As Tolkien had\\nLowdham saying, “Your whim is law.”\\nSomething really close to LotR-style Quenya seems to have made its first\\nappearance in the latter half of the thirties, with the writing of the Etymolo-\\ngies. But it is not to be thought that everything was completely settled even\\nafter LotR had been written and published in the first half of the fifties;\\nTolkien indeed used the opportunity to tinker just a little with even the\\npublished samples of Quenya in this work when a revised edition appeared\\nin 1966 (and even more niggling was certainly going on behind the scenes).\\nSeven years later he died, and there is little reason to believe that he ever\\nmanaged (or even seriously tried) to fix Quenya and his other languages in\\none definite cut-in-stone form – sorting out every detail. Members of the Ed-\\nitorial Team have indicated that Tolkien’s later manuscripts bear witness to\\none last phase of intense experimentation, but apparently, no final or definite\\nversion of the language ever emerged. This was not necessarily a “failure”,\\nlike a composer never managing to finish his great opera: “Unceasing change,\\noften frustrating to those who study these languages, was inherent in this\\nart,” Christopher Tolkien observes (SD:440). In another place, he remarks\\nregarding his father’s work on the languages that “it seems indeed that they\\nvery attempt to write a definitive account produced immediate dissatisfac-\\ntion and the desire for new constructions: so the most beautiful manuscripts\\n28\\n\\n\\nwere soon treated with disdain” (LR:342). Insofar as “delight lay in the cre-\\nation itself”, Tolkien could not write a definitive account, or his fun would\\nbe past and over.\\nNonetheless, if compared to Tolkien’s intense experimentation in the twen-\\nty years from 1915, Quenya does seem to have entered a somewhat “stable”\\nphase in the second half of the thirties. Over the next decade Tolkien wrote\\nLotR, which included some samples of Quenya as it now appeared (most\\nnotably Nam´\\nari¨\\ne). With the eventual publication of LotR in 1954–55, these\\nforms became a “fixed” part of the mythos (despite Tolkien’s slight tinker-\\ning in the 1966 revision). Having published LotR, Tolkien obviously could\\nnot revise his languages anything as freely as he could before. Reportedly,\\nthere are hints in his post-LotR manuscripts that he indeed felt somewhat\\nconstrained. But this relative stability would later be good news for people\\nwanting to learn or study “the” Quenya, Tolkien’s more-or-less final decision\\non how this language had “really been” back in the remote ages chronicled\\nby his narratives.\\nSome (including me) have referred to this as mature Quenya. Others\\nfeel this term to be unduly disparaging to the earlier forms of Quenya or\\n“Qenya”, since the inevitable implication is that they were somehow imma-\\nture and inferior. Artistically, subjectively speaking I do think the “final”\\nform of Quenya is more attractive than Tolkien’s earlier experiments, and\\nthere can be no doubt that this is the kind of Quenya that most students\\nwill primarily want to learn – not the earlier variants that Tolkien himself\\nrejected. For that matter, this is certainly the version of Quenya that Tolkien\\nhimself would have wanted us to study; if it had been up to him, we would\\nnever have seen any other versions! He took the utmost care to ensure that\\nhis mythos would remain free from internal contradictions, and he would\\nnever have recognized contradictory variants of Quenya as being somehow\\nequally valid. Indeed it should be noted that elderly Tolkien referred to his\\nearliest form of “Qenya” as “very primitive” (PM:379). Hence we have no\\nchoice but to treat the early material with considerable caution, and there is\\nlittle reason to believe that Tolkien would have been greatly insulted if oth-\\ners were to say (or indeed to agree!) that his early “Qenya” variants are not\\nquite as attractive as his later, carefully refined version(s) of the language.\\nEven so, in this course I have opted to speak, not of “mature Quenya”, but\\nrather of LotR-style Quenya. The latter term must be wholly uncontrover-\\nsial. The language that this course teaches is of course LotR-style Quenya,\\nas well as it can be approximated at the present stage – but there is no\\npoint in pretending that the various earlier “Qenya” variants never existed.\\nI will indeed refer to some of their features, to give the student some idea\\nof what kind of variations occur in the material. Apart from such academic\\nconsiderations, the early material is something we may “fall back on” where\\nmaterial closer to (and ideally postdating) the writing of LotR is insufficient\\nfor our needs. In particular, we may cannibalize the “Qenya” material for\\n29\\n\\n\\nuseful vocabulary items, in each case making sure that the words we carry\\nover into LotR-style Quenya fit this tongue (i.e., they must not clash with\\nlater words of different meaning, and the shape of the words themselves\\nmust fit the phonology and derivational system of the language as Tolkien\\neventually came to envision it). After all, all the incarnations of Q(u)enya in\\nthe entire period from the language was invented in 1915 and until Tolkien’s\\ndeath in 1973 may well be seen as endless variations on somewhat the same\\nthemes. Therefore it is in a way only fitting that in our attempts to develop\\na useable form of Quenya, we take everything into consideration. But as for\\nthe overall grammatical and phonological structure, we must give priority\\nto Tolkien’s vision as it manifested in LotR and writings postdating this\\nwork: If we have any respect whatsoever for Tolkien’s intentions, the form\\nof Quenya that we attempt to crystallize must be LotR-compatible.\\nLittle can be easy or clear-cut in this strange corner of Language. Re-\\nconstructing the structure of Quenya is like trying to piece together a huge\\npuzzle of far-sundered pieces. Many pieces are simply missing, vast amounts\\nof material being inaccessible to scholars (and to make matters worse, the\\nones who are supposed to be publishing it often seem far more concerned\\nabout concealing it). Moreover, because of Tolkien’s frequent revisions you\\ncan’t even be sure that all the pieces you do find belong to the same puzzle\\nat all. Some clearly do not fit and can be ignored; many other fall in the\\ncategory of “doubtful”, and you don’t really know what to do with them.\\nIn this course I will mention some of the variations and present my hope-\\nfully qualified guesses as to what we should accept as authoritative and\\nwhat is probably best ignored. Indeed, due to the general lack of explicit\\ngrammatical information from Tolkien, I will not always present Quenya\\ngrammar with confidence and authority; rather you will often see me review\\nwhatever evidence is available and try to make out some rules that we can\\nfollow when putting together our own Quenya compositions. But in a way\\nthis is precisely what I should like to do anyway, so as to acquaint students\\nwith the kind of deductions that the field of Tolkienian linguistics is all\\nabout at this stage. Concerning some material I published earlier, I’ve had\\n(gentle) complaints to the effect that I merely listed my conclusions without\\nshowing what they were based on, somewhat dogmatically asserting that\\n“this is how it is, take my word for it”. I think this style was unavoidable\\nin a brief presentation, but here I will in many cases avail myself of the\\nopportunity to go back to the primary sources and really demonstrate what\\nkind of deductions underlie everything.\\nPrecisely because Tolkien’s Quenya is a somewhat fluid entity, fixed in\\ngeneral outline but with endless contradictory variations when it comes to\\nthe details, we can to some extent feel free to crystallize our own standard\\n(not making it more difficult than we have to). As long as we piece together\\na usable system from elements Tolkien provided, even though there is no\\nway we can accept all the known variations within a single, unified system,\\n30\\n\\n\\nthe resulting language will be “real Quenya” – to the extent such a thing\\ncan exist.\\n0.5\\nSpelling conventions\\nOver the decades, Tolkien’s spelling of Quenya varied in certain details. As\\ndiscussed above, just about every aspect of Quenya was somewhat “vari-\\nable”, but unlike the unstable grammar, the spelling variations are not\\nvery consequential: In theory our alphabet is not the writing native to\\nQuenya anyway. Tolkien was merely hesitating on how to best render into\\nour own letters the supposed “original Elvish script” (the Tengwar, also\\ncalled F¨\\neanorian writing – a singularly beautiful script that Tolkien de-\\nvised with the same loving care as the languages themselves). In this course,\\na consistent spelling has been imposed on the material, mostly based on\\nthe spelling used in LotR (I say “mostly based” because the spelling used\\nin LotR is not entirely consistent either, but it is close!) Concerning the\\nspelling used in LotR, Tolkien wrote: “The archaic language of lore [namely\\nQuenya] is meant to be a kind of ‘Elven-latin’, and by transcribing it into\\na spelling closely resembling that of Latin (except that y is only used as a\\nconsonant, as y in E[nglish] Yes) the similarity to Latin has been increased\\nocularly” (Letters:176).\\nI will outline the spelling conventions used in this work. What follows\\nis not something a fresh student needs to carefully internalize. People who\\nwant to study Quenya should nonetheless be aware of the major spelling\\ninconsistencies in the primary sources. Guided primarily by the spelling\\nTolkien used in LotR, I have regularized the following features:\\nVowel length indicated by an accent (and no other symbol)\\nIn his spelling of Quenya, Tolkien always used some kind of symbol to mark\\nvowels that are to be pronounced long (if you don’t know what a vowel is,\\nsee the first regular lesson). But precisely what symbol he used is some-\\nwhat variable. Sometimes he uses a macron, a short horizontal line above\\nthe vowel; this is especially common in the Etymologies and certain other\\n“philological” writings. Sometimes a circumflex is used, e.g. ˆ\\no in the word\\nfˆ\\nolima “secretive” from the earliest “Qenya” dictionary (LT2:340/QL:38).\\nBut in LotR and most sources postdating it, Tolkien typically uses a nor-\\nmal accent to indicate vowel-length, and so will we here: long ´\\na, ´\\ne, ´\\nı, ´\\no, ´\\nu\\nas opposed to short a, e, i, o, u. So if I ever needed the word fˆ\\nolima, I\\nwould spell it f´\\nolima instead. When quoting Primitive Elvish forms, I will\\nhowever use circumflexes to mark long vowels. In the sources, macrons are\\nnormally used instead: We have already quoted alk-w¯\\na “swan” from the en-\\ntry ´\\nalak in Etym., the macron above the final a indicating that the vowel\\nis long. However, writing alk-wˆ\\na (etc.) instead is safer in a document that\\n31\\n\\n\\nis to be distributed over the Internet; vowels with macrons may be replaced\\nby various weird symbols if the software of the recipients is not overly fond\\nof linguistics.\\nC rather than K\\nIf you bothered looking up the reference I gave for the sentence Anar caluva\\ntielyanna above (Unfinished Tales p. 22), you may have noticed that in\\nthe source, the middle word is actually spelt kaluva instead. In Quenya,\\nk and c represent the same sound (pronounced K); Tolkien just couldn’t\\nmake up his mind which letter to use. In pre-LotR sources, such as the\\nEtymologies and the early Qenya Lexicon, he mostly used k (though in a few\\ncases, c pops up in these sources as well). Since the original inspiration for\\nQuenya was Finnish, and Finnish orthography employs the letter k, it is not\\nsurprising that Tolkien originally preferred that grapheme. But as is evident\\nfrom Letters:176 quoted above, he later decided that in LotR, he would\\nspell Quenya as similar to Latin as possible. Guided by Latin orthography,\\nhe started to use the letter c instead of k: “I decided to be ‘consistent’\\nand spell Elvish names and words throughout without k” (Letters:247). For\\ninstance, the word for “metal” had been spelt tinko in the Etymologies\\n(entry tinkˆ\\no), but in LotR Appendix E, the same word with the same\\nmeaning appears as tinco instead. Hence we regularize k to c throughout.\\nIt is a curious fact that Tolkien, even in sources that postdate LotR, in\\nmany (indeed most) cases reverted to the use of k. His writings are quite\\ninconsistent on this point. A word for “Dwarf” is given as Kasar with a k in\\nWJ:388; yet on the next page Tolkien switches to c when quoting the Quenya\\nname of Moria: Casarrondo (“Dwarf-cave” or “Dwarf-hall”). A word for\\n“house” appears as k¨\\noa in WJ:369 (k¨\\noarya “his house”), but in MR:250\\nthe same word is spelt with a c in the compound c¨\\noacalina “light of the\\nhouse” (an Elvish expression for the soul inside the body). In some late notes\\npublished in VT41:10, Tolkien mentioned a word ruskuite “foxy” using the\\nletter k rather than c, but immediately afterwards he wrote down a word\\ncalarus “polished copper” using c rather than k. From the posthumously\\npublished Silmarillion we remember names like Melkor and Tulkas, but in\\nMR:362, 382 the spellings used are Melcor and Tulcas. The Quenya word\\nfor “horse” is spelt rocco in Letters:282, but in Letters:382 we have rokko\\ninstead. Imitating Tolkien’s persistent indecision in this matter would be\\nquite pointless or even confusing. For instance, the Quenya word for “bed”\\nis given in LR:363 as kaima, but in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR, the obviously related\\nword “lies” is spelt caita. Maintaining the inconsistent spelling out of some\\nkind of misunderstood reverence would obscure the relationship between the\\nwords; to go with caita, the word for “bed” clearly ought to be spelt caima.\\nI should mention that there are those who would regularize the material to\\nk instead, discarding the spellings used in LotR in favour of the orthography\\n32\\n\\n\\nTolkien uses in many other sources. This is only a matter of taste, and in\\nthe “C or K” question all writers can essentially make their own choice, but\\nI will normally adhere to the LotR spelling. After all, the LotR is a rather\\ncentral work regarding the setting Tolkien placed his languages in.\\nNOTE: But in the case of the title of the Markirya poem, I tend to retain k simply\\nbecause the word markirya or “ark” only occurs in the early, “Qenya” version of the\\npoem. It is not found in the later Quenya version, though I don’t know what we should\\notherwise call it. So in this case I will leave the k in to mark this as an early “Qenya” word,\\nthough a form marcirya would surely work in LotR-style Quenya as well – and this is\\nthe spelling I would use if I ever needed the word “ark” in an actual Quenya text. I guess\\nI would normally also retain k in some names that we are very familiar with from the\\nSilmarillion: Melkor, Tulkas, Kement´\\nari and a few others. But the Silmarillion also\\nemploys forms like Calaquendi (rather than Kalaquendi), so there is little consistency\\nin this work.\\nQU rather than just Q\\nIn most pre-LotR sources, the combination “cw” is represented by the one\\nletter q. But in a few early sources (published only posthumously), and more\\nimportantly in LotR, Tolkien used qu rather than just q: Again the inspi-\\nration was Latin spelling. This even affected the name of the language; as\\nmentioned above, Tolkien’s original spelling was Qenya. To quote another\\nexample, the word for “feather”, spelt qesse in a pre-LotR source (Etym.,\\nentry kwes), became quesse in LotR (Appendix E). This is a change that\\nis consistently carried through in Tolkien’s post-LotR writings as far as we\\nknow them, so we need not hesitate to impose this spelling on the earlier\\nmaterial as well. (Tolkien’s own son does so in LT1:170; when discussing the\\nfirst element of the name Qerkaringa occurring in early material, Christo-\\npher Tolkien uses the spelling querka instead. I would go one step further\\nand write querca.)\\nX rather than KS (or for that matter CS)\\nTolkien’s spelling of what is to be pronounced “ks” varies. Most sources seem\\nto have ks, but occasionally, the spelling x is used instead (already in the\\nQenya Lexicon of ca. 1915, p. 95, we seem to have tuxa as a variant spelling\\nof tuksa “144”). Throughout the Etymologies, the spelling ks is used, e.g.\\nmaksa “pliant, soft” (entry masag). The Etymologies, entry karak, thus\\ngives Helkarakse as the name of the arctic area crossed by some of the\\nNoldor when they went into exile. However, this name appears as Helcarax¨\\ne\\nin the published Silmarillion, with x for ks (and c for k), and we regularize\\nin accordance with the latter spelling – e.g. maxa rather than maksa. In\\npublished post-LotR sources, Tolkien seems to be using x rather than ks\\nconsistently, e.g. axan “commandment” and nixe “frost” in WJ:399/417,\\n33\\n\\n\\nor axo “bone” in MC:223 – so x must be seen as his final decision in this\\nmatter. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien refers to “the combinations ts, ps, ks\\n(x), that were favoured in Quenya”; this also seems to suggest that ks is\\nto be represented by x in normal spelling. (No actual example of a Quenya\\nword containing x/ks seems to occur in LotR, but as mentioned above, we\\nhave Helcarax¨\\ne in the Silmarillion.)\\nN rather than ˜\\nN\\nIn many sources, Tolkien uses the symbol ˜\\nn, which should not be pronounced\\nas in Spanish orthography (e.g., as in se˜\\nnor). “In the transcription ˜\\nn [is\\nused for] the F¨\\neanorian letter for the back nasal, the ng of king” (MR:350).\\nUnlike English, Quenya could originally have this ng at the beginning of\\nwords (as well as in other positions where it may also occur in English). A\\nprominent example is the word ˜\\nNoldo, plural ˜\\nNoldor, which is so spelt in\\nmany sources. But in LotR Appendix E, Tolkien wrote that this ng or ˜\\nn\\n“has been transcribed n (as in Noldo) according to the pronunciation in the\\nThird Age”. The list of Tengwar names in the same Appendix confirms the\\ndevelopment Tolkien hinted at here: the pronunciation of certain symbols of\\nTengwar writing was slightly changed as the long Ages of Middle-earth went\\nby. The letters that were originally called ngoldo and ngwalme (= ˜\\nnoldo,\\n˜\\nnwalme) were later called noldo and nwalme instead; since the letters were\\nnamed after actual Quenya words containing the sound denoted by the letter,\\nthis reflects a development whereby initial ˜\\nn- becomes normal n-. Already in\\nthe Etymologies of the mid-thirties, Tolkien hinted at a similar development:\\nIn the entry ˜\\nngar(a)m, the word for “wolf” was listed as “˜\\nnarmo, narmo”,\\nwhich is evidently to be understood as an older and a later form. MR:350\\nmentions a word ˜\\nn´\\nol¨\\ne “lore, knowledge” that is spelt with initial ˜\\nn- in the\\nEtymologies as well (entry ˜\\nngol, where it is glossed “wisdom”), but in the\\nSilmarillion Appendix (entry gˆ\\nul) it is spelt n´\\nol¨\\ne. This would be the later,\\nThird Age form. We go for the Third Age form everywhere, regularizing ˜\\nn\\nto n throughout. (Notice, though, that in Tengwar writing the distinction\\nbetween the symbols transcribed ˜\\nn and n was upheld even after they had\\nboth come to be pronounced “n”. But this is not a problem as long as we\\nwrite Quenya in our normal alphabet.) Undoubtedly the combinations ng\\nand nc in the middle of words are also technically ˜\\nng and ˜\\nnc, as in anga\\n“iron” or anca “jaw”, but this pronuncation comes naturally to speakers of\\nEnglish and does not have to be expressly represented in writing. As far as\\nis known, Tolkien never used the letter ˜\\nn before g or c in Quenya words,\\nbut only n.\\n34\\n\\n\\nS rather than Þ\\nThis is a case somewhat similar to ˜\\nn vs. n: Tolkien imagined that Quenya as\\nspoken in Valinor possessed þ, more or less like the sound spelt th in English\\nthink. (In Valinorean Quenya it was strictly a little more s-like than the\\nEnglish sound, pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth\\nonly, not between the upper and lower teeth as in English.) However, in the\\ndialect of the Noldor, this s-like þ eventually turned into normal s, merging\\nwith preexisting s’es (a change F¨\\neanor vehemently but vainly opposed: see\\nPM:331–339 for an eminent example of how intertwined Tolkien’s languages\\nand narratives can be). Quenya as a ceremonial language in Middle-earth\\nalways had s, since only the Noldorin dialect was known there. In WJ:484,\\nTolkien mentions þinde as the Quenya word for “grey, pale or silvery grey”,\\nbut adds that in the Noldorin (“˜\\nN”) dialect, this became sinde. In WJ:319,\\nwe find þelma as a word for “fixed idea, will”; in this case the later Noldorin\\nform selma is not mentioned there or elsewhere, but we would still use the\\nlatter form here, since we are aiming for the kind of Quenya that was used\\nin Middle-earth in the Third Age.\\nThe diaeresis\\nIn many cases, Tolkien adds a diaeresis, two dots, above a vowel, for in-\\nstance ¨\\na, ¨\\no, ¨\\ne in the names E¨\\narendil, E¨\\nonw¨\\ne. This is only to clarify the\\npronunciation, primarily for readers used to English orthography. It should\\nbe emphasized that the diaeresis is not in any way “necessary” to write cor-\\nrect Quenya. Tolkien wrote about the spelling ¨\\ne that it is “only a device of\\ntranscription, not needed in the original” – that is, in the supposed “origi-\\nnal” Tengwar writing (PM:343). It is not really “needed” in the transcription\\neither – Tolkien never used it in the Etymologies – and it can safely be left\\nout in e-mail. Indeed some scholars advocate leaving it out altogether in all\\nmedia, perceiving it as a superfluous graphic encumbrance useful only to\\npeople who don’t know the first thing about Quenya (and to people used to\\nthe orthographies of such languages as German, Swedish or Finnish, it can\\nbe downright misleading). But I don’t know; I guess I like to see the diaere-\\nsis in carefully presented texts, even if it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t\\nknow beforehand. It adds an exotic tint to the texts, and also represents a\\nnod in the direction of the visual impression made by written Finnish, since\\nFinnish orthography employs letters like ¨\\na and ¨\\no – that however denote\\nsounds distinct from normal a, o, which is not the case in Quenya spelling.\\nIf we are to use the diaeresis, it should however be used in a consistent way.\\nIn WJ:425, Christopher Tolkien comments on his father’s “very variable”\\nuse of it, so some regularization is required. (Christopher Tolkien himself\\nhas been regularizing his father’s spelling in some quotations; for instance,\\nin PM:371 he cites the Quenya word ross¨\\ne “fine rain, dew” from the entry\\n35\\n\\n\\nros1 in Etym., but there the word is actually spelt rosse with no diaeresis.)\\nThe final -¨\\ne in (say) E¨\\nonw¨\\ne is meant to remind the reader that final -¨\\ne is\\nnot silent, as it usually is in English orthography. “Final e is never mute or a\\nmere sign of length as in English,” Tolkien noted in LotR Appendix E (this\\nvery sentence providing two examples of this feature of English spelling,\\nnamely mute and mere). He added that “to mark this final e is often (but\\nnot consistently) written ¨\\ne ”. As he says, this spelling is not used consistently,\\nwhether in LotR or in other sources – cf. some of the words already quoted:\\nquesse, sinde, nixe. Hereinafter, we will however be consistent about this:\\nquess¨\\ne, sind¨\\ne, nix¨\\ne. (Notice, however, that the diaeresis is not used in\\nwords where the final e is also the only vowel, as in short words like te\\n“them” or ve “as, like” – both of which occur in LotR. From time to time I\\nsee some overeager dot-fan produce spellings like t¨\\ne and v¨\\ne, but while this\\nis not in any way “harmful”, it is quite superfluous: Tolkien never uses such\\nspellings.)\\nSince only a final -e receives the diaeresis, the dots normally go if you add\\nan ending to the word (or use it as the first element in a compound), since the\\n-e is then no longer final. An attested example of this is provided by the word\\nl´\\namaty´\\nav¨\\ne “sound-taste” (individual pleasure in wordforms), the plural of\\nwhich is spelt l´\\namaty´\\naver (MR:215–216). We do not see **l´\\namaty´\\nav¨\\ner,\\nfor because of the plural ending -r, the vowel e before it is not final anymore.\\n(Throughout this course, a double asterisk ** is used to mark a wrong form.)\\nAppendix D in LotR likewise indicates that the plural form of enqui¨\\ne (the\\nEldarin six-day week) is to be spelt enquier rather than **enqui¨\\ner.\\nBesides final ¨\\ne, we shall use the diaeresis to clarify the pronunciation of\\nthe combinations ea, eo and oe (sc. to indicate that both vowels are to be\\npronounced clearly separate: e-a, e-o, o-e; hence for instance ¨\\nea is not to\\nbe drawn together like ea in English heart). In the case of e + a and e +\\no, the diaeresis is placed above the e as long as it appears as a lower-case\\nletter: ¨\\nea, ¨\\neo. If, however, it is to be capitalized, the dots move to the next\\nletter instead: E¨\\na, E¨\\no (as in E¨\\narendil, E¨\\nonw¨\\ne). Tolkien’s own writings are\\nnot consistent in this matter; we adopt the spelling used in LotR and the\\nSilmarillion. Sometimes he places the diaeresis above a capital letter as well;\\nfor instance, the Quenya name of the universe in some texts appears as ¨\\nEa\\n(e.g. MR:7), though according to the system we just sketched it should be E¨\\na\\n– as in the published Silmarillion. (Gross inconsistency is seen in Letters:386,\\nwhere Tolkien refers to “the attempt of E¨\\narendil to cross ¨\\nEar [the ocean]” –\\nit must be either ¨\\nEarendil, ¨\\nEar OR E¨\\narendil, E¨\\nar!) Conversely, Tolkien\\nsometimes places the diaeresis over the second vowel in the group even when\\nthe first vowel is not capitalized, resulting in spellings like e¨\\na (UT:305, 317);\\nwe would rather spell it ¨\\nea (as Tolkien himself did elsewhere; see VT39:6). In\\na footnote in MR:206, Christopher Tolkien observes that his father wavered\\nbetween F¨\\nean´\\naro and Fe¨\\nan´\\naro (the Quenya form of the name F¨\\neanor);\\naccording to the system here outlined, it should be F¨\\nean´\\naro.\\n36\\n\\n\\nIn the case of oe (a very rare combination), we place the diaeresis over the\\n¨\\ne, as in the example lo¨\\nend¨\\ne in LotR Appendix D (this is the name of the\\nmiddle day of the year in the calendar of the Elves). In Appendix E, Tolkien\\nexplicitly stated that the fact that oe is disyllabic is “often indicated by\\nwriting . . . o¨\\ne ”.\\nIn some sources, the combination ie is also broken up with a diaeresis,\\nresulting in spellings like Ni¨\\nenna (name of a Vali¨\\ne or “goddess”), for in-\\nstance in MR:49. Yet this spelling is not used in the published Silmarillion,\\nthat simply has Nienna. The LotR itself is somewhat ambiguous on this\\npoint. In Appendix A we have the names Telperi¨\\nen and Silmari¨\\nen so spelt\\n(though Unfinished Tales p. 173 has Silmarien). However, the most sub-\\nstantial Quenya text in LotR, Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, does not use the diaeresis in this\\ncombination – this text has tier, not ti¨\\ner, for “paths” (though the latter\\nspelling occurs in RGEO:67). In accordance with this example, as well as\\nNienna in the Silmarillion, we will not use the diaeresis in the combination\\nie. If, however, the group -ie occurs at the end of a word, the e receives\\nthe diaeresis because it is final (wholly irrespective of the fact that it is also\\npart of the combination ie), in accordance with the rule established above.\\nHence Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, Vali¨\\ne rather than Nam´\\narie, Valie, and if the first ele-\\nment of Nienna occurs by itself, we will spell it ni¨\\ne – this is the word for\\n“tear”. Removing the plural ending -r from tier “paths” likewise produces\\nti¨\\ne “path”, since -¨\\ne becomes final.\\nIn many post-LotR sources, Tolkien also started to break up the combi-\\nnation oa by means of a diaeresis (apparently to warn the reader that “oa”\\nis not drawn together as in English load). Hence we have spellings like hr¨\\noa\\n“body” (MR:350 and passim). Cf. also some of the words quoted above:\\nk¨\\noarya, c¨\\noacalina. However, in LotR Tolkien simply wrote oa. Contrast\\nthe spelling loa used in LotR (Appendix D: “The Eldar also observed a\\nshort period or solar year . . . usually called loa”) with the spelling l¨\\noa in\\nMR:426 (where the word occurs in the plural: “l¨\\noar upon l¨\\noar” = years\\nupon years). Regularizing in accordance with the system used in LotR, we\\nwill not use the diaeresis in the combination oa. Hence we will here use\\nspellings like hroa “body”, coa “house” etc. Hroa without a diaeresis is\\nactually found in MR:399–400 (and VT41:13), so we are not “tampering”\\nwith Tolkien’s spelling, just crystallizing a standard by choosing one of the\\noptions his writings provide and carrying it through consistently. This, as I\\nhave tried to demonstrate, is true of all the regularization I impose on the\\nmaterial.\\n[As for the English orthography employed in this work, it follows the author’s home-\\nmade Mid-Atlantic convention. Therefore you will find British spellings like flavour, colour\\n(not American flavor, color) next to American spellings like analyze (not British analyse).\\nThe orthography of my native Norwegian does not in all cases match the pronunciation,\\nbut it comes rather closer to the spoken language than any variant of English spelling\\n37\\n\\n\\ndoes. Therefore, please allow me to gently mock the pointless variations introduced by well-\\nmeaning reformers of English orthography. It is actually beyond help, so why bother?]\\n38\\n\\n\\nLesson 1\\nThe sounds of Quenya.\\nPronunciation and accentuation.\\n1.1\\nGeneral remarks\\nQuenya as an actual entity in our own world exists primarily as a writ-\\nten language: Quenya enthusiasts tend to be widely scattered and must\\ngenerally share their compositions via some written medium only (indeed\\nI shall normally refer to users of Quenya as “writers” rather than “speak-\\ners”). Nonetheless, any student should obviously know what pronunciation\\nTolkien imagined, as well as his intentions can be approximated now.\\nThere exist a very few recordings of Tolkien himself reading Quenya texts.\\nIn a late TV interview, Tolkien writes out and pronounces the greeting elen\\ns´\\nıla l´\\numenn’ omentielvo. More notably, he made two different recordings\\nof Nam´\\nari¨\\ne (sung and spoken). The spoken version is also available on the\\nnet:\\nhttp://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/tolkien elvish/index.html\\n(under “Poem in Elvish”). A few lines of this version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne differ\\nfrom their LotR counterparts: The recorded version has inyar ´\\nun´\\noti nar\\nve r´\\namar aldaron / inyar ve lint¨\\ne yulmar v´\\nanier instead of y´\\neni\\n´\\nun´\\notim¨\\ne ve r´\\namar aldaron! / y´\\neni ve lint¨\\ne yuldar (a)v´\\nanier as in\\nLotR. The recording was made before the book was published (and hence\\nbefore the final revisions). A much later recording, with the same text as in\\nthe book, also exists. I have not heard it, so I cannot comment further.\\nThe very few extant recordings are interesting, but they are not our chief\\nsource of information. Most of what we know about Quenya pronuncia-\\ntion is based on Tolkien’s written notes about how his languages should be\\npronounced, predominantly the information provided in LotR Appendix E.\\n(Indeed Tolkien’s actual pronunciation in the recordings is not always quite\\nflawless according to his own technical descriptions, but then he was not a\\nnative speaker of Quenya.)\\nAny natural language has a phonology, a set of rules defining what sounds\\nare used, how they vary and behave, and how they can be combined. This\\ngoes for any well-made invented language as well. Quenya is most definitely\\n39\\n\\n\\nnot a haphazard jumble of sounds; Tolkien carefully constructed its phonol-\\nogy – both as an evolving entity (classical Quenya gradually developing from\\nPrimitive Elvish) and as a “fixed” form (defining the kind of Quenya that\\nwas used as a language of lore and ceremony in Middle-earth). Tolkien had\\nPengolodh, the sage of Gondolin, observe that Elvish tongues tended to use\\nrelatively few sounds – “for the Eldar being skilled in craft are not wasteful\\nnor prodigal to small purpose, admiring in a tongue rather the skilled and\\nharmonious use of a few well-balanced sounds than profusion ill-ordered”\\n(PM:398). None of the sounds used in Quenya are particularly exotic from a\\nEuropean viewpoint, but they are combined in an exquisitely tidy manner.\\nCompared to Tolkien’s Elvish, many “real” languages indeed appear rather\\nmessy.\\n1.2\\nBasic terms\\nLet us get some basic terms into place (people with linguistic training need\\nnot spend much time on this section). The sounds of any language can be\\ndivided into two broad categories, vowels and consonants. The vowels are\\nsounds made by letting the air stream “freely” through the mouth: Different\\nvowels are produced by modifying the position of the tongue and the lips, but\\nthe stream of air is not directly obstructed. If one draws out various vowels,\\npronouncing aaaaa. . . or eeeee. . . or ooooo. . . , it is easy to feel how the\\nair streams quite unhindered though the mouth: One merely configures the\\ntongue and lips to “shape” the desired sound. Vowels can be more or less\\n“open” or “closed”: You only have to notice the position of the tongue and\\nlower jaw when pronouncing aaah. . . as contrasted with their position when\\nyou pronounce ooooh. . . to understand what is meant by this. The vowel\\na (as in English part) is the most open, while the vowel u (as in English\\nrude) is the most closed. Other vowels fall between. Vowels can also be more\\nor less “rounded”, mainly depending on the position of the lips; the vowel\\nu (as just described) is said to be rounded because it is pronounced with\\nthe lips pouted. A vowel like o (as in English sore) is actually pronounced\\nmuch like the a of part, but o is rounded and a is not – making the vowels\\naudibly distinct.\\nWhen pronouncing vowels, the stream of air is only modified (by means\\nof devices like the ones just described). It is never actually “hindered”. In\\nthe case of the consonants, the air is however more actively obstructed.\\nThus, Tolkien can inform us that one early Elvish term for consonant was\\ntapta tengw¨\\ne or just tapta, meaning “impeded element” or “impeded\\none” (VT39:7). In the most “extreme” cases the stream of air may even\\nbe completely halted for a moment: This is easily perceived in the case of\\na consonant like p, which is pronounced by bringing the lips into contact,\\nmomentarily cutting offthe stream of air from the lungs and allowing a\\n40\\n\\n\\npressure to build up inside the mouth. Then the lips are suddenly parted\\nagain, releasing the air in a small explosion – and this explosion constitutes\\na p. Such plosive consonants include t, p, k and their counterparts d, b, g\\n(sc. hard g as in gold, not as in gin). They are all formed by halting and then\\nsuddenly releasing the air various places in the mouth. Instead of halting\\nthe air completely one may also let it “fizzle through” a small opening, as\\nwhen f is pronounced by forcing the air out between the lower lip and the\\nupper teeth; such “friction” sounds are called fricatives (or spirants) and\\ninclude consonants like f, th, v. And there are yet other options on how\\nto manipulate the stream of air, such as rerouting it through the nose to\\nproduce nasal consonants like n or m.\\nThe concept of voicing should also be understood. Humans (and, it would\\nseem, Elves) come with a kind of buzzing device installed in their throats,\\nnamely the vocal chords. By making the vocal chords vibrate, one may add\\n“voice” to the stream of air before it enters the speech organs proper. The\\npresence or lack of such voicing is what distinguishes sounds like v vs. f.\\nIf one draws out a sound like ffff. . . and suddenly turns it into vvvv. . .\\ninstead, one will feel the “buzzer” in the throat kicking in (put a finger on\\nyour glottis – what in men is called the “Adam’s apple”, less protuberant\\nin women – and you will actually feel the vibration of the vocal chords).\\nIn principle, the device of voicing could be used to double the number of\\nsounds we are able to produce, since they could all be pronounced either\\nwith vibration in the vocal chords (as voiced sounds) or without such vi-\\nbration (as unvoiced sounds). In practice, most of the sounds of speech do\\nnot appear in unvoiced versions. Many sounds would barely be perceptible\\nwithout the voicing (n, for instance, would be reduced to little more than a\\nweak snort). Normally all vowels are voiced as well, certainly so in Quenya\\n(though in Japanese, vowels may lose their voicing in certain environments).\\nBut I have already referred to d, b, g as the “counterparts” of t, p, k; they\\nare counterparts in the sense that the former are voiced and the latter are\\nnot. One characteristic feature of Quenya (at least the Noldorin dialect) is\\nthe very limited distribution of the voiced plosives d, b, g; they occur solely\\nin the middle of words, and then only as part of the consonant clusters\\nnd/ld/rd, mb, and ng. Some speakers also pronounced lb instead of lv.\\n(Possibly Tolkien imagined different rules for the poorly attested Vanyarin\\ndialect of Quenya: The Silmarillion refers to a lament called Aldud´\\neni¨\\ne\\nmade by a Vanyarin Elf; this word has puzzled researchers since the middle\\nd occurs in a position that would be quite impossible in Noldorin Quenya.)\\nSyllables: Made up of vowels and consonants, speech is not an undifferenti-\\nated outburst of sound. Rather it is perceived to be organized into rhythmic\\nunits called syllables. The shortest possible words are necessarily monosyl-\\nlabic, having only one syllable – like English from or its Quenya equivalent\\nho. Words of more than one syllable, polysyllabic ones, form longer strings of\\nrhythmic “beats”. A word like faster has two syllables (fas-ter), a word like\\n41\\n\\n\\nwonderful has three (won-der-ful), a word like geography has four (ge-og-\\nra-phy), and so on – though obviously we can’t go much further before the\\nwords would be felt to be impractically long and difficult to pronounce. Some\\noriental languages, like Vietnamese, show a great preference for monosyllabic\\nwords. But as is evident from the English examples just quoted, European\\nlanguages often employ longer words, and Tolkien’s Quenya makes extensive\\nuse of big mouthfuls (as does Finnish). Consider words like Ainulindal¨\\ne or\\nSilmarillion (five syllables: ai-nu-lin-da-l¨\\ne, sil-ma-ril-li-on). An unin-\\nflected Quenya word typically has two or three syllables, and this number is\\noften increased by adding inflectional endings, or by compounding.\\n1.3\\nThe sounds of Quenya\\nIn Quenya, the basic vowels are a, e, i, o, u (short and long). They may\\nalso be combined into diphthongs, groups of two basic vowels pronounced\\ntogether as one syllable: There are three diphthongs in -i (ai, oi, ui) and\\nthree in -u (au, eu, iu, though the diphthongs eu and iu are quite rare).\\nThe consonants of Third Age Quenya may be listed as c (= k), d, f, g, gw,\\nh, hy, hw, l, ly, m, n, nw, ny, p, qu, r, ry, s, t, ty, v, y and w (this\\nlisting is not wholly uncontroversial; the consonant system of Quenya can be\\nplausibly analyzed in more than one way). In Elvish writing, the Tengwar\\northography also upholds the distinction between some consonants that by\\nthe Third Age had come to be pronounced alike and thus merged altogether\\n(þ merging with s, while initial ˜\\nn fell together with n – see the discussion\\nof spelling conventions). In the transcription and spelling employed in this\\ncourse, the former presence of “lost” distinct consonants is reflected in two\\ncases only: hl and hr, that were originally unvoiced l and r, but later they\\nmerged with normal l, r (and are therefore not included on the list of Third\\nAge Quenya consonants above). Thus we will spell, say, hr´\\nıv¨\\ne (“winter”)\\nin this way despite the fact that Tolkien imagined the typical Third Age\\npronunciation to be simply “r´\\nıv¨\\ne” (with a normal r).\\nThough the consonants hy, gw, hw, ly, nw, ny, ry, ty, and qu (and hr,\\nhl) must here be written as two letters (as digraphs), they should evidently\\nbe taken as unitary sounds: Their pronunciation will be discussed in greater\\ndetail below. The digraphs in -w represent labialized consonants, while the\\ndigraphs in -y stand for palatalized consonants; again, see below for further\\ndiscussion of these terms. It should be understood that qu is simply an\\naesthetic way of spelling what would otherwise be represented as cw (most\\npeople will agree that Quenya looks better than Cwenya), so qu, like\\nnw, is a labialized consonant. When counting syllables one must remember\\nthat there is no actual vowel u in qu; “u” here stands for w. A word like\\nalqua (“swan”) thus has only two syllables: al-qua (= al-cwa). One must\\nnot think “al-qu-a” and conclude that there are actually three syllables. In\\n42\\n\\n\\nTengwar writing, qu is denoted by a single letter, and in most early sources,\\nTolkien also used the single letter q to represent it.\\nDouble consonants: Some consonants also occur in long or double versions;\\ndouble vs. single consonants may be compared to long vs. short vowels. The\\n“obvious” cases, sc. the double consonants directly represented in orthogra-\\nphy, are cc, ll, mm, nn, pp, rr, ss and tt (e.g. ecco “spear”, colla “cloak”,\\nlamma “sound”, anna “gift”, lappa “hem of robe”, yarra- “to growl”,\\ness¨\\ne “name”, atta “two”). The group pp is very rare, only attested in ma-\\nterial far predating the LotR. In the Note on Pronunciation appended to\\nthe Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien noted: “Consonants written twice are\\npronounced long, thus Yavanna has the long n heard in English unnamed,\\npenknife, not the short n in unaimed, penny.” Words like tana “that” vs.\\ntanna “sign”, tyel¨\\ne “ceases” vs. tyell¨\\ne “grade”, ata “again” vs. atta “two”\\nshould be audibly distinct. – It is possible that some of the consonants writ-\\nten as digraphs must also be counted as double consonants when they occur\\nbetween vowels; e.g. ny = long or double palatalized n (more on this below).\\nConsonant clusters (vs. single consonants): It is difficult to pronounce\\nmany sequential consonants, so the languages of the word generally con-\\nfine themselves to relatively small groups (or “clusters”) of consonants. The\\nmost typical word, from just about any language, is a series of vowels and\\nconsonants (single ones or relatively short consonant clusters) alternating –\\nthe “core” of each syllable usually being a vowel. Tolkien’s Quenya is no ex-\\nception; this language actually has quite restrictive rules for how consonants\\nand vowels can be combined into syllables and longer words. Even so, con-\\nsonant clusters are quite common, but they are not distributed as “freely”\\nas in English. While English and for that matter Sindarin allow consonant\\nclusters at the beginning of words, Quenya does not (SD:417–418). A word\\nlike scream, commencing with a cluster of no less than three consonants,\\nwould be quite impossible in Quenya. Tolkien noted that the name that the\\n“Woses” or Wild Men had for themselves, Drughu, was adapted to Quenya\\nas R´\\nu (UT:385). Quenya could not preserve the initial cluster dr- of the orig-\\ninal form of this loan-word (even apart from the fact that Quenya could not\\nhave d in this position). Quenya does allow a limited number of consonant\\nclusters medially, between vowels in the middle of words; among “frequent”\\nof “favoured” clusters Tolkien cited ld, mb, mp, nc, nd, ng, ngw, nqu,\\nnt, ps, ts and x (for cs). Hence we have such typical Quenya-style words as\\nElda “Elf”, lamb¨\\ne “tongue”, tumpo “hump”, ranco “arm” etc. Finally,\\nat the end of words, only five single consonants may occur: only -l, -n, -r,\\n-s, or -t is permitted in this position (Letters:425; however, most Quenya\\nwords end in a vowel). Consonant clusters or double consonants are not nor-\\nmally found at the end of words, though they may occur if a final vowel\\ndrops out (is elided) because the next word begins in the same or a similar\\nvowel. Hence in LotR we have a “final” nn in the phrase l´\\numenn’ omen-\\ntielvo (“on the hour of our meeting”), but only because this is reduced from\\n43\\n\\n\\nl´\\numenna omentielvo (this full form occurring in WJ:367 and Letters:424).\\nThe only genuine consonant cluster occurring at the end of a word seems\\nto be nt used a specific grammatical ending (dual dative, to be discussed\\nin later lessons) – e.g. ciryant “for a couple of ships”, formed from cirya\\n“ship”. Tolkien’s earliest “Qenya” experiments, as recorded in the Qenya\\nLexicon of 1915, were more liberal in this respect. “Qenya” allowed more\\nfinal consonants and even final consonant clusters, but as LotR-style Quenya\\nevolved in Tolkien’s notes, he tightened up the phonology. Thus he gave the\\nlanguage a more clearly defined flavour.\\n1.4\\nPronunciation\\nVowels: Quenya vowels are pure. For people who want to pronounce Elvish\\nvowels with some degree of accuracy, Tolkien recommended Italian vowels as\\na model (as did Zamenhof for Esperanto, by the way). Speakers of English\\nhave an ingrained habit of blurring many vowels, especially when they are\\nnot fully stressed; hence in a word like banana it is typically only the middle\\nA that comes out as a “proper” A-sound. The two other A’s, that are not\\nstressed, are typically made to sound like a blurred, obscure “reduction\\nvowel” that linguists call a schwa (from a Hebrew word for nothingness;\\nEnglish textbooks sometimes prefer the spelling “shwa”). But in Quenya\\nall vowels, in all positions, must be clearly and distinctly pronounced; any\\ntendencies to “blur” them must be strongly resisted.\\nAs we remember, Quenya has both long and short vowels, the long ones\\nbeing marked with an accent: ´\\na, ´\\ne, ´\\no, ´\\nu, ´\\nı vs. short a, e, o, u, i. Long and\\nshort vowels must be kept apart and pronounced clearly distinct. Sometimes\\nvowel length is the only thing that makes otherwise similar words distinct:\\nfor instance, cu with a short u means “dove”, whereas c´\\nu with a long ´\\nu\\nmeans “crescent”.\\nLong ´\\na can be sounded as in English father: m´\\na “hand”, n´\\nar¨\\ne “flame”,\\nqu´\\naco “crow”. However, English does not have anything corresponding to\\nQuenya short a. It is absolutely necessary to master it, for short a is by\\nfar the commonest of Quenya vowels. Tolkien noted that it should be more\\n“open” than the long ´\\na. What we want is a vowel that by its sound (or\\nquality) is about midway between the a’s of English father and English cat\\n– but as for its length (or quantity), it should by all means be short as in the\\nlatter word. The vowel heard in Spanish padre will do. Speakers of English\\nmay pin down a short a by isolating the first part of the diphthong ai as in\\naisle.\\nNOTE: If you have the original Star Wars movie available, listen carefully when Har-\\nrison Ford first appears about 45 minutes in and introduces himself as “Han Solo”: Ford\\nactually produces a nice Quenya-style short a in “Han”, making this syllable sound as it\\nwould in Quenya words (e.g. hanu “a male” or handa “intelligent”; apparently there is\\n44\\n\\n\\neven a Quenya word han “beyond”). But later in the SW movies, the vowel of “Han” is\\ninconsistently pronounced either with a long a as in English father or with the vowel heard\\nin English cat, which is precisely the vowel to be avoided in Quenya. Linguistic consistency\\nwas never the, ahem, force of Star Wars. By the way, do you remember Endor, the green\\nmoon where George Lucas placed his reinvented teddy bears in the third movie? Guess\\nwhat the Quenya word for “Middle-earth” is! Lucas would surely say that his intention\\nwas to pay tribute to Tolkien. . .\\nUPDATED NOTE: Now that Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring has appeared,\\nI can quote examples from the soundtrack of this movie as well; most people interested in\\nTolkien’s work will surely have seen it, and many are also going to buy it on video or DVD.\\nGood examples of short Elvish a occur in the Sindarin name Caradhras “Redhorn” as\\npronounced by Christopher Lee (“Saruman”) in the scene where his spying crows return\\nto Isengard: “So, Gandalf, you try to lead them over Caradhras. . . ” Lee also gets the\\nshort a’s more or less right in a scene following shortly afterwards, when he stands on the\\ntop of Isengard reading a Quenya invocation: Nai yarvax¨\\nea rasselya taltuva notto-\\ncarinnar. . . (but the last word sounds almost like c´\\narinnar, the first vowel being long –\\nafter all, Chris Lee is not a native speaker of Quenya!)\\nAn extra challenge for speakers of English is to pronounce -a as a full\\nvowel at the end of words. Where English orthography has a final -a, it\\nis normally pronounced like a schwa. Contrast the English and the Spanish\\npronunciation of the final vowel in a name like Sara; in Spanish, the English-\\nstyle reduction or “blurring” of the -a does not take place. In one very\\nearly source, Tolkien actually stated that “Qenya”, like English, turned final,\\nunaccented -a into a schwa (“as in English drama”, QL:9), but there is\\nnothing to suggest that this idea was still valid decades later when he wrote\\nthe LotR. Indeed even the early source just referred to has it that there\\nwas one important dialect of “Qenya” where the weakening of final -a did\\nnot take place. So speakers should try to pronounce a full a in all positions:\\nneither of the a’s in a word like anna “gift” should be pronounced as in the\\nEnglish name Anna.\\nLong ´\\ne is another Quenya sound that does not occur in contemporary\\nEnglish. The long e of English became long i (like Quenya ´\\nı) centuries ago\\n– though because of this descent it is still often spelt ee, as in see. Quenya ´\\ne\\nhas the value of German eh as in Mehr. The pronunciation of ai in English\\nair at least approaches ´\\ne, but this is really a short e followed by a schwa.\\nTolkien notes that long ´\\ne should be closer than short e (see LotR Appendix\\nE), so just lengthening the vowel heard in English end will not be quite\\nsufficient. The quality of the vowel should be about midway between the\\nvowels heard in English end and English see, but it should be long like the\\nlatter: n´\\nen “water”, r´\\ne “day”, m´\\nena “region”.\\nShort e may be pronounced as in English end. In Quenya this sound also\\noccurs in final position. Since word-final e is usually silent in English orthog-\\nraphy, Tolkien often used the spelling ¨\\ne in this position – and throughout\\nthis course, this spelling is employed consistently. This is only to remind\\n45\\n\\n\\nEnglish readers that in Quenya, this letter is to be distinctly pronounced.\\nBut since word-final e never occurs in spoken English, some speakers tend to\\nsubstitute i or ey (following English practice in the rare cases of a final or-\\nthographic “e” being sounded, as when Jesse is pronounced “jessi”, or karate\\nis pronounced “karatey”). Quenya e should have the value described above\\nin all positions. It must NOT be pronounced i, nor must there be a y-like\\nsound creeping after it: l´\\nom¨\\ne “night”, mor¨\\ne “black”, tinw¨\\ne “sparkle”.\\nLong ´\\nı is pronounced as in English machine, that same as “ee” in English\\nsee: the Quenya word s´\\nı (“now”) is similar in sound. Other examples include\\nn´\\nıs “woman” and r´\\nıma “edge”. This long ´\\nı must be noticeably longer than\\nshort i, which may be pronounced like in English pit: Titta “tiny”, imb¨\\ne\\n”between”, vinya “new”. In one early source, Tolkien himself quoted the\\nword pit as an example of short “Qenya” i (QL:8). Later writings suggest\\nthat the quality of the vowel-sound should be like the i of machine, in English\\noften spelt “ee” – start with this sound and shorten it. (Before unvoiced\\nstops, as in feet, “ee” may be quite short also in English – just make sure\\nthere is a distinction of length between i and ´\\nı.) Notice that i is never\\npronounced ai as in English fine = “fain”. (Quenya fin¨\\ne “larch” has two\\nsyllables, the vowels being those heard in pit [ideally a little closer] and pet,\\nrespectively.) Of course, this also goes for final -i (usually a plural ending).\\nIf the student will forgive another Star Wars reference, George Lucas’ Jedi\\nmay be “jedai” = “jed-eye”, but Tolkien’s Quendi are most definitely not\\n“quendai”. In Quenya, final -i should rather be pronounced as in Iraqi,\\nMississippi.\\nLong ´\\no may be pronounced more or less as in English sore, but preferably a\\nlittle tenser and “closer” (midway between the vowel-sounds of English sore\\nand English “oo” as in soon): m´\\nol “slave”, t´\\no “wool”, ´\\noma “voice”. Short\\no may be pronounced as in English for (when accented), or as in box. The\\nquality of the latter vowel may be just a little too open and A-like according\\nto Tolkien’s descriptions. Yet this is the pronunciation he himself used in\\nmost cases in the recording of him reading Nam´\\nari¨\\ne; it should perhaps be\\nattributed to his English accent. Some words with o: rondo “cave”, olos\\n“dream”, tolto “eight”. Of course, Quenya o is never pronounced “ow” as in\\nEnglish so, also; a word like tolto must NOT come out as “tol-tow”. Neither\\nmust o ever be reduced to a schwa or dropped altogether; be especially\\nmindful of the ending -on, often found in masculine names (and also in plural\\ngenitives like Silmarillion; see later lessons). “English-style” pronunciation\\nof a name like Sauron would result in what a baffled Elf might try to\\nrepresent in writing as S´\\nor’n (or at best S´\\noren). The final -on should\\nsound rather like the first syllable of English online, with the vowel fully\\nintact even though it is unaccented in Sauron. In the Jackson movie, the\\nactors usually deliver a good pronunciation of this name; especially listen\\nto how “Gandalf” and “Saruman” pronounce it. Good examples of short\\nElvish o also occur in the name Mordor as pronounced by the same two\\n46\\n\\n\\nactors.\\nLong ´\\nu is the vowel of English brute, in English often spelt “oo” as in fool:\\nN´\\numen “west”, c´\\nu “crescent”, y´\\nuyo “both”. It must be distinctly longer\\nthan short u, which is pronounced somewhat like the vowel of English put\\n(NOT like in English cut). Ideally, Quenya short u should be a little more\\n“rounded” than the vowel of put; it should be simply a shorter version of the\\nlong ´\\nu or “oo” described above: Cundu ”prince”, nuru “death”, ulundo\\n“monster”. Notice that Quenya u is never pronounced “yu” as in English\\nunion; ulundo should not become “yulundo”.\\nSpeakers of English must be especially mindful of their vowels when a\\ncombination vowel + r occurs. In the combinations ar, or, many speakers\\nof English have a tendency to lengthen the vowel even where it should be\\nshort (and many would also let the r drop out, especially when it is followed\\nby another consonant). But in Quenya words like narda (“knot”) or lorna\\n(“asleep”), the vowel before the r must be short, as indicated by the absence\\nof the accent mark. It is not permissible to let the pronunciation drift to-\\nwards “n´\\na(r)da”, “l´\\no(r)na”, no matter how tempting this is to people used\\nto English speech-habits.\\nWhere the groups er, ir, ur occur (e.g. in words like serc¨\\ne “blood”,\\ntirno “watcher”, turma “shield”), speakers of English must take care NOT\\nto pronounce the vowels after the fashion of English serve, girl, turn. (I\\nonce had an English teacher who described the vowel of “girl” as one of\\nthe ugliest sounds of the English language. She taught English at university\\nlevel, so she should know – though perhaps she wasn’t wholly serious. . . )\\nShort e, i, u should sound just as described above, wholly irrespective of\\nthe following r. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that er, ir, ur should\\nsound, not as in English fern, fir, fur, but rather like air, eer, oor (that is,\\nlike it would be natural for a speaker of English to pronounce orthographic\\n“air, eer, oor” – however, it should be understood that this would only be\\nan approximation of the ideal pronunciation). In the Peter Jackson movie,\\nthe actors struggle to pronounce the final syllable of the Quenya name Isil-\\ndur correctly, with variable results. In the flash-back scene where Elrond\\n(played by Hugo Weaving) leads Isildur into Mount Doom and urges him\\nto destroy the Ring, Weaving’s pronunciation of the name Isildur is very\\ngood – following Tolkien’s guidelines to the letter.\\nDiphthongs: In addition to the “basic”, unitary vowel-sounds discussed\\nabove (what linguists would call the monophthongs), we have the diphthongs\\n– combinations of two basic vowels that are run together into one syllable, in\\nmany ways behaving like a unitary vowel for the purpose of word-building:\\nThe Quenya diphthongs are ai, au, eu, iu, oi, and ui.\\n• The diphthong ai is the same that is heard in English aisle. It is NOT\\nlike the one in English mail, though English orthographic “ai” usually\\nrepresents the latter sound (can anyone think of other exceptions than\\n47\\n\\n\\naisle?) The first syllable of faila “just, generous” must not pronounced\\nlike the English word fail, since Quenya ai always has the sound of\\nEnglish I, eye: Aica “fell, terrible”, caima “bed”, aira “holy”. Of\\ncourse, the first syllable of the latter word sounds nothing like English\\nair!\\n• The diphthong au is pronounced as in German Haus, or more or\\nless as the “ow” of English cow: aul¨\\ne “invention”, laur¨\\nea “golden”,\\ntaur¨\\ne “forest”. It is never sounded as in English caught, aura (in\\nwhich words “au” is pronounced rather like Quenya ´\\no). In his “Note\\non Pronunciation” appended to the Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien\\nnotes that the first syllable of Sauron should be like English sour,\\nnot English sore. (However, the diphthong in sour is in British English\\nfollowed by a schwa – a faint reminiscence of the otherwise silent final\\nr. This schwa should not be pronounced in Sauron.)\\n• The diphthong eu does not occur in English, but it is not dissimilar to\\nthe “o” of English so. The only difference is that while the first part\\nof the diphthong is a schwa in English, it should be a normal e (as in\\nend) in Quenya. In particular, some British upper-class pronunciations\\nof English “o” as in so come close to Quenya eu (but the American\\npronunciation does not). Quenya examples: leuca “snake”, neuma\\n“snare”, peu “pair of lips”. This diphthong is not very common.\\n• The diphthong iu may be sounded like yu in English yule, according\\nto the usual Third Age Pronunciation. Tolkien imagined that origi-\\nnally, it had rather been a “falling” diphthong like the other Quenya\\ndiphthongs, stressed on the first rather than the last element (LotR\\nAppendix E). However, the Third Age pronunciation would be equally\\n“valid” also within the mythos, and for speakers of English it is easier\\nto achieve. This diphthong is in any case very rare; in the Etymologies\\nit is only attested in a handful of words (miul¨\\ne “whining, mewing”,\\npiuta “spit”, siul¨\\ne “incitement” and the group tiuca “thick, fat”,\\ntiuco “thigh” and tiuya- “swell, grow fat” – a few more examples of\\niu could be quoted from Tolkien’s early “Qenya” material).\\n• The diphthong oi is easy, corresponding to English “oi” or “oy” as in\\noil, toy: coir¨\\nea “living”, soica “thirsty”, oira “eternal”.\\n• The diphthong ui Tolkien sometimes compared to the sound occurring\\nin English ruin. This is a rather surprising example, for surely the word\\n“ruin” is not normally pronounced as containing a diphthong, but as\\ntwo distinct syllables: ru-in. Rather think “ooy” as in the English\\nphrase too young: huin¨\\ne “shadow”, cuil¨\\ne “life”, uil¨\\ne “(long, trailing)\\nplant”. Notice that the combination qui does not contain this diph-\\nthong; this is just a more visually pleasing way of spelling cwi (e.g.\\norqui “Orcs” = orcwi).\\n48\\n\\n\\nAll other groups of vowels are not diphthongs, but simply vowels belonging\\nto separate syllables, to be pronounced distinctly. In linguistic terms, vowels\\nthat are in direct contact without forming diphthongs are said to be in\\nhiatus. Primitive Elvish apparently did not have such combinations, at least\\nnot in the middle of words: Tolkien had F¨\\neanor concluding that “our fathers\\n. . . in building words took the vowels and parted them with the consonants\\nas walls” (VT39:10). But some consonants had been lost in Quenya, so\\nthat vowels that were originally so “parted” had come into direct contact\\n(VT39:6). In Quenya we even have polysyllabic all-vowel words like E¨\\na (a\\nname of the universe) or oa (“away”). The most frequent combinations of\\nvowels in hiatus are ea, eo, ie, io, oa; each vowel should be sounded “by\\nitself”. Tolkien often emphasizes this fact by adding diaereses or “dots”\\nto one of the vowels, and in the consistent spelling here imposed on the\\nmaterial, we regularly write ¨\\nea (E¨\\na), ¨\\neo (E¨\\no), o¨\\ne. Thus there is no excuse\\nfor such mistakes as pronouncing ¨\\nea as in English heart or please, or o¨\\ne\\nas in canoe or foetus. (Other distortions are apparently also possible: Cate\\nBlanchett simply reduced E¨\\narendil to “Erendil” the one time her version of\\nGaladriel pronounces this name in the Jackson movie: “I give you the light\\nof E[¨\\na]rendil, our most beloved star. . . ” Can we have an extra vowel for the\\nDirector’s Cut, please?)\\nIn this course we do not use the diaeresis in the combinations ie (ex-\\ncept when final) and oa, but as indicated by the spelling i¨\\ne and ¨\\noa in\\ncertain Tolkien manuscripts, the vowels must be pronounced distinctly and\\nnot drawn together as in English piece (or tie), or English load. In accor-\\ndance with this, Christopher Tolkien in the Note on Pronunciation that he\\nappended to the Silmarillion indicates that the name Nienna is to be pro-\\nnounced Ni-enna, not “Neena” as if ie were sounded as in English piece.\\n(Immediately after the line in which she mangles the name E¨\\narendil, Cate\\nBlanchett pronounces the Quenya word nam´\\nari¨\\ne, “farewell”. I’m glad to\\nsay that she did a better job with this word, getting the -i¨\\ne more or less\\nright!) Some words with vowels in hiatus: f¨\\nea “soul”, l¨\\neo “shade”, lo¨\\nend¨\\ne\\n“year-middle” (the middle day of the year according to the Elvish calendar),\\ncoa “house”, ti¨\\ne “path”.\\nConsonants: Most Quenya consonants are easy to pronounce for people\\nused to speaking a Western language. These points may be observed:\\n• C is always pronounced k, never s; indeed Tolkien does use the letter k\\nrather than c in many sources. Celma “channel” or cirya “ship” must\\nnot come out as “selma”, “sirya”. (This goes for Sindarin spelling as\\nwell: When Celeborn is pronounced “Seleborn” in the Rankin/Bass\\nanimated version of LotR, it clearly shows that the moviemakers never\\nmade it to Appendix E.)\\n• In the groups hw, hy, hl, hr, the letter h is not to be pronounced\\nseparately. These are just digraphs denoting unitary consonants:\\n49\\n\\n\\n• What is spelt hl, hr was originally unvoiced l, r. That is, these sounds\\nwere pronounced without vibration in the vocal chords, resulting in\\nwhat may be described as “whispered” versions of normal l, r. (If you\\ncan isolate the l of English please, you will have an unvoiced l – though\\nin this case, it is just “incidentally” unvoiced because of the influence\\nfrom the unvoiced plosive p immediately preceding it. English never\\nhas unvoiced l as an independent sound of speech, as Quenya originally\\ndid.) In Quenya, these sounds are quite rare; examples include hr´\\nıv¨\\ne\\n“winter” and hl´\\noc¨\\ne “serpent, dragon”. However, Tolkien stated that\\nby the Third Age, hr and hl had come to be pronounced as normal\\nvoiced r, l, though the spelling hl, hr apparently persisted in writing.\\n• What is spelt hw corresponds to English wh in dialects where this\\nis still distinct from normal w (e.g., witch and which are audibly\\ndistinct words – American English, as well as northern British En-\\nglish, normally uphold this distinction, though it has been abandoned\\nin the British Received Pronunciation). Put simply, hw is a (weak)\\nversion of the sound you make when you blow out a candle. Hw\\nis not a very frequent sound in Quenya; this seems to be a quite\\ncomplete list of the known words where it occurs: hwan “sponge,\\nfungus”, hwarin “crooked”, hwarma “crossbar”, hwerm¨\\ne “gesture-\\ncode”, hwesta “breeze, breath, puffof air” (also as verb: hwesta- “to\\npuff”), hwind¨\\ne “eddy, whirlpool”.\\n• What is spelt hy represents a sound that may occur in English, but\\nthat is not normally recognized as a distinct consonant in this lan-\\nguage. Hy denotes what by a German term is often referred to as\\nich-Laut or “ich-sound”, since it is exemplified by “ch” in the Ger-\\nman word ich (“I”). To speakers of English it may sound much like sh\\n(one imagines Kennedy training long and hard to avoid “Ish bin ein\\nBerliner”). Still, as I said, a (weak) version of the sound in question\\nmay often be heard in English as well: In words like hew, huge, hu-\\nman, the h may be pronounced like an (obscure) hy. Cf. SD:418–419,\\nwhere Tolkien states that in Quenya or “Avallonian”, the sound hy\\nis “approximately equivalent to . . . h in huge”. In LotR Appendix E,\\nTolkien also pointed out that hy has the same relationship to y as hw\\n(discussed above) has to normal w: one is unvoiced, the other voiced.\\nSo another way of arriving at hy is to start with the sound of y (as\\nin you) and produce a voiceless, “whispered” variant of it. Once you\\nhave the sound pinned down, you only have to strengthen it; it should\\nbe pronounced with the same force as English sh: Hyarmen “south”,\\nhyalma “shell, conch”, hyell¨\\ne “glass”. It seems that hy mostly occurs\\nat the beginning of words; ahya- “change” is presently the sole known\\nexample of hy occurring between vowels in the middle of a word. How-\\never, h in the combination ht following certain vowels should also be\\n50\\n\\n\\npronounced like hy; see below. – In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted\\nthat speakers of Westron (the supposed “original language” of the\\nRed Book, that Tolkien “translated” into English) often substituted\\nthe sound of sh for Quenya hy. Speakers of English who don’t care\\nabout subtle phonological details may of course do the same, turning a\\nword like hyalma into “shalma”. This would be a pronunciation that\\nexisted also within the Middle-earth setting, though it was not quite\\nlike the proper Elvish pronunciation (and it does seem best to aim for\\nthe latter!) I guess many speakers of English would hardly be able to\\ntell the difference, though. Incidentally, one can achieve a pretty good\\nhy by starting from sh; just make sure that your tongue is not raised\\n(you may press its tip against the lower teeth to be certain of that). If\\nyou try to pronounce sh with the tongue in this position, what comes\\nout ought to sound like hy.\\n• Outside the groups hw, hy, hl, hr, the letter h does represent an\\nindependent sound, but it is pronounced somewhat differently in dif-\\nferent positions. It seems that originally, Quenya h (at least where it\\ncomes from Primitive Elvish kh) was typically stronger than English\\nh – that is, a “breath-h” as in high. In F¨\\neanor’s day it was apparently\\npronounced like ch in German ach or Scottish loch, or like Cyrillic X.\\nIn phonetic writing, this sound is represented as [x]. But later, at the\\nbeginning of words, this [x] was weakened and became a sound like\\nEnglish h. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien informs us that the Tengwa\\nletter for [x] was originally called harma; naturally this Tengwa was\\nso called because the initial h of this word was an example of the\\nsound the letter denoted, [x]. But when [x] in this position eventually\\nturned into an English-style h, the Tengwa was renamed aha, for in\\nthe middle of words, [x] was not weakened. So we can extract these\\nrules: at the beginning of words (before a vowel), the letter h is to\\nbe pronounced like English h. But in the middle of words, h is to be\\npronounced [x]: as between vowels in aha “wrath”, and likewise before\\nt in words like pahta “closed”, ohta “war”, nuhta- “to stunt”.\\nIn one late source, Tolkien noted that “in Quenya and Telerin medial\\n[x] eventually became h also in most cases” (VT41:9). It may therefore\\nbe permissible to pronounce even words like aha with an English-style\\nbreath-h. But the group ht must probably always be pronounced [xt];\\nthe weaker breath-h would be barely audible in this position.\\nThis rule needs one modification. Likely, h before t was originally\\npronounced [x] in all cases. Following any of the vowels a, o, and u,\\nthis pronunciation persisted, as in the examples pahta, ohta, nuhta-\\nabove. But following the vowels i and e, the original [x] turned into\\na sound similar to German ich-Laut (German may indeed be Tolkien’s\\ninspiration for this particular development in Quenya phonology).\\n51\\n\\n\\nThus in words like eht¨\\ne “spear” or rihta- “to jerk”, h should be\\npronounced just like the hy described above. Again, Tolkien imagined\\nthat human (mortal) speakers of Westron had a tendency to substitute\\na sound like English sh and say “esht¨\\ne”, “rishta” instead.\\n• Quenya l “represents more or less the sound of English initial l, as in\\nlet” (LotR Appendix E). Now why did Tolkien specify that Quenya l is\\nto sound like an initial English l (regardless of its position in a Quenya\\nword)? As Tolkien was well aware, British English l is pronounced\\nsomewhat differently in different positions. An initial l, as in let, is\\npronounced as a so-called “clear” l – and this is the kind of l that\\nshould be used in all positions in Quenya (as is also the case in other\\nlanguages, like German). But when l is not initial, English in most\\ncases employs a so-called “dark” l, which differs from the the “clear”\\nl in that the “dark” variant is pronounced by arching the back of the\\ntongue upwards: Contrast the pronunciation of l in two words like let\\n(clear l) and fill (dark l). Compared to the “clear” l, the “dark” l\\nsounds lower pitched, but this sound is to be avoided in Quenya. This\\nmay be something of a problem to Americans, since their L’s tend to\\nbe rather “dark” in all positions, even initially (at least as perceived\\nby European ears). – Perfectionists should also observe another detail:\\nIn Letters:425, Tolkien mentioned l among the Quenya “dentals”, sc.\\nsounds that are pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the\\n(upper) teeth. English normally uses an alveolar l instead, that is, a\\nsound pronounced with the tip of the tongue further back, above the\\nteeth rather than touching them. This again makes for a somewhat\\n“darker” sound. When pronouncing a Quenya l, one should make sure\\nthat that the tip of the tongue touches the teeth.\\n• Quenya n is like English n. Usually this sound had been n all along,\\nbut in some cases it represents older ng as in English king, ding (notice\\nthat there is no distinct g to be heard, despite the spelling). Unlike En-\\nglish, Quenya could also have this sound at the beginning of words. As\\nmentioned in the discussion of spelling conventions, Tolkien sometimes\\nused the letter ˜\\nn to represent this older ng, e.g. ˜\\nNoldor. In his letters,\\nTolkien in one case added a footnote to the word Noldor (so spelt),\\ninforming the recipient that the initial N was to be pronounced “ng\\nas in ding” (Letters:176). This would however be the “archaic” pro-\\nnunciation; people speaking Quenya in Frodo’s day would simply say\\nNoldor: LotR Appendix E clearly indicates that by the Third Age,\\ninitial ˜\\nn had come to be pronounced like a normal n, and therefore\\nthe Elvish letter for ˜\\nn “has been transcribed n”. We have adopted the\\nsame system here, so the letter n in nearly all cases represents normal\\nEnglish n, regardless of its phonological history in Quenya. I say “in\\nnearly all cases” because n is still pronounced ˜\\nn before c (= k), g and\\n52\\n\\n\\nqu. This is not much of a problem, for it is natural for speakers of\\nEnglish and many other languages to use this pronunciation anyway.\\nIn a word like anca “jaw” the cluster nc is therefore pronounced like\\n“nk” in English tank, and in a word like anga “iron” the ng should be\\nsounded like “ng” in English finger. Notice that Quenya ng occurring\\nin the middle of words should always be pronounced with an audible g\\n(this also goes for the group ngw, as in tengwa “letter”). It is NOT\\njust the simple ˜\\nn described above, the “ng” of English king, with no\\ndistinct g. (We are of course talking about a hard g here; Quenya ng\\nmust never be pronounced “nj” as in English angel, but always as\\nin finger. The sound of “soft” g as in English gin does not occur in\\nQuenya.)\\n• Quenya r “represents a trilled r in all positions; the sound was not\\nlost before consonants (as in [British] English part)” (LotR Appendix\\nE). English r is generally much too weak for Quenya. Its weakness is\\nprecisely the reason why it tends to drop out before consonants and\\nat the end of words (except where the next word happens to begin\\nin a vowel – and by analogy, some speakers of English even introduce\\nan R-sound where a word that properly should end in a vowel comes\\nbefore a word beginning in a vowel. That is when vanilla ice starts\\ncoming out as “vanillar ice” – or, if you like, “vanilla rice”! Of course,\\nthis must be avoided in Quenya.) Quenya r should be trilled, as in\\nSpanish, Italian, Russian etc., or for that matter as in Scottish English.\\nCertain subtleties of Tengwar spelling suggests that in Quenya, r was\\nsomewhat weaker immediately in front of consonants (as opposed to\\nvowels) and at the end of words. Nonetheless, it should be a properly\\ntrilled, wholly distinct sound even in these positions: Parma “book”,\\nerd¨\\ne “seed”, tasar “willow”, Eldar “Elves”. The vowel in front of r\\nshould not be lengthened or otherwise affected. In the Jackson movie,\\nthe actors portraying Gandalf and Saruman normally pronounce the\\nname Mordor correctly, with trilled r’s and short vowels (whereas\\nElijah Wood’s “Frodo” invariably says M´\\nod´\\no with no trace of any r’s!)\\nIn the movie, – Mordor is Sindarin for Black Land, but by its form\\nand pronunciation, the word could just as well be Quenya mordor =\\n“shadows” or “stains” (the plural form of mordo).\\nThe uvular r that is common in languages like French and German\\nshould be avoided in Quenya, for LotR Appendix E states that this\\nwas “a sound which the Eldar found distasteful” (it is even suggested\\nthat this was how the Orcs pronounced R!)\\n• The consonant s should always be unvoiced, “as in English so, geese”\\n(LotR Appendix E). In English, s is often voiced to z, even though\\northography may still show “s”. For instance, though the s of English\\nhouse is unvoiced, it becomes voiced in the plural form houses (for\\n53\\n\\n\\nthis reason, Tolkien noted that he would have liked the spelling houzes\\nbetter – see PM:24). When pronouncing Quenya, one should be careful\\nnot to add voice to s, turning it into z: Asar “festival”, olos “dream”,\\nnaus¨\\ne “imagination”. Third Age Exilic Quenya did not possess the\\nsound z at all. (Tolkien did imagine that z had occurred at an earlier\\nstage, but it had later turned into r, merging with original r. For\\ninstance, UT:396 indicates that the plural of olos “dream” was at\\none stage olozi, but later it became olori.) Where it occurs between\\nvowels, s often represents earlier þ (more or less = th as in thin);\\nthe words asar and naus¨\\ne mentioned above represent older aþar and\\nnauþ¨\\ne and were so spelt in Tengwar orthography.\\n• On v and w: We must assume that v and w are properly pronounced\\nas in English vine and wine, respectively (but initial nw is strictly\\nnot n + w but simply a so-called labialized n; see below). There are\\nsome unclear points here, though. LotR Appendix E seems to indicate\\nthat in Third Age Quenya, initial w had come to be pronounced v: it is\\nsaid that the name of the Tengwa letter vilya had earlier been wilya.\\nLikewise, Tolkien indicated that the word v´\\nera (“personal, private,\\nown”) had been w´\\nera in what he called “Old Quenya” (PM:340).\\nIn the Etymologies, the evidence is somewhat divergent. Sometimes\\nTolkien has primitive stems in w- yield Quenya words in v-, as when\\nthe stem wan yields Quenya vanya- “go, depart, disappear”. Some-\\ntimes he lists double forms, as when the stem wˆ\\na (or wawa, waiwa)\\nyields Quenya vaiwa and waiwa, both meaning “wind”. Under the\\nstem way Tolkien listed a word for “envelope” as “w- vaia”, evidently\\nindicating a double form waia and vaia (all of these examples are\\nfound in LR:397). In LR:398, there are further double forms, but in\\nthe case of the verb vilin (“I fly”) from the stem wil, Tolkien curi-\\nously changed it to wilin. Perhaps he suddenly decided to go for the\\n“Old Quenya” spelling rather than actually rejecting one in favour of\\nthe other?\\nThe weight of the evidence seems to be that at the beginning of words,\\nw- had come to be pronounced as normal v- by the Third Age; where\\nTolkien listed double forms in w- and v-, the former is apparently to\\nbe taken as the more archaic form. However, I have not regularized\\nthe spelling on this point, though where Tolkien himself used or listed\\na form in v- rather than w- (either alone or as an alternative to w-),\\nI will use the form in v- in this course. (This also goes for vilin!) It\\nis possible, though, that according to the Third Age pronunciation all\\ninitial w’s should be sounded as v, the original distinction between\\ninitial v and w having been lost in the spoken language. It is unclear\\nwhether or not Tolkien meant that this distinction was consistently\\nupheld in Tengwar orthography (as when this writing upheld the dis-\\n54\\n\\n\\ntinction between þ and s even after both had come to be pronounced\\ns). If so, the letter called (wilya >) vilya was still used for v repre-\\nsenting older w, while another letter (vala) was used for v that had\\nbeen v all along. – Other than at the beginning of words, the dis-\\ntinction between v and w was upheld even in the Third Age. In the\\ncase of the groups lw and lv the distinction could even be empha-\\nsized by altering the pronunciation of the latter: “For lv, not for lw,\\nmany speakers, especially Elves, used lb” (LotR Appendix E). Hence\\na word like elv¨\\nea “starlike” would often be pronounced “elb¨\\nea”, and\\nit might also be so written in Tengwar orthography. Though frequent,\\nthis would seem to be a non-standard pronunciation, and the spellings\\nemployed by Tolkien usually indicates the pronunciation “lv”. Cf. for\\ninstance Celvar (or “Kelvar”, meaning animals) rather than Celbar\\nin the speeches of Yavanna and Manw¨\\ne in the Silmarillion, chapter 2.\\nIn PM:340 Tolkien quotes a Quenya word for “branch” as olba rather\\nthan olva, though.\\n• The letter y “is only used as a consonant, as y in E[nglish] Yes”:\\nTolkien singled this out as one of the few major departures from Latin\\nspelling in the spelling conventions he used for Quenya (Letters:176).\\nThe vowel y, like German ¨\\nu or French “u” as in lune, does not occur\\nin Quenya (though it is found in Sindarin).\\nThe question of aspiration\\nThere is one uncertainty regarding the precise pronunciation the unvoiced\\nstops c (= k), t, p: In English as well as some other languages, these sounds,\\nwhen occurring before a vowel at the beginning of a word, are normally\\naspirated. That is, a h-like puffof breath is slipped in after them. In this\\nposition they are pronounced a little like genuine sequences k + h, t +\\nh, p + h (as in backhand, outhouse, scrap-heap). The average speaker is\\nnot conscious of this at all, not really perceiving the extra h as a distinct\\nsound: It is just the way k, t, p is “expected” to sound at the beginning\\nof words. But in some languages, like French, Russian and (perhaps most\\nimportantly) Finnish, there is no such gratuitous h automatically following\\nthese consonants when they occur in certain positions.\\nShould Quenya t, p, c be aspirated as in English, or should they be pro-\\nnounced as in French or Finnish? This question is not directly addressed\\nanywhere in Tolkien’s published writings. It may be observed that Quenya\\nt, p, c descend from Primitive Elvish consonants that were certainly not\\naspirated, for in the primitive language they contrasted with distinct aspi-\\nrated sounds: primitive th, ph, kh, which later became s, f, h in Quenya.\\n(Cf. two wholly distinct primitive words like thaurˆ\\na “detestable” and taurˆ\\na\\n“masterful” – the th of the first word should be sounded the way a speaker of\\nEnglish would most likely mispronounce the t of the latter! The t of taurˆ\\na\\n55\\n\\n\\nshould actually be pronounced French-style, with no aspiration.) So were\\nQuenya t, p, c still unaspirated, since they had been so in the primitive\\nlanguage?\\nSince the primitive aspirated sounds had been changed, adding aspiration\\nto t, p, c would cause no confusion. It should be noted, though, that in\\nthe writing system devised by F¨\\neanor, there were originally distinct letters\\nfor aspirated sounds: “The original F¨\\neanorian system also possessed a grade\\nwith extended stems, both above and below the line [of writing]. These\\nusually represented aspirated consonants (e.g. t + h, p + h, k + h)” (LotR\\nAppendix E). However, these were not the letters used to spell Quenya t,\\np, c. So all things considered, I think Quenya t, p, c should ideally be\\npronounced without aspiration. For people who are used to automatically\\nslip in a h-like puffof breath after these consonants it may be difficult to get\\nrid of it, since they are not really conscious of its presence at all. A phonology\\nteacher once advised me that one way of getting rid of the aspiration is to\\npractice pronouncing t, p, c/k with a burning candle in front of your mouth;\\nthe trick is to pronounce these consonants without the flame of the candle\\nflickering (because of the puffof breath that constitutes the aspiration).\\nThe voiced counterparts of t, p and c/k, namely d, b and (hard) g re-\\nspectively, are not aspirated in English. For this reason, people who are\\nused to hearing the unvoiced sounds pronounced as aspirated variants may\\n(wrongly) perceive unaspirated unvoiced plosives as their voiced counter-\\nparts. Pronounced without aspiration, Quenya words like tarya (“stiff”),\\nparma (“book”) or calma (“lamp”) may sound a little like “darya, barma,\\ngalma” to speakers of English (speakers of French, Russian or Finnish would\\nnot be confused). When pronouncing such words, one must not introduce\\nvibration in the vocal chords to produce actual voiced sounds d, b, g. –\\nBut I should add that the whole aspiration issue is not something a student\\nneeds to spend much time on; as I said, the exact pronunciation of Quenya\\nt, p, c is nowhere addressed in published writings. If it is indeed wrong to\\nadd aspiration to these consonants, at least one will err little more than\\nTolkien did himself when reading Nam´\\nari¨\\ne.\\nPalatalized and labialized consonants\\nIn Quenya, we find words like nyarna “tale”, tyali¨\\ne “play” or nwalca\\n“cruel”. From these spellings it would seem that such words begin in conso-\\nnant clusters: n + y, t + y, n + w. However, this would not agree with the\\nexplicit statement made in Lowdham’s Report that “Adunaic, like Aval-\\nlonian [= Quenya], does not tolerate more than a single basic consonant\\ninitially in any word” (SD:417–418). So how are we to explain this?\\nThe solution seems to be that “combinations” like the ny of nyarna are\\njust single, basic consonants: Ny is not a cluster n + y, but the same unitary\\nsound that is fittingly represented as a single letter “˜\\nn” in Spanish orthogra-\\n56\\n\\n\\nphy – as in se˜\\nnor. Of course, this sounds very much like “senyor”, but “˜\\nn” is\\nreally a single consonant. This “˜\\nn” is a palatalized version of n, an n that has\\nbeen “tinted” in the direction of y. English employs one distinctly palatal-\\nized consonant, usually represented by the digraph “sh” (which, of course,\\nis not a cluster s + h); this can be described as a palatalized s. By carefully\\ncomparing the pronunciation of s and sh you can perceive the palataliza-\\ntion mechanism operating in your own mouth: A consonant is palatalized by\\narching the back of the tongue up towards the roof of the mouth (the palate,\\nhence the term “palatalized consonant”). The relationship between s and\\nsh corresponds to the relationship between n and Quenya ny (or Spanish\\n“˜\\nn”).\\nBesides ny, Quenya also has the palatalized consonants ty, ly, ry (e.g. in\\ntyali¨\\ne “play”, alya “rich”, verya “bold”); these are palatalized counterparts\\nof “normal” t, l, r. Regarding ty, Tolkien wrote that it may be pronounced\\nas the “t” of English tune (see for instance SD:418–419 – it should be noted\\nthat he is thinking of dialects where this comes out as “tyoon”; this is not\\nthe case in all forms of American English). In Gondor, some mortal speakers\\nof Quenya supposedly pronounced ty like ch as in English church, but\\nthat was not quite the proper Elvish pronunciation. As for the consonant\\nly, it would be similar to the “lh” of Portuguese olho (“eye”). In LotR\\nAppendix E, Tolkien noted that l (so spelt) should also “to some degree\\n[be] ‘palatalized’ between e, i and a consonant, or finally after e, i”. The\\nwording “to some degree” seems to suggest that we would not have a regular,\\n“full-blown” palatalized l in these positions (like the sound spelt ly), but in\\nwords like Eldar “Elves” or amil “mother”, the l should ideally have just\\na little tint of palatalizing to it.\\nBesides the palatalized consonants, we have the labialized consonants: nw,\\ngw and qu (= cw). These are not really clusters n + w, g + w, c + w.\\nRather they represent n, g, c (k) pronounced with pouted lips, as when\\npronouncing w: By the pouting of the lips, the consonant is “labialized”\\n(this word comes from the Latin term for “lip”). Quenya qu may certainly\\nbe pronounced as in English queen, but ideally it should be pronounced as k\\nand w merged together in a single, unitary sound. (True, there does exist one\\nearly source where Tolkien states that qu, though originally being simply\\nk “accomp[anied] by lip-rounding”, “is now sounded practically exactly as\\nEnglish qu – a liprounded k foll[owed] by a distinct w sound”: See Parma\\nEldalamberon #13, page 63. However, I think this idea may be superseded by\\ninformation from a much later source, indicating that Quenya had no initial\\nconsonant clusters: SD:417–418.) Nw and gw similarly represent “merged”\\nversions of n/w, g/w. – It should be noted that nw is a single, labialized\\nconsonant only at the beginning of words, where it represents earlier ngw\\n(sc. what Tolkien might also spell “˜\\nnw”, using “˜\\nn” for ng as in king). In the\\nmiddle of words, e.g. in vanwa “gone, lost”, nw really is a cluster n + w and\\nis so spelt also in Tengwar orthography. However, the labialized consonants\\n57\\n\\n\\nqu and gw also occur in the middle of words. In fact, gw occurs only in\\nthat position, and always in the combination ngw (not “˜\\nnw” but “˜\\nngw”,\\nstill using “˜\\nn” as Tolkien did): Lingw¨\\ne “fish”, nangwa “jaw”, sungwa\\n“drinking-vessel”.\\nThe question of length: It may seem that when they occur medially be-\\ntween vowels, the palatalized and labialized consonants count as long or\\ndouble consonants (as if the digraphs represented actual consonant clusters\\nafter all). Again using the letter “˜\\nn” with its Spanish value of a palatalized\\nn (and not, as Tolkien often did, for ng as in king), one may ask whether a\\nword like atarinya (“my father”, LR:61) actually represents “atari˜\\nn˜\\nna”. If\\nso, the group ny in the middle of words denotes a long palatalized N. Then\\nthe very word Quenya would be pronounced “Que˜\\nn˜\\nna” rather than “Quen-\\nya”. Another possibility is “Que˜\\nnya”, the n being palatalized all right, but\\nthere is still a relatively distinct y-sound following it (which there would\\nnot be when ny occurs at the beginning of a word). Tolkien reading a ver-\\nsion of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne at least once pronounced the word inyar as “i˜\\nn˜\\nnar” (but\\nthe second time it occurred he simply said “inyar” with n + y). In any\\ncase, the groups ny, ly, ry, ty and qu (for cw) must be counted as either\\nlong consonants or consonant clusters for the purpose of stress (see below)\\n– though it is also clear that sometimes they must be analyzed as single,\\nunitary consonants.\\nStress\\nWhenever a language has polysyllabic words, speakers of this language may\\nenunciate some syllables more forcefully than others. We say that these\\nsyllables are stressed or accented. In some languages speakers don’t normally\\nemphasize certain syllables more than others. For instance, the Japanese\\nput about the same amount of stress on every syllable, resulting in what\\nunloving foreigners have referred to as “machine gun articulation”. But in\\nWestern languages, a varying amount of stress is common: Some syllables\\nare stressed, others unstressed.\\nThe rules for which syllables are stressed vary wildly, though. Some lan-\\nguages have a very simple system; in French, words that are to receive any\\nstress are always accented on the final syllable. To the natives, Paris is not\\n“PARis” as in English, but rather “parIS” (actually the French don’t pro-\\nnounce the s, but that has nothing to do with the accent). The Finns also\\nhave a very simple system, stressing all words on the first syllable: While\\nsome speakers of English may think that Helsinki is most “naturally” pro-\\nnounced “HelSINKi”, the residents of the city will insist on “HELsinki”\\ninstead.\\nSince the Finnish language was evidently Tolkien’s foremost inspiration,\\none might think that he would have copied its simple system of accenting\\nall words on the first syllable over into Quenya. In the “internal” or fictional\\n58\\n\\n\\nhistory of the language, he did indeed envision an early period during which\\nQuenya words were so accented (the so-called retraction period, WJ:366).\\nHowever, this was replaced by a new system already before the Noldor went\\ninto exile, so Quenya as a language of lore in Middle-earth employed different\\naccentuation patterns, carefully described in LotR Appendix E. This is the\\nsystem we must use. (It seems that Tolkien actually copied it from Latin!)\\nWords of one syllable, like nat “thing”, obviously pose no problem; this\\none syllable is the sole candidate for receiving the stress. The simplest poly-\\nsyllabic words, those of two syllables, are no problem either: In LotR Ap-\\npendix E, Tolkien noted that “in words of two syllables [the accent] falls\\nin practically all cases on the first syllable”. As this wording implies, there\\nmay be a very few exceptions; the only exception known seems to be the\\nword av´\\na “don’t!”, that is accented on the final syllable: “aV ´\\nA”. (Even\\nthis one word also appears in the alternative form ´\\nava, stressed on the first\\nsyllable according to the normal rule: “ ´\\nAV a”.) The name of the Blessed\\nRealm, Aman, I sometimes hear people pronounce with the stress on the\\nsecond rather than the first syllable – but the correct pronunciation must\\nbe “AM an”, if we can trust the rules set out by Tolkien. (“AmAN ” would\\nbe Amman, capital of Jordan!)\\nLonger words, with three or more syllables, are slightly more complex\\nwhen it comes to stress. Many of them are accented on the second to last\\nsyllable. However, in some cases the second-to-last syllable isn’t “qualified”\\nto receive the accent: This syllable cannot be accented if it is short. So how\\ndo we recognize a short syllable? If it contains no long vowel (no vowel\\nmarked with an accent), this is obviously one omen. Then the vowel itself\\nis necessarily short. If this short vowel is followed by only one consonant,\\nor even no consonant at all, this syllable has little chance of receiving the\\naccent. Its one remaining chance of redeeming itself as a long syllable is\\nthat instead of a simple short vowel it actually contains one of the Quenya\\ndiphthongs: ai, au, eu, oi, ui or iu. Two vowels combined into a diphthong\\ncount as having the same “length” as a normal, unitary long vowel (marked\\nby an accent). But if there is no diphthong, no long vowel, and not even a\\nshort vowel followed by more than one consonant, the syllable in question is\\nirredeemably short. If this is the second-to-last syllable in a word of three or\\nmore syllables, this penultimate syllable has forfeited all its chances to re-\\nceive the stress. In such a case the stress moves one step ahead, to fall on the\\nthird syllable from the end (no matter what this syllable looks like). Tolkien\\nnoted that words of such a shape “are favoured in the Eldarin languages,\\nespecially Quenya”. Examples:\\n• A word like vestal¨\\ne “wedding” is accented “VESTal¨\\ne”. The second-\\nto-last syllable cannot receive the stress because its vowel (the a) is\\nshort and followed by only a single consonant (the l); hence the accent\\nmoves one step ahead, to the third syllable from the end. Plural forms\\n59\\n\\n\\nlike Teleri (the Sea-Elves) and Istari (the Wizards) I sometimes hear\\npeople mispronounce as “TeLERi”, “IsTARi”; applying Tolkien’s rules\\nwe have to conclude that he actually intended “TELeri”, “ISTari”.\\nThe short penultimate syllables in these words cannot be accented.\\n• A word like Eress¨\\nea (the name of an isle near the Blessed Realm) some\\nspeakers of English are tempted to accent on the second-to-last syl-\\nlable (following the stress-pattern of such a place-name as “Eritrea”!)\\nBut since in Er-ess-¨\\ne-a the second-to-last syllable is just a short ¨\\ne\\nnot followed by a group of consonants (actually not even one conso-\\nnant), this syllable cannot be accented and the stress moves to the\\nsyllable before it: “ErESS¨\\nea”. Other words of the same pattern (with\\nno consonant following a short vowel in the second-to-last syllable):\\nEldali¨\\ne “the people of the Elves” (“ElDAli¨\\ne” – though the word Elda\\n“Elf” by itself is of course accented “ELda”), Tilion “The Horned”,\\nname of a Maia (“TILion”), laur¨\\nea “golden” (“LAUR¨\\nea”), Yavanni¨\\ne\\n“September” (“YaVANN i¨\\ne”), Silmarillion “[The Story] of the Sil-\\nmarils” (“SilmaRILLion”).\\nBut though such words were “favoured”, there is certainly no lack of\\nwords where the second-to-last syllable does qualify for receiving the\\naccent. Examples:\\n• Varda’s title Elent´\\nari “Star-Queen” is pronounced “ElenT ´\\nARi”, since\\nthe vowel ´\\na in the second-to-last syllable is long. (If this had been a\\nshort a, it couldn’t have been stressed since it is not followed by more\\nthan one consonant, and the third syllable from the end would have\\nbeen accented instead: “ELEN tari” – but no such word exists.) The\\nnames N´\\numen´\\nor¨\\ne, Valin´\\nor¨\\ne are likewise accented on the long ´\\no in\\nthe second-to-last syllable (whereas in the shortened forms N´\\numenor,\\nValinor the accent must fall on the third syllable from the end:\\nN ´\\nUMenor, VALinor).\\n• Words like hastaina “marred” or Valarauco “Power-demon” (Sin-\\ndarin Balrog) are accented “hasTAIN a”, “ValaRAUCo” – since diph-\\nthongs like ai, au can be counted as long vowels for the purpose of\\nstress.\\n• The names Elendil and Isildur are accented “ElENDil” and “IsILD-\\nur”, since the vowel in the second-to-last-syllable, though short, is\\nfollowed by more than one consonant (the groups nd, ld, respectively).\\nA double consonant would have the same effect as a cluster of different\\nconsonants; for instance, Elenna (“Starwards”, a name of N´\\numenor) is\\npronounced “ElENN a”. (Contrast the adjective elena “stellar, of the\\nstars”: this must be accented “ELena” since the second-to-last syllable\\n“en” is short and therefore unable to receive the accent – unlike the\\nlong syllable “enn” in Elenna.)\\n60\\n\\n\\nNotice that the one letter x represents two consonants, ks. Therefore, a\\nword like Helcarax¨\\ne (a place-name) is accented “HelcarAX¨\\ne” (not “Hel-\\nCARax¨\\ne” as if there were only one consonant following the a in the second-\\nto-last syllable). Cf. the alternative spelling Helkarakse in the Etymologies,\\nentry karak.\\nAs noted above, some combinations should apparently be thought of as\\nsingle consonants: qu (for cw/kw) represents labialized k, not k + w. Sim-\\nilarly, ny, ty, ly, ry would be palatalized n, t, l, r (the first = Spanish ˜\\nn).\\nBut in the middle of words, for the purpose of stress, it seems that qu, ly,\\nny, ty etc. do count as groups of consonants (double consonants or clusters\\n– we cannot be certain precisely what Tolkien intended). In WJ:407, Tolkien\\nindicates that the compound word ciryaquen “shipman, sailor” (made from\\ncirya “ship” + -quen “person”) is to be accented “cirYAquen”. If qu (=\\ncw/kw) were here thought of as a single consonant, labialized k, there would\\nnot be a group of consonants following the a and it could not receive the ac-\\ncent: the word would then have been pronounced “CIRyaquen” instead. So\\neither qu here does count as a cluster k + w, or it represents a long or double\\nlabialized k (or even labialized kw followed by w). Bottom line is: pronounce\\n“cirYAquen” and be relieved that the rest is mainly academic meandering.\\nA few other words including the combinations in question: Elenya (first day\\nof the Eldarin six-day week, accented “ElEN ya”), Calacirya or Calacilya\\n(a place in the Blessed Realm, accented “CalaCI rya”, “CalaCI lya”).\\nA word of warning regarding the accent mark: Notice that the accent mark\\nthat may appear above vowels (´\\na, ´\\ne, ´\\nı, ´\\no, ´\\nu) only denotes that the vowel is\\nlong. While this symbol is frequently used to indicate the stressed syllable,\\nthis is not the case in Tolkien’s normal spelling of Quenya. (Some may have\\nnoted that Pok´\\nemon isn’t accented on the ´\\ne either, so Tolkien isn’t wildly\\nidiosyncratic in this department!) A long vowel will often receive the stress,\\nas in the example Elent´\\nari above, but not necessarily so: If the long vowel\\ndoes not appear in the second-to-last syllable, its length (and the accent\\nmark denoting it!) is quite irrelevant for the purpose of stress. In a word\\nlike ´\\nUlairi, the Quenya name for the Ringwraiths or Nazgˆ\\nul, the stress\\nfalls on the diphthong ai, not on the ´\\nu. The spelling palant´\\nır has mislead\\nmany, making them think that this word is to be accented on “t´\\nır”. Here is\\nsomething Ian McKellen, playing Gandalf in the Peter Jackson LotR movie\\ntrilogy, wrote as the film was being shot:\\n. . . I have to learn a new pronunciation. All this time we have\\nbeing saying “palanT´\\nIR” instead of the Old English stress on\\nthe first syllable. Just as the word was about to be commit-\\nted to the soundtrack, a correction came from Andrew Jack,\\nthe Dialect Coach; he taught me a Norfolk accent for Restora-\\ntion, and for LOTR he supervises accents, languages and all\\nthings vocal. Palant´\\nır, being strictly of elvish origin should fol-\\n61\\n\\n\\nlow Tolkien’s rule that the syllable before a double consonant\\nshould be stressed – “paLANT´\\nır” making a sound which is close\\nto “lantern”. . .\\nAndrew Jack was right. Palant´\\nır cannot be stressed on the final syllable;\\nvirtually no polysyllabic Quenya words are accented in such a way (as I said\\nabove, av´\\na “don’t!” is the sole known exception). Instead the a in the second-\\nto-last syllable receives the accent because it is followed by the consonant\\ncluster nt (I should not call this a “double consonant” like McKellen does,\\nsince I want to reserve that term for a group of two identical consonants,\\nlike tt or nn – but for the purpose of stress, double consonants and clusters\\nof different consonants have the same effect). So it is indeed “palANT´\\nır”.\\n(But in the plural form palant´\\nıri, where the long ´\\nı suddenly appears in the\\nsecond-to-last syllable, it does receive the accent: “palanT´\\nIRi”.)\\nIn the case of long words ending in two short syllables, the last of these syl-\\nlables may receive a weaker secondary stress. In a word like h´\\nısim¨\\ne “mist”,\\nthe main stress falls on h´\\nıs, but the final syllable -m¨\\ne is not wholly un-\\nstressed. This secondary stress is much weaker than the main accent, though.\\n(Nonetheless, Tolkien did note that for the purpose of poetry, the secondary\\nstress can be used metrically: RGEO:69.)\\nSpeed\\nFinally a brief note on something we know little about: How fast should\\none talk when speaking Quenya? The few recordings of Tolkien speaking\\nQuenya are not “reliable” in this matter; he inevitably enunciates quite\\ncarefully. But regarding F¨\\neanor’s mother M´\\nıriel he noted that “she spoke\\nswiftly and took pride in this skill” (PM:333). So fast Quenya is evidently\\ngood Quenya. When Tolkien also wrote that “the Elves made considerable\\nuse of . . . concomitant gestures” (WJ:416), one remembers that he had a\\ngreat love for Italian – see Letters:223.\\nSummary of Lesson One\\nThe Quenya vowels are a, e, i, o, u; long vowels are marked with an accent:\\n´\\na, ´\\ne etc. The vowels should be pure, pronounced with their “Italian” values;\\nlong ´\\na and ´\\ne should be noticably closer than short a, e. Some vowels may\\nreceive a diaeresis (¨\\ne, ¨\\na etc.), but this does not affect their pronunciation and\\nis only intended as a clarification for people used to English orthography.\\nThe diphthongs are ai, au, eu, oi, ui, and iu. The consonant c is always\\npronounced k; l should be pronounced as a “clear”, dental L; r should be\\ntrilled; s is always unvoiced; y is only used as a consonant (as in English\\nyou). Ideally, the consonants t, p, c should probably be unaspirated. Palatal-\\nized consonants are represented by digraphs in -y (ty, ny etc.); labialized\\n62\\n\\n\\nconsonants are normally written as digraphs in -w (e.g. nw, but what would\\nbe cw is spelt qu instead). H is pronounced [x] (German ach-Laut) before t,\\nunless this combination ht is preceded by one of the vowels e or i, in which\\ncase h is sounded like German ich-Laut. Otherwise, h may be pronounced\\nlike English h; the digraphs hy and hw however represent ich-Laut and un-\\nvoiced w (like American English wh), respectively. The combinations hl and\\nhr originally represented unvoiced l, r, but by the Third Age, these sounds\\nhad come to be pronounced like normal l and r. In polysyllabic words, the\\nstress falls on the second-to-last syllable when that is long (containing either\\na long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by a consonant cluster or a\\ndouble consonant). If the second-to-last syllable is short, the stress falls on\\nthe third syllable from the end (unless the word has only two syllables, in\\nwhich case the first syllable receives the stress whether it is short or long).\\nExercises\\nAs far as the most critical subtleties of pronunciation are concerned, I un-\\nfortunately cannot make any exercises; we are not in a classroom so that I\\ncan comment on your pronunciation. But regarding stress (accent) and the\\npronunciation of h, it is possible to make exercises.\\n1. Determine which vowel (single vowel or diphthong) receives the accent\\nin the words below. (It is not necessary to indicate where the entire\\nsyllable it belongs to begins and ends.)\\nA. Alcar (“glory”)\\nB. Alcar¨\\ne (longer variant of the above)\\nC. Alcarinqua (“glorious”)\\nD. Calima (“bright”)\\nE. Oronti (“mountains”)\\nF. ´\\nUn´\\notim¨\\ne (“uncountable, numberless”)\\nG. Envinyatar (“renewer”)\\nH. Ulund¨\\ne (“flood”)\\nI. E¨\\naruil¨\\ne (“seaweed”)\\nJ. Ercass¨\\ne (“holly”)\\nExtra exercise on stress: While we hear many Sindarin lines in the\\nmovie, one of the few really prominent samples of Quenya in Peter\\nJackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring is the scene where “Saruman”\\n(Christopher Lee) standing on the top of Isengard reads an invocation\\nto bring down an avalanche in order to stop the Fellowship. He says to\\nthe mountain they are attempting to cross: Nai yarvax¨\\nea rasselya\\n63\\n\\n\\ntaltuva notto-carinnar! = “may your bloodstained horn collapse\\nupon enemy heads!” (not translated in the movie). The actor accents\\nthe words like this: nai yarVAX¨\\nea RASSelya TALTuva notto-\\nCARinnar. Are all the words accented as they should be, according\\nto Tolkien’s guidelines? If not, what is right and what is wrong?\\n2. Where the letter h appears in Quenya words as they are spelt in our\\nletters, it may be pronounced in various ways. Ignoring the digraphs\\nhw and hy, the letter h may be pronounced\\nA) a “breath-h” like English h as in high,\\nB) more or less as in English huge, human or ideally like ch in\\nGerman ich,\\nC) like ch in German ach or Scottish loch (in phonetic writing [x]).\\nIn addition we have alternative D): the letter h is not really pronounced\\nat all, but merely indicates that the following consonant was unvoiced\\nin archaic Quenya.\\nSort the words below into these four categories (A, B, C, D):\\nK. Ohtar (“warrior”)\\nL. Hr´\\nav¨\\ne (“flesh”)\\nM. Nahta (“a bite”)\\nN. Heru (“lord”)\\nO. Neht¨\\ne (“spearhead”)\\nP. Mahalma (“throne”)\\nQ. Hell¨\\ne (“sky”)\\nR. Tihtala (“blinking”)\\nS. Hl´\\noc¨\\ne (“snake, serpent”)\\nT. H´\\nısi¨\\ne (“mist”)\\n64\\n\\n\\nLesson 2\\nNouns. Plural form. The article.\\n2.1\\nThe Noun\\nWords that denote things, as opposed to for instance actions, are called\\nnouns. The “things” in question may be inanimate (like “stone”), animate\\n(like “person”, “woman”, “boy”), natural (like “tree”), artificial (like\\n“bridge, house”), concrete (like “stone” again) or wholly abstract (like “ha-\\ntred”). Names of persons, like “Peter” or “Mary”, are also considered nouns.\\nSometimes a noun may denote, not one clearly distinct object or person, but\\nan entire substance (like “gold” or “water”). So there is much to be included.\\nIn most languages, a noun can be inflected, that is, it appears in various\\nforms to modify its meaning, or to make it fit into a specific grammatical\\ncontext. For instance, if you want to connect two English nouns like “Mary”\\nand “house” in such a way as to make it clear that Mary owns the house,\\nyou modify the form of the noun Mary by adding the ending -’s, producing\\nMary’s, which readily connects with house to make the phrase Mary’s house.\\nOr starting with a noun like tree, you may want to make it clear that you\\nare talking about more than one singular tree, and so you modify the word\\nto its plural form by adding the plural ending -s to get trees. In English, a\\nnoun doesn’t have very many forms at all; there is the singular (e.g. girl),\\nits plural (girls), the form you use when the one denoted by the noun owns\\nsomething (girl’s) and the combination of the plural and this “ownership”-\\nform (written girls’ and unfortunately not really distinct from girls or girl’s\\nin sound, but speakers of English somehow get along without too many\\nmisunderstandings – rest assured that the Quenya equivalents are clearly\\ndistinct in form!) So an English noun comes in no more than four different\\nforms.\\nA Quenya noun, on the other hand, comes in hundreds of different forms.\\nIt can receive endings not only for two different kinds of plural, plus endings\\ndenoting a pair of things, but also endings expressing meanings that in\\nEnglish would be denoted by placing small words like “for, in/on, from,\\nto, of, with” etc. in front of the noun instead. Finally a Quenya noun can\\n65\\n\\n\\nalso receive endings denoting who owns it, e.g. -rya- “her” in m´\\naryat “her\\nhands” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne (the final -t, by the way, is one of the endings denoting\\na pair of something – in this case a natural pair of hands).\\nHaving read the above, the student should not succumb to the idea that\\nQuenya is a horribly difficult language (“imagine, hundreds of different forms\\nto learn where English has only four!”), or for that matter start thinking\\nthat Quenya must be some kind of super-language (“wow, hundreds of dif-\\nferent forms to play with while the poor English-speaking sods have to get\\nalong with a pitiful four!”) English and Quenya organize the information\\ndifferently, that is all – the former often preferring a string of short words,\\nthe latter rather jumbling the ideas to be expressed into one big mouth-\\nful. The hundreds of different forms arise because a much lower number of\\nendings can be combined, so there is no reason to despair. It is a little like\\ncounting; you needn’t learn two hundred and fifty different numeric symbols\\nto be able to count to 250, but only the ten from 0 to 9.\\nMost of the endings a noun can take we won’t discuss before in (much)\\nlater lessons. We will start with something that should be familiar enough,\\nfound even on the puny list of English noun-forms: Making a noun plural –\\ngoing from one to several.\\nIn Quenya, there are two different plurals. One is formed by adding the\\nending -li to the noun. Tolkien called this the “partitive plural” (WJ:388) or\\na “general pl[ural]” (see the Etymologies, entry teles). Unfortunately, the\\nfunction of this plural – sc. how it differs in meaning from the more “normal”\\nplural discussed below – is not fully understood. We have a few examples of\\nthis plural in our scarce source material, but they are not very helpful. For\\na long time it was assumed that this plural implied that there were “many”\\nof the things in question; hence Eldali (formed from Elda “Elf”) would\\nmean something like “many Elves”. There may be something to this, but in\\nseveral of the examples we have, there seems to be no implication of “many”.\\nIt has been suggested that Eldali may rather mean something like “several\\nElves” or “some Elves”, sc. some out of a larger group, some considered\\nas part of this group: The term “partitive plural” may point in the same\\ndirection. However, I will for the most part leave the partitive plural alone\\nthroughout this course. Its function just isn’t well enough understood for me\\nto construct exercises that would only mean feeding some highly tentative\\ninterpretation to unsuspecting students. (I present some thoughts about the\\n-li plural in the appendices to this course.)\\nFor now we will deal with the “normal” plural form instead. Any reader of\\nTolkien’s narratives will have encountered plenty of examples of this form;\\nthey are especially common in the Silmarillion. Nouns ending in any of\\nthe four vowels -a, -o, -i or -u , plus nouns ending in the group -i¨\\ne, form\\ntheir plural with the ending -r. Cf. the names of various groups of people\\nmentioned in the Silmarillion:\\n66\\n\\n\\nElda “Elf”, plural Eldar\\nVala “god (or technically angel)”, pl. Valar\\nAinu “spirit of God’s first creation”, pl. Ainur\\nNoldo “Noldo, member of the Second Clan of the Eldar”, pl. Noldor\\nVali¨\\ne “female Vala”, pl. Valier\\nFor another example of -i¨\\ne, cf. tier for “paths” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne; compare\\nsingular ti¨\\ne “path”. (According to the spelling conventions here employed,\\nthe diaeresis in ti¨\\ne is dropped in the plural form tier because the dots\\nare there merely to mark that final -¨\\ne is not silent, but in tier, e is not\\nfinal anymore because an ending has been added – and hence the dots go.)\\nExamples of the plurals of nouns in -i are rare, since nouns with this ending\\nare rare themselves, but in MR:229 we have quendir as the pl. of quendi\\n“Elf-woman” (and also quendur as the pl. of quendu “Elf-man”; nouns in\\n-u are not very numerous either).\\nThis singular word quendi “Elf-woman” must not be confused with the\\nplural word Quendi that many readers of Tolkien’s fiction will remember\\nfrom the Silmarillion, for instance in the description of the awakening of the\\nElves in chapter 3: “Themselves they named the Quendi, signifying those\\nthat speak with voices; for as yet they had met no other living things that\\nspoke or sang.” Quendi is the plural form of Quend¨\\ne “Elf”; nouns ending\\nin -¨\\ne typically form their plurals in -i, and as we see, this -i replaces the\\nfinal -¨\\ne instead of being added to it. In WJ:361, Tolkien explicitly refers to\\n“nouns in -e, the majority of which formed their plurals in -i”.\\nAs this wording implies, there are exceptions; a few nouns in -¨\\ne are seen\\nto use the other plural ending, -r, instead. One exception we have already\\ntouched on: where the -¨\\ne is part of -i¨\\ne, we have plurals in -ier, as in tier\\n“paths”. Hence we avoid the awkward plural form **tii. Other exceptions\\ncannot be explained as easily. In LotR Appendix E, we have tyeller for\\n“grades”, evidently the plural of tyell¨\\ne. Why tyeller instead of **tyelli?\\nLR:47 likewise indicates that the plural of mall¨\\ne “road” is maller; why not\\n**malli? It may be that nouns in -l¨\\ne have plurals in -ler because “regular”\\n**-li might cause confusion with the partitive plural ending -li mentioned\\nabove. Unfortunately, we lack more examples that could confirm or disprove\\nthis theory (and so I don’t dare to construct any exercises based on this as-\\nsumption, though I would follow this rule in my own Quenya compositions).\\nThe form tyeller confused early researchers; with extremely few examples to\\ngo on, some wrongly concluded that nouns in -¨\\ne regularly have plurals in -er.\\nThe name of the early journal Parma Eldalamberon or “Book of Elven-\\ntongues” (sporadically published still) reflects this mistake; the title incorpo-\\nrates **lamber as the presumed plural of lamb¨\\ne “tongue, language”, while\\nwe now know that the correct plural must be lambi. Though the error\\nwas early suspected and is now recognized by everyone, the publisher never\\nbothered to change the name of the journal to the correct form Parma El-\\n67\\n\\n\\ndalambion (and so, ever and anon, I get an e-mail from some fresh student\\nwondering why my site is called Ardalambion and not Ardalamberon. . . )\\nIn some cases, Tolkien himself seems uncertain which plural ending should\\nbe used. In PM:332, the plural form of Ingw¨\\ne “Elf of the First Clan [also\\nname of the king of that clan]” is given as Ingwi, just as we would expect;\\nyet a few pages later, in PM:340, we find Ingwer instead (it is there said\\nthat the First Clan, the Vanyar, called themselves Ingwer, so perhaps this\\nreflects a special Vanyarin usage?) It may be noted that in Tolkien’s earliest\\n“Qenya”, more nouns in -¨\\ne apparently had plural forms in -er. For instance,\\nthe early poem Narqelion has lasser as the plural of lass¨\\ne “leaf”, but in\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR Tolkien used the plural form lassi.\\nAs far as I know, the words in the exercises below all follow the normal\\nrule: Nouns ending in -¨\\ne, except as a part of -i¨\\ne, have plurals in -i.\\nThis leaves only one group of nouns to be considered, namely those that\\nend in a consonant. These nouns, just like those that end in -¨\\ne, are seen to\\nhave plurals in -i. A few examples: Eleni “stars”, the plural form of elen\\n“star”, occurs in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne (and also in WJ:362, where both the singular and\\nthe plural form are quoted). The Silmarillion has Atani for “Men” (not\\n“males”, but humans as opposed to Elves); this is formed from the singular\\nword Atan. According to WJ:388, the word Casar “Dwarf” has the plural\\nCasari “Dwarves”.\\nOf these two plural endings – r as in Eldar “Elves”, but i as in Atani\\n“(Mortal) Men” – Tolkien imagined the latter to be the most ancient. The\\nplural ending -i comes directly from Primitive Elvish -ˆ\\nı, a word like Quendi\\nrepresenting primitive Kwendˆ\\nı. The plural ending -r arose later: “For the\\nshowing of many the new device of r was brought in and used in all words\\nof a certain shape – and this, it is said, was begun among the Noldor”\\n(PM:402). In primary-world terms, both plural endings were however present\\nin Tolkien’s conception from the beginning; already in his earliest work on\\n“Qenya”, written during World War I, we find forms like Qendi (as it was\\nthen spelt) and Eldar coexisting. The twin plural endings are a feature\\nthat evidently survived throughout all the stages of Tolkien’s development\\nof Quenya, from 1915 to 1973.\\nNOTE ON THE DIFFERENT WORDS FOR “ELF”: As the attentive reader will have\\ninferred from the above, there is more than one Quenya word for “Elf”. The word with the\\nwidest application, within the scope of Tolkien’s fiction, was Quend¨\\ne pl. Quendi. This\\nform is at least associated with the word “to speak” (quet-), and Tolkien speculated that\\nultimately these words were indeed related via a very primitive base kwe- having to do\\nwith vocal speech (see WJ:391–392). When the Elves awoke by the mere of Cuivi´\\nenen, they\\ncalled themselves Quendi (or in primitive Elvish actually Kwendˆ\\nı) since for a long time\\nthey knew of no other speaking creatures. Eventually the Vala Orom¨\\ne found them under a\\nstarlit sky, and he gave them a new name in the language they themselves had developed:\\nEldˆ\\nai, often translated “Starfolk”. In Quenya, this primitive word later appeared as Eldar\\n(singular Elda). While the term Eldar (Eldˆ\\nai) was originally meant to apply to the entire\\n68\\n\\n\\nElvish race, it was later only used of the Elves that accepted the invitation of the Valar to\\ncome and dwell in the Blessed Realm of Aman and embarked on the Great March to get\\nthere (the term Eldar is also applicable to those who never actually made it all the way to\\nAman, such as the Sindar or Grey-elves who stayed in Beleriand). Those who refused the\\ninvitation were called Avari, “Refusers”, and hence all Elves (Quendi) can be subdivided\\ninto Eldar and Avari. Only the former play any important part in Tolkien’s narratives.\\nSo in later Quenya the situation was this: Quend¨\\ne pl. Quendi remained as the only truly\\nuniversal term for all Elves of any kind, but this was a technical word primarily used by the\\nLoremasters, not a word that would be used in daily speech. The gender-specific variants\\nof Quend¨\\ne “Elf”, namely masculine quendu and feminine quendi, would presumably\\nbe used only if you wanted to speak of a specifically Elvish (wo)man as opposed to a\\n(wo)man of any other sentient race: These are not the normal Quenya words for “man”\\nand “woman” (the normal words are n´\\ner and n´\\nıs, presumably applicable to a man or\\nwoman of any sentient race, not just Elves). The normal, everyday Quenya term for “Elf”\\nwas Elda, and the fact that this word technically didn’t apply to Elves of the obscure\\nAvarin tribes living somewhere far east in Middle-earth was no big problem since none\\nof them was ever seen anyway. Regarding the compound Eldali¨\\ne (which combines Elda\\nwith li¨\\ne “people, folk”) Tolkien wrote that when one of the Elves of Aman used this\\nword, “he meant vaguely all the race of Elves, though he was probably not thinking of\\nthe Avari” (WJ:374). – Throughout the exercises found in this course, I have used Elda\\n(rather than Quend¨\\ne) as the standard translation of English “Elf”, regardless of any\\nspecialized meaning it may have within Tolkien’s mythos. As I said in the Introduction,\\nin these exercises I largely eschew specific references to Tolkien’s mythos and narratives.\\n2.2\\nThe article\\nWe have time for one more thing in this lesson: the article. An article,\\nlinguistically speaking, is such a word as English “the” or “a, an”. These\\nlittle words are used in conjunction with nouns to express such different\\nshades of meaning as “a horse” vs. “the horse”. Anyone capable of reading\\nthis text in the first place will know what the difference is, so no lengthy\\nexplanation is necessary. In short, “a horse” refers to a horse that hasn’t been\\nmentioned before, so you slip in the article “a” as a kind of introduction:\\n“Look, there’s a horse over there!” You may also use the phrase “a horse”\\nif you want to say something that is true of any horse, as in “a horse is\\nan animal”. If, on the other hand, you say “the horse”, it usually refers to\\none definite horse. Hence “the” is termed the definite article, while “a, an”,\\nlacking this “definite” aspect, is conversely called the indefinite article.\\nIn this respect at least, Quenya is somewhat simpler than English. Quenya\\nhas only one article, corresponding to the English definite article “the” (and\\nsince there is no indefinite article it must be distinguished from, we may\\nsimply speak of “the article” when discussing Quenya). The Quenya word\\ncorresponding to English “the” is i. For instance, Nam´\\nari¨\\ne has i eleni for\\n69\\n\\n\\n“the stars”. As can be inferred from the above, Quenya has no word cor-\\nresponding to English “a, an”. When translating Quenya into English, one\\nsimply has to slip in “a” wherever English grammar demands an indefi-\\nnite article, as in the famous greeting Elen s´\\nıla l´\\numenn’ omentielvo, “a\\nstar shines upon the hour of our meeting”. As we see, the first word of the\\nQuenya sentence is simply elen “star”, with nothing corresponding to the\\nEnglish indefinite article “a” before it (or anywhere else in the sentence, for\\nthat matter). In Quenya, there is no way you can maintain the distinction\\nbetween “a star” and just “star”; both are simply elen. Luckily there isn’t\\nmuch of a distinction to be maintained anyway. Languages like Arabic, He-\\nbrew and classical Greek employ a similar system: there is a definite article\\ncorresponding to English “the”, but nothing corresponding to the English\\nindefinite article “a, an” (and this is the system used in Esperanto as well).\\nAfter all, the absence of the definite article is itself enough to signal that a\\n(common) noun is indefinite, so the indefinite article is in a way superfluous.\\nTolkien decided to do without it in Quenya, so students only have to worry\\nabout i = “the”.\\nSometimes, Tolkien connects the article to the next word by means of a\\nhyphen or a dot: i-mar “the earth” (F´\\nıriel’s Song), i·coimas “the lifebread”\\n(PM:396). However, he did not do so in LotR (we have already quoted the\\nexample i eleni “the stars” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne), and neither will we here.\\nThe Quenya article is generally used as in English. However, some nouns\\nthat would require the article in English are apparently counted as proper\\nnames in Quenya, and so take no article. For instance, the sentence Anar\\ncaluva tielyanna is translated “the Sun shall shine upon your path” (UT:\\n22, 51); yet there is no article in the Quenya sentence. “The Sun” is not\\n**i Anar, but simply Anar. Clearly Anar is perceived as a proper name,\\ndesignating one celestial body only, and you don’t have to say “the Anar”\\nany more than an English-speaking person would say “the Mars”. The name\\nof “the” Moon, Isil, undoubtedly behaves like Anar in this respect. It may\\nbe noted that both words are treated as proper names in the Silmarillion,\\nchapter 11: “Isil was first wrought and made ready, and first rose into the\\nrealm of the stars. . . Anar arose in glory, and the first dawn of the Sun was\\nlike a great fire. . . ”\\nAlso notice that before a plural denoting an entire people (or even race),\\nthe article is not normally used. WJ:404 mentions a saying Valar valu-\\nvar, “the will of the Valar will be done” (or more literally *“the Valar will\\nrule”). Notice that “the Valar” is simply Valar in Quenya, not i Valar.\\nSimilarly, PM:395 has lamb¨\\ne Quendion for “language of the Elves” and\\ncoimas Eldaron for “coimas [lembas] of the Eldar” – not **lamb¨\\ne i Quen-\\ndion, **coimas i Eldaron. (The ending -on here appended to the plurals\\nQuendi, Eldar signifies “of”; this ending should not affect whether or not\\nthe article has to be present before the word.)\\nWith this usage compare Tolkien’s use of “Men” in his narratives to refer\\n70\\n\\n\\nto the human race as such: “Men awoke in Hild´\\norien at the rising of the\\nSun. . . A darkness lay upon the hearts of Men. . . Men (it is said) were at\\nfirst very few in number. . . ” (Silmarillion, chapter 17.) By contrast, “the\\nMen” would refer, not to the entire race, but only to a casual group of\\n“Men” or humans. Quenya plurals denoting entire peoples or races seem\\nto behave in the same way. In a Quenya text there would probably be no\\narticle before plurals like Valar, Eldar, Vanyar, Noldor, Lindar, Teleri,\\nAtani etc. as long as the entire race or people is considered, even though\\nTolkien’s English narratives speak of “the Valar”, “the Eldar” etc. However,\\nif we replace Eldar with its equivalent “Elves”, we see that the article often\\nwould often not be required in English, either (e.g. “Elves are beautiful”\\n= Eldar nar vany¨\\ne; if you say “the Elves are beautiful” = i Eldar nar\\nvany¨\\ne, you are probably describing once particular group of Elves, not the\\nentire race).\\nOccasionally, especially in poetry, the article seemingly drops out for no\\nspecial reason. Perhaps it is simply omitted because of metric considera-\\ntions. The first line of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, ai! lauri¨\\ne lantar lassi s´\\nurinen, Tolkien\\ntranslated “ah! like gold fall the leaves. . . ” – though there is no i before lassi\\n“leaves” in the Quenya text. The Markirya poem also leaves out the article\\nin a number of places, if we are to judge by Tolkien’s English translation of\\nit.\\nSummary of Lesson Two\\nThere is a plural ending -li the function of which we don’t fully understand,\\nso we will leave it alone for now. The normal plural is formed by adding\\n-r to nouns ending in any of the vowels -a, -i, -o, -u, plus nouns ending\\nin -i¨\\ne. If, on the other hand, the noun ends in -¨\\ne (except, of course, as\\npart of -i¨\\ne) the plural ending is usually -i (displacing the final -¨\\ne); nouns\\nending in a consonant also form their plurals in -i. The Quenya definite\\narticle, corresponding to English “the”, is i; there is no indefinite article like\\nEnglish “a, an”.\\nVocabulary\\nRegarding Frodo hearing Galadriel singing Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, the LotR states that\\n“as is the way of Elvish words, they remained graven in his memory”. This\\nmay be a comforting thought to students attempting to memorize Quenya\\nvocabulary. In the lessons proper, while I discuss various aspects of Quenya,\\nI will normally mention quite a few words – but in the exercises, I will only\\nuse words from the “vocabulary” list that is hereafter presented at the end\\nof each lesson. Thus, this is all the student is excepted to carefully memorize\\n(doing the exercises for the next lessons, you will also need vocabulary intro-\\n71\\n\\n\\nduced earlier). We will introduce twelve new words in each lesson: a fitting\\nnumber, since Tolkien’s Elves preferred counting in twelves rather than tens\\nas we do. A unified list of all the vocabulary henceforth employed in the\\nexercises of this course can be found in Appendix A.\\nmin¨\\ne “one” (from now on, we will introduce one new number in each lesson)\\nAnar “(the) Sun”\\nIsil “(the) Moon”\\nar “and” (a most useful word that will allow us to have two exercises in one. . . translate\\n“the Sun and the Moon”, for instance. . . )\\nElda “Elf”\\nli¨\\ne “people” (sc. an entire “ethnic group” or even race, as in Eldali¨\\ne = the People of\\nthe Elves).\\nvend¨\\ne “maiden”(in archaic Quenya wend¨\\ne)\\nrocco “horse” (specifically “swift horse for riding”, according to Letters:382\\naran “king”\\nt´\\nari “queen”\\ntasar “willow” (by its form this could be the plural of **tasa, but no such word\\nexists, and -r is here part of the basic word and not an ending. This word occurs,\\ncompounded, in LotR – Treebeard chanting “In the willow-meads of Tasarinan\\n[Willow-vale] I walked in the spring. . . ”)\\nnu “under”\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English (or whatever language you prefer):\\nA. Roccor\\nB. Aran (two possible English translations!)\\nC. I rocco.\\nD. I roccor.\\nE. Arani.\\nF. Min¨\\ne li¨\\ne nu min¨\\ne aran.\\nG. I aran ar i t´\\nari.\\nH. Vendi.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. Willows.\\nJ. Elves.\\n72\\n\\n\\nK. The kings.\\nL. Peoples.\\nM. The horse under (or, below) the willow.\\nN. A maiden and a queen.\\nO. The queen and the maidens.\\nP. The Sun and the Moon (I promised you that one. . . )\\n73\\n\\n\\nLesson 3\\nDual number. Stem variation.\\n3.1\\nDual number\\nThe previous lesson covered two Quenya plural forms: the somewhat mys-\\nterious “partitive plural” in -li, and the “normal” plural in either -r or -i\\n(mostly depending on the shape of the word). Like quite a few “real” lan-\\nguages, Quenya also possesses a dual form, that has no direct counterpart\\nin English. Dual number refers to two things, a couple of things. The dual\\nis formed with one out of two endings: -u or -t.\\nWithin the fictional timeline imagined by Tolkien, these two endings orig-\\ninally had somewhat different meanings, and so were not completely inter-\\nchangeable. A footnote in Letters:427 provides some information on this.\\nThe ending -u (from Primitive Elvish -ˆ\\nu) was originally used in the case\\nof natural pairs, of two things or persons somehow belonging together as a\\nlogical couple. For instance, according to VT39:9, 11, the word p´\\ne “lip” has\\nthe dual form peu “lips”, referring to one person’s pair of lips (and not,\\nfor instance, to the upper lip of one person and the lower lip of another,\\nwhich would be just “two lips” and not a natural pair). The noun veru,\\nmeaning “married pair” or “husband and wife”, has dual form; in this case\\nthere does not seem to be a corresponding singular “spouse” (but we have\\nverno “husband” and vess¨\\ne “wife” from the same root; see LR:352). The\\nnoun alda “tree” occurs in dual form with reference, not to any casual pair\\nof trees, but the Two Trees of Valinor: Aldu.\\nNotice that if the ending -u is added to a noun ending in a vowel, this vowel\\nis displaced: hence the dual of alda is aldu rather than **aldau – though\\na word quoted in PM:138, reproducing a draft for the LotR Appendices,\\nseems to suggest that Tolkien for a moment considered precisely the latter\\nform. There is also an old source that has Aldaru, apparently formed by\\nadding the dual ending -u to the normal plural aldar “trees”, but this seems\\nto be an early experiment of Tolkien’s that was probably long obsolete by\\nthe time he wrote LotR. In the dual form peu, the final vowel of p´\\ne “lip”\\nis apparently not displaced by the dual ending -u. However, Quenya p´\\ne is\\n74\\n\\n\\nmeant to descend from primitive Elvish pe˜\\nne, whereas the dual form peu\\nis meant to come from pe˜\\nnˆ\\nu (VT39:9) – so the e of peu was not originally\\nfinal.\\nAs for the other dual ending, -t, it according to Letters:427 represents an\\nold element ata. This, Tolkien noted, was originally “purely numerative”;\\nit is indeed related to the Quenya word for the numeral “two”, atta. By\\n“purely numerative”, Tolkien evidently meant that the dual in -t could de-\\nnote two things only casually related. For instance, ciryat as the dual form\\nof cirya “ship” could refer to any two ships; ciryat would only be a kind\\nof spoken shorthand for the full phrase atta ciryar, “two ships”. However,\\nTolkien further noted that “in later Q[uenya]”, the dual forms were “only\\nusual with reference to natural pairs”. Precisely what he means by “later”\\nQuenya cannot be determined; it could refer to Quenya as a ritual language\\nin Middle-earth rather than the vernacular of the Eldar in Valinor. In any\\ncase, the Third Age Quenya we aim for in this course must certainly be\\nincluded when Tolkien speaks of “later” Quenya, so here we will follow the\\nrule that any dual form must refer to some kind of natural or logical pair,\\nnot to two things only casually related. In other words, the dual in -t came\\nto have just the same “meaning” as a dual in -u. A dual like ciryat “2\\nships” (curiously spelt “ciriat” in Letters:427, perhaps a typo) would not in\\nlater Quenya be used with reference to any two ships, but only of two ships\\nthat somehow form a pair – like two sister ships. If you just want to refer\\nto two ships that do not in any way form a natural or logical pair, like any\\ntwo ships that happen to be seen together, you would not use the dual form\\nbut simply the numeral atta “two” – hence atta ciryar.\\nSince the two endings -t and -u had come to carry the same meaning,\\nsome rule is needed to determine when to use which. Which ending should\\nbe used can apparently be inferred from the shape of the word itself (just like\\nthe shape of the word normally determines whether the plural ending should\\nbe -i or -r). In Letters:427, Tolkien noted that “the choice of t or u [was]\\ndecided by euphony”, sc. by what sounded well – adding as an example that\\n-u was preferred to -t if the word that is to receive a dual ending already\\ncontains a t or the similar sound d. Hence the dual of alda is aldu rather\\nthan **aldat. It seems that as far as later Quenya is concerned, -t would\\nbe your first option as the dual ending, but if the noun it is to be added\\nto already contains t or d, you opt for -u instead (remembering that this\\nending displaces any final vowels). The duals Tolkien listed in the Plotz\\nLetter, ciryat “a couple of ships” and lasset “a couple of leaves” (formed\\nfrom cirya “ship” and lass¨\\ne “leaf”) confirm that a words with no t or\\nd in them take the dual ending -t. Perhaps the ending -u would also be\\npreferred in the case of nouns ending in a consonant, since -t could not be\\nadded directly to such a word without producing a final consonant cluster\\nthat Quenya phonology wouldn’t allow; unfortunately we have no examples.\\n(If the ending -t is to be used anyhow, a vowel would probably have to be\\n75\\n\\n\\ninserted before it, producing a longer ending – likely -et. We will eschew this\\nlittle problem in the exercises below, since nobody really knows the answer.)\\nIt is clear, however, that Quenya has a number of old duals that do not\\nfollow the rule that the ending is normally -t, replaced by -u only if there is\\na d or t in the word it is to be added to. The examples veru “married pair”\\nand peu “lips, pair of lips” are proof of that; here there is no t or d present,\\nbut the ending is still -u rather than -t. Presumably these are “fossilized”\\ndual forms reflecting the older system in which only -u denoted a natural or\\nlogical pair. The example peu “(pair of) lips” suggests that the ending -u\\nis used in the case of body-parts occurring in pairs, such as eyes, arms, legs.\\n(The other ending -t may however be used if certain other endings intrude\\nbefore the dual ending itself; we will return to this in a later lesson.) The\\nword for “arm” is ranco; the dual form denoting one person’s pair of arms\\nis not attested, but my best guess is that it would be rancu. The compound\\nhendumaica “sharp-eye[d]” mentioned in WJ:337 may incorporate a dual\\nhendu “(pair of) eyes”. The Quenya word for “eye” is known to be hen, or\\nhend- before an ending (the Etymologies only mentions the normal plural\\nhendi “eyes”, LR:364). In the case of this word the dual ending would be\\n-u rather than -t anyway, since there is a d in hend-. The word for “foot”,\\nt´\\nal, probably has the dual talu (for the shortening of the vowel, see below).\\n3.2\\nStem variation\\nThis is a subject we shall have to spend some paragraphs on, since even on\\nthis early stage of the course we haven’t been able to wholly eschew it. I will\\ngo into some detail here, but students can rest assured that they are not\\nexpected to remember all the words and examples below; just try to get a\\nfeel for what stem variation is all about.\\nSometimes the form of a Quenya word subtly changes when you add\\nendings to it. Two such words were mentioned above. If you add an ending\\nto t´\\nal “foot”, for instance -i for plural or -u for dual, the long vowel ´\\na is\\nshortened to a. So the plural “feet” is tali rather than **t´\\nali, the dual “a\\ncouple of feet” is talu rather than **t´\\nalu. In such a case, t´\\nal “foot” may be\\nsaid to have the stem tal-. Likewise, the word hen “eye” has the stem hend-\\n, since its plural is hendi and not just **heni. The “stem” form does not\\noccur by itself, but is the form you add endings to. When presenting a gloss,\\nI will represent such stem variation by listing the independent form first,\\nfollowed by a parenthetical “stem form” with a hyphen where the ending\\ngoes, e.g.: t´\\nal (tal-) “foot”, hen (hend-) “eye”.\\nIn the case of t´\\nal vs. tal-, the variation is apparently due to the fact\\nthat vowels were often lengthened in words of only one syllable, but when\\nthe word had endings the word obviously got more than one syllable and\\nso the lengthening did not occur (another example of the same seems to be\\n76\\n\\n\\nn´\\ner “man” vs. plural neri “men”, MR:213/LR:354). Originally, the vowel\\nwas short in all forms. It is usually true that the stem form gives away\\nhow the word looked at an earlier stage in the long linguistic evolution\\nTolkien dreamed up in great detail. Hen “eye” in its stem hend- reflects\\nthe primitive “base” khen-d-e from which it is ultimately derived (LR:364).\\nQuenya could not have -nd at the end of a word and simplified it to -n when\\nthe word stands alone (thus, hen in a way represents the impossible “full”\\nform hend), but before an ending the group -nd- was not final and could\\ntherefore actually appear. Very often stem variation has to do with clusters\\nor sounds that are not allowed at the end of words, but that may appear\\nelsewhere. Cf. a word like talan “floor”. The plural “floors” is not **talani\\nas we might expect, but talami. The stem is talam- because this is the form\\nof the Primitive Elvish root-word: talam (LR:390). As Quenya evolved\\nfrom Primitive Elvish, a rule came into place that only a few consonants\\nwere allowed at the end of words, and m was not one of them. The closest\\n“permissible” consonant was n, and so the old word talam was altered to\\ntalan – but in the plural form talami (and other forms that added an\\nending to the word), the m was not final and therefore persisted unchanged.\\nAnother, similar case is filit “small bird”, that has the stem filic- (e.g.\\nplural filici “small birds”): The primitive root-word was philik (LR:381),\\nbut Quenya did not permit -k at the end of a word, so in that position it\\nbecame -t. When not final it remained k (here spelt c).\\nIn some cases, the “independent” form is a simplified or shortened form\\nof a word, while the stem form reflects the fuller form. For instance, Tolkien\\napparently imagined that the word merend¨\\ne “feast, festival” was often\\nshortened to meren, but the stem is still merend- (LR:372). Hence the\\nplural of meren is merendi, not **mereni. When it stands alone, the\\nword niss¨\\ne “woman” is normally reduced to nis (or n´\\nıs with a lengthened\\nvowel), but the double S persists before endings: thus the plural “women”\\nis nissi (LR:377, MR:213). A similar case is Silmarill¨\\ne, the name of one\\nof the legendary jewels created by F¨\\neanor; this is normally shortened to\\nSilmaril, but before endings the double L of the full form is preserved\\n(Silmarill-); hence the plural is always Silmarilli. In the case of compound\\nwords, sc. words made up from several other words, the second element in\\nthe compound is often reduced, but a fuller form may turn up before an\\nending. For instance, the noun Sindel “Grey-elf” (WJ:384) incorporates -el\\nas a reduced form of Elda “Elf”. The plural of Sindel is not **Sindeli,\\nbut Sindeldi preserving the cluster -ld- seen in Elda. (Since the final -a is\\nlost in the compound, we cannot have the plural **Sindeldar.)\\nIn some cases a word may be contracted when you add endings to it. In\\nsuch cases the stem-form does not reflect the older, more complete form\\nof the word. Such contraction often occurs in two-syllable words containing\\ntwo identical vowels. For instance, feren “beech-tree” is reduced to fern-\\nbefore an ending, e.g. plural ferni instead of **fereni. WJ:416 likewise\\n77\\n\\n\\nindicates that laman “animal” may be reduced to lamn- before an ending,\\nhence for instance lamni “animals”, though the unreduced form lamani\\nwas also in use. Occasionally, the contracted forms suffer further change\\nwhen compared to the unreduced form; as the plural of seler “sister” we\\nmight expect **selri, but since lr is not a permissible consonant cluster in\\nQuenya, it is changed to ll – the actual plural “sisters” being selli (LR:392).\\nAnother form of stem-variation is very poorly attested as far as nouns\\nare concerned, but there are hints to the effect that the final vowel of some\\nwords would change when an ending is added. In Quenya, the final vowels\\n-o and -¨\\ne sometimes come from -u and -i in Primitive Elvish. At one stage\\nof the linguistic evolution, original short -i became -e when the vowel was\\nfinal; in the same environment original short -u became -o. For instance, the\\nprimitive word tundu “hill, mound” came out as tundo in Quenya (LR:395).\\nBut since this change only occurred when the vowel was final, it is possible\\nthat its original quality would be preserved before an ending. The plural\\n“hills” may well be tundur rather than tundor, though neither form is at-\\ntested. According to SD:415, the Quenya noun l´\\nom¨\\ne “night” has the “stem”\\nl´\\nomi-, evidently meaning that the final vowel -¨\\ne changes to -i- if you add an\\nending after it. For instance, adding the dual ending -t to l´\\nom¨\\ne (to express\\n“a couple of nights”) would presumably produce l´\\nomit rather than l´\\nomet.\\nThis would be because l´\\nom¨\\ne comes from Primitive Elvish dˆ\\nomi (LR:354),\\nand -i never turned into -e except when final. Some think certain words in\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, l´\\nırinen and s´\\nurinen, are attested examples of this phenomenon:\\nThese are forms of l´\\nır¨\\ne “song” and s´\\nur¨\\ne “wind” (the latter is attested by it-\\nself in MC:222; the meaning of the ending -nen seen in l´\\nırinen and s´\\nurinen\\nwill be discussed in a later lesson). If this word originally ended in an -i that\\nbecame -¨\\ne only later (and only when final), it may explain why in this word\\n-¨\\ne seemingly turns into -i- before an ending. We would then say that s´\\nur¨\\ne\\nhas the stem s´\\nuri-.\\nThere seems to be a similar variation between involving the final vowel\\n-o, that in some cases descend from final -u in Primitive Elvish; again the\\nprimitive quality of the vowel may be resurrected if an ending is added to\\nit. For instance, rusco “fox” is said to have the stem ruscu-, so if we add\\nthe dual ending to speak of a “a couple of foxes”, the resulting form should\\npresumably be ruscut rather than ruscot. However, there is no extensive\\ntreatment of this phenomenon in Tolkien’s published writings; indeed the\\nstatements made in SD:415 and VT41:10 that l´\\nom¨\\ne and rusco have stems\\nl´\\nomi-, ruscu- are as close as we get to explicit references to it.\\nThe student should not despair, thinking that all sorts of strange things\\ntypically happen whenever you add an ending to a Quenya word, so that\\nthere is a great potential for making embarrassing mistakes (or at least very\\nmuch extra stuffto memorize). Most Quenya words seem to be quite well-\\nbehaved, with no distinct “stem” form to remember; you just add the ending\\nand that’s it. Where a distinct stem-form is known to exist (or where we\\n78\\n\\n\\nhave good reason to suspect one), this will of course be indicated when I\\nfirst present the word, if it is relevant for the exercises.\\nSummary of Lesson Three\\nIn addition to the plural form(s), Quenya also has a dual number used\\nfor a pair of things forming some kind of natural or logical couple. (We\\nmust assume that two things only casually associated would be denoted by\\na normal plural in conjunction with the numeral atta “two”.) The dual\\nis formed with one out of two endings: -t or -u (the latter displaces final\\nvowels; the dual of alda “tree” is therefore aldu rather than aldau). One’s\\nfirst choice seems to be -t, but if the word this ending is to be added to\\nalready contains a t or a d, the alternative ending -u is preferred instead\\n(for reasons of euphony – if you like, to avoid “crowding” the word with t’s\\nor similar sounds!) However, there seems to be a number of old, “fossilized”\\ndual forms that end in -u even though there is no d or t in the word, such\\nas veru “married pair” and peu “pair of lips”. The latter example may\\nsuggest that all body-parts occurring in pairs are denoted by dual forms in\\n-u rather than -t, regardless of the shape of the word (though the ending -t\\nis evidently preferred if other endings intrude before the dual ending itself;\\nmore on this later).\\nQuite a few Quenya words subtly change when endings are appended to\\nthem, e.g. talan “floor” turning into talam- in the plural form talami. We\\nwould then call talam- the stem form of talan. Similarly, the final vowels -o\\nand -¨\\ne sometimes appear as -u- and -i-, respectively, if some ending is added;\\nthus l´\\nom¨\\ne “night” has the stem l´\\nomi-. In many cases, the stem-form echoes\\nthe older shape of words (sounds or combinations that could not survive at\\nthe end of a word being preserved where not final), though the stem-form\\nmay also represent a contraction.\\n79\\n\\n\\nVocabulary\\natta “two”\\nhen (hend-) “eye”\\nranco “arm”\\nando “gate”\\ncirya “ship”\\naiw¨\\ne “bird”\\ntalan (talam-) “floor”\\nn´\\ner (ner-) “man” (adult male of any sentient race – Elvish, mortal or otherwise)\\nn´\\nıs (niss-) “woman” (similarly: adult female of any sentient race)\\nsar (sard-) “stone” (a small stone – not “stone” as a substance or material)\\nalda “tree”\\noron (oront-) “mountain”\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Hendu\\nB. Atta hendi (and answer: what is the difference between this and hendu\\nabove?)\\nC. Aldu\\nD. Atta aldar (and answer again: what is the difference between this and\\nAldu above?)\\nE. Min¨\\ne n´\\ner ar min¨\\ne n´\\nıs.\\nF. I sardi.\\nG. Talami.\\nH. Oronti.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. Two ships (just any two ships that happen to be seen together)\\nJ. Two ships (that happen to be sister ships)\\nK. Arms (the two arms of one person)\\nL. Two mountains (within the same range; Twin Peaks, if you like – use a\\ndual form)\\nM. Double gate (use a dual form)\\nN. Two birds (that have formed a pair)\\nO. Two birds (just any two birds)\\nP. Men and women.\\n80\\n\\n\\nLesson 4\\nThe Adjective. The Copula. Adjectival agreement in number.\\n4.1\\nThe Adjective\\nThe vocabulary of any language can be separated into various classes of\\nwords – various parts of speech. Tolkien’s languages were designed to be\\n“definitely of a European kind in style and structure” (Letters:175), so the\\nparts of speech they contain are not very exotic, but ought to be quite fa-\\nmiliar to any schoolchild in Europe or America. We have already mentioned\\nthe nouns, which by a somewhat simplified definition are words denoting\\nthings. Now we will move on to the adjectives.\\nAdjectives are words that have assumed the special function of description.\\nIf you want to say that someone or something possesses a certain quality,\\nyou can often find an adjective that will do the job. In a sentence like the\\nhouse is red, the word “red” is an adjective. It describes the house. There\\nare adjectives for all sorts of qualities, quite useful if you want to say that\\nsomeone or something is big, small, holy, blue, silly, rotten, beautiful, thin,\\nnauseous, tall, wonderful, obnoxious or whatever the occasion demands.\\nOne often distinguishes two different ways of using an adjective:\\n1. You can team it up with a noun which it then describes, resulting in\\nphrases like tall men or (a/the) red book. Such phrases can then be inserted\\ninto a full sentence, like tall men scare me or the red book is mine, where\\nthe words tall, red simply provide extra information about their companion\\nnouns. This is called using the adjective attributively. The quality in question\\nis presented as an “attribute” of the noun, or is “attributed” to it (tall men\\n– OK, then we know precisely what kind of men we are talking about here,\\nthe tall ones, their tallness being their “attribute”).\\n2. But you may also construct sentences where the whole point is that\\nsomeone or something possesses a specific quality. You don’t just “presup-\\npose” the tallness as when you speak of tall men – you want to say that the\\nmen are tall, that’s the very piece of information you want to convey. This is\\ncalled using an adjective predicatively: You choose a party you want to say\\nsomething about, like the men in this case, and then add an adjective to tell\\n81\\n\\n\\nwhat quality this party possesses. The adjective is then called the predicate\\nof this sentence.\\nAs the attentive reader already suspects from the example above, there is\\none more complication: You don’t just say the men tall, but the men are tall.\\nActually sentences like the men tall would be quite OK in a great number\\nof languages (and Quenya may even be one of them), but in English you\\nhave to slip in a word like are or is before the adjective when you use it as\\na predicate: The book is red. The men are tall. This “is/are” doesn’t really\\nadd a whole lot of meaning here (there is a reason why so many languages\\nmanage without any corresponding word!), but it is used to “couple” the\\nadjective with the words that tell us what we are really talking about here –\\nlike the book and the men in our example. Hence “is/are” is called a copula.\\nIn sentences like gold is beautiful, I am smart or stones are hard, it can be\\nperceived the prime function of the copula (here variously manifesting as is,\\nam and are) is simply to connect the following adjectives beautiful, smart,\\nhard with the thing(s) or person we are talking about: gold, I, stones. The\\ncopula is an integral part of the predicate of the sentence. This is one of\\nthe most important constructions speakers or English have at their disposal\\nwhen they want to say that X possesses the quality Y.\\nWell, let’s get down to Quenya here. When compared to the plethora\\nof shapes that a noun can have, Quenya adjectives are quite restricted in\\nform. The vast majority of Quenya adjectives end in one of two vowels -a\\nor -¨\\ne. The latter ending is the less common and typically occurs in colour-\\nadjectives: Ninqu¨\\ne “white”, mor¨\\ne “black”, carn¨\\ne “red”, varn¨\\ne “brown”\\netc. When an adjective does not end in -a or -¨\\ne, it virtually always ends\\nin -in, e.g. firin “dead”, hwarin “crooked”, melin “dear” or latin “open,\\nfree, cleared (of land)”. The latter adjective is actually listed as latin(a)\\nin Tolkien’s writings (LR:368), evidently suggesting that latin is shortened\\nfrom a longer form latina, both variants occurring in the language. (Perhaps\\nall the adjectives in -in are to be considered shortened forms or full forms in\\n-ina.) Adjectives that do not end in either -a, -¨\\ne or -in are extremely rare;\\nthere is at least teren “slender” – but even this adjective also has a longer\\nform in -¨\\ne (teren¨\\ne).\\nAdjectives in -a are by far the most common type. The final vowel -a\\nmay appear by itself, as in l´\\nara “flat”, but it is often part of a longer ad-\\njectival ending like -wa, -na (variant -da), -ima or -ya. Examples: helwa\\n“(pale) blue”, harna “wounded”, melda “beloved, dear”, melima “love-\\nable”, vanya “beautiful”. The word Quenya itself is in its origin a ya-\\nadjective meaning “Elvish, Quendian”, though Tolkien decided that it came\\nto be used only as a name of the High-elven language (Letters:176, WJ:360–\\n361, 374).\\nIn Quenya as in English, an adjective can be directly combined with a\\nnoun, describing it. We have many attested examples of adjectives being\\nused attributively like this; they include the phrases lint¨\\ne yuldar “swift\\n82\\n\\n\\ndraughts” (Nam´\\nari¨\\ne), luini tellumar “blue vaults” (prose-style Nam´\\nari¨\\ne),\\nf´\\nana cirya “a white ship” (Markirya), quant¨\\ne tengwi “full signs” (a term\\nused by early Elvish linguists; we needn’t discuss its precise meaning here;\\nsee VT39:5). In these examples, the word order is the same as in English:\\nadjective + noun. This is apparently the normal, preferred order. In Quenya,\\nit is however also permissible to let the adjective follow the noun. For in-\\nstance, Markirya has anar p´\\nur¨\\nea for “a bleared sun”, literally “(a) sun\\nbleared”, and in LR:47 we have mall¨\\ne t´\\nera, literally “road straight”, for\\n“a straight road” (cf. LR:43). Perhaps this word order is used if you want\\nto emphasize the adjective: the context in LR:47 indicates that this is a\\nstraight road as opposed to a bent one. However, letting the adjective fol-\\nlow the noun may be the normal word order in the case of an adjectival\\n“title” that is used in conjunction with a proper name: In UT:305 cf. 317\\nwe have Elendil Voronda for “Elendil the Faithful” (well, the form found\\nin UT:305 is actually Elendil Vorondo, because the phrase is inflected;\\nwe will return to the ending -o here seen in a later lesson). Presumably you\\ncould also use the more normal word-order and speak of voronda Elendil,\\nbut that – I guess – would simply be a more casual reference to “faithful\\nElendil”, not meaning “Elendil the Faithful” with the adjective used as a\\nregular title. It may be noted that Quenya, unlike English, does not insert\\nthe article before an adjective used as a title (not **Elendil i Voronda, at\\nleast not necessarily).\\nWhat, then, about using adjectives as predicates, like “red” is the predi-\\ncate of the sentence “the book is red”? (Contrast the attributive use of the\\nadjective in a phrase like “the red book”.) The adjective vanwa “lost” is\\nused predicatively in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: Vanwa n´\\na . . . Valimar “lost is . . . Vali-\\nmar” (a place in the Blessed Realm that Galadriel thought she would never\\nsee again). This sentence tells us that the Quenya copula “is” has the form\\nn´\\na. Plural “are” seems to be nar, attested in an early version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nrecorded by Tolkien on tape (see Jim Allan’s An Introduction to Elvish, p.\\n5). It is generally assumed that these copulas would be used as in English,\\nfor instance like this:\\nI parma n´\\na carn¨\\ne. “The book is red.”\\nUlundo n´\\na ´\\num¨\\nea. “A monster is evil.”\\nI neri nar hall¨\\ne. “The men are tall.”\\nIn this lesson as originally published in December 2000, I slipped in a\\nwarning at this point:\\nI should add, though, that due to the extreme scarcity of exam-\\nples we can’t be certain what the preferred word order really is.\\nFrom the example vanwa n´\\na . . . Valimar “lost is . . . Valimar”\\nin Nam´\\nari¨\\ne one could argue that n´\\na should follow the adjective,\\nso that “the book is red” should rather be i parma carn¨\\ne n´\\na,\\n83\\n\\n\\n“the book red is”. It would be interesting to know if n´\\na “is”\\nwould still follow vanwa “lost” if we relocated Valimar to the\\nbeginning of the sentence; should “Valimar is lost” be Valimar\\nn´\\na vanwa, English-style, or perhaps Valimar vanwa n´\\na? In\\nthe examples above and the exercises below I have organized the\\nsentences using the “English” word order, but Tolkien may have\\nhad something more exotic up his sleeve. There is no way of\\ntelling before more material is published.\\nI revise this lesson in November 2001, and this summer a few more exam-\\nples involving the word n´\\na “is” finally became available. There does seem\\nto be a tendency to place n´\\na at the end of the sentence, as in the example\\nl´\\na caritas . . . alasaila n´\\na (literally, “not to do it unwise is” – VT42:34).\\nYet the same article that provides this example also cites the formula “A n´\\na\\ncalima l´\\na B” (literally, “A is bright beyond B”) as the Quenya way of ex-\\npressing “A is brighter than B” (VT42:32). Notice that this formula employs\\nan English-style word-order, with n´\\na “is” preceding rather than following\\ncalima “bright”. So it seems that sentences like i parma n´\\na carn¨\\ne, word\\nby word corresponding to English “the book is red”, may be possible after\\nall. Therefore I have not revised any of the examples or exercises of this\\ncourse, all of which employ the “English” word order as far as the copula\\nn´\\na is concerned. It seems, however, that the order i parma carn¨\\ne n´\\na “the\\nbook red is” must be considered a perfectly valid alternative, and Tolkien\\nmay even have intended this to be the more common word order. We must\\nawait still more examples.\\n[New update, January 2002: This month some new examples were indeed\\npublished. It seems that the exact word order is simply a matter of taste.\\nThe example ely¨\\ne na manna “thou art blessed” from VT43:26 has an\\nEnglish-style word order, and here the copula “is/art” appears in the short\\nform na rather than n´\\na. I have however maintained n´\\na in the exercises of\\nthis course; the word na has several other, quite distinct meanings. But\\nperhaps the short form na- is consistently preferred when some ending is to\\nbe added; cf. the plural form nar “are”. Of course, the unattested form n´\\nar\\ncould be equally valid for all I know.]\\nIn F´\\nıriel’s Song (a pre-LotR text), the word for “is” appears as ye rather\\nthan n´\\na or na, as in ´\\nırima ye N´\\numenor “lovely is N´\\numenor” (LR:72).\\nHowever, both the Qenya Lexicon (QL:64) and the Etymologies (LR:374)\\npoint to n´\\na instead, and in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne we have this word attested in an actual\\ntext. Etym and the QL are earlier than F´\\nıriel’s Song, but Nam´\\nari¨\\ne is later,\\nso would seem that ye was just a passing experiment in Tolkien’s evolution\\nof Quenya. In F´\\nıriel’s Song we also see an ending for “is”, -i¨\\ne, appended to\\nadjectives and displacing their final vowel: hence in this song we have m´\\nari¨\\ne\\nfor “(it) is good”, derived from the adjective m´\\nara “good”. This ending -\\ni¨\\ne is transparently related to the independent word ye. I don’t think the\\n84\\n\\n\\nsystem of using the ending -i¨\\ne for “is” was still valid in LotR-style Quenya,\\nand I wouldn’t recommend it to writers. The ending -i¨\\ne has other meanings\\nin later Quenya.\\nAnother system may well be valid, though: using no copula at all. You\\nsimply juxtapose the noun and the adjective, the word “is/are” being un-\\nderstood: Ilu vanya “the World [is] fair” (F´\\nıriel’s Song), maller raicar\\n“roads [are] bent” (LR:47). The formula “A is bright beyond B” = “A is\\nbrighter than B” referred to above is actually cited as “A (n´\\na) calima l´\\na\\nB” in VT42:32. As suggested by the parentheses, n´\\na could be omitted. The\\nexample malle t´\\nera “a straight road” mentioned above could also be inter-\\npreted “a road [is] straight”, if the context allowed it. The final version of\\nTolkien’s Quenya translation of the Hail Mary, published in January 2002,\\nleaves out several copulas: Aistana ely¨\\ne, ar aistana i y´\\nav¨\\ne m´\\nonalyo =\\n“blessed [art] thou, and blessed [is] the fruit of thy womb”.\\nWe must assume that the copula n´\\na, nar is not limited to combining nouns\\nand adjectives, but can also be used to equate nouns: Parmar nar engwi\\n“books are things”, F¨\\nean´\\naro n´\\na Noldo “F¨\\neanor is a Noldo”. (Notice, by the\\nway, that the proper Quenya form of F¨\\neanor’s name is F¨\\nean´\\naro; “F¨\\neanor” is\\na Quenya-Sindarin hybrid form used in Middle-earth after his death.) Again\\nit may be permissible to leave out the copula and retain the same meaning:\\nParmar nati, F¨\\nean´\\naro Noldo.\\nAdjectival agreement in number: Quenya adjectives must agree in number\\nwith the noun they describe. That is, if the noun is plural, the adjective\\nmust be, too; if the adjective describes several nouns it must also be plural,\\neven if each of the nouns is singular. English makes no such distinction –\\nits adjectives do not change – but it is not surprising that Tolkien built\\nadjectival agreement in number into Quenya, since this was to be a highly\\ninflected language.\\nWe have no examples of what happens if an adjective is to agree with a\\nnoun in the dual form (or, for that matter, with a “partitive plural” noun\\nin -li). It is generally assumed, though, that there are no special dual or\\npartitive plural forms of adjectives, but only one plural (or should we say\\n“non-singular”) form.\\nHow, then, is the plural form of adjectives constructed? From the exam-\\nples now available, it can be seen that Tolkien experimented with various\\nsystems over the years. In early sources, adjectives in -a form their plural\\nform by adding the ending -r, just like nouns in -a do. For instance, one very\\nearly “map” of Tolkien’s imaginary world (actually depicted as a symbolic\\nship) includes a reference to I Nori Landar. This evidently means “The\\nWide Lands” (LT1:84–85; the adjective landa “wide” occurs in the Ety-\\nmologies, entry lad. Christopher Tolkien in LT1:85 suggests the translation\\n“The Great Lands”.) Here the plural noun nori “lands” is described by the\\nadjective landa “wide” – another example of an attributive adjective follow-\\ning the noun, by the way – and since the noun is plural, the adjective takes\\n85\\n\\n\\nthe plural ending -r to agree with it. This way of forming plural adjectives\\nwas still valid as late as 1937 or slightly earlier; we have already quoted the\\nexample maller raicar “roads [are] bent” from LR:47, where the adjective\\nraica “crooked, bent, wrong” (listed by itself in LR:383) is plural to agree\\nwith maller.\\nHowever, this system cannot be recommended to writers; the evidence\\nis that in LotR-style Quenya, it had been abandoned. Tolkien in a way\\nreached back into the past and revived a system he had used in what may\\nbe the very first “Qenya” poem he ever wrote, Narqelion of 1915–16. In this\\npoem, adjectives in -a form their plurals by means of the ending -i. For in-\\nstance, the phrase sangar ´\\num¨\\neai occurring in this poem apparently means\\n“throngs large” = large throngs; the adjective ´\\num¨\\nea “large” is listed in the\\nearly Qenya Lexicon (QL:97 – but in later Quenya, the word ´\\num¨\\nea means\\n“evil” instead). Later, Tolkien however introduced one more complication:\\nAdjectives in -a had plurals in -ai in archaic Quenya only. In Exilic Quenya,\\nQuenya as spoken by the Noldor after they had returned to Middle-earth,\\n-ai at the end of words of more than one syllable had been reduced to -¨\\ne. (Cf.\\nWJ:407 regarding the ending -v¨\\ne representing “archaic Q -vai”.) So while\\nthe plural form of, say, quanta “full” was apparently quantai at the older\\nstages of the language, it later became quant¨\\ne. This form we have already\\nmet in one of the examples quoted above: quant¨\\ne tengwi, “full signs”,\\nwhere quanta appears in the plural form to agree with tengwi “signs”\\n(VT39:5).\\nThere is one special case to be considered: adjectives in -¨\\nea, such as laur¨\\nea\\n“golden”. In archaic Quenya, we must assume that the plural form was\\nsimply laur¨\\neai. But when -ai later became -e, what would be ?laur¨\\nee did\\nnot prove to be a durable form. To avoid the cumbersome combination of\\ntwo concomitant e’s, the first of them was changed to i. Hence the plural\\nform of laur¨\\nea in Exilic Quenya appears as lauri¨\\ne, as in the first line of\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne: Ai! lauri¨\\ne lantar lassi s´\\nurinen. . . “Ah! golden fall the leaves in\\nthe wind. . . ” – the adjective being plural to agree with the noun it describes,\\nlassi “leaves”.\\nAs for adjectives in -¨\\ne, they seem to behave like most nouns of the same\\nshape: -¨\\ne becomes -i in the plural. We don’t have very many examples, but\\nthe phrase luini tellumar “blue vaults” in the prose version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nseems to incorporate the plural form of an adjective luin¨\\ne “blue” (actually\\nnot attested in this form, but as observed above, there are many colour-\\nadjectives in -¨\\ne). Moreover, in the Etymologies Tolkien noted that the an\\nadjective mait¨\\ne “handy, skilled” has the plural form maisi (LR:371). Evi-\\ndently the plural form was especially mentioned primarily to illustrate an-\\nother point: that adjectives in -it¨\\ne have plural forms in -isi, the consonant\\nt turning into s before i. This particular idea seems to have been dropped\\nlater, though: In a much later, post-LotR source, Tolkien wrote hlon´\\nıti\\ntengwi, not ?hlon´\\nısi tengwi, for “phonetic signs” (WJ:395). So perhaps\\n86\\n\\n\\nthe plural form of mait¨\\ne could simply be ?maiti as well.\\nAs for the plural form of adjectives ending in a consonant, such as firin\\n“dead”, we don’t seem to have any examples to guide us. It has traditionally\\nbeen assumed that they form their plurals in -i, just like nouns of this shape\\ndo, and this still seems reasonably plausible. So, say, “dead men” could be\\nfirini neri. If any argument can be raised against this assumption, it is that\\nadjectives in -in actually seem to be shortened forms of longer adjectives in\\n-ina. As pointed out above, Tolkien quoted the adjective meaning “open,\\nfree, cleared (of land)” as latin(a), indicating double forms latin and latina.\\nThe plural form of latina should obviously be latin¨\\ne, for older latinai. But\\nwhat about latin? If this is merely a shortened form of latina, perhaps the\\nplural form would still be latin¨\\ne rather than latini? We cannot know for\\ncertain; in the exercises below I have followed the traditional assumption,\\nusing plurals in -i. Adjectives ending in a consonant are quite rare anyway, so\\nthis uncertainty does not greatly jeopardize the quality of our own Quenya\\ntexts.\\nIn what positions do adjectives agree in number? Attested examples like\\nthose already quoted, like luini tellumar “blue domes”, would seem to indi-\\ncate that an attributive adjective in front of the noun does show agreement.\\nSo does an attributive adjective following the noun; the Markirya poem\\nhas i fairi n´\\nec¨\\ne for “the pale phantoms”, or literally “the phantoms pale”\\n(n´\\neca pl. n´\\nec¨\\ne “vague, faint, dim to see”, MC:223). An adjective separated\\nfrom the noun it describes also agrees in number, hence laur¨\\nea “golden” ap-\\npears in plural form lauri¨\\ne in the first line of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, lauri¨\\ne lantar lassi\\n“golden fall leaves” (the prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne has lassi lantar lauri¨\\ne “leaves fall\\ngolden”). As for predicative adjectives, we lack late examples. In German,\\nadjectives do agree in number when they are used attributively, but adjec-\\ntives used predicatively do not. Yet the old example maller raicar “roads\\n[are] bent” in LR:47 would seem to indicate that in Quenya, adjectives agree\\nin number also when they are used predicatively. In later Quenya we should\\npresumably read maller (nar) raic¨\\ne, since Tolkien changed the rules for\\nhow the plural form of adjectives is constructed.\\nSo in short, we can conclude that adjectives agree in number with the\\nnouns they describe “everywhere” – whether they appear before, after or\\nseparated from the noun, whether they are used attributively or predica-\\ntively. There are a few examples that don’t quite fit in, though. Appendix E\\nof the essay Quendi and Eldar of ca. 1960 contains several “well-behaved”\\nexamples of plural adjectives that are used attributively with the plural\\nnoun tengwi “signs”, making up various phrases used by early Elvish lin-\\nguists when they tried to analyze the structure of their tongue (as I said\\nabove, we needn’t concern ourselves with the precise meaning of these terms\\nhere). Besides hlon´\\nıti tengwi “phonetic signs” and quant¨\\ne tengwi “full\\nsigns” already quoted (WJ:395, VT39:5), we have racin¨\\ne tengwi “stripped\\nsigns” and peny¨\\ne tengwi “lacking signs” (VT39:6; the singular of the latter,\\n87\\n\\n\\npenya tengw¨\\ne “a lacking sign”, is attested: VT39:19). In these phrases the\\nadjectives hlon´\\nıt¨\\ne “phonetic”, quanta “full”, racina “stripped, deprived”\\nand penya “lacking, inadequate” all assume their plural forms, beautifully\\nagreeing with tengwi “signs, elements, sounds”. So far, so good. But then\\nwe turn to the draft material for Appendix E of Quendi and Eldar. Here\\nTolkien did not let the adjectives agree in number, and we have phrases\\nlike lehta tengwi “free/released elements”, sarda tengwi “hard sounds”\\nand tapta tengwi “impeded elements” (VT39:17). We would of course ex-\\npect leht¨\\ne tengwi, sard¨\\ne tengwi, tapt¨\\ne tengwi, but these are not found.\\nUnless we are to assume that there are several classes of adjectives, some\\nthat agree in number and others that don’t – and I think this is rather far-\\nfetched – it seems that Tolkien in the draft material used a system whereby\\nan attributive adjective immediately in front of its noun does not agree in\\nnumber. But when he actually wrote the Appendix, he would seem to have\\nintroduced agreement in this position as well, and so we have for instance\\nquant¨\\ne tengwi rather than ?quanta tengwi for “full signs”. Elvish gram-\\nmar could change at lightening speed whenever Tolkien was in his “revision”\\nmood, so this would not be surprising.\\nThe last version of the Markirya poem, which Christopher Tolkien thinks\\nwas written at some point in the last decade of his father’s life (1963–73), is\\nalso relevant here. In the phrase “fallen towers”, Tolkien first wrote the adjec-\\ntive atalant¨\\nea “ruinous, downfallen” in its plural form atalanti¨\\ne, just like\\nwe would expect. Then, according to Christopher Tolkien, he mysteriously\\nchanged atalanti¨\\ne to the singular (or rather uninflected) form atalant¨\\nea,\\nthough the adjacent noun “towers” was left in the plural (MC:222). Again\\nTolkien seems to be experimenting with a system whereby attributive adjec-\\ntives immediately in front of the noun they describe do not agree in number,\\nbut appear in their uninflected form. A similar system appears in Tolkien’s\\nwritings on Westron, the “Common Speech” of Middle-earth (a language he\\nonly sketched). Perhaps he considered introducing such a system in Quenya\\nas well, and we see this idea flickering on and off, so to speak, in his writings?\\nHowever, the system I would recommend to writers is to let adjectives\\nagree in number also in this position. In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR we have the\\nphrase lint¨\\ne yuldar “swift draughts”, and in the interlinear translation\\nin RGEO:66 Tolkien explicitly noted that lint¨\\ne is a “pl.” adjective. We\\nmust assume, then, that lint¨\\ne represents older lintai, the plural form of an\\nadjective linta. If an attributive adjective immediately in front of the noun\\nit describes did not agree in number, “swift draughts” should have been\\n?linta yuldar instead. The source where Tolkien explicitly identified lint¨\\ne\\nas a plural form was published during his own lifetime, and moreover as late\\nas in 1968, possibly postdating even the last version of Markirya. So his final\\ndecision seems to have been that adjectives do agree in number with their\\nnouns also when the adjective appears immediately in front of the noun.\\nOne suspects that he spent many sleepless nights carefully considering the\\n88\\n\\n\\nvarious pros and cons in this important question.\\nNOTE ON ADJECTIVES USED AS NOUNS: As described above, Tolkien at one\\nstage had adjectives in -a form their plurals in -ar, but later he replaced this with -¨\\ne\\n(for older -ai). However, adjectives in -a may still have plural forms in -ar if they are\\nused as nouns, because in such a case they are naturally inflected as nouns. Tolkien noted\\nthat instead of saying peny¨\\ne tengwi “lacking signs” the Elves might simply refer to the\\npenyar or “lacking ones” – “using [the adjective] penya as a technical noun” (VT39:19). A\\nmore well-known example is provided by the adjective vanya “fair, beautiful”; this would\\nnormally have the plural form vany¨\\ne (e.g. vany¨\\ne nissi “beautiful women”). However, the\\nadjective vanya can also be used as a noun, “a Vanya” or “Fair One”, which was the word\\nused of a member of the First Clan of the Eldar. Then the whole clan is of course called\\nthe Vanyar, as in the Silmarillion chapter 3: “The Vanyar were [Ingw¨\\ne’s] people; they\\nare the Fair Elves.” Using another (but related) adjective “beautiful”, namely vanima,\\nTreebeard employed another noun-style plural when he greeted Celeborn and Galadriel as\\na vanimar “o beautiful ones” (the translation given in Letters:308).\\nAdjectives in -¨\\ne would however have their usual plural form in -i even if they are used\\nas nouns, since most nouns in -¨\\ne also form their plurals in -i.\\nSummary of Lesson Four\\nAdjectives are words used to describe various qualities, such as “tall” or\\n“beautiful”. They can be combined with nouns, making up phrases like\\n“(a/the) red book” or “tall men”, where the adjectives “red” and “tall” de-\\nscribe the nouns “book” and “men” directly; this is called using an adjective\\nattributively. But they can also be made to make up sentences like “the book\\nis red” or “the men are tall”, where the whole point of the sentence is to\\nascribe a certain quality to a noun; here the adjective is used as a predicate.\\nIn such cases English slips in a copula, like “is” or “are” in these examples,\\nto clarify the relationship between the noun and the adjective. Many lan-\\nguages do without this extra device (one would just say what corresponds\\nto “the book red”), and this seems to be permissible in Quenya as well, but\\nthe explicit copula n´\\na “is”/nar “are” also occurs in the material. – Most\\nQuenya adjectives end in the vowel -a, some also in -¨\\ne; the only ones that\\nend in a consonant are a few that have the ending -in (apparently shortened\\nfrom -ina). Quenya adjectives agree in number; if an adjective describes a\\nplural noun or more than one noun, the adjective must be plural as well.\\nAdjectives in -a have plural forms in -¨\\ne (for older -ai); notice that if the\\nadjective ends in -¨\\nea it forms its plural in -i¨\\ne (to avoid -¨\\nee). Adjectives in -¨\\ne\\nhave plural forms in -i; for the few adjectives in -in we lack examples, but\\nit is normally assumed that they would add -i in the plural.\\n89\\n\\n\\nVocabulary\\nExcept for the two first items, all of these are adjectives. Don’t worry about\\nthe other words occurring in the exercises below; those you have already\\nmemorized carefully, following my instructions in Lesson Two. Right?\\nneld¨\\ne “three”\\nn´\\na “is” (nar “are”)\\nvanya “beautiful, fair”\\nalta “great” (= big; the word is used of physical size only)\\ncalima “bright”\\ntaura “mighty”\\nsaila “wise” (we will use this form found in late material; a pre-LotR source has saira\\ninstead)\\n´\\num¨\\nea “evil”\\ncarn¨\\ne “red” (we suspect that Tolkien the Devout Catholic was thinking about cardinals\\nwith their red attires; the Italian word carne = “[red] meat” may also be relevant\\nhere. . . )\\nninqu¨\\ne “white”\\nmor¨\\ne “black” (cf. the first element of Sindarin Mordor = Black Land)\\nfirin “dead”\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Mor¨\\ne rocco.\\nB. Calim¨\\ne hendu.\\nC. Neld¨\\ne firini neri.\\nD. Vany¨\\ne aiwi.\\nE. T´\\nari n´\\na taura n´\\nıs.\\nF. I oronti nar alt¨\\ne.\\nG. Aran taura (two possible translations!)\\nH. I n´\\ner ar i n´\\nıs nar sail¨\\ne.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. The white gate.\\nJ. A great ship.\\nK. The floor is red.\\n90\\n\\n\\nL. One black stone and three white stones.\\nM. Wise kings are mighty men.\\nN. The mighty man and the beautiful woman are evil.\\nO. Elves are beautiful.\\nP. The Elves are a beautiful people.\\n91\\n\\n\\nLesson 5\\nThe Verb: Present tense and agreement in number.\\nSubject/object. The superlative form of adjectives.\\n5.1\\nThe Verb\\nAs I mentioned at the beginning of the previous lesson, the vocabulary of\\nany language can be separated into various classes of words, or “parts of\\nspeech”. So far we have explicitly discussed the nouns, which denote things,\\nand adjectives, which are words used to describe nouns (linguists would\\nfind these definitions rather simplistic, but they will do for our purpose).\\nActually we have already touched on a three other parts of speech as well,\\nwithout discussing them in depth. As part of Lesson Two you hopefully\\nmemorized the word nu “under”, which is a preposition; prepositions are\\nsmall words or “particles” like under, on, of, to, in, about etc., often used to\\nprovide information about spatial relationships (e.g. “under the tree” = nu\\ni alda), though frequently they are used in more abstract contexts. With\\nthe word ar “and” we have also included the most typical representative of\\nthe conjunctions, words used to connect (or indeed “conjoin”) other words,\\nphrases or sentences, e.g. Anar ar Isil = “the sun and the moon”. Still, no\\nthorough discussion of prepositions or conjunctions as such seems necessary:\\nin Quenya they seem to behave pretty much like their English equivalents,\\nso for the most part you simply have to learn the corresponding Quenya\\nwords. They are not normally inflected in any way.\\nAnother part of speech that we have already touched on is far more sophis-\\nticated and intriguing: the verb. We encountered one verb in the previous\\nlesson: n´\\na “is”, with its plural form nar “are”. As verbs go, this one is not\\nvery exciting; it is simply used to coordinate a noun with some sort of pred-\\nicate that tells us what the noun “is”: Aran n´\\na taura, “a king is mighty”,\\ntasar n´\\na alda “a willow is a tree”. As I said in the previous lesson, the cop-\\nula n´\\na doesn’t really provide much extra information here, except clarifying\\nthe relationship between the various elements of the sentence. Most other\\nverbs (very nearly all other verbs, actually) are however full of meaning.\\nThey don’t just tell us what someone or something “is”, but what someone\\n92\\n\\n\\nor something does. The Verb brings action into the language.\\nIn a sentence like “the Elf dances” it is easy to identify “dances” as the\\naction-word, telling us what is going on here. And sure enough, “dances” is\\na form of the English verb to dance. This verb may appear in other forms\\nas well; instead of “dances” we might say “danced”, which moves the action\\ninto the past: “The Elf danced.” This illustrates an important feature of\\nverbs in European languages: the form of the verb gives information about\\nwhen the action denoted takes place, in the present or in the past. Some\\nlanguages also have special future forms. Tolkien built all of these features\\ninto Quenya.\\nThe different “time-forms” of the verb are called various tenses; we speak\\nof present tense, past tense and future tense. We will only deal with the\\npresent tense in this lesson, and return to the others later. (The trinity of\\npresent, past and future does not represent a full list of all the tenses there\\nare. We will discuss a total of five different tenses in this course, and I would\\nbe very surprised if unpublished material does not describe even more tenses\\nthan the ones we know at present.)\\nHere I should slip in a warning: We don’t have much explicit information\\nabout the Quenya verb. In the so-called Plotz Letter, that Tolkien wrote\\nto Dick Plotz at some point in the mid-sixties, he set out the declension of\\nthe noun. Apparently similar information about the verb was to follow; it\\nnever did. This is of course most unfortunate. Not that Tolkien took this\\ninformation to his grave; we know that he did write about these matters, but\\nthe relevant writings have not been published. For the time being, we must\\nfor the most part try to figure out the grammatical rules by ourselves if we\\nwould like our Quenya poems to include verbs. Regarding the present tense,\\nsome scraps of information luckily appeared in Vinyar Tengwar #41, July\\n2000. Combining this info with some linguistic deduction, we can probably\\nmake out the main features of the system Tolkien had in mind.\\nAs they appear in various sources, Quenya verbs seem to fall into two main\\ncategories (though there are some verbs in our corpus that don’t readily\\nfit into either, even if we exclude the early “Qenya” material where some\\nreally weird things are going on in the verbal system). The first and largest\\ncategory is what can be termed A-stems, for they all end in -a. Another\\nterm for the same is derived verbs, for these verbs never represent a naked\\nprimitive “root-word”, but are derived by adding endings to this root. The\\nmost frequent of these endings are -ya and -ta; much less frequently we see\\n-na or just -a. Examples:\\ncalya- “to illuminate” (root kal)\\ntulta- “to send for, to fetch, to summon” (root tul)\\nharna- “to wound” (root skar; primitive initial sk- became h- in Quenya)\\nmapa- “to grasp, to seize” (root map)\\n(Convention has it that when you list verbal stems as such, you add a\\n93\\n\\n\\nhyphen at the end; Tolkien usually does so in his writings. The “stem” of a\\nverb is a basic form that we start from when deriving other forms, such as\\ndifferent tenses.)\\nIf these A-stems can be termed “derived verbs”, the other category con-\\nsists of the “non-derived” or primary verbs. These are verbs that display\\nno such ending as -ya, -ta, -na or -a. The verbal stems in question can be\\ntermed “primary” or “basic” since they essentially represent a primitive root\\nwith no additions. For instance, the verb mat- “eat” comes directly from\\nthe root mat- of similar meaning. Tac- “fasten” represents the root tak-\\n“fix, make fast”. Tul- “come” can be identified with the root tul- “come,\\napproach, move towards” (contrast the derived verb tulta- “send for, sum-\\nmon, fetch” from the same root, derived by means of the ending -ta). In the\\ncase of the roots mel- “love” and sir- “flow”, Tolkien didn’t even bother to\\nrepeat the glosses for the Quenya verbs mel- and sir- (see LR:372, 385).\\nWhen discussing Quenya verbs, we sometimes need to refer to the stem-\\nvowel. This is the vowel of the root-word underlying the verb as it appears\\nin Quenya. In the case of primary verbs like mel- “love”, it is of course\\neasy to identify the stem-vowel, since e is the only vowel there is (and sure\\nenough, this is also the vowel of the underlying root mel-). In the case of\\nderived verbs like pusta- “stop” or ora- “impel”, the vowels of the added\\nending (here -ta and -a) do not count as stem-vowels. Pusta-, for instance,\\nis derived from a root pus, and its stem-vowel is therefore u, not a. In the\\nvast majority of cases, the stem-vowel is simply the first vowel of the verb\\n(but not necessarily so, there may be some prefixed element).\\nWith this we have the necessary terms in place and can finally start dis-\\ncussing the formation of the present tense. To start with the primary verbs,\\nwhat seems to be the present tense of the verb mel- “love” is attested in\\nLR:61, Elendil telling his son Herendil: Yonya iny¨\\ne tye-m´\\nela, “I too, my\\nson, I love thee”. Here we have the verb describing a present or on-going (in\\nthis case quite permanent) action. Another example of a present-tense pri-\\nmary verb can apparently be found in the LotR itself, in the famous greeting\\nelen s´\\nıla l´\\numenn’ omentielvo, “a star shines [or, is shining] upon the\\nhour of our meeting”. S´\\nıla would seem to be the present tense of a verb\\nsil- “shine (with white or silver light)”, listed in the Silmarillion Appendix.\\nM´\\nela and s´\\nıla show the same relationship to the simple verbal stems mel-\\nand sil-: the present-tense forms are derived by lengthening the stem-vowel\\n(this is denoted by supplying an accent, of course) and adding the ending -a.\\nThis conclusion is supported by an example from VT41:13: The verb quet-\\n“speak, say” there appears in the present tense qu´\\neta “is saying”.\\nThough forms like m´\\nela and s´\\nıla may occasionally be translated using\\nthe simple present tense in English, hence “love(s)” and “shines”, is seems\\nthat the Quenya present tense properly denotes a continuous or ongoing\\naction that is best translated using the English “is . . .-ing” construction,\\nas in the example qu´\\neta just quoted: this is “is saying” rather than just\\n94\\n\\n\\n“says”. The conclusion that the Quenya present tense properly denotes con-\\ntinuous actions is also supported by other evidence: The Quenya present\\ntense of the primary verb mat- “eat” is nowhere attested in published ma-\\nterial. However, Tolkien stated that mˆ\\natˆ\\na was “the stem of the continuous\\nform”, which could be translated “is eating” (VT39:9; ˆ\\na here denotes long\\na, in Quenya spelt ´\\na). Tolkien actually put an asterisk in front of mˆ\\natˆ\\na to\\nmark it as an “unattested” form, so this should evidently be taken as prim-\\nitive Elvish rather than Quenya. How Quenya evolved from the primitive\\nlanguage can be inferred from many other examples, so we know that mˆ\\natˆ\\na\\nwould come out as m´\\nata. This form would seem to fall into the same pat-\\ntern as m´\\nela, s´\\nıla and qu´\\neta: lengthened stem-vowel and ending -a (and\\nworking backwards, we can deduce that Tolkien meant m´\\nela, s´\\nıla, qu´\\neta\\nto be descended from primitive Elvish mˆ\\nelˆ\\na, sˆ\\nılˆ\\na, kwˆ\\netˆ\\na). Presumably these\\nare all “continuous” forms; just like primitive mˆ\\natˆ\\na “is eating” they appar-\\nently emphasize the ongoing nature of the action: S´\\nıla may literally be “is\\nshining” rather than just “shines”. Perhaps the lengthening of the stem-\\nvowel somehow symbolizes this ongoing or “drawn-out” action. In the case\\nof m´\\nela in the sentence iny¨\\ne tye-m´\\nela, it is more natural to translate “I\\nlove you” rather than “I am loving you”, but the latter would seem to be\\nthe most literal meaning.\\nThen we must consider the second and larger category of verbs, the A-\\nstems. In their case, the information from VT41 is of particular value.\\nIt seems that the A-stems form their present tense by somewhat the same\\nrule as the primary verbs, but the rule needs a little “adaptation” to fit the\\nshape of an A-stem verb. Our sole attested example is the verb ora- “urge”\\nor “impel”. VT41:13, 18 indicates that its present tense is ´\\nor¨\\nea (“is urging”).\\nAs in the case of primary verbs, the stem-vowel has been lengthened and\\nthe ending -a has been added. There is one complication, though: since the\\nverbal stem ora- already ended in -a, this vowel is changed to e so as to\\navoid to a’s in sequence: What would be ´\\nora-a manifests as ´\\nor¨\\nea. Hence\\nwe must conclude that verbs like mapa- “grasp, seize” and lala- “laugh”\\nappear as m´\\nap¨\\nea, l´\\nal¨\\nea in the present tense.\\nShort A-stems like ora- or mapa- are however of a rather unusual shape,\\nsince they add only the simple vowel -a to the original root. As discussed\\nabove, A-stems where the final -a is only part of a longer derivational ending\\n(most often -ya or -ta) are much more common. We have already quoted\\nexamples like calya- “to illuminate” and tulta- “to summon” (roots kal,\\ntul). Such “complex” A-stems have a consonant cluster following the vowel\\nof the original root, like ly and lt in these examples. We have no actual\\nexample of the present tense of such a verb. If we were to apply the pattern\\nwe deduce to exist from the example ´\\nor¨\\nea “is urging”, it would land us on\\nforms like ?c´\\naly¨\\nea “is illuminating” and ?t´\\nult¨\\nea “is summoning”. However,\\nthere seems to be a phonological rule in Quenya prohibiting a long vowel\\nimmediately in front of a consonant cluster. It would seem that a word like\\n95\\n\\n\\n?t´\\nult¨\\nea cannot exist (but frankly I’m not quite sure about ?c´\\naly¨\\nea, since\\nly/ny/ry sometimes seem to count as unitary palatalized consonants rather\\nthan consonant clusters). Lacking actual examples, we can only assume that\\nin such a case the lengthening of the vowel would simply be dropped, so that\\nthe present tense of verbs like calya- and tulta- would be caly¨\\nea, tult¨\\nea\\n(though as I just indicated, ?c´\\naly¨\\nea may be possible for all I know). This\\nwould apply wherever there is a consonant cluster following the vowel of\\nthe verbal stem. Further examples are lanta- “fall”, harna- “wound” and\\npusta- “stop”, that would all – presumably – form their present-tense forms\\nin -¨\\nea: Lant¨\\nea “is falling”, harn¨\\nea “is wounding”, pust¨\\nea “is stopping”.\\nWe must assume that this system also applies where there is a diphthong\\nin the verbal stem, since like a vowel in front of a consonant cluster, a\\ndiphthong cannot be lengthened in any way. The present-tense forms of\\nverbs like faina- “emit light” or auta- “pass” would presumably be fain¨\\nea,\\naut¨\\nea.\\nWe now know enough to start building simple sentences:\\n• Isil s´\\nıla “the Moon is shining” (present tense s´\\nıla formed from the\\nprimary verb sil- “shine”)\\n• I Elda l´\\nal¨\\nea “the Elf is laughing” (present tense formed from the\\nshort A-stem lala- “laugh”)\\n• Lass¨\\ne lant¨\\nea “a leaf is falling” (present tense formed from the com-\\nplex A-stem lanta- “fall”; we cannot have *l´\\nant¨\\nea paralleling l´\\nal¨\\nea\\nbecause a long vowel cannot occur in front of a consonant cluster)\\nSome useful terms can be included here. Once you include a verb in the\\nsentence, denoting some kind of action, you must normally devote another\\npart of the sentence to telling who is doing this action. The party that\\ndoes whatever the verb tells us is being done, constitutes the subject of the\\nsentence. In a sentence like Isil s´\\nıla “the Moon is shining”, it is thus Isil\\n“the Moon” that is the subject, since it is the Moon that does the shining\\nthe verb s´\\nıla tells us about. In a sentence like i Elda m´\\nata “the Elf is\\neating”, i Elda “the Elf” is the subject, since the Elf does the eating.\\nThis very sentence, i Elda m´\\nata, has possibilities. We can add one more\\nelement, like the noun massa “bread”, and get i Elda m´\\nata massa “the\\nElf is eating bread”. Now what is the function of this added word? It is\\nthe “target” of the verbal action, in this case what is eaten. The target of\\nthe verbal action is called the object, the passive counterpart of the active\\nsubject: The subject does something, but the object is what the subject does\\nsomething to. The subject “subjects” the object to some kind of action. This\\n“action” may of course be much less dramatic than “subject eats object” as\\nin the example above. For instance, it can be as subtle as in the sentence\\n“the subject sees the object” (fill in with other sense-verbs if you like),\\nwhere the “action” of the subject does not physically affect the object in\\n96\\n\\n\\nany way. That is not the point here. The basic idea of the subject-object\\ndichotomy is simply that the subject does something to the object, though\\n“does something to” must sometimes be understood in a wider sense.\\nNOTE: Notice, though, that in sentences with the copula n´\\na/nar “is/are”, for instance\\ni alda n´\\na tasar “the tree is a willow”, tasar “a willow” does not count as the object\\nof i alda “the tree”. I alda is the subject all right, since this is the element that “does”\\nwhat little action there is in this sentence: “the tree is. . . ” But tasar “a willow” is not\\nthe object, for in this sentence “the tree” does not do anything to “a willow” – and the\\nhallmark of the object is that something is done to it. Rather than doing anything do\\na willow, the tree is a willow, and that is another thing altogether: Tasar is here the\\npredicate of i alda, as we discussed in the previous lesson. But if we substitute m´\\nata\\n“is eating” for n´\\na “is”, we are right back to a subject-verb-object construction: I alda\\nm´\\nata tasar, “the tree is eating a willow”. If you are unduly troubled by the fact that\\nthis sounds somewhat nonsensical, rest assured that the grammar is fine.\\nIn the case of some verbs, there can be no object. In the case of (say)\\nlanta- “to fall”, you can have a subject and say i Elda lant¨\\nea “the Elf\\nis falling”. Here the subject doesn’t do anything to an object; it is just the\\nsubject itself that is doing something. With a verb like mat- “eat”, it is\\nkind of optional if you want to fill out the sentence with an object or not: I\\nElda m´\\nata (massa), “the Elf is eating (bread)”; this works as a complete\\nsentence even without the object. But some verbs by their meaning demand\\nan object, and the sentence would be felt to be incomplete without it. If we\\nsay i Elda m´\\nap¨\\nea “the Elf is seizing”, this only raises the question “the Elf\\nis seizing what?” and we must come up with an object to make the sentence\\ncomplete.\\nIn the Plotz letter, Tolkien indicated that in one variant of Quenya, so-\\ncalled Book Quenya, nouns would have a special form if they function as\\nobjects. Singular nouns ending in a vowel would have this vowel lengthened\\n(for instance, cirya “ship” would become ciry´\\na if it appears as the object\\nof a sentence), and nouns that normally employ the plural ending -r would\\nswitch to -i (so “ships”, as object, would be ciryai instead of ciryar). This\\nspecial “object” form, in linguistic terms the accusative case, was suppos-\\nedly used in (archaic?) written Quenya. However, this accusative does not\\nappear in any actual texts, such as Nam´\\nari¨\\ne or even the last version of the\\nMarkirya poem, which must be almost contemporaneous with the Plotz let-\\nter. Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, sung by Galadriel, is perhaps supposed to reflect the usage of\\nspoken Third Age Quenya. Whatever the case, I do not use the distinct ac-\\ncusative in the exercises I have made for this course (or in my own Quenya\\ncompositions). It seems clear that the use of the accusative was far from\\nuniversal, within or without the fictional context. So I would say cirya(r)\\nfor “ship(s)” even if the word appears as the object of a sentence.\\nWith the terms subject and object in place, we can discuss another feature\\nof the Quenya verb. Just like adjectives agree in number with the nouns they\\ndescribe, verbs agree in number with their subjects. Let us have a closer look\\n97\\n\\n\\nat the first line of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, lauri¨\\ne lantar lassi “like gold fall the leaves”,\\nor literally “golden fall [the] leaves”. Here the adjective laur¨\\nea “golden”\\nappears in plural form lauri¨\\ne to agree in number with the plural noun lassi\\n“leaves”, as we discussed in the previous lesson. But the verb lanta- “to\\nfall” must also agree with its plural subject lassi. The verb lanta therefore\\ntakes the ending -r. (The verb itself appears in the so-called aorist tense, to\\nbe discussed later; you can think of aorist lantar vs. present tense lant¨\\near\\nas corresponding to English “fall” vs. “are falling”, respectively.) The plural\\nending -r we have already met in the case of nouns, as in Eldar “Elves”,\\nbut nouns may also have plurals in -i, depending on their shape. In the case\\nof verbs, the plural ending -r seems to be universal, no matter what the verb\\nlooks like. The ending -r is not restricted to the present tense of verbs, but\\nis seemingly used in all tenses, wherever a plural subject turns up.\\nEssentially we have already met the verbal plural ending in the verb nar\\n“are”, the plural of n´\\na “is”. (One may ask why n´\\na does not turn into ?n´\\nar\\nwith the long vowel intact. The latter form may very well turn out to be\\nvalid, but nar “are” with a short a is at least less prone to confusion with\\nthe noun n´\\nar “flame”.)\\nMore than one subject has the same effect on the verb as a (single) plural\\nsubject, the verb taking the ending -r in both instances:\\nI arani m´\\natar “the kings are eating” (sg. i aran m´\\nata “the king is\\neating”)\\nI aran ar i t´\\nari m´\\natar “the king and the queen are eating” (if you want\\nthe verb mat- “eat” to appear in singular present-tense form m´\\nata here,\\nyou must get rid of either the king or the queen so that there is just a single\\nsubject)\\nOn the other hand, it has no effect on the verb if we have a plural object\\nor multiple objects, e.g. i aran m´\\nata massa ar apsa “the king is eating\\nbread and meat” (apsa “cooked food, meat”). The verb agrees in number\\nwith the subject only.\\nIt has generally been assumed that the verb has only one plural form, the\\nending -r being universal. In other words, the verb would take the ending -r\\nnot only where the subject noun appears in the “normal” plural (ending -r\\nor -i), but also where it is dual (ending -u or -t) or appears in the “partitive\\nplural” form (ending -li). However, we have no actual examples from LotR-\\nstyle Quenya, and in particular I will not rule out the possibility that there\\nmay be a special dual form of the verb to go with dual subjects (ending -t\\nas for most nouns, like Aldu s´\\nılat rather than Aldu s´\\nılar for “the Two\\nTrees are shining”???) The published material allows no certain conclusion\\nin this question, so I will simply avoid dual subjects in the exercises I make\\nfor this course.\\nThe last thing we must consider when discussing the verb is the question\\nof word order. Where in the sentence does the verb fit in, really? English\\n98\\n\\n\\nsentences generally list the subject, the verb and the object (if there is any\\nobject) in that order. The attentive reader will have noticed that most of the\\nQuenya sentences above are organized in the same manner. This seems to be\\nthe most typical word order in Quenya prose. Examples of the subject and\\nthe verb in that order include lassi lantar “leaves fall” and morni¨\\ne caita\\n“darkness lies [upon the foaming waves]” – both from the prose version\\nof Nam´\\nari¨\\ne. But there are also examples of the verb being placed first,\\ne.g. Fingon’s cry before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad: Auta i l´\\nom¨\\ne!, literally\\n“Passes the night”, but translated “the night is passing!” in the Silmarillion\\nch. 20. Indeed both of the above-quoted examples of the order subject-verb\\nfrom the prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne instead show the order verb-subject in the poetic\\nversion in LotR: lantar lassi, caita morni¨\\ne. In English, fronting the verb\\nis one way of turning a declarative statement into a question, e.g. “Elves\\nare beautiful” vs. “are Elves beautiful?”, but this way of forming questions\\nevidently doesn’t work in Quenya. (Auta i l´\\nom¨\\ne! “passes the night!” for\\n“the night is passing!” is perhaps an example of dramatic style or affectionate\\nspeech; the verbal action is evidently considered more important than the\\nsubject that performs it. I suspect that in a less dramatic context, one would\\nrather say i l´\\nom¨\\ne auta.)\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne also provides an example of a sentence with both subject, verb\\nand object: h´\\nısi¨\\ne unt´\\nupa Calaciryo m´\\nıri, “mist [subject] covers [verb] the\\njewels of Calacirya [this whole phrase being the object]”. Yet word order is\\nagain quite flexible, especially in poetry, as further examples from Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nshows. We have object-subject-verb in the sentence m´\\naryat Elent´\\nari or-\\ntan¨\\ne, literally “her hands (the) Starqueen raised” (in LotR translated “the\\nQueen of the stars . . . has uplifted her hands”). The sentence ily¨\\ne tier\\nundul´\\nav¨\\ne lumbul¨\\ne, literally “all paths downlicked (i.e. covered) shadow”,\\nhas the order object-verb-subject (in LotR, Tolkien used the translation\\n“all paths are drowned deep in shadow”). In the prose version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne,\\nTolkien interestingly reorganized both of these to subject-verb-object con-\\nstructions: Elent´\\nari ortan¨\\ne m´\\naryat, lumbul¨\\ne undul´\\nav¨\\ne ily¨\\ne tier. This\\nis our main basis for assuming that this is the normal order, preferred where\\nthere are no poetic or dramatic considerations to be made.\\nIn general, one must be careful about putting the object before the sub-\\nject, for this could in some cases cause confusion as to which word is the\\nobject and which is the subject (since the commonest form of Quenya does\\nnot maintain a distinct accusative case to mark the object). Such inversions\\nare however quite permissible when the subject is singular and the object\\nis plural or vice versa. Then the verb, agreeing in number with the subject\\nonly, will indirectly identify it. In the sentence ily¨\\ne tier undul´\\nav¨\\ne lum-\\nbul¨\\ne we can readily tell that it must be lumbul¨\\ne “shadow” and not ily¨\\ne\\ntier “all paths” that is the subject, because the verb undul´\\nav¨\\ne does not\\nreceive the ending -r to agree with the plural word tier. Hence this can’t be\\nthe subject – but the singular noun lumbul¨\\ne “shadow” can.\\n99\\n\\n\\n5.2\\nMore about adjectives\\nIn English and other European languages, adjectives have special forms that\\nare used in comparison. In English, adjectives have a comparative form that\\nis constructed by adding the ending -er, and a superlative form that is formed\\nwith the ending -est. For instance, the adjective tall has the comparative\\nform taller and the superlative form tallest. (In the case of some adjectives,\\nEnglish however resorts to the independent words more and most instead\\nof using the endings, e.g. more intelligent and most intelligent instead of\\nintelligenter and intelligentest, which forms are perceived as cumbersome.)\\nThe function of these forms is to facilitate comparison between various par-\\nties. If we want to say that one party possesses the quality described by\\nthe adjective to a greater extent than some other party, we may use the\\ncomparative form: “Peter is taller than Paul.” The superlative form is used\\nif we want to say that one party possesses the quality in question more than\\nall others that are considered: “Peter is the tallest boy in the class.”\\nIn the first version of this Quenya lesson, as published in December 2000,\\nI wrote: “But when it comes to Quenya, there is not much we can say. The\\npublished material includes absolutely no information about comparative\\nforms; we don’t even have an independent word for ‘more’. . . ” Since then,\\nthe situation has happily changed; during 2001 a little more information\\nappeared in the journals Tyali¨\\ne Tyelelli´\\neva and Vinyar Tengwar. Now we\\ndo have a word for “more” (malda), and we also know a special formula\\nthat is used in comparison: “A is brighter than B” may be expressed as “A\\nn´\\na calima l´\\na B”, literally “A is bright beyond B” (VT42:32). However, the\\nword l´\\na has other meanings beside “beyond”, and it will be more practical\\nto discuss and practice its use in comparison in a later lesson (“The various\\nuses of l´\\na”, Lesson Eighteen).\\nWe will here focus on the superlative form of adjectives instead. One\\ntiny scrap of evidence has long been available: In Letters:278–279, Tolkien\\nexplained the adjectival form ancalima occurring in LotR. Translating it as\\n“exceedingly bright”, he stated that this is calima “shining brilliant” with\\nthe element an- added, the latter being a “superlative or intensive prefix”.\\nFor this reason, many writers have used the prefix an- as the equivalent\\nof the English ending -est, to construct the superlative form of adjectives\\n– e.g. anvanya “fairest” from vanya “fair, beautiful” (but is should be\\nunderstood that ancalima remains our sole attested example of an- used\\nin this sense).\\nOne may wonder whether the form that is made by prefixing an- re-\\nally is the equivalent of an English superlative, sc. a form of the adjective\\nthat implies having the most of the property involved in comparison with\\ncertain others. It may be noted that Tolkien translated ancalima, not as\\n“brightest”, but as “exceedingly bright”. When he describes an- as a “su-\\nperlative or intensive prefix”, he may almost seem to mean ‘superlative or\\n100\\n\\n\\nrather intensive prefix’. So perhaps an- implies “very, exceedingly” rather\\nthan “most” in comparison with others. It may be noted, though, that the\\ncontext the in which the word is found does seem to imply a certain amount\\nof “comparison”: In LotR, ancalima occurs as part of Frodo’s “speaking in\\ntongues” in Shelob’s lair (volume 2, Book Four, chapter IX): Aiya E¨\\narendil\\nElenion Ancalima. No translation is given in the LotR itself, but Tolkien\\nlater stated that this means “hail E¨\\narendil brightest of stars” (Letters:385).\\nIn Tolkien’s mythology, E¨\\narendil carrying the shining Silmaril was set in the\\nheavens as the brightest of the stars. So here, the meaning does seem to\\nbe that of a genuine superlative, “brightest” in the full sense of “brighter\\nthan all the others”. In any case, no other information on how to form the\\nsuperlative appears in published writings, so we have little choice but to\\nuse this formation. We must however be prepared that future publications\\nmay provide more information about this, involving alternative superlative\\nformations.\\nThe prefix an- in this form cannot be mechanically prefixed to any Quenya\\nadjective, or consonant clusters that Quenya does not allow would sometimes\\nresult. An- can be prefixed “as is” to adjectives beginning in a vowel or in\\nc-, n-, qu-, t-, v-, w-, and y-:\\nan + alta “great (in size)” = analta “greatest”\\nan + calima “bright” = ancalima “brightest” (our sole attested exam-\\nple!)\\nan + norna “tough” = annorna “toughest”\\nan + quanta “full” = anquanta “fullest”\\nan + vanya “beautiful” = anvanya “most beautiful”\\nan + wenya “green” = anwenya “greenest”\\nan + y´\\nara “old” = any´\\nara “oldest”\\nPerhaps we can also include adjectives in f- and h- (no examples):\\nan + f´\\nana “white” = ?anf´\\nana “whitest”\\nan + halla “tall” = ?anhalla “tallest”\\nWhat would happen in other cases we cannot say for certain. Either an\\nextra vowel (likely e or a) would be inserted between the prefix and the\\nadjective to break up what would otherwise be an impossible cluster, or\\nthe final -n of the prefix would change, becoming more similar (or wholly\\nsimilar) to the first consonant of the adjective. Such assimilation is observed\\nelsewhere in our corpus, so this has to be our favourite theory regarding\\nthe behavior of an- as well. Before the consonant p-, the n of an would\\nlikely be pronounced with the lips closed because the pronunciation of p\\ninvolves such a closure; hence n would turn into m. (Compare English input\\noften being pronounced imput.) From pitya “small” we would thus have\\nampitya for “smallest”, this being the impossible word anpitya reworked\\n101\\n\\n\\ninto a permissible form (Quenya does not have np, but the cluster mp is\\nfrequent even in unitary words).\\nBefore the consonants l-, r-, s-, and m-, the final n of an- would probably\\nbe fully assimilated, that is, it becomes identical to the following consonant:\\nan + lauca “warm” = allauca “warmest”\\nan + ringa “cold” = arringa “coldest”\\nan + sarda “hard” = assarda “hardest”\\nan + moina “dear” = ammoina “dearest”\\nCf. such attested assimilations as nl becoming ll in the compound N´\\numel-\\nl´\\not¨\\ne “Flower of the West” (UT:227, transparently a compound of the well-\\nknown words n´\\numen “west” and l´\\not¨\\ne “flower”). As for the group nm be-\\ncoming mm, this development is seen in the name of the Vanyarin Elf El-\\nemm´\\nır¨\\ne mentioned in the Silmarillion: his (her?) name apparently means\\n“Star-jewel” (elen “star” + m´\\nır¨\\ne “jewel”).\\nSummary of Lesson Five\\nTwo major categories of Quenya verbs are the primary verbs, that repre-\\nsent a primitive root with no additions, and the A-stems, that have added\\nan ending including the vowel a to the original root (sometimes -a alone,\\nbut more commonly some longer ending like -ya or -ta). The primary verbs\\nform their present tense by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, e.g.\\ns´\\nıla “is shining” from sil- “to shine”. The A-stems form their present tense\\nby somewhat the same rule, but when the ending -a is added to such a\\nstem (already ending in -a), what would be -aa is changed to -¨\\nea. In our\\none attested example of the present tense of an A-stem, ´\\nor¨\\nea from ora- “to\\nimpel”, the stem-vowel has been lengthened. However, as far as we under-\\nstand Quenya phonology, a long vowel cannot normally occur in front of a\\nconsonant cluster, and most A-stems do have a consonant cluster following\\nthe stem-vowel (e.g. lanta- “to fall”, hilya- “to follow”). Presumably such\\nverbs would form their present tense in -¨\\nea, but the stem-vowel would re-\\nmain short. Only the (relatively few) A-stems that do not have a consonant\\ncluster following the stem-vowel can lengthen it in the present tense. – A\\nverb agrees with its subject in number, receiving the ending -r if the subject\\nis plural: elen s´\\nıla “a star is shining”, eleni s´\\nılar “stars are shining”.\\nA superlative form of adjectives can be derived by adding the prefix an-, as\\nin ancalima “brightest” from calima “bright”. We must, however, assume\\nthat the n of this prefix is in many cases assimilated to the first consonant of\\nthe adjective, or consonant clusters that Quenya phonology does not allow\\nwould arise. For instance, an- + lauca “warm” may produce allauca for\\n“warmest” (*anlauca being an impossible word).\\n102\\n\\n\\nVocabulary\\ncanta “four”\\nNauco “Dwarf”\\nparma “book”\\ntiuca “thick, fat”\\nmapa- verb “grasp, seize”\\ntir- verb “watch, guard”\\nlala- verb “laugh” (so according to a late source, PM:359; in earlier material the verb\\nlala-, of a quite different derivation, has the meaning “deny”: See the entry la in\\nthe Etymologies. We needn’t discuss whether one obsoletes the other; here we will\\nuse lala- for “laugh” only.)\\ncaita- verb “lie” (lie horizontally, not “tell a lie”)\\ntulta- verb “summon”\\nlinda- verb “sing” (cf. the word Ainulindal¨\\ne or “Music [lit. Singing] of the Ainur”)\\nmat- verb “eat”\\ncenda- verb “read”\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. I n´\\nıs l´\\nal¨\\nea.\\nB. I antiuca Nauco m´\\nata.\\nC. I t´\\nari t´\\nıra i aran.\\nD. I analta oron n´\\na taura.\\nE. I n´\\ner tult¨\\nea i anvanya vend¨\\ne.\\nF. I aiw¨\\ne lind¨\\nea.\\nG. I Naucor m´\\nap¨\\near i canta Eldar.\\nH. I antaura aran n´\\na saila.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. The woman is watching the greatest (/biggest) ship.\\nJ. The most evil (/evilest) men are dead.\\nK. The Elf is seizing the book.\\nL. Four men are lying under a tree.\\nM. The wisest Elf is reading a book (careful: what probably happens to\\nthe superlative prefix when it is added to a word like saila “wise”?)\\n103\\n\\n\\nN. The king and the queen are reading the book.\\nO. The birds are singing.\\nP. The four Dwarves are watching a bird.\\n104\\n\\n\\nLesson 6\\nPast tense\\n6.1\\nThe past tense\\nThe previous lesson discussed the Quenya present tense, which is typically\\nused to describe an on-going present action. However, Quenya has differ-\\nent tenses covering the entire trinity of past, present and future, and when\\nrecounting past events one will normally use the past tense.\\nIn English, very many past tenses are formed by means of the ending -ed,\\ne.g. filled as the past tense of the verb fill. In Quenya, most past tense forms\\nare likewise formed by means of an ending added to the verbal stem. As far\\nas we know, all past tense verbs end in the vowel -¨\\ne (though further endings,\\nsuch as the plural ending -r that is used in the case of a plural subject, may\\nof course be added after this vowel). In many cases, this vowel -¨\\ne is part\\nof the ending -n¨\\ne, that seems to be the most general past tense ending in\\nQuenya.\\nAs discussed in the previous lesson, most Quenya verbs are A-stems, mean-\\ning that they end in the vowel -a. The past tenses of these verbs are typically\\nformed simply by adding the ending -n¨\\ne. For instance, the Etymologies men-\\ntion a verb orta- “raise” (see the entry oro), and in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR its\\npast tense is seen to be ortan¨\\ne. (The simplest translation of ortan¨\\ne is of\\ncourse “raised”; the somewhat free rendering in LotR employs the transla-\\ntion “has uplifted” instead, but Tolkien’s interlinear translation in RGEO:67\\nreads “lifted up” – which is merely an alternative wording of “raised”.) Other\\nexamples from Tolkien’s notes:\\nora- “urge”, past tense oran¨\\ne “urged” (VT41:13, 18)\\nhehta- “exclude”, past tense hehtan¨\\ne “excluded” (WJ:365)\\nulya- “pour”, past tense ulyan¨\\ne “poured” (Etym, entry ulu)\\nsinta- “fade”, past tense sintan¨\\ne “faded” (Etym, entry thin)\\nWe may add the verb ahyan¨\\ne “changed” (or “did change”), only attested\\nlike this in the past tense, as part of the question manen lamb¨\\ne Quendion\\nahyan¨\\ne[?] “how did the language of the Elves change?” (PM:395). The verb\\n105\\n\\n\\n“change” would seem to be ahya-.\\nRegarding the verb ava- (apparently meaning “refuse, forbid”), Tolkien\\nnoted that its past tense avan¨\\ne “revealed that it was not in origin a ‘strong’\\nor basic verbal stem”. The latter seems to be more or less the same as a\\nprimary verb. He called avan¨\\ne a “weak” past tense form (WJ:370). That\\nprobably goes for all the past tenses so far discussed. (What Tolkien would\\ncall a “strong” past tense is not quite clear. Perhaps he would use this term\\nof the past tenses formed by means of nasal-infixion – see below.)\\nWe must also consider the “basic” or “primary”, ending-less verbs, verbs\\nthat unlike the A-stems do not have a final vowel: verbs like sil- “to shine”,\\ntir- “to watch”, mat- “to eat”.\\nIt seems that the ending -n¨\\ne can be used to form the past tense of some\\nprimary verbs as well. Tolkien mentioned tirn¨\\ne as the past tense of the verb\\ntir- “to watch” (Etym, entry tir), and he also quoted tamn¨\\ne as the past\\ntense of the verb tam- “to tap” (Etym, entry tam). In these cases, adding\\n-n¨\\ne to the verbal stems in question does not produce impossible consonant\\nclusters: Both rn and mn are permitted by Quenya phonology. For this\\nreason, the ending -n¨\\ne can probably also be added to verbal stems ending in\\n-n, since double nn is likewise a wholly acceptable combination in Quenya.\\nFor instance, the past tense of the verb cen- “to see” is presumably cenn¨\\ne\\n“saw”, though we have no attested example of the past tense of a verb of\\nthis shape.\\nBut whenever the stem of a basic verb ends in any consonant other than\\njust -m, -n, or -r, simply adding the ending -n¨\\ne would produce consonant\\nclusters that Quenya cannot have. The past tense forms of verbs like mat-\\n“eat”, top- “cover” or tac- “fasten” cannot be **matn¨\\ne, **topn¨\\ne, **tacn¨\\ne,\\nfor clusters like tn, pn, cn are not found in the language. So what happens?\\nThe difficult way of describing what occurs is to say that the n of the\\nending -n¨\\ne is replaced by nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant\\nof the verbal stem. What is “infixion”? We have already mentioned suffixes,\\nelements added at the end of a word (like the plural ending -r, added to the\\nnoun Elda in its plural form Eldar), and prefixes, elements added at the\\nbeginning of a word (like the superlative prefix an-, added to the adjective\\ncalima “bright” in its superlative form ancalima “brightest”). If you want\\nto add something to a word, there are only so many places you can fit it in;\\nif it is not to be prefixed or suffixed, the final option is to infix it, that is, jam\\nit into the word. For instance, the verb mat- “to eat” has the past tense\\nmant¨\\ne “ate” (VT39:7), an infixed n turning up before the final consonant of\\nthe verbal stem (t becoming nt). Similarly, the verb hat- “break asunder”\\nhas the past tense hant¨\\ne (Etym, entry skat).\\nBefore the consonant p, the infix takes the form m rather than n, so that\\nthe past tense of top- “to cover” is tomp¨\\ne (Etym, entry top). Before c, the\\ninfix appears as n (or actually ˜\\nn, see below), so that the past tense of tac-\\n“to fasten” is tanc¨\\ne (Etym, entry tak). The various forms of the infix – n,\\n106\\n\\n\\nm or ˜\\nn, depending on the environment – are all nasals, sounds pronounced\\nby making the stream of air from the lungs go out through the nose rather\\nthan the mouth. Hence nasal-infixion is a fitting term for this phonological\\nprocess.\\nAs I said, that was the difficult way of stating what happens. Put more\\nsimply: if adding the past tense ending -n¨\\ne to a primary verb would result\\nin any of the impossible clusters tn, cn, pn, the n and the consonant before\\nit switch places. Tn and cn simply become nt and nc; what would be np\\nchanges to mp to ease pronunciation. (Actually what would be nc similarly\\nchanges to ˜\\nnc, using ˜\\nn for ng as in king as Tolkien sometimes did – but ac-\\ncording to the spelling conventions here employed, ˜\\nnc is represented simply\\nas nc.) Hence:\\nmat- “eat”, past tense (**matn¨\\ne >) mant¨\\ne “ate”\\ntop- “cover”, past tense (**topn¨\\ne > **tonp¨\\ne >) tomp¨\\ne “covered”\\ntac- “fasten”, past tense (**tacn¨\\ne >) tanc¨\\ne “fastened”\\nThis, at least, is an easy way to imagine it for pedagogical purposes.\\nWe cannot know for certain whether Tolkien imagined this to be the ac-\\ntual development – a form something like matn¨\\ne actually occurring at an\\nearlier stage, but later becoming mant¨\\ne by swapping around the conso-\\nnants t and n. The linguistic term for such transposing of two sounds is\\nmetathesis, and there are other examples of metathesized consonants in the\\nimaginary evolution of Tolkien’s languages (see for instance the Etymolo-\\ngies, entry kel-). However, some clues suggest that Tolkien imagined these\\npast tenses to reflect “genuine” nasal-infixion occurring already in primitive\\nElvish, not merely a later transposition of consonants. After all, he had one\\nof his characters observe that “nasal-infixion is of considerable importance\\nin Avallonian” (SD:433; Avallonian is another term for Quenya). But this is\\nan academic question.\\nPrimary verbs with -l as their final consonant must be given special at-\\ntention. The verb vil- “to fly” is said to have the past tense vill¨\\ne (Etym,\\nentry wil). This double ll probably represents some combination of l and n.\\nPerhaps vill¨\\ne is meant to represent older wiln¨\\ne with the normal past tense\\nending (notice that in this case, v comes from older w: root wil), the group\\nln turning into ll in Quenya. However, other examples suggest that older\\nln would rather produce Quenya ld. It may well be that vill¨\\ne is meant to\\nrepresent older winl¨\\ne, that is, a nasal-infixed variant of the verb wil- (since\\nnl also became ll in Quenya; for instance, the noun nell¨\\ne “brook” is said to\\ncome from older nen-le: Etym, entry nen). Whatever development Tolkien\\nmay have imagined, primary verbs with l as their final consonant seem to\\nform their past tense form by adding -l¨\\ne.\\nNOTE: In Telerin, the sister language of Quenya in the Blessed Realm, a verb formed\\nfrom a root del (“go”) is said to have the past tense delle: WJ:364. As pointed out by Ales\\nBican, this form probably descends from older denle (with nasal-infixion). If it descended\\n107\\n\\n\\nfrom delne, it would likely have remained unchanged in Telerin, since the cluster ln is\\npermitted in this language (cf. a Telerin word like elni “stars”, WJ:362). This observation\\nsupports the view that past tenses with nasal-infixion did occur already in Primitive\\nElvish.\\nThe system set out above is what I shall consider the “regular” way of\\nforming the past tense of a verb in Quenya. That is, as long as a verb\\nconforms with this system, I will not explicitly list its past tense when I\\nfirst mention it. All the past tenses in the exercises below are constructed\\naccording to this system, so your task this time is to internalize the rules\\nabove. Some irregular forms will be discussed in later lessons, but even so,\\nwe will here survey certain “alternative” past tense formations (contrasting\\nthem with the more regular forms may actually be helpful in memorizing the\\nnormal system – but the student is not expected to memorize this survey as\\nsuch). So do skim through as much as you can take of the stuffbelow, and\\nproceed to the exercises when you’ve had enough.\\nThe past tense of primary verbs with -r as their final consonant is rela-\\ntively well-attested: Attested examples include car- “make, do”, pa.t. carn¨\\ne\\n(Etym, entry kar), tir- “watch”, pa.t. tirn¨\\ne (Etym, entry tir) and tur-\\n“govern”, pa.t. turn¨\\ne (Etym, entry tur). So above we set out the rule that\\nverbs of this shape have past tense forms that are constructed by adding the\\nsuffix -n¨\\ne. But a few verbs behave quite differently. The past tense of the\\nverb rer- “sow” is not **rern¨\\ne as we might expect, but rend¨\\ne: See Etym,\\nentry red. The reason for this is precisely the fact that the original root-\\nword was red rather than **rer. Thus the verb rer- appeared as red- at\\nan earlier stage, and then the past tense rend¨\\ne is actually “regular” enough:\\nit is simply formed from red- by means of nasal-infixion + the ending -¨\\ne\\n(just like such a regular verb as quet- “say” has the pa.t. quent¨\\ne). What\\nslightly complicates matters is that in Quenya, original d only survived as\\npart of the clusters ld, nd, and rd; in all other positions it was changed, and\\nfollowing a vowel it normally became r. Hence red- turned into rer-, while\\nthe past tense rend¨\\ne remained unscathed by the phonological changes. In\\nthis perspective, the verb is strictly speaking not “irregular” at all; it just\\nbehaves differently because it has a special history – and this goes for very\\nmany of the “irregularities” in Quenya: As observed by his son, Tolkien’s lin-\\nguistic creations “imagine language not as ‘pure structure’, without ‘before’\\nor ‘after’, but as growth, in time” (LR:342). Tolkien clearly liked leaving in\\nvarious testimonials to this imaginary age-long “growth”.\\nWe don’t know very many verbs in -r that should have past tenses in -nd¨\\ne\\nbecause of their special history. From the Etymologies we must presumably\\ninclude the verbs hyar- “cleave” and ser- “rest” (since these come from\\nroots syad and sed, see the relevant entries in Etym – but Tolkien did not\\nactually mention the past tense forms hyand¨\\ne and send¨\\ne). In a post-LotR\\nsource we have a verb nir- “press, thrust, force”; again no past tense form\\nhas been published, but since the stem is given as nid it should presumably\\n108\\n\\n\\nbe nind¨\\ne rather than nirn¨\\ne (VT41:17). More attested examples could be\\nquoted from early “Qenya” material, but these writings do not have full au-\\nthority as regards LotR-style Quenya. For instance, the 1915 Qenya Lexicon\\nseems to include the verb nyar- “tell, relate” in this category (past tense\\nnyand¨\\ne, QL:68). But in later material, Tolkien derived this verb from a root\\nnar (entry nar2 in Etym) rather than nad, so now its past tense would\\npresumably be regular (nyarn¨\\ne).\\nSome primary verbs are also seen to use a past tense formation that dis-\\npenses with any nasal sounds. The verb does receive the ending -¨\\ne, the vowel\\ndisplayed by all past-tense forms, but instead of adding a nasal sound (in-\\nfixed or as part of the ending -n¨\\ne), the stem-vowel of the verb is lengthened.\\nFor instance, the past tense of the verb lav- “lick” is seen to be l´\\nav¨\\ne (at-\\ntested in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne as part of the verb undul´\\nav¨\\ne “down-licked”, that is,\\n“covered”). Likewise, the past tense of the negative verb um- “not do” or\\n“not be” is said to be ´\\num¨\\ne (Etym, entry ugu/umu; we will return to this\\npeculiar verb in Lesson Nine). This past tense formation is quite common\\nin the early Qenya Lexicon, and it also turns up in relatively late (but still\\npre-LotR) sources. F´\\nıriel’s Song of ca. 1936 agrees with the 1915 Lexicon\\nthat the past tense of the verb car- “make, do” is c´\\nar¨\\ne (QL:45, LR:72; the\\nspelling used in the sources is k´\\nare). However, according to the Etymologies\\n(entry kar), the past tense is carn¨\\ne – and that is the form we will use here:\\nThe Etymologies is, at least in part, slightly younger than Firiel’s Song.\\nFollowing the pattern of c´\\nar¨\\ne, some pre-LotR sources give t´\\nul¨\\ne as the past\\ntense of the verb tul- “come” (LR:47, SD:246), but vill¨\\ne as the past tense\\nof vil- in the Etymologies suggests that the past tense “came” could just as\\nwell be tull¨\\ne (representing older tulne or tunle) instead.\\nIt might seem that Tolkien eventually decided to limit the use of the past\\ntense formation represented by t´\\nul¨\\ne and c´\\nar¨\\ne, though it was never wholly\\nabandoned, as the form undul´\\nav¨\\ne in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR demonstrates. We\\nmight actually have expected the past tense of lav- “lick” to be **lamb¨\\ne\\nrather than l´\\nav¨\\ne. A past tense form lamb¨\\ne would be constructed by nasal-\\ninfixion of the original root-word lab (itself listed in Etym): In Quenya,\\noriginal b normally became v following a vowel, but b persisted unchanged\\nin the group mb. The Qenya Lexicon actually lists amb¨\\ne as the past tense of\\na verb av- “depart” (QL:33); this may be an example of this phenomenon.\\nHowever, **lamb¨\\ne as the past tense of lav- would clash with the noun\\nlamb¨\\ne “tongue, language”; perhaps this is why Tolkien decided to go for\\nthe irregular formation l´\\nav¨\\ne instead. Or should we generalize from lav- and\\nlet all Quenya primary verbs in -v form their past tense after the pattern\\nof l´\\nav¨\\ne?\\nLuckily, these verbs are not very numerous. There is a distinct verb lav-\\nmeaning “yield, allow, grant” (root dab, see Etym), possibly a verb tuv-\\n“find” (verbal stem isolated from a longer form), plus tyav- as the verb\\n“taste” (see entry kyab in Etym). Should the past tense “tasted” be tyamb¨\\ne\\n109\\n\\n\\nor ty´\\nav¨\\ne? The latter past tense form is actually attested in the Qenya\\nLexicon (p. 49), but since the QL is seen to use this formation quite liberally\\ncompared to later Quenya, we cannot be sure that the information is valid\\nfor the later stages of Tolkien’s conception. (Ty´\\nav¨\\ne is attested in a post-\\nLotR source as a noun “taste”; whether this argues against the same form\\nbeing used as a past tense “tasted” is unclear. In the 1915 Lexicon, Tolkien\\ndid have similar-sounding nouns and verbal tenses coexisting; see QL:49,\\nentry kumu.)\\nThere are some curious cases where even longer, derived verbs (A-stems)\\ndrop their ending and have l´\\nav¨\\ne-style past tenses derived directly from the\\nending-less root. One early example is the verb serta- “tie”, past tense s´\\ner¨\\ne\\n(QL:83) rather than **sertan¨\\ne as we might expect. These formations are far\\nfrom uncommon in the 1915 Lexicon, but the idea was not wholly obsolete\\nin later Quenya either: The Etymologies of the mid-thirties records that the\\nverb onta- “beget, create” has two possible past tenses: beside the regular\\nform ontan¨\\ne we also have the irregular form ´\\non¨\\ne (Etym, entry ono).\\nThe simplest A-stems, those that add the short ending -a to the root\\n(and not a longer ending like -ta or -ya), may also drop this ending in\\nsome past tense formations. Above we quoted the QL form ty´\\nav¨\\ne as an\\nattested past tense of the verb tyav- “taste”, but in the 1915 Lexicon, the\\nverb “taste” is actually given as an A-stem tyava-: It is not a primary\\nverb tyav- as it becomes in later sources (QL:49 vs. Etym, entry kyab).\\nWithin the later system, we would expect an A-stem tyava- to have the\\npast tense tyavan¨\\ne, but the validity of either form in LotR-style Quenya is\\nhighly questionable. More commonly, the simplest A-stem verbs have past\\ntenses that are “regular” enough – if you pretend that the final -a does not\\nexist! Above we quoted oran¨\\ne as an example of the regular past tense of\\na simple A-stem verb (ora- “urge”), but immediately after writing oran¨\\ne,\\nTolkien actually added orn¨\\ne as a parenthetic alternative (VT41:13). Of\\ncourse, orn¨\\ne would be a perfectly regular form if it were the past tense of a\\nprimary verb **or- (cf. for instance tur- “govern”, pa.t. turn¨\\ne). In effect,\\nora- may behave as a primary verb in the past tense, discarding its ending\\nand jumping over into another class. The earliest material has examples\\nof the same phenomenon: In the QL, the past tense forms of the verbs\\npapa- “tremble” and pata- “rap, tap” are given as pamp¨\\ne, pant¨\\ne (p. 72),\\nnot **papan¨\\ne, **patan¨\\ne as we would expect according to the “regular”\\nsystem. The nasal-infixed past tense forms would be perfectly “regular” if\\nwe assume that in the past tense, the simple A-stem verbs papa- and pata-\\nare masquerading as primary verbs **pap-, **pat-. Thus we cannot be\\ncertain whether the past tense of the verb mapa- “grasp, seize” should be\\nmapan¨\\ne or mamp¨\\ne; writers have used both. Since Tolkien seems to imply\\nthat the past tense of ora- can be both oran¨\\ne and orn¨\\ne, perhaps both are\\npermissible.\\nNOTE: In QL:59, Tolkien actually listed the past tense of mapa- as namp¨\\ne (sic!) In\\n110\\n\\n\\nthe 1915 scenario, there were two variant roots, mapa and napa, that shared the past\\ntense namp¨\\ne. Do we dare to assume that this idea was still valid decades later? The verb\\nmapa- is listed in the Etymologies, but if Tolkien had still imagined its past tense to be\\nas irregular as namp¨\\ne, I tend to think that it would have been explicitly mentioned in\\nEtym as well. Furthermore, in Etym there is no trace of the alternative root napa; we\\nonly find map (LR:371) corresponding to mapa in the QL. But on the other hand, the\\nform namp¨\\ne is attested, so if you like it better than the unattested forms mapan¨\\ne or\\nmamp¨\\ne, feel free to use it.\\nThe verb lala- “laugh” is another example of one of the simplest A-stems.\\nIt may have the past tense lalan¨\\ne, but it is also possible that it should behave\\nas a primary verb in the past tense. But if so, we must take into account\\nthe fact that lala- is to be derived from older g-lada- (PM:359); this is one\\nof the cases where an original d following a vowel turned into l rather than\\nr (influenced by the l earlier in the word). So if lala- has a “short” past\\ntense, it should probably not be lall¨\\ne, but rather land¨\\ne – derived from\\na nasal-infixed form of the original word g-lada-. On the other hand, the\\nsimilar but distinct verb lala- “deny” found in the Etymologies (LR:367)\\nnever contained a d, so its past tense may well be lall¨\\ne (unless it is lalan¨\\ne,\\nand I think I lean toward that form).\\nThe Etymologies actually provides a few examples of even more complex\\nA-stems that also drop their ending and in effect transform themselves into\\nprimary verbs in the past tense. The verb farya- “to suffice” is said to have\\nthe past tense farn¨\\ne (Etym, entry phar); here the whole ending -ya drops\\nout in the past tense, which is formed as if this were a primary verb **fer-\\n. Based on such a regular example as the one we quoted above – namely\\nulya- “pour”, past tense ulyan¨\\ne – we would of course expect the past tense\\nof ferya- to be **feryan¨\\ne. But actually even our “regular” example ulya-\\nalso has an alternative past tense form ull¨\\ne (Etym, entry ulu), and this\\nis a particularly interesting example, for Tolkien indicated that the two\\npast tenses ulyan¨\\ne and ull¨\\ne were not interchangeable. They had somewhat\\ndifferent meanings. There will be a fuller discussion of this in Lesson Ten;\\nfor now it suffices to say that I think most verbs in -ya would retain this\\nending when the past tense suffix -n¨\\ne is added. (But ull¨\\ne as one past tense\\nof ulya-, formed directly from ul- rather than the full form of the verb,\\nwould seem to confirm that primary verbs in -l normally have past tenses in\\n-l¨\\ne. Except for ull¨\\ne, we only have the example vil- “fly”, pa.t. vill¨\\ne to go\\non – so an extra, if indirect, confirmation of this pattern is very welcome!)\\nFinally we will discuss a strange past tense formation that may occur in\\nthe case of verbs in -ta. Perhaps it should not be seen as irregular, for Tolkien\\nactually described one such past tense as “regular . . . for a -ta verb of this\\nclass” (WJ:366). Nonetheless, its formation is less than straightforward. It\\nis exemplified already in the earliest material: The 1915 Lexicon contains a\\nverb lahta- (QL:50; the verb is not clearly glossed), but its past tense is not\\n**lahtan¨\\ne as we might expect: Instead we find lahant¨\\ne. In other words, the\\n111\\n\\n\\nverb lahta- is reworked into lahat- (the stem-vowel being repeated between\\nthe second and the third consonant, breaking up the consonant cluster,\\nwhereas the final -a is dropped), and the past tense lahant¨\\ne is then formed\\nfrom this lahat- by means of nasal-infixion and an added -¨\\ne, in itself a quite\\nregular process familiar from primary verbs.\\nA much later example can be found in the Etymologies, where the verb\\norta- “rise, raise” is assigned a past tense form oront¨\\ne (Etym, entry oro),\\nthough oront¨\\ne is not there clearly presented as a Quenya form: In Etym, it\\nis actually quite unclear what language it is meant to belong to. However,\\nin some of Tolkien’s earlier drafts for Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, the past tense of orta- did\\nappear as oront¨\\ne, not “regular” ortan¨\\ne as it became in the final version.\\nSo what is going on here?\\nOur only real clue is what Tolkien wrote in WJ:366, where he somewhat\\nsurprisingly declared the form oant¨\\ne – the past tense of auta- “go away,\\nleave” – to be quite regular “for a -ta verb of this class”. According to the\\n“regular” system we have tried to make out, oant¨\\ne instead of **autan¨\\ne in-\\nevitably seems highly irregular. Tolkien derived the verb auta- from a root\\nawa (WJ:365), so its form in the primitive language is probably meant to be\\nawatˆ\\na (my reconstruction). As primitive Elvish evolved towards Quenya as\\nwe know it, the second of two identical short vowels in concomitant syllables\\nwas often lost; hence awatˆ\\na would have been shortened to aw’tˆ\\na = autˆ\\na, and\\nthis in turn is the direct ancestor of Quenya auta-. But it seems that the\\nold past tense of such a verb as awatˆ\\na, with a vowel immediately preceding\\nthe ending -tˆ\\na, was formed by nasal-infixion: Tolkien explicitly gave the past\\ntense of the primitive verb as awantˆ\\ne (WJ:366; the spelling there used is ac-\\ntually ´\\nawa-n-tˆ\\ne, the hyphens before and after the n apparently emphasizing\\nthat it is an infix – whereas the accent on the initial ´\\na here only means that\\nit is stressed, not that the vowel is long).\\nIn the case of a word like awantˆ\\ne, the rule that the second of two identical\\nshort vowels is lost could not apply (no **aw’ntˆ\\ne), for such loss does not\\noccur immediately in front of a consonant cluster – and the nasal-infixion\\nhas here produced a cluster nt. The “final” Quenya form of awantˆ\\ne, namely\\noant¨\\ne, is somewhat obscured because the group awa later became oa in\\nQuenya – but this change has nothing to do with the past tense forma-\\ntion. Now we can explain a form like oront¨\\ne as the past tense of orta-:\\nIn the Etymologies, the original root is given as oro (LR:379), so Tolkien\\nprobably meant the verb orta- to be descended from older orotˆ\\na- after the\\nregular loss of the second vowel. But the past tense of this orotˆ\\na- was the\\nnasal-infixed form orontˆ\\ne (both are my reconstructions), and this produced\\nQuenya oront¨\\ne, the second vowel here being preserved because of the fol-\\nlowing cluster nt (no one wants to say **ornt¨\\ne!)\\nWhen Tolkien apparently changed his mind and altered the past tense\\nof orta- from oront¨\\ne to ortan¨\\ne (a “regular” form according to the sys-\\ntem we have set out), this would seem to suggest that he had now decided\\n112\\n\\n\\nthat the primitive forms were instead ortˆ\\na- with past tense orta-nˆ\\ne: There\\nwas never any vowel immediately in front of the ending -tˆ\\na after all, and\\ntherefore the past tense was not formed by nasal-infixion, but by the inde-\\npendent ending -nˆ\\ne (> Quenya -n¨\\ne). This is not the only example of Tolkien\\napparently changing his mind about which verbs actually belong to this ex-\\nclusive “class”. The Etymologies lists a verb atalta- “collapse, fall in” (entry\\ntal´\\nat); no past tense is there mentioned, but in one text we have atalant¨\\ne\\n(LR:56, translated “down-fell”). This would seem to presuppose that the\\nprimitive forms were atalatˆ\\na- with past tense atalantˆ\\ne (my reconstructions,\\nbut cf. WJ:319 regarding atalat as a derivative form of the root talat).\\nYet in Tolkien’s later texts the past tense of atalta- becomes ataltan¨\\ne\\n(LR:47 and SD:247), simply formed by adding the normal ending -n¨\\ne. So\\nnow Tolkien had presumably come to envision the primitive forms as ataltˆ\\na-,\\npast tense atalta-nˆ\\ne (my reconstructions).\\nIf the apparent revisions oront¨\\ne > ortan¨\\ne and atalant¨\\ne > ataltan¨\\ne do\\nnot reflect changes in his ideas about the primitive Elvish forms, it may\\nbe that he imagined a development whereby the Eldar replaced the more\\ncomplex past tense formations with simpler, analogical forms. For instance,\\noront¨\\ne as past tense of orta- could have been replaced by ortan¨\\ne because\\nof analogy with such straightforward past tense formations as hehta-, pa.t.\\nhehtan¨\\ne (WJ:365). In the Etymologies, the form oront¨\\ne is indeed marked\\nwith a symbol that indicates that it is “poetic or archaic” (cf. LR:347); is this\\nto suggest that it was ordinarily replaced by the “non-archaic” form ortan¨\\ne?\\nEspecially considering how Tolkien later came to envision the history of the\\nQuenya tongue – that it was used as a ceremonial language in Middle-earth,\\nbut was no longer anyone’s mother-tongue – we could very plausibly assume\\nthat its grammar was somewhat simplified, more complex formations being\\nsuppressed and replaced by simpler analogical ones. Indeed oant¨\\ne rather\\nthan **autan¨\\ne as the past tense of auta- “to leave” is the only verb I can\\nthink of where we “must” use this special past tense formation, unless we\\nare to accept some of the earliest “Qenya” material with no reservations\\n(and I have plenty).\\nWith this we conclude our survey of various strange or irregular ways of\\nforming the past tense; as I said above, the exercises below are meant to\\nreflect the regular system instead.\\nRemember that just like present-tense verbs, a past tense form receives\\nthe ending -r if it has a plural subject (or multiple subjects). For instance,\\nthe simplest past tense of the verb lanta- “fall” is lantan¨\\ne, but with a plural\\nsubject it becomes lantaner (SD:246). Naturally, he diaeresis over the final\\n-¨\\ne disappears, since the vowel is no longer final when the plural ending -r is\\nadded after it.\\n113\\n\\n\\nSummary of Lesson Six\\nWhile various irregular formations occur, it would seem that the past tense\\nof Quenya verbs is typically formed according to these rules: A-stem verbs\\nsimply receive the ending -n¨\\ne. The “primary” or ending-less verbs can also\\nreceive this ending if their last consonant is -r or -m, probably also -n (no\\nexamples). If added to a primary verb in -l, the ending -n¨\\ne turns into -l¨\\ne\\n(resulting in a double ll, e.g. vill¨\\ne as the past tense of vil- “fly”). Primary\\nverbs ending in one of the consonants p, t, c have past tenses constructed\\nby adding the ending -¨\\ne combined with nasal-infixion intruding before the\\nlast consonant of the verbal stem; the infix manifests as m before p (hence\\ntomp¨\\ne as the past tense of top- “cover”), otherwise as n (hence mant¨\\ne as\\nthe past tense of mat- “eat”).\\nVocabulary\\nlemp¨\\ne “five”\\nelen “star”\\nharma “treasure” (noun)\\nsil- verb “shine” (with white or silver light, like star-shine or moon-shine)\\nhir- verb “find”\\ncap- verb “jump”\\ntec- verb “write”\\nquet- verb “speak, say”\\nmel- verb “love” (as friend; no Quenya word referring to erotic love between the sexes\\nhas been published)\\ncen- verb “see” (related to cenda- “read”, which word is derived from a strengthened\\nform of the same stem and meaning, basically, to watch closely).\\norta- verb “rise”, also used = “raise, lift up”.\\nharya- verb “possess; have” (related to the noun harma “treasure”, basically re-\\nferring to a “possession”)\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English (and practice your vocabulary at the same time;\\nmost of the words employed in exercises A–H were introduced in earlier\\nlessons):\\nA. I n´\\ner cendan¨\\ne i parma.\\nB. I Naucor manter.\\nC. I aran tultan¨\\ne i t´\\nari.\\n114\\n\\n\\nD. N´\\nıs lindan¨\\ne.\\nE. I vendi tirner i Elda.\\nF. I lemp¨\\ne roccor caitaner nu i alta tasar.\\nG. I eleni siller.\\nH. I Nauco cenn¨\\ne rocco.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. A Dwarf found the treasure.\\nJ. The Elf spoke.\\nK. The horse jumped.\\nL. The king loved the Elves.\\nM. A man wrote five books.\\nN. The queen rose.\\nO. The kings possessed great treasures.\\nP. The king and the queen summoned four Elves and five Dwarves.\\n115\\n\\n\\nLesson 7\\nFuture tense and Aorist\\n7.1\\nThe future tense\\nIn this lesson we will introduce two new tenses of the verb, the future and\\nthe aorist. We shall have to spend quite a few paragraphs trying to define\\nthe function of the latter, but the function of the future tense is easy enough\\nto grasp: This tense is used with reference to future actions.\\nEnglish (unlike, say, French) has no distinct future tense. Instead of a uni-\\ntary, inflectional form of the verb that only refers to future actions, English\\nmay fall back on longer phrases involving extra verbs like “shall” or “will”:\\nA past tense form like “came” has no one-word counterpart with future\\nreference that would exemplify a true future tense – we only find circumlo-\\ncutions like “shall come” or “will come” (or even “is going to come”). It is\\neven possible to use the present tense with future reference: “He comes to-\\nmorrow.” For this reason, linguists may refer to the English “present” tense\\nas a non-past tense instead: It actually covers both present and future.\\nThese somewhat asymmetric features of English are avoided in Tolkien’s\\nElvish. Languages like Quenya and Sindarin do possess true future tense\\nforms of the verb. For instance, the future tense of the verb hir- “find” ap-\\npears near the end of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, in the sentence nai ely¨\\ne hiruva, “maybe\\nthou shalt find [it]”. The example hiruva “shall (shalt) find” includes what\\nseems to be the normal – possibly universal – Quenya future tense marker:\\nthe ending -uva. This pattern is confirmed by the Markirya poem, that in-\\ncludes the examples cenuva “shall heed”, tiruva “shall watch” and hlaruva\\n“shall hear” (verbs cen- “see, behold, heed”, tir- “watch”, hlar- “hear”). In\\nLR:63, Tolkien translates the verb queluva as “faileth”, but this is only an\\nexample of the English “present” or non-past tense embracing the future as\\nwell. The context clearly indicates that the verbal action in question belongs\\nto the future: Man t´\\nar¨\\ne ant´\\nava nin Il´\\nuvatar, Il´\\nuvatar, eny´\\nar¨\\ne tar i\\ntyel ´\\nır¨\\ne Anarinya queluva? “What will Il´\\nuvatar, O Il´\\nuvatar, give me in\\nthat day beyond the end, when my Sun faileth [literally: shall fail]?”\\nThe examples listed so far exemplify the future tense of “primary” or\\n116\\n\\n\\nending-less verbs only. It seems that the ending -uva is also used in the case\\nof the more numerous A-stem verbs, which however lose their final -a before\\nthe future tense ending is added (one exception, see note below). In a post-\\nLotR source, the future tense of the verb linda- “sing” appears as linduva\\n(attested with a secondary ending here removed; see Taum Santoski’s article\\nin the October 1985 issue of the newsletter Beyond Bree). Also, what must\\nbe the future tense of the A-stem verb ora- “to urge, impel” is apparently\\ngiven as oruva in another post-LotR source (VT41:13, 18; Tolkien actually\\nwrote oruv·, but the editor points out that “the dot may be an inadvertently\\nincomplete a”: No Quenya word can end in -v.)\\nNOTE: Notice, however, that a final -a does not drop out before the ending -uva when\\nthis -a is also the only vowel of the verbal stem. Thus, the future tense form of the copulas\\nderived from the stem nˆ\\na “to be” (cf. n´\\na “is”) is not **nuva, but nauva: This word for\\n“will be” is attested in VT42:34.\\nIt may be that Tolkien at one point imagined a somewhat more com-\\nplicated system regarding the A-stems. Above we quoted a line from the\\npre-LotR Quenya text usually called F´\\nıriel’s Song, including ant´\\nava as the\\nfuture tense of anta- “give” (LR:63, 72). Here Tolkien seems to be using\\na system whereby A-stem verbs form their future tense by lengthening the\\nfinal -a to -´\\na and adding the ending -va (shorter variant of -uva?) However,\\nin light of the later examples linduva and oruva (instead of **lind´\\nava,\\n**or´\\nava), we may conclude that Tolkien eventually decided to make -uva\\nthe more or less universal future tense marker: This ending simply causes\\nthe final -a of A-stems to drop out. My best guess is that in LotR-style\\nQuenya, the future tense of anta- should be antuva rather than ant´\\nava,\\nsince Tolkien may seem to have simplified the system.\\nHowever, there is one possible complication in LotR-style Quenya as well,\\nregarding the primary verbs. In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR occurs the future tense\\nform enquantuva, “shall refill”. Removing the prefix en- “re-”, we have\\nquantuva for “shall fill”. This used to be taken as the future tense of a verb\\nquanta- “to fill”, related to the adjective quanta “full”. Tolkien’s earliest\\n“Qenya” wordlist indeed lists such a verb (QL:78, there spelt qanta-). How-\\never, about half a decade after publishing LotR, Tolkien in the essay Quendi\\nand Eldar seemingly cited the Quenya verb “to fill” as quat- (WJ:392). This\\nwould seem to be a primary verb, past tense presumably quant¨\\ne (the pa.t.\\n“qante” is actually given in QL:78, but there it is evidently only meant as a\\npermissible shortening of the full form “qantane”; the regular past tense of\\na verb quanta- would be quantan¨\\ne in later Quenya as well). If Tolkien had\\ndecided that the Quenya verb “to fill” is actually quat-, and its future tense\\nis quantuva as Nam´\\nari¨\\ne would seem to indicate, should we conclude that\\nthe same verbs that form their past tense with nasal-infixion + the ending\\n-¨\\ne similarly form their future tense with nasal-infixion + the ending -uva?\\nFor instance, should the future tense of verbs like mat- “eat”, top- “cover”\\nand tac- “fasten” be mantuva “shall eat”, tompuva “shall cover”, tan-\\n117\\n\\n\\ncuva “shall fasten”? (Compare the nasal-infixion in the past tense forms:\\nmant¨\\ne, tomp¨\\ne, tanc¨\\ne.) Or should we just add the ending -uva to the\\nverbal stem without any further manipulations, hence matuva, topuva,\\ntacuva instead? General principles would perhaps suggest the latter, but\\nthere remains the curious example of quantuva next to quat-. If there is\\nto be no nasal-infixion in the future tense forms, we would have to accept\\nthat the verb “fill” can be both quanta- and quat-, with separate future\\ntenses quantuva and quatuva.\\nI have used future tense forms with nasal-infixion in certain compositions\\nof my own (and so have some people who put greater trust in my so-called\\n“expert opinion” than they possibly should). But it may well be that Tolkien,\\nmentioning the form quat- in WJ:392, actually intended this to be simply\\nthe way the underlying root kwata manifests in Quenya. The exact wording\\nin the source involves a reference to “the verb stem *kwata, Q quat- ‘fill’.”\\nIf quat- is merely the way the ancient stem kwata appears in Quenya, the\\nactual verb “fill” could still be quanta- with future tense quantuva. (Com-\\npare for instance the entry pat in the Etymologies, this root pat producing\\nthe Quenya verb panta- “open”. There is also an adjective panta “open”,\\nexactly parallelling quanta “full” next to the verb quanta- “fill”; perhaps\\nthe verb is derived from the adjective in both cases.)\\nAlternatively, quat- really is the verb “to fill” and not just an underlying\\nroot-form, but the future tense quantuva still presupposes a longer A-\\nstem quanta-. Perhaps Tolkien had just plain forgotten that he had already\\npublished a form of the A-stem verb quanta- “fill”, so that he was no longer\\nfree to change it to a primary verb quat-. (See PM:367-371 for an example\\nof Tolkien working out some elaborate linguistic explanations that he had\\nto scrap because he discovered that they conflicted with something he had\\nalready published in LotR – a fatal footnote in an Appendix forcing him to\\nreject his nice new ideas!)\\nThus, material presently available does not allow any certain conclusion in\\nthis matter. Writers can equally plausibly let verbs that show nasal infixion\\nin the past tense do so also in the future tense (arguing from the quat-\\n/quantuva pair that this is how the language works) or choose to explain\\nquat- differently and form the future tense of any primary verb simply\\nby adding the ending -uva (as in hir-/hiruva). As users of Quenya we\\ncan probably well afford to live with slightly different dialects regarding\\nthis detail, until future publications hopefully allow us to pick the right\\nexplanation.\\nIt must be assumed that the future tense, like all other tenses, receives\\nthe ending -r where it occurs with a plural subject (e.g. elen siluva “a star\\nwill shine”, but plural eleni siluvar “stars will shine”).\\n118\\n\\n\\n7.2\\nThe Aorist\\nWe have now discussed all the three tenses corresponding to the basic trinity\\nof past, present, and future. Yet the Quenya verb has other tenses as well.\\nOne is called the aorist. The use of this term with reference to Quenya\\ngrammar was long disputed by some, but a Tolkien text that finally became\\navailable in July 2000 demonstrates that he had indeed invented a Quenya\\ntense he called aorist (VT41:17).\\nWhile even people with no linguistic training readily understand what the\\npast, present and future tenses are “for”, it is hardly equally obvious what\\nfunction the aorist tense has. (Some linguists would say that the aorist is\\nstrictly not a “tense” at all, according to certain definitions of that term;\\nhowever, Tolkien did use the phrase “aorist tense” in VT41:17. We will not\\ndiscuss this question here, wholly academic as it is.) So what, really, is an\\naorist?\\nTo start with the word itself, it comes from Greek and literally means\\nsomething like “unlimited” or “undetermined”. The word was originally\\ncoined to describe a certain Greek form of the verb. In Greek this form\\ncontrasts with the past tense or “imperfect”, the latter being used of a past\\naction that was being done over a period of time (not just a momentary\\naction). The aorist, on the other hand, has no such implications regarding\\nthe “duration” of the action. It just denotes a past action, period, with no\\nfurther distinctions. When contrasted with the imperfect, the Greek aorist\\ncan be used for a momentary or clearly finished (not on-going) action. An-\\nother use of the Greek aorist is not especially associated with the past: the\\naorist could be used to express general truths that are not limited to any\\nspecific time, like “sheep eat grass”.\\nBut this was the Greek aorist; the Quenya aorist is not used in quite the\\nsame way. Yet their functions do overlap in some respects, which must be\\nthe reason why Tolkien decided to employ this term from Greek grammar\\nin the first place. We will try to determine the function of the Quenya aorist\\nbefore we discuss how it is actually formed. For now, just take my word that\\nthe verbs in the examples I cite are aorists.\\nThe Quenya aorist, like the Greek one, can be used to express “gen-\\neral truths”. Our best example is a sentence occurring in WJ:391, where\\nElves are described as i carir quettar ´\\nomainen, “those who make words\\nwith voices”. The aorist verb carir “make” here denotes a general habit\\nof the Elves, covering past, present and future, for the Elves were making\\nwords throughout their history. The sentence polin quet¨\\ne “I can speak”\\n(VT41:6) includes another aorist verb, and again a “general truth” is pre-\\nsented, though in this case it relates only to the speaker: The meaning is of\\ncourse “I can (always) speak”, presenting a general ability, not just some-\\nthing that applies only to the present time (as if the speaker was dumb\\nyesterday and may go dumb again tomorrow). So one imporant function of\\n119\\n\\n\\nthe Quenya aorist is that it is used, or rather can be used, of verbal actions\\nthat transcend the here and now – rather describing some “timeless” truth\\nor “general” situation. In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR, Galadriel describes the gloomy\\nstate of Middle-earth using an aorist verb: sindan´\\noriello caita morni¨\\ne\\n“out of a grey country darkness lies” (not present tense cait¨\\nea = “is lying”,\\nas if this were merely a strictly present phenomenon, soon to pass). The first\\nwords of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne also include an aorist: lauri¨\\ne lantar lassi, “like gold fall\\nthe leaves” – but this is not just a here-and-now description of leaves that are\\nfalling (which would presumably be lant¨\\near, present tense): The following\\nlines indicate that Galadriel describes the general situation in Middle-earth,\\nthe ever-recurring autumnal decay as she has been observing it throughout\\ny´\\neni ´\\nun´\\notim¨\\ne, “long years uncountable”. So our example “sheep eat grass”\\nis probably best rendered into Quenya using an aorist verb: m´\\namar matir\\nsalqu¨\\ne (singular “sheep” = m´\\nama, “grass” = salqu¨\\ne). As the example\\npolin quet¨\\ne “I can speak” demonstrates, the aorist can also be used to\\ndescribe the abilities or habits of a single individual (i m´\\nama mat¨\\ne salqu¨\\ne\\n= “the sheep eats grass”).\\nIt seems, however, that the Quenya aorist is not only used to describe\\n“timeless truths”. In some cases Tolkien himself seems to waver in the choice\\nbetween the aorist and the present tense, the latter more typically describing\\nan ongoing here-and-now situation. This hesitation on Tolkien’s part suggest\\nthat these tenses are to some extent interchangeable. We have an aorist in\\nthe sentence ´\\norenya quet¨\\ne nin “my heart tells me” (VT41:11), which is\\napparently quite synonymous with the alternative wording ´\\norenya qu´\\neta\\nnin (VT41:13) employing a present tense form instead of an aorist. In the\\nfamous greeting elen s´\\nıla l´\\numenn’ omentielvo, “a star shines [or rather\\nis shining] on the hour of our meeting”, Tolkien finally decided to use a\\npresent tense form – but in earlier drafts, he used an aorist sil¨\\ne instead\\n(RS:324). This greeting, having relevance for “our meeting” only, obviously\\ncannot describe any “general truth” transcending time. Yet it is apparently\\npermissible to use an aorist form even in such a context (though Tolkien\\ndecided that it was better to use the present tense).\\nIt should be noted that the Quenya aorist is generally associated with\\nthe present, not with the past as in Greek. As Jerry Caveney wrote about\\nTolkien on the Elfling list (August 3, 2000):\\nIn what seems to me typical of his creativeness and ‘fun’ in cre-\\nating languages, he took the idea of the aorist aspect, and said,\\nin effect, ‘What if a language used the aorist to contrast present\\ngeneral (unlimited) actions to present continuative actions in-\\nstead of using it to contrast past general actions to present con-\\ntinuative [as in classical Greek]?’ The result is Tolkien’s ‘present\\naorist’. :) He thus created a language that could distinguish con-\\ntinuative from general present actions simply, something classi-\\n120\\n\\n\\ncal Greek could not readily do, and which modern English and\\nFrench, for example, can only do with extra words (I walk, I\\nam walking; je marche, je suis en train de marcher). I suspect\\nTolkien enjoyed the elegance of this basic grammatical distinc-\\ntion, which I am not aware that any ‘living’ language has.\\nOn the other hand, Carl F. Hostetter thinks the Quenya aorist is used\\nto describe an action that is “punctual, habitual, or otherwise durationless”\\n(VT41:15). This is probably correct in most cases, describing the typical\\nfunction of the aorist. Yet some examples suggest that it may be better to\\nsay that whereas the present tense explicitly identifies an ongoing action, the\\nQuenya aorist is simply unmarked as far as duration is concerned. It does\\nnot necessarily contrast with the continuative present tense; an aorist as\\nsuch does not signal that a verbal action must be non-continuative or “du-\\nrationless”. Rather, as Caveney says, it is a “general” form, an all-purpose\\n“present tense” that simply doesn’t address the question of whether the\\naction denoted is continuative, habitual or momentary. As Luk´\\naˇ\\ns Nov´\\nak ob-\\nserved on the Elfling list (August 1, 2000): “It seems that the aorist is so\\n‘aoristos’ [Greek: unlimited] that it can express almost everything.”\\nIn the exclamation auta i l´\\nom¨\\ne! “the night is passing” (Silmarillion ch.\\n20), the form auta would seem to be an aorist (contrasting with the present\\ntense, which is probably aut¨\\nea) – yet Tolkien employs the translation “is\\npassing” rather than “passes”. So it would seem that the aorist can also be\\nused for an ongoing action; it just isn’t explicitly marked as such, grammat-\\nically speaking. If this is correct, it would be difficult to pin down any case\\nwhere it is palpably wrong to replace the present tense with an aorist. Using\\nthe aorist would be simply a rather neutral way of talking about “present”\\nactions – whether such action is actually ongoing, habitual, or merely an\\nexpression of “general truths”. (Hence m´\\namar matir salqu¨\\ne = “sheep\\neat grass” could also be understood as “sheep are eating grass”, though\\nfor this meaning it is probably better – but hardly mandatory – to use the\\npresent tense: m´\\natar.) In choosing between the aorist and the present tense,\\nthe only hard-and-fast rule one has to go on seems to be that the present\\ntense should not be used with reference to entirely duration-less actions:\\nThe Quenya present tense is always used about some kind of continuous\\naction. (Indeed some students would dispense with the term “present tense”\\nand rather speak of the “continuative” form.) Beyond this one restriction, it\\nseems that writers can choose quite freely between the aorist and the present\\ntense.\\nGenerally, however, it seems that the Quenya aorist corresponds to the\\nEnglish simple present (that shows either the ending -s or no ending at\\nall, depending on the grammatical context). So Tolkien often translated\\nQuenya aorists: e.g. top¨\\ne “covers” (LR:394), mac¨\\ne “hews” (VT39:11), tirin\\n“I watch” (LR:394). The Quenya present tense, on the other hand, is often\\n121\\n\\n\\nbest translated using the English “is . . .-ing” construction: t´\\nopa “is cov-\\nering”, m´\\naca “is hewing”, t´\\nıran “I am watching”. (The ending -n in the\\nexamples tirin/t´\\nıran, as well as in the form polin “I can” cited above, sig-\\nnifies “I”: This suffix will be discussed in the next lesson.) In Lesson Five we\\npointed out that the present tense form qu´\\neta denotes “is saying” rather\\nthan just “says”; conversely, the aorist quet¨\\ne is usually “says” rather than\\n“is saying”. If the Quenya aorist is used somewhat like the English simple\\npresent tense, the aorist can be used to describe actions that are perceived as\\nduration-less or habitual. For instance, an aorist like cap¨\\ne “jumps” may de-\\nscribe an action that is momentary (“he jumps”) or habitual/characteristic\\n(“any frog jumps”).\\nYet we also seem to have examples of Tolkien using the Quenya present/\\n“continuous” tense instead of the aorist where English would still translate\\nthe verb in question as a simple present tense form, not as an “is . . .-ing”\\nconstruction. Consider this line from Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: h´\\nısi¨\\ne unt´\\nupa Calaciryo\\nm´\\nıri “mist covers the jewels of Calacirya”. The present tense form unt´\\nupa\\ndescribes a continuous action, more literally “is covering”, but here Tolkien\\nwrote “covers” instead. Presumably it would in no way have been wrong\\nto use an aorist instead. After all, the mist covering the jewels of Calacirya\\nis evidently perceived as a rather general state of things, not merely as an\\nongoing meteorological phenomenon that will soon pass! (The aorist would\\npresumably be untup¨\\ne – perhaps this form, stressed on the first rather\\nthan the penultimate syllable, just didn’t fit the meter of Tolkien’s poem?\\nAnyhow, the latter element of this verb untup- seems to be a variant of\\ntop- in the Etymologies, both verbs meaning “cover”.)\\nAnother example of a present tense where we might expect to see an\\naorist can be found in Cirion’s Oath (UT:305, 317), in the sentence i h´\\narar\\nmahalmassen mi N´\\numen = “those who sit on thrones in the West”. This\\nrefers to the Valar, and their being enthroned in the West must be considered\\na “general truth”, just like it is a general truth that Elves make (aorist carir)\\nwords with voices. Yet Tolkien used what seems to be a present tense instead\\nof an aorist: h´\\nara, here plural h´\\narar, apparently suggesting a primary verb\\nhar- “to sit”. The plural aorist would probably be harir instead. It may be\\nnoted that while Tolkien translated h´\\narar as “sit” in the running English\\ntranslation in UT:305, he employed the more literal translation “are sitting”\\nin his linguistic discussion in UT:317. Yet this seems to demonstrate that\\nin Quenya, one can use the present tense as well as the aorist to describe\\nalso a general state of things. After all, the Valar’s agelong state of being\\nenthroned is also after a fashion “continuous”. Cf. also the sentence yonya\\niny¨\\ne tye-m´\\nela, “I too, my son, I love thee” (LR:61), where Tolkien uses a\\npresent tense instead of an aorist: Literally iny¨\\ne tye-m´\\nela would seem to\\nmean “I am loving you”, but the reference must be to a quite “permanent”\\nemotional state. If anyone else that Tolkien had written this, I would strongly\\nadvice the writer to use an aorist (mel¨\\ne) instead of m´\\nela – actually I still\\n122\\n\\n\\nthink the aorist would be better in this context, even though it was Tolkien\\nwho wrote this! But this example confirms that the present tense can also\\nbe used to describe “general truths” or more or less permanent situations,\\nthough this is more typically the domain of the aorist.\\nI can well imagine that after this discussion, the student wonders if there\\nis any point in maintaining the aorist and the present as distinct tenses,\\nsince their functions seem to overlap to such an extent – the only concrete\\nrule being that if some kind of present action cannot in any way be seen\\nas continuous, but is entirely duration-less, one must use the aorist. In just\\nabout all other contexts, either tense will apparently do, and the use of the\\naorist may not necessarily imply that an action has to be duration-less: For\\ninstance, it could also describe a “general truth”, or indeed an ongoing action\\n(as in auta = “is passing”). The context must be taken into consideration.\\nI can only say that I didn’t make this language (another guy did. . . )\\nPerhaps future publications will throw more light on whatever subtle dis-\\ntinctions Tolkien had in mind. But in the exercises I made for this course,\\nI have consistently used aorists for the English simple present, whereas I\\nuse the Quenya present tense for the English “is . . .-ing” construction. I do\\nthink writers transposing English usage to Quenya using this formula would\\nget it right (or rather, wouldn’t make palpable mistakes!) most of the time.\\nThat was the function of the aorist, difficult though it is to pin down.\\nNow we must discuss how the Quenya aorist is actually formed.\\nIt seems that in Primitive Elvish, the rules for how the aorist is constructed\\nwere quite simple: In the case of a “derived” or A-stem verb, the aorist tense\\nis simply identical to the verbal stem itself (irrespective of the fact that the\\naorist can of course receive such secondary endings as the plural marker\\n-r, where such is required). No explicit tense-marker had to be present.\\nRegarding the A-stems, this system persists in Quenya. The aorist of a verb\\nlike lanta- “to fall” is simply lanta “falls” (occurring in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, there\\nwith the plural ending -r to agree with its plural subject “leaves”: lauri¨\\ne\\nlantar lassi, “golden fall [the] leaves”).\\nIn the case of the “primary” or ending-less verbs like mat- “to eat”,\\nthey originally (in Primitive Elvish) formed their aorist tense by adding\\nthe ending -i: “Eats” apparently used to be mati. It is somewhat arguable\\nwhether the ending -i is here strictly an aorist tense-marker. If so, we might\\nhave expected to see it in the formation of A-stem aorists as well. Perhaps\\nthe rule for aorist formation in Primitive Elvish should rather be stated\\nlike this: The aorist is normally identical to the verbal stem, but in the\\ncase of “primary” or ending-less verbal stems, they receive the ending -i\\nas a kind of stopgap to make up for the absence of any other ending. (I\\nshould add that this “simplified” view is not wholly unproblematic, but it\\nworks most of the time.) This system essentially persists in Quenya, but\\nthe phonological development occurring since Primitive Elvish has added\\none minor complication: Where final, the short -i of Primitive Elvish was\\n123\\n\\n\\nat some point changed to -¨\\ne. (For instance, the Quenya noun rinc¨\\ne “quick\\nshake” is said to descend from primitive rinki: See the entry rik(h) in the\\nEtymologies. Where Quenya has final -i, it is normally shortened from long\\n-ˆ\\nı in the primitive language.) Hence the old form mati “eats” had turned\\ninto mat¨\\ne in Quenya. But since this change only occurred where -i was final,\\nwe still see mati- if the aorist form is to receive any ending, such as -r in\\nthe case of a plural subject. Hence Nauco mat¨\\ne “a Dwarf eats”, but with\\na plural subject Naucor matir “Dwarves eat”. The ending “shielded” the\\nfinal -i so that it was not really final at all, and therefore it did not change\\nto -¨\\ne.\\nNOTE 1: There are a few examples of what seems to be aorist forms where the ending -¨\\ne\\npersists in the form -e- even if the aorist receives an ending. For instance, what must be the\\nplural aorist of the verb ettul- “come forth” appears as ettuler (instead of the expected\\nform ettulir) in SD:290. Perhaps Tolkien at one stage imagined that the primitive ending\\n-i had become -e in all positions, even where it was not final – like ettulir being altered to\\nettuler on analogy with the ending-less form ettul¨\\ne. But this seems to have been just a\\npassing “phase” in Tolkien’s evolution of Quenya: In our best late source, the essay Quendi\\nand Eldar of about 1960, the plural aorist of car- “do, make” appears as carir, not **carer\\n(WJ:391). Hence Tolkien had reestablished the system he had also used a quarter of a\\ncentury earlier, in the Etymologies. – The form ettuler is (apparently) translated “are at\\nhand” in SD:290; a more literal translation would presumably be “are coming forth”. This\\nwould confirm that it may be permissible to use the aorist also for ongoing actions; this\\ntense is simply unmarked regarding the duration of the action, whereas the “present” or\\n“continuous/continuative” tense explicitly identifies an action as ongoing. In our exercises,\\nwe will nonetheless use the aorist in the most “typical” way (to denote actions that are\\nmomentary or habitual/timeless).\\nNOTE 2: In the case of primary verbs, the aorist and the present tense differ not\\nonly regarding the ending. In the present tense, the stem-vowel is lengthened (m´\\nata “is\\neating”), whereas in the aorist, it stays short (mat¨\\ne “eats”). Yet there are a very few\\nstrange forms in our corpus that look like aorists by their ending, but still show a long\\nstem-vowel, e.g. t´\\nap¨\\ne “stops, blocks” (Etym, entry tap). We would expect tap¨\\ne with\\na short vowel (it is tempting to believe that the accent above a is just an ink-smear in\\nTolkien’s manuscript. . . ) – It may also be noted that a few derived verbs (A-stems) include\\nan “intrinsically” long vowel, e.g. c´\\nuna- “bend”, s´\\nuya- “breathe” or m´\\nota- “labour, toil”.\\nTo use the latter verb as an example, its aorist would presumably be m´\\nota, even though\\nthis may look like the present tense of a non-existing primary verb **mot-. (We must\\nassume that the actual present tense of m´\\nota would be m´\\not¨\\nea.)\\nSummary of Lesson Seven\\nIn Quenya, the future tense is formed with the ending -uva. When added\\nto an A-stem, the -a of the stem drops out before this ending; for instance,\\nthe future tense of the verb linda- “sing” is linduva (not **lindauva).\\n124\\n\\n\\nQuenya also has a tense termed aorist, which differs from the present tense\\nin that the latter explicitly describes an on-going action. The aorist says\\nnothing about the duration of the action, and while the use of an aorist\\nform does not preclude that the action denoted is drawn-out or on-going,\\nit seems that this tense is more typically used to describe duration-less,\\npunctual, habitual, characteristic or altogether timeless actions. An example\\nof an aorist is quet¨\\ne = “speaks”, as opposed to present tense qu´\\neta “is\\nspeaking”. It may be that the Quenya aorist corresponds quite well to the\\nEnglish simple present tense (“speaks”), whereas the Quenya present tense\\nrather corresponds to the English “is . . .-ing” construction (“is speaking”).\\nIn the case of A-stem verbs, the aorist is identical to the verbal stem itself\\n(irrespective of any secondary endings the aorist verb may receive). In the\\ncase of primary verbs, the aorist tense is formed by means of the ending\\n-i, which however changes to -¨\\ne if no secondary ending (e.g. -r for plural)\\nis to follow. Hence the aorist of mat- “to eat” is mat¨\\ne “eats” if there is\\nno further ending added to the word, but otherwise we see mati- + ending\\n(e.g. matir “eat” in the case of a plural subject).\\nVocabulary\\nenqu¨\\ne “six”\\nilya, noun/adjective “all, every” (“every” before a singular noun, e.g. ilya Elda\\n“every Elf”, but ilya occurring by itself would rather mean “all”). Note that before\\na plural noun, this word also signifies “all” and is inflected for plural as a common\\nadjective, hence becoming ily¨\\ne for older ilyai (cf. ily¨\\ne tier “all paths” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nand ily¨\\ne mahalmar “all thrones” in Cirion’s Oath)\\nrimba, adjective “numerous”, here used for “many” (presumably becoming\\nrimb¨\\ne when used in conjunction with plural nouns, if it is inflected like any other\\nadjective – hence e.g. rimb¨\\ne r´\\navi “many lions”)\\nAtan “Man” (not “sentient male”, which is n´\\ner, but Mortal Man as opposed to Immor-\\ntal Elf, or Dwarf. Within Tolkien’s mythos, this word came to be used especially\\nof the Elf-friends of Beleriand and their descendants, the ones called Edain or\\nD´\\nunedain in Sindarin. But even within the mythos, the word was originally used\\nsimply of humans as opposed to Elves, and so do we use it here. Cf. Il´\\nuvatar’s words\\nin the Silmarillion, chapter 1: “Behold the Earth, which shall be a mansion for the\\nQuendi and the Atani [Elves and Men]!”)\\nohtar “warrior”\\nr´\\na (r´\\nav-) “lion”\\nAmbar “the world” (the Quenya word probably does not require the article i; it is\\ncapitalized and apparently treated as a proper name)\\nhr´\\nav¨\\ne “flesh”\\nmacil “sword”\\n125\\n\\n\\nfir-, verb “die, expire” (cf. the adjective firin “dead”)\\ntur-, verb “govern, control, wield”\\nor, preposition “over, above”\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Rimb¨\\ne Naucor haryar harmar.\\nB. Anar ortuva ar i aiwi linduvar.\\nC. Enqu¨\\ne neri tiruvar i ando.\\nD. Ilya Atan firuva.\\nE. Ily¨\\ne Atani firir.\\nF. Saila n´\\ner cenda rimb¨\\ne parmar.\\nG. Ilya elen sil¨\\ne or Ambar.\\nH. I Elda mapa i Nauco.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. Every Elf and every Man.\\nJ. The Elf will find the Dwarf.\\nK. The horse jumps over the Dwarf.\\nL. The king controls many warriors and will control (/rule) all the\\nworld.\\nM. The king and the queen will read the book.\\nN. The warrior wields a sword.\\nO. All lions eat flesh.\\nP. Six lions are eating flesh.\\n126\\n\\n\\nLesson 8\\nPerfect tense. Pronominal endings -n(y¨\\ne), -l(y¨\\ne), -s.\\n8.1\\nThe perfect tense\\nTolkien certainly imagined the Quenya verb to have more tenses than the\\nones that appear in published material, but only one of these known tenses\\nnow remains to be discussed. The last known Quenya tense is the perfect.\\n(There are still other forms of the verb that we shall have to discuss later,\\nsuch as the infinitive, the gerund and the imperative, but these don’t count\\nas tenses.)\\nLinguistically speaking, English has no perfect tense, just as English has\\nno future tense. However, just as the language quite regularly expresses the\\nidea of futurity by involving extra verbs like “shall” or “will”, so the meaning\\nof a true perfect tense is typically achieved by means of a circumlocution\\ninvolving the verb “have”. For instance, some typical English constructions\\ndoing the job of a perfect tense are seen in these sentences: “Peter has left”,\\n“the guests have eaten” (as opposed to a mere past tense: “Peter left”,\\n“the guests ate”). The perfect tense thus describes an action that itself is\\npast, but by using the perfect tense one emphasizes that this past action\\nis somehow still directly relevant for the present moment: “Peter has left\\n[and he is still gone]”, “the guests have eaten [and they are hopefully still\\nsatiated as we speak]”, etc. – In English at least, such constructions may\\nalso be used to describe an action that started in the past and still goes on\\nin the present moment: “The king has ruled (or, has been ruling) for many\\nyears.”\\nQuenya, unlike English, does have a true perfect tense – a unitary form\\nof the verb that expresses this meaning, without circumlocutions and extra\\nverbs. Several examples of this perfect tense occurs in LotR. Two of them\\nare found in the chapter The Steward and the King in Volume 3. The first\\nexample is from Elendil’s Declaration, repeated by Aragorn during his coro-\\nnation. It goes, in part: Et E¨\\narello Endorenna ut´\\nulien = “Out of the\\nGreat Sea to Middle-earth I am come [or: I have come].” Removing the end-\\ning -n meaning “I”, we find that the naked present tense “have/has come”\\n127\\n\\n\\nis ut´\\nuli¨\\ne (according to the spelling conventions here employed, we must add\\na diaeresis to -e when it becomes final). Later in the same chapter, Aragorn\\nfinds the sapling of the White Tree, and exclaims: Y´\\ne! ut´\\nuvienyes! “I have\\nfound it!” (The word y´\\ne is not translated; it is apparently simply an exclama-\\ntion “Yes!” or “Yeah!”) Ut´\\nuvienyes can be broken down as ut´\\nuvie-nye-s\\n“have found-I-it”. We are thus left with ut´\\nuvi¨\\ne as the perfect tense of a verb\\ntuv- “find”. (This verb is not otherwise attested, unless it can be equated\\nwith a verb tuvu- “receive” found in very early [1917] material; see GL:71.\\nWhether this tuv- somehow differs in meaning from hir-, we cannot know.\\nIn the exercises of this course, I always use hir- for “find”.)\\nA post-LotR example of a Quenya perfect tense is found in VT39:9,\\nTolkien mentioning a form ir´\\nıci¨\\ne “has twisted” – evidently the perfect tense\\nof a primary verb ric- “twist” (not otherwise attested, but the Etymolo-\\ngies lists a primitive root rik(h)- “jerk, sudden move”). As stated above,\\nthe form ut´\\nuvi¨\\ne “has found” seems to presuppose a verb tuv- “find”, and\\nut´\\nuli¨\\ne “has come” is the perfect tense of a verb tul- “come” that is at-\\ntested in the Etymologies (entry tul-). From these examples it is clear that\\nthe perfect tense is formed with the ending -i¨\\ne, but the stem of the verb is\\nalso manipulated in other ways. In the case of primary verbs at least, the\\nstem-vowel is lengthened: ut´\\nuvi¨\\ne, ut´\\nuli¨\\ne, ir´\\nıci¨\\ne.\\nThe ardent student will remember that a similar lengthening occurs in\\nthe present tense (we would have t´\\nuva “is finding”, t´\\nula “is coming”, r´\\nıca\\n“is twisting”), but the perfect tense formation differs from the present tense\\nnot only in the fact that the former receives the ending -i¨\\ne instead of -a.\\nThe perfect, alone of all known Quenya tenses, also receives a kind of prefix.\\nThis prefix is variable in form, for it is always the same as the stem-vowel\\n(but short). Hence the verbs tuv- “find” and tul- “come” become ut´\\nuvi¨\\ne\\nand ut´\\nuli¨\\ne in the perfect (I underline the prefix), since their stem-vowel is\\nu. On the other hand, the verb ric- “twist”, with the stem-vowel i, turns\\ninto ir´\\nıci¨\\ne in the perfect tense. Further examples (constructed by me, with\\nunderlining of stem-vowel and prefix):\\nStem-vowel A: mat- “eat” vs. am´\\nati¨\\ne “has eaten”\\nStem-vowel E: cen- “see” vs. ec´\\neni¨\\ne “has seen”\\nStem-vowel I : tir- “watch” vs. it´\\nıri¨\\ne “has watched”\\nStem-vowel O: not- “reckon” vs. on´\\noti¨\\ne “has reckoned”\\nStem-vowel U : tur- “govern” vs. ut´\\nuri¨\\ne “has governed”\\nThe prefix seen in the perfect tense is usually referred to as the augment.\\nIt may also be noted that the process of “copying” or “repeating” a part of\\na word, like the prefixing of stem-vowels seen here, is by a linguistic term\\ncalled reduplication. So to use as many fancy words as possible, one feature\\nof the Quenya perfect tense is that it includes a reduplicated stem-vowel that\\nis prefixed as an augment.\\nSo far we have only used examples involving primary verbs. The evidence\\n128\\n\\n\\nis actually extremely scarce regarding derived (A-stem) verbs. General prin-\\nciples suggest that they would drop the final -a before the ending -i¨\\ne is\\nadded. For instance, the perfect tense of lala- “laugh” or mapa- “seize” is\\npresumably al´\\nali¨\\ne “has laughed”, am´\\napi¨\\ne “has seized”. (Where such a verb\\nhas a long stem-vowel, it presumably just stays long in the perfect, where\\nit would have been lengthened anyway. The augment should probably al-\\nways be a short vowel, though; hence a verb like m´\\nota- “toil” may have the\\nperfect tense om´\\noti¨\\ne “has toiled”.)\\nHowever, very many A-stems have a consonant cluster following the stem-\\nvowel, e.g. rn following the first A in a verb like harna- “wound”. Since\\nQuenya isn’t fond of long vowels immediately in front of consonant clusters,\\nwe must assume that the lengthening of the stem-vowels simply does not\\noccur in verbs of this shape. Otherwise the perfect tense would be formed\\naccording to the normal rules: reduplicate the stem-vowel as an augment and\\nreplace final -a with the ending -i¨\\ne (so “has wounded” would be aharni¨\\ne, not\\n**ah´\\narni¨\\ne). We may have some attested examples of augment-less perfects\\nthat are seen to skip the lengthening of the stem-vowel where there is a\\nconsonant cluster following it (see below).\\nThe numerous A-stems that end in -ya may be somewhat special. Take\\na verb like hanya- “understand”. According to the rules so far given, the\\nperfect “has understood” should be **ahanyi¨\\ne (or even **ah´\\nanyi¨\\ne with\\na lengthened vowel, for it is rather unclear whether ny here counts as a\\nconsonant cluster or a unitary consonant – palatalized n like Spanish ˜\\nn).\\nHowever, such a form is impossible, for the combination yi does not occur\\nin Quenya.\\nWe may have one example to guide us: In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, there occurs a perfect\\ntense av´\\nani¨\\ne “has passed” (actually it appears in the plural: y´\\neni av´\\nanier\\nve lint¨\\ne yuldar lisse-miruv´\\noreva = “years have passed like swift draughts\\nof the sweet mead” – notice that the perfect, like other tenses, receives the\\nending -r when it occurs with a plural subject). In the essay Quendi and El-\\ndar of ca. 1960, Tolkien explained av´\\nani¨\\ne (or v´\\nani¨\\ne without the augment)\\nas being the perfect tense of the highly irregular verb auta- (WJ:366). But a\\nquarter of a century earlier, in the Etymologies, he had listed a verb vanya-\\n“go, depart, disappear” (see the entry wan). It is eminently possibly that\\nwhen he actually wrote Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in the forties, he still thought of (a)v´\\nani¨\\ne\\nas the perfect tense of this verb vanya-, though he would later come up\\nwith another explanation (perhaps he wanted to eliminate the clash with\\nthe adjective vanya “fair”, though the words would not be difficult to dis-\\ntinguish in context?) If so, Tolkien gave away how to treat verbs in -ya: In\\nthe perfect tense, the whole ending -ya is dropped before -i¨\\ne is added, and\\nwhat remains of the verb is treated just as if it were a primary verb. The\\nperfect tense would therefore show both augment and lengthening of the\\nstem-vowel, something like this:\\n129\\n\\n\\nhanya- “understand”, perfect ah´\\nani¨\\ne “has understood”\\nhilya- “follow”, perfect ih´\\nıli¨\\ne “has followed”\\ntelya- “finish”, perfect et´\\neli¨\\ne “has finished”\\ntulya- “lead”, perfect ut´\\nuli¨\\ne “has led”\\nOf course, from the perfect forms you cannot determine with certainty\\nwhat the original verb stem looks like. For instance, ih´\\nıli¨\\ne could also be\\nthe perfect of a primary verb **hil- or a short A-stem **hila-. In this case,\\nno such verb is known to exist, but ut´\\nuli¨\\ne would be the perfect not only\\nof tulya- “lead”, but also of the distinct primary verb tul- “come”. So\\none must apparently depend on the context to find out whether the perfect\\nut´\\nuli¨\\ne is formed from tulya- (so that it means “has led”) or from tul- (so\\nthat it means “has come”). Same with the perfect ah´\\nari¨\\ne: this form would\\nmean “has possessed” if it is formed from harya, but “has sat, has been\\nsitting” if it is the perfect of har- (apparently a primary verb “sit”; only\\nthe plural present tense h´\\narar “are sitting” is attested: UT:305, 317).\\nVerbs including diphthongs: In some cases it may be somewhat difficult\\nto determine what the stem-vowel is. Where a verb contains a diphthong in\\n-i or -u, it is probably the first vowel of this diphthong that functions as an\\naugment in the perfect tense. For instance, the perfect tense of verbs like\\ntaita- “prolong” or roita- “pursue” would probably be ataiti¨\\ne, oroiti¨\\ne, and\\nthe perfect tense of hauta- “cease, take a rest” is presumably ahauti¨\\ne. (The\\nstem-vowel can hardly be lengthened when it’s part of a diphthong, so we\\nwouldn’t expect to see **at´\\naiti¨\\ne, **or´\\noiti¨\\ne, **ah´\\nauti¨\\ne.) The original roots\\nof these verbs are given in the Etymologies as tay, roy, khaw, respectively;\\nthus the proper stem-vowels of these verbs are seen to be a, o, a (again\\nrespectively). The final -i or -u seen in the Quenya diphthongs arise from\\noriginal consonants -y and -w, so they cannot count as stem-vowels.\\nUnaugmented perfects: The material contains some examples of perfect-\\ntense verbs that are constructed according to the rules set forth about,\\nexcept that they do not have any augment prefixed. MR:250 (reproducing\\na post-LotR source) mentions a form f´\\nıri¨\\ne “has breathed forth” or in later\\nusage “has died”; the augment is missing, though there is no reason to as-\\nsume that the “full” form if´\\nıri¨\\ne would be wrong. (The actual translation of\\nf´\\nıri¨\\ne given in MR:350 is “she hath breathed forth”, but no element meaning\\n“she” can be identified; it is evidently understood.) The verb av´\\nanier “have\\npassed” occurring in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne was actually v´\\nanier with no augment in the\\nfirst edition of LotR; Tolkien supplied the augment in the second edition\\n(1966). Before this, in the essay Quendi and Eldar of about 1960, he ex-\\nplained the unaugmented variant as being simply a variant form “appearing\\nin verse” (WJ:366). Adding a syllable, as Tolkien did when introducing the\\nfull form av´\\nanier into the poem in 1966, actually doesn’t fit the meter of\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne very well – but he evidently decided to let grammatical accuracy\\ntake priority.\\n130\\n\\n\\nIn the other perfects occurring in LotR (ut´\\nulien, ut´\\nuvienyes), the aug-\\nment was present also in the first edition of 1954–55. Nonetheless, it seems\\nthat the whole idea of augmenting perfect-tense verbs appeared relatively\\nlate in Tolkien’s evolution of Quenya. In early sources, the augment is miss-\\ning. For instance, the phrase “the Eldar have come” appears as i·Eldar\\ntulier in Tolkien’s earliest “Qenya” (LT1:114, 270). The perfect of tul-\\nhere appearing features the same ending -ie- as in LotR-style Quenya, but\\nthe augment, as well as the lengthening of the stem-vowel, still have not been\\nintroduced into the language. Updating this sentence to LotR-style Quenya\\nby implementing Tolkien’s later revisions would probably produce Eldar\\nut´\\nulier (with an augmented perfect and no article before Eldar when it\\nrefers to the entire Elvish race).\\nIn much later, but still pre-LotR, material, we find lanti¨\\ne (with a plural\\nsubject lantier) as a form of the verb lanta- “fall”: LR:56. These forms\\nwould also seem to be unaugmented perfects, showing the ending -i¨\\ne char-\\nacteristic of this tense. True, Tolkien translated these forms as “fell” (lanti¨\\ne\\nnu huin¨\\ne “fell under shadow”, ¨\\neari lantier “seas fell”) as if they represent\\nsome kind of past tense form – not perfect “has/have fallen”. However, he\\nlater noted that “the forms of past and perfect became progressively more\\nclosely associated in Quenya” (WJ:366). If this is to mean that Quenya might\\nsometimes use the perfect where English would rather have a past tense, we\\ncan explain “fell” rather than “has/have fallen” as a possible translation\\nof lanti¨\\ne/lantier. In SD:310, where Christopher Tolkien discusses a later\\nversion of the text in question, he records how his father changed lantier\\nto lantaner – apparently substituting a true past tense form for a perfect-\\nused-as-past.\\nIf lantier, sg. lanti¨\\ne, can indeed be considered a perfect tense form, it\\nwould confirm that the stem-vowel cannot be lengthened before a consonant\\ncluster (not **l´\\nanti¨\\ne). Around this stage, Tolkien had certainly introduced\\nsuch lengthening of the stem-vowel in the perfect; F´\\nıriel’s Song has c´\\narier\\nfor “made” (or “they made”, since the plural ending -r is included). This\\nform of the verb car- “make, do” would seem to be another perfect-used-\\nas-past, judging from the translation. Since the stem-vowel is lengthened in\\nc´\\narier, we must assume that it stays short in lantier for purely phonological\\nreasons: no long vowels are allowed before a consonant cluster. – It may be\\nthat the absence of the augment in some early sources is simply due to the\\nfact that Tolkien had not invented it yet; in LotR-style Quenya I would\\nrecommend alanti¨\\ne as the perfect tense of lanta- and ac´\\nari¨\\ne as the perfect\\nof car-.\\nNonetheless, the above-cited example f´\\nıri¨\\ne “has breathed forth, has ex-\\npired” from a post-LotR source (MR:250) would seem to indicate that even\\nin LotR-style Quenya, it is permissible to leave out the augment, construct-\\ning the perfect simply by means of the ending -i¨\\ne + lengthening of the stem-\\nvowel if there is no consonant cluster following it. Possibly unaugmented\\n131\\n\\n\\nperfects are meant to be more common in spoken or informal language, and\\nin poetry one can leave out the augment if the extra syllable would spoil\\nthe meter (hence v´\\nanier for av´\\nanier in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, though Tolkien changed\\nhis mind in 1966 and introduced the full form). However, in the exercises I\\nmade for this course, all perfect-tense forms do include the augment.\\nVerbs beginning in vowels: Verbs beginning in a vowel pose a problem.\\nWhere a verb has a prefix beginning in a vowel, the augment may slip in\\nbetween the prefix and the most basic verbal stem. For instance, the verb\\nenyal- “recall, remember” is quite literally en-yal- “re-call”, where yal- and\\nnot en- is the basic verbal stem incorporating the stem-vowel; in such a case\\nI would expect the perfect to be enay´\\nali¨\\ne. But some verbs begin in a vowel\\neven without any prefixed element, e.g. anta- “give”. In such a case the first\\nvowel is also the stem-vowel, here occurring without any consonant in front\\nof it. A verb may also include a prefix that happens to be identical to the\\nstem-vowel, e.g. onot- “count up” (formed from not- “reckon” with a prefix\\no- meaning “together”, hence onot- is literally “reckon together”). Other\\nverbal stems already prefix the stem-vowel as a kind of intensification, e.g.\\natalta- “collapse, fall in” (vs. the verb talta- with a somewhat less harsh\\nmeaning: “slope, slip, slide down”). In all of these cases, it is difficult to\\nprefix the stem-vowel as an augment in the perfect tense. We cannot well\\nhave a’anti¨\\ne for “has given”, o’on´\\noti¨\\ne for “has counted up”, a’atalti¨\\ne for\\n“has collapsed”. So what do we get instead?\\nOne popular assumption has been that in such cases, the entire first sylla-\\nble is reduplicated as an augment: Hence the perfect tense of a anta- “give”\\nwould be ananti¨\\ne (antanti¨\\ne?), and so on. With the publication of Vinyar\\nTengwar #41 in July 2000, this theory was almost confirmed. It turns out\\nthat in a late source, Tolkien listed or´\\nori¨\\ne as the perfect tense of the verb\\nora- “urge” (VT41:13, 18; actually this form is not explicitly identified as\\nthe perfect tense, but it can hardly be anything else). Notice that the entire\\nfirst syllable (or-) is reduplicated in the perfect: By reduplicating the conso-\\nnant following the stem-vowel as well as the stem-vowel itself, the awkward\\nform **o’´\\nori¨\\ne is avoided; in or´\\nori¨\\ne the reduplicated consonant r keeps the\\naugment and the initial vowel of the verbal stem comfortably apart. Well\\nand good – the only problem is that after writing down the form or´\\nori¨\\ne,\\nTolkien struck it out! Whether this means that we are back on square one,\\nor whether Tolkien struck out the form or´\\nori¨\\ne not because he invalidated\\nit but simply because he didn’t feel like discussing the perfect tense of ora-\\nthere and then, none can say.\\nSince it is rather unclear how we should add the augment to most verbs\\nbeginning in a vowel, I have simply avoided the perfect tense of such verbs\\nin the exercises I made for this course. But since augmentless perfects seem\\nto be permissible, the easiest solution must be to simply omit the augment\\nin the case of such verbs: anta- “give” becoming anti¨\\ne “has given”, onot-\\n“count up” becoming on´\\noti¨\\ne “has counted up” (though this is also the\\n132\\n\\n\\nperfect of not- “reckon”!), and so on. After the rejected form or´\\nori¨\\ne, Tolkien\\nactually wrote ori¨\\ne. Was this a replacement perfect tense, with no augment?\\nI would expect ´\\nori¨\\ne with a lengthened stem-vowel; ori¨\\ne looks more like a\\nquite different form of the verb (a gerund, to be discussed in later lessons).\\nThis word may be worth noticing, all the same.\\nBefore leaving the perfect tense, I should briefly comment on a somewhat\\nstrange form occurring in the Silmarillion, chapter 20. Here we have the\\nexclamation ut´\\nulie’n aur¨\\ne, translated “the day has come”. Ut´\\nulie (ut´\\nuli¨\\ne)\\nis clearly the perfect tense of tul- “come”, as confirmed by the translation\\n“has come”. However, the added ’n is something of a mystery. What is this\\nextra consonant doing there? The form ut´\\nulie’n is reminiscent of ut´\\nulien\\n“I am come” in Elendil’s Declaration in LotR, but here -n is a pronominal\\nending “I” (see the next section). No such ending can be present in ut´\\nulie’n,\\ngiven Tolkien’s translation. The apostrophe ’ inserted before this latter n\\nprobably indicates a different pronunciation as well; in ut´\\nulie’n the final\\nconsonant is perhaps meant to be sounded as a separate syllable. It may be\\nthat this n is added simply for the sake of euphony, preventing three vowels\\nin sequence (since the next word also begins in a vowel; if you count the\\ndiphthong au in aur¨\\ne as two vowels, there would even be four sequential\\nvowels). If a perfect tense appears with no secondary ending added to -\\ni¨\\ne, and the next word begins in a vowel, should we always insert ’n to\\navoid too many vowels in hiatus? I have used such a system in at least one\\ncomposition of my own, but this conclusion is extremely tentative: In the\\nexercises below I have never used this extra ’n, since no one really knows\\nits function. Some even think it represents an alternative incarnation of\\nthe article (which normally appears as i): After all, Tolkien did employ the\\ntranslation “the day has come”. Hence ut´\\nulie’n aur¨\\ne = ?ut´\\nuli¨\\ne en aur¨\\ne\\nor ?ut´\\nuli¨\\ne in aur¨\\ne “has-come the day”??? (For a possible attestation of in\\nas a Quenya article, see PM:395.) We can only hope that future publications\\nwill shed some more light on this. It may be noted that Christopher Gilson,\\nwho has access to unpublished Tolkien material, advocates the ’n = “the”\\ninterpretation.\\n8.2\\nPronouns\\nIt is time to introduce one of really economic devices of Language, the pro-\\nnouns. (If you know perfectly well what a pronoun is, and you also know\\nabout the three different “persons” that personal pronouns are divided into,\\nplease scroll down until you see the word Quenya in red. I’m not trying to\\nwaste anyone’s time here!)\\nThe word “pronoun” is a giveaway; it simply means “for (instead of)\\na noun”. Pronouns are words (or endings) that can replace a noun, often\\nreferring back to a noun that has already been mentioned. Thus you don’t\\n133\\n\\n\\nhave to repeat the noun itself all the time. Pronouns provide a kind of spoken\\nshorthand, saving the language from utter tedium. Thanks to pronouns,\\nspeakers of English can keep up a conversation with another people without\\nhaving to endlessly repeat the other party’s name every time they are being\\naddressed; instead the pronoun you is substituted. Instead of having to\\nsay “the group just referred to” or “the people presently being discussed”\\nspeakers of English have at their disposal the short, snappy word they. And\\ntry to imagine how you would go about referring to yourself without the\\npronoun I. Phrases like “this person” or “the one who is talking now” get\\ntedious really fast.\\nThere are several kinds of pronouns (even interrogative ones like “who”),\\nbut the ones most frequently found are the personal pronouns, which we\\nwill focus on in this introduction. Customarily, they are divided into three\\ndifferent “persons” (not that the pronouns involved only refer to sentient\\nbeings; in this context, “person” is just an established term for a pronoun\\nclass). In English, this traditional tripartite classification produces a table\\nsomething like this:\\n• First person (referring to oneself or one’s own group): Singular I,\\nas object me, of ownership my and mine; plural we, as object us, of\\nownership our and ours.\\n• Second person (directly addressing another person or another group):\\nSingular and plural both you, which is also the object form; of own-\\nership your and yours. Archaic English also has distinct singular pro-\\nnouns: Thou, as object thee, of ownership thy and thine.\\n• Third person (referring to another person or group): Singular he,\\nshe, or it depending on the gender and/or nature of what is being\\nreferred to; as object him, her, or it (the latter being the same as the\\nsubject form), of ownership his, her (the latter happens to coincide\\nwith the object form, but there is also hers) and its. In the plural we\\nhave they, as object them, of ownership their and theirs.\\nWhile the concept of these three “persons” as such is near-universal in the\\nlanguages of the world, it is quite arbitrary what other distinctions languages\\nbuild into their pronoun tables. The system is not necessarily symmetric,\\neither – certainly not so in English. English pronouns normally maintain\\na distinction of singular vs. plural, e.g. singular I vs. plural we, but this\\ndistinction is suddenly abandoned in the second person, where you is used\\nno matter whether the speaker addresses one person or several people. On\\nthe other hand, English suddenly becomes very pedantic in the third person\\nsingular. Here you have to use he if you are referring to a male, she if you\\nare referring to a female (or a ship!), and it if you are referring to something\\ninanimate or abstract, or to an animal (unless “it” is a pet and you feel\\n134\\n\\n\\nyou know “it” so intimately that you must consider saying “he” or “she”\\ninstead!)\\nSuch hair-splitting distinctions are not made anywhere else in the En-\\nglish pronominal system, and certain other languages dispense with them.\\nFinnish, ever relevant for this study since it was Tolkien’s foremost inspi-\\nration for Quenya, only has a single word (h¨\\nan) that covers both “he” and\\n“she”: The Finns get happily along without making this distinction. On the\\nother hand, other languages may go even further than English. For instance,\\nthe Hebrews apparently thought the masculine/feminine distinction was so\\ninteresting that it wasn’t enough to have separate words for “he” and “she”.\\nHebrew also has separate words for “you” (atta when speaking to a man, att\\nwhen addressing a woman); the language even carries the principle into the\\nplural by having separate words for “they” (hem when referring to a group\\nof men, but with reference to an all-female group, “they” is henna. . . as I\\nunderstand it, a mixed group is referred to by the “masculine” term hem,\\nand then we are left to wonder if a group of 10,000 women and 1 man is still\\nhem rather than henna).\\nWhat, then, about Quenya? What pronominal distinctions did Tolkien\\nhave his Elves make?\\nIt is somewhat difficult to say anything very definite about the Quenya\\npronominal system. Even now, with enormous amounts of material still\\nunavailable to scholarship, it is already safe to say that the pronouns of\\nTolkien’s Elvish languages were rather “unstable” – probably even more so\\nthan many other aspects of his ever-fluid linguistic constructs. The pronoun\\ntables seem to have undergone countless revisions, and some think Tolkien\\nnever quite managed to sort out every detail. (Personally I think he did –\\nthe problem is rather that he did it so often!)\\nWe know that the Quenya pronominal system, as Tolkien envisioned it\\nin his later years, makes some distinctions that are not regularly expressed\\nin English. For one thing, just as Quenya has a dual form of the noun in\\naddition to the singular and plural forms, so there are also at least some dual\\npronouns. So in the First Person we don’t find singular “I” and plural “we”\\nonly, but also a distinct dual pronoun meaning “you (sg.) and I” or “the two\\nof us”. Another subtle distinction is made in the words for “we”: In Quenya,\\nthere are separate words or endings for “we”, depending on whether or not\\nthe party that is addressed is included in “we” or not. On the other hand, it\\nseems that Quenya does not always maintain the distinction between “he”,\\n“she” and even “it”; all of these may be covered by a single pronoun.\\nAs this course proceeds, we will discuss various parts of the pronoun table\\nand their associated obscurities, and also return to the special pronominal\\ndistinctions made in Quenya. However, let us introduce a few pronouns right\\naway.\\nOne thing should be understood: in Quenya, pronouns typically appear\\nas endings, not so often as independent words. (Where a Quenya pronoun\\n135\\n\\n\\ndoes appear as a separate word, it is often emphatic – producing much the\\nsame effect as putting an English pronoun in italics: “You [and no one else]\\ndid it.” We will return to the independent pronouns later.) In the final lines\\nof Nam´\\nari¨\\ne we find the word hiruvaly¨\\ne, translated “thou shalt find” by\\nTolkien. If you have worked your way through all the exercises, you will\\nremember the form hiruva, future tense of hir- “find”. This hiruva “shall\\nfind” here appears with the pronominal ending -ly¨\\ne attached, denoting the\\nsubject of the verb. This ending belongs to the Second Person and signifies\\n“thou” – or using a less archaic translation, “you”. Hence hiruvaly¨\\ne =\\n“thou shalt find”, or “you will find”. The suffix -ly¨\\ne can be attached to any\\nverb to indicate that its subject is “you, thou”.\\nHaving mentioned this pronoun we however run into Instant Obscurity,\\nwhich is a situation we shall often find ourselves in while discussing Quenya\\npronouns. It is unclear whether or not this ending -ly¨\\ne covers both singular\\nand plural “you”; in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne it is singular, as demonstrated by the trans-\\nlation “thou”. In one of Tolkien’s draft texts for the LotR Appendices, he\\nactually wrote that the Elvish languages did not distinguish between sin-\\ngular and plural “you” (no more than English does): “All these languages\\n. . . had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and plural\\nof the second person pronouns; but they had a marked distinction between\\nthe familiar forms and the courteous” (PM:42–43). The ending -ly¨\\ne, used\\nby Galadriel to address a relative stranger like Frodo, would seem to be a\\npolite or courteous “you”. In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne it is thus used as a singular “thou”,\\nonly one person being addressed, but according to PM:42–43 just quoted it\\ncould equally well be plural “you” (so if all the members of the Fellowship\\nhad understood Quenya, they still couldn’t be certain whether Galadriel was\\naddressing them all, or Frodo alone).\\nHowever, in the essay Quendi and Eldar written about half a decade after\\nthe publication of LotR, Tolkien did imply the existence of pronominal end-\\nings that make a distinction between singular and plural “you” (WJ:364).\\nHere he referred to “reduced pronominal affixes of the 2nd person”, implied\\nto be -t in the singular and -l in the plural. This -l could well be a “re-\\nduced” form of -ly¨\\ne, which would then be a plural “you”. Even so, Tolkien\\nindisputably used this ending for a singular “you” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, since he\\ntranslated it as “thou” in the text in LotR. This shorter ending -l is also\\nattested as part of the verb hamil “you judge” (VT42:33), and this may\\nalso be taken as a singular “you”, though the context is not conclusive either\\nway. It would seem that in the second half of the fifties, Tolkien had been\\nrethinking the pronominal system. The statement made in the draft text\\nfor the LotR Appendices, to the effect that Elvish did not distinguish sin-\\ngular and plural “you”, had not actually made it into the published LotR.\\nTherefore he would not be bound by it. (Whenever we are dealing with\\nTolkien material that has been published only posthumously, we can never\\nbe certain that the information provided is entirely “canonical”: The author\\n136\\n\\n\\ncould always change his mind, and so he often did, especially regarding the\\nlanguages.)\\nTolkien had apparently discovered that Quenya possesses distinct pro-\\nnouns for singular and plural “you” after all. Perhaps the new (ca. 1960)\\nidea goes something like this: -ly¨\\ne and the shorter variant -l would properly\\nbe a plural “you”, but it is also used as a polite singular, hence the trans-\\nlation “thou” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne. The idea of addressing a single person as if (s)he\\nwere several people could be a way of showing respect, emphasizing the im-\\nportance of the other. Parallels are found in languages of our own world.\\n(A former British PM on occasion carried this system over from the Second\\nPerson to the First, referring to herself as a plural “we” rather than a singu-\\nlar “I”, apparently to emphasize her own importance. Of course, royals have\\nbeen using this linguistic device for centuries – and for that matter, even\\nthe author of this course sometimes refers to himself as “we”! But actually\\nI tend to include the reader in this “we”, so that you quite undeservedly re-\\nceive some of the credit for the gradual unraveling of Quenya grammar that\\n“we” are undertaking here. . . ) As for English “thou” vs. “you”, Matthew\\nSkala wrote on the Elfling list (January 4, 2001):\\n”Thou” is second person singular, and “you” is second person\\nplural, with the added rule that in formal contexts it’s polite to\\nuse plural even when talking to an individual. Much like French\\n“tu” (singular/informal) and “vous” (plural/formal). In English\\nit has become standard to use “you” for both singular and plural\\nregardless of politeness, but that is a recent innovation; until\\nabout 100–200 years ago, English speakers routinely used “thou”\\nin informal contexts. The bizarre situation today is that because\\nof this historical change, most of us only ever encounter “thou”\\nin historical and formal contexts, such as the Bible. . . and so\\nnow, if you use it you sound like you’re being especially formal\\nand polite. The “formality/politeness” charge has been flipped\\nbackwards.\\nIt may be, then, that Quenya -ly¨\\ne or -l corresponds to the original use of\\nEnglish “you”, before the historical change Skala describes – but because of\\nthat change, -l(y¨\\ne) used as a polite singular may now be rendered “thou”,\\nas Tolkien translated it in LotR.\\nTo summarize: the ending -l(y¨\\ne) can certainly be used as a singular “you”,\\nand it is probably a polite/courteous form rather than a familiar/intimate\\nform. It may be that -l(y¨\\ne) also covers plural “you”, this may even be\\nits proper meaning, but this is where things get somewhat obscure. Tolkien\\nprobably changed his mind back and forth about the details. In the exercises\\nbelow, I have simply used the neutral word “you” as the equivalent of -l(y¨\\ne).\\nThen it is impossible to go wrong.\\n137\\n\\n\\nBut we seem to have plunged right into the Second Person; let us return\\nto the First. In the First Person singular, things are luckily crystal clear\\n(well, very nearly so). The pronoun “I” is most often represented by the\\nending -n. (Linguists have noted that in the languages of the world, the\\nterm for “I, me” remarkably often includes some nasal sound like N or M.\\nWhatever subtle features of human psychology underlie this phenomenon,\\nTolkien seems to have liked this association, and worked it into several of\\nhis languages. Cf. Sindarin im = “I”.) Notice how the ending -n is added to\\nthe verbs ut´\\nuli¨\\ne (perfect tense of tul- “come”) and maruva (future tense\\nof mar- “abide, dwell”) in Elendil’s Declaration:\\nEt E¨\\narello Endorenna ut´\\nulien = “out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth\\nI am come.”\\nSinom¨\\ne maruvan = “in this place will I abide”.\\nHowever, the ending -n for “I” also occurs as a longer variant, -ny¨\\ne. (As\\nnoted above, the ending -ly¨\\ne for “you” has a shorter variant -l; the variation\\n-ny¨\\ne vs. -n for “you” would parallel this.) This longer variant is seen in a\\nword we have already touched on in this lesson, the form ut´\\nuvienyes! “I\\nhave found it!” – Aragorn’s exclamation when he found the discovered the\\nsapling of the White Tree. The word ut´\\nuvi¨\\ne, apparently the perfect tense\\nof a verb tuv- “find”, here occurs with two pronominal endings. The first\\nof them, -ny¨\\ne or “I”, denotes the subject of the verb: Ut´\\nuvie+ny¨\\ne “have\\nfound+I” = “I have found”. However, following -ny¨\\ne we have yet another\\npronominal ending, the Third Person Singular suffix -s, meaning “it”. Thus\\nan entire sentence of verb, subject and object has been telescoped into a\\nsingle word: ut´\\nuvienyes = “I have found it”.\\nNOTE: Notice that according to the spelling conventions here employed, final -¨\\ne loses\\nits diaeresis whenever an ending is added so that it is not final anymore: ut´\\nuvi¨\\ne + -ny¨\\ne =\\nut´\\nuvieny¨\\ne and not ut´\\nuvi¨\\neny¨\\ne; adding -s to ut´\\nuvieny¨\\ne likewise produces ut´\\nuvienyes\\nand not ut´\\nuvieny¨\\nes. This is solely a matter of orthography.\\nWe can abstract this grammatical rule: if a verb is to receive two pronom-\\ninal endings, one denoting the subject of the verb and the second the object,\\nthe subject ending is attached first and the object ending next. In published\\nmaterial, there are two or three other examples of this, beside ut´\\nuvienyes.\\nIt is then obvious why the long form -nye- is preferred here. While ut´\\nuv-\\nien would do nicely for “I have found”, the object ending -s “it” could not\\nhave been added to the short ending -n, since **ut´\\nuviens is not a possible\\nQuenya word. So we can formulate another rule: The long form -ny¨\\ne (-nye-),\\nNOT short -n, must be used for “I” if another pronominal ending is to follow\\nit. (Similarly, for “you” one must use the long ending -ly¨\\ne [-lye-], not the\\nshorter form -l, if a second pronominal ending is to be added: “You have\\nfound” could be either ut´\\nuviel or ut´\\nuviely¨\\ne, but “you have found it” must\\nbe ut´\\nuvielyes, since **ut´\\nuviels would be impossible.)\\nThe long ending -ny¨\\ne “I” may however occur even if there is no ob-\\n138\\n\\n\\nject pronoun following it (as can the long form -ly¨\\ne for “you, thou”, cf.\\nhiruvaly¨\\ne “thou shalt find” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne). The form linduvany¨\\ne “I shall\\nsing” occurs on the frontispiece of the 1975 French bilingual edition of The\\nAdventures of Tom Bombadil (ISBN 2-264-00913-6). The frontispiece repro-\\nduces a manuscript page by Tolkien, including some brief linguistic notes.\\n(Taum Santoski, analyzing these notes in the newsletter Beyond Bree, Oc-\\ntober 1985, read this form as “linduvanya” – but as pointed out by Carl\\nF. Hostetter, Tolkien probably intended “linduvanye” instead. Tolkien was\\ncapable of wonderful calligraphy, but his normal handwriting is often a chal-\\nlenge to transcribers!) As long as no second pronominal ending is to follow,\\nit is apparently wholly optional whether one uses the long ending -ny¨\\ne or\\nthe short ending -n for “I”. We have the long ending in linduvany¨\\ne “I shall\\nsing”, but Elendil’s Declaration uses the short ending in maruvan “I will\\nabide”. Certainly these examples could be scrambled to produce linduvan,\\nmaruvany¨\\ne of exactly the same meaning.\\nIt seems, however, that the short ending -n is much more common than\\nthe longer suffix -ny¨\\ne. We have already encountered this -n attached to\\nseveral verbs, such as polin “I can”, tirin “I watch” in the previous lesson.\\nTolkien very often cites primary verbs like this, listing them as they appear\\nin the 1st person aorist (with the ending -i- intact because it is followed\\nby an ending and hence not final, so that it would become -¨\\ne). Tirin is an\\nexample actually found in the Etymologies (entry tir), but by the standards\\nof this field, examples truly abound: carin “I make, build” (entry kar), lirin\\n“I sing” (glir) or “I chant” (lir1), nutin “I tie” (nut), nyarin “I tell”\\n(nar2), rerin “I sow” (red), serin “I rest” (sed), sucin “I drink” (suk),\\ntamin “I tap” (tam), tucin “I draw” (tuk), tulin “I come” (tul), turin\\n“I wield” (tur), tyavin “I taste” (kyap), vilin “I fly” (wil), umin “I\\ndo not” (ugu/umu). The form polin “I can” (VT41:6) is one of several\\nexamples from post-LotR sources. Presumably it would in no way be wrong\\nto use the long ending -ny¨\\ne instead (e.g. poliny¨\\ne), but -n is the commonest\\nending in the published corpus. But especially for the purpose of poetry, it is\\noften practical to be able to choose between a long and a short pronominal\\nending, so that one can include or get rid of a syllable if the meter demands\\nthis.\\nAlso notice that the ending -ny¨\\ne, as well as -ly¨\\ne for “you”, cause the\\naccent to fall on the syllable preceding the ending because ny and ly here\\ncount as consonant clusters. Cf. the stress rules set out in Lesson One. If\\nhiruvany¨\\ne “I will find” (with the accent on a) doesn’t sound good in your\\npoem, you can always use the short form hiruvan and have the accent land\\non i in the first syllable instead. (Again, we may have the same system in\\nthe Second Person: It is entirely possible that in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, Tolkien wrote\\nhiruvaly¨\\ne rather than the shorter form hiruval simply because the former\\nvariant fit his poetic meter better.)\\nAs for the ending -s meaning “it”, occurring as an object pronoun in\\n139\\n\\n\\nut´\\nuvienyes “I have found it”, it seems that it may also be used as a subject.\\nFor instance, if polin is “I can”, we must assume that “it can” would be\\npolis. However, the ending -s brings us into the Third Person with its own\\nset of obscurities, which we will save for later (Lesson 15). In the exercises\\nbelow, -s is used in the same way as in the example ut´\\nuvienyes: attached\\nto another pronominal ending to denote the object of the verb (just as the\\nfirst ending added to the verb denotes its subject).\\nSummary of Lesson Eight\\nThe Quenya perfect tense is formed by adding the ending -i¨\\ne to the verbal\\nstem (if the stem ends in a vowel, it is apparently omitted before -i¨\\ne is added;\\nverbs in -ya seem to loose this entire ending). Unless followed by a consonant\\ncluster, the stem-vowel is lengthened. Normally it is also reduplicated as an\\naugment prefixed to the verb (ric- “twist” vs. ir´\\nıci¨\\ne “has twisted”, hanya-\\n“understand” vs. ah´\\nani¨\\ne “has understood”). However, there also appear\\nsome unaugmented perfects in the published corpus (notably f´\\nıri¨\\ne rather\\nthan if´\\nıri¨\\ne for “has expired”), so it may be permissible to leave out the\\naugment and still have a valid perfect tense form. It is somewhat unclear\\nhow the augment is to be prefixed to verbal stems beginning in a vowel.\\n– Quenya pronouns most typically appear as endings rather than separate\\nwords. Among these pronominal endings we have -n or -ny¨\\ne “I”, -l or -ly¨\\ne\\n“thou, you” and -s “it”. Two pronominal endings may be added to the same\\nverb, the first of them denoting the subject of the verb, the second its object.\\nVocabulary\\notso “seven”\\nseldo “boy” (actually Tolkien didn’t provide an explicit gloss, but the word is cited in\\na context where he is discussing Quenya words for “child”, and seldo seems to be\\na masculine form. See the entry SEL-D- in the Etymologies.)\\nm´\\nol “thrall, slave”\\nan “for” (or “since, because”, introducing a sentence giving a reason, as in “I rely on\\nhim, for he has often been of help to me”.)\\ntul- verb “come”\\nlanta- verb “fall”\\nnurta- verb “hide” (cf. the Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva or “Hiding of Valinor” referred to\\nin the Silmarillion)\\nlerya- verb “release, (set) free, let go”\\nmetya- verb “end” = “put an end to”\\nroita- verb “pursue”\\n140\\n\\n\\nlaita- verb “bless, praise”\\nimb¨\\ne preposition “between”\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English (and practice your vocabulary; except for the\\nnumeral otso and the pronominal endings, exercises A–H only employ\\nwords you are supposed to have memorized in earlier lessons):\\nA. I n´\\ner ih´\\nıri¨\\ne i harma.\\nB. I r´\\navi am´\\natier i hr´\\nav¨\\ne.\\nC. I aran utulti¨\\ne i t´\\nari.\\nD. I nissi ecendier i parma.\\nE. I ´\\num¨\\nea t´\\nari am´\\napi¨\\ne i otso Naucor.\\nF. Et´\\neciely¨\\ne otso parmar.\\nG. Equ´\\netien.\\nH. Ec´\\nenielyes.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. The man has come.\\nJ. The seven Dwarves have eaten.\\nK. The boys have seen a lion between the trees.\\nL. The six Elves have pursued the seven Dwarves.\\nM. The Dwarf has hidden a treasure.\\nN. I have praised the king, for the king has released all thralls.\\nO. You have fallen, and I have seen it.\\nP. I have put an end to it [/I have ended it].\\n141\\n\\n\\nLesson 9\\nThe infinitive. The negative verb. Active participles.\\n9.1\\nThe infinitive\\nAll of the forms of the verb that we have discussed so far, all the tenses, are\\nwhat a linguist would call finite verb forms. The definition of a finite verb\\nis that it is capable of functioning as the predicate of a sentence, the part\\nof the sentence that tells us what the subject does (or is – in Lesson Four\\nwe pointed out that a phrase made up of copula + noun or adjective also\\ncounts as a predicate, e.g. “gold is beautiful”, but here we will deal with\\nmore normal verbs instead). In a sentence like i Elda m´\\nata massa “the\\nElf is eating bread”, linguists can readily label the roles of all parts of the\\nsentence: just like i Elda “the Elf” is the subject and massa “bread” is the\\nobject, so the verb m´\\nata “is eating” is the predicate of the sentence. And\\nprecisely because the form m´\\nata, present tense of mat- “eat”, is able to\\nfunction as a predicate here, we can tell that m´\\nata is a finite form of the\\nverb.\\nThe infinitive is another story. It is, as the name suggests, in-finite –\\nnon-finite. It is not inflected for time, as are the tenses. It does not receive\\nthe ending -r, even if the subject of the sentence is plural. So by itself, an\\ninfinitive is not capable of functioning as the predicate of a sentence. An\\ninfinitive cannot be directly teamed up with a subject. What, then, is its\\nuse?\\nEnglish infinitives have various uses, but an important function of the\\ninfinitive is that it allows several verbs to be combined in one sentence. In\\na sentence like “the Dwarves wanted to eat”, the verb “wanted” is a finite\\nform, appearing in one specific tense (in this case past tense). But the verb\\n“eat” appears as an infinitive, “to eat”, complementing the finite verb to\\nform a longer verbal phrase “wanted to eat”. In English, infinitive verbs are\\nvery often marked by inserting “to” before the verb proper, but this “to” is\\nnot always included. In a sentence like “I let him go”, the verb “go” counts\\nas an infinitive even though there is no “to” before it. (Contrast “I allowed\\nhim to go”.) Neither is “to” included before an infinitive following certain\\n142\\n\\n\\nverbs like “can” or “must” (e.g. “I must go”, not **“I must to go”).\\nIn Quenya, there seems to be no independent infinitive marker like English\\n“to”, so we don’t have to worry about where to include or omit it. Attested\\nexamples of Quenya infinitives most certainly do not abound, but there is\\nthe sentence polin quet¨\\ne “I can speak” (VT41:6). Here the verb polin “I\\ncan” is a finite form, the aorist of the primary verb pol- appearing with the\\npronominal ending -n “I” attached – but the word quet¨\\ne must be analyzed\\nas an infinitive. Of course, quet¨\\ne is similar in form to an aorist “speaks”,\\nbut as indicated by the translation “speak” as well as the context, the form\\nquet¨\\ne is infinitival here. We can tell, then, that primary verbs like quet-\\nhave infinitives in -¨\\ne (undoubtedly representing Primitive Elvish -i). The\\nending may be analyzed simply as a kind of stopgap that is supplied to make\\nup for the absence of any other ending, or quet¨\\ne may be seen as representing\\nan uninflected primitive “I-stem” kweti. No matter how we imagine the\\nultimate derivation and the “meaning” of the ending -¨\\ne, we probably know\\nenough to actually start using the infinitive form of primary verbs. Here are\\nsome (home-made) examples combining infinitives with various finite forms\\n(tenses) of the verbs mer- “wish, want” and pol- “can”. Finite verbs in red,\\ninfinitives in blue:\\nI Elda pol¨\\ne cen¨\\ne i Nauco “the Elf can see the Dwarf” (notice that though\\nthe verbs pol- “want” and cen- “see, behold” receive the same ending -¨\\ne here, the former\\nis an aorist and the latter is an infinitive: The context must decide whether the form cen¨\\ne\\nis to be understood as an aorist “sees” or an infinitive “[to] see”)\\nI Naucor merner mat¨\\ne ”the Dwarves wanted to eat” (finite verb merner\\n“wanted”, inflected for past tense and plural, + infinitive verb mat¨\\ne “to eat”)\\nI seldo poll¨\\ne hlar¨\\ne ilya quetta “the boy could hear every word”\\nPolily¨\\ne car¨\\ne ilqua “you can do everything”\\nI nissi meruvar tul¨\\ne “the women will want to come”\\nWhat, then, about A-stems? In the Etymologies, Tolkien often glossed A-\\nstem verbs as if they were infinitives, e.g. anta- “to present, give”, varya-\\n“to protect” or yelta- “to loathe” (entries ana1, bar, dyel). This is not\\nby itself conclusive evidence that a form like anta could actually be used\\nas an infinitive “to give” in a Quenya text, for in the tradition of Western\\nlinguistics, the infinitive is commonly the form used to name, list or gloss\\na verb in wordlists. Sometimes this system is carried through even where\\nsuch a gloss is strictly wrong: A Hebrew-English wordlist may insist that\\nnathan means “to give”, though it actually means “he gave” – this being\\nthe simplest and most basic form of this verb, the logical form to be listed\\nin a dictionary. However, a form like anta- is simply an uninflected A-stem,\\nand Tolkien did refer to certain grammatical circumstances “when the bare\\nstem of the verb is used . . . as infinitive” (MC:223). The general system also\\nseems to suggest that A-stems with no additions can function as infinitives.\\n(Notice that the infinitives of both primary verbs and A-stems seem to be\\n143\\n\\n\\nsimilar in form to ending-less aorists.) So I guess we can have sentences like\\nthe following (and let me just underline the infinitives to avoid too much\\nfancy coloring):\\nI vendi merner linda “the maidens wanted to sing”\\nI norsa pol¨\\ne orta i alta ondo “the giant can lift the big rock”\\nMerin cenda i parma “I want to read the book”\\nIn some cases, English may prefer a form in -ing to a regular infinitive,\\nfor instance after the verbs “start” and “stop”. I think it is a fair guess that\\nQuenya would use the normal infinitive in such cases as well:\\nI nissi pustaner linda “the women stopped singing” (or, “. . . ceased\\nto sing”)\\nSeveral infinitives can probably be juxtaposed by means of ar “and”:\\nI neri merir cenda ar tec¨\\ne rimb¨\\ne parmar “the men want to read and\\n(to) write many books”\\nThe discussion above certainly does not cover all there is to say about\\nQuenya infinitives. Some more details are known and will be filled in later in\\nthis course, but there are many obscure points. In some very late (ca. 1969)\\nnotes, Tolkien refers to “the general (aorist) ‘infinitive’ formed by added\\n-i” (VT41:17), but since only brief quotes from this material have been\\npublished, we cannot be certain what he means. Is there a specific “aorist\\ninfinitive”? We have earlier discussed the distinction made between such\\nforms as m´\\nata “is eating” (present/continuative tense) and mat¨\\ne “eats”\\n(aorist). Does Quenya carry these distinctions over into the infinitive, so\\nthat one can somehow distinguish “to eat” (aorist infinitive) from “to be\\neating” (continuative infinitive)?\\nMoreover, what does Tolkien refer to by “added -i”? Obviously there is an\\ninfinitive that is formed by adding -i to the verbal stem (of primary verbs at\\nleast). But is this ending a contemporary Quenya suffix, or does it represent\\na Primitive Elvish form? As mentioned above, the attested infinitive quet¨\\ne\\n“(to) say” may be meant to represent a primitive form kweti, which would\\nindeed be the root kwet- with “added -i”. But if this -i is a contemporary\\nQuenya suffix, there would be an alternative infinitive queti “to say”. How\\nit is used, and whether it is interchangeable with the attested form quet¨\\ne,\\nwe cannot even begin to guess. In the essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien did\\nmention a few verb forms that may seem to exemplify an infinitive in -i,\\nnamely auciri and h´\\nociri, both meaning “cut off” (in two different senses,\\nsee WJ:365–366). But later in the essay, he quoted the same forms with a\\nhyphen attached (auciri-, h´\\nociri-), as if these are verbal stems rather than\\nindependent infinitive forms (WJ:368). So we cannot be sure of anything,\\nand must await the publication of more material.\\nAs noted above, the infinitive is traditionally used to name or list verbs,\\nor to give their meaning as a general gloss. From now on we will often\\n144\\n\\n\\ndefine verbs in such a way, e.g. glossing a verbal stem like tul- as “to come”\\nand lanta- as “to fall” (rather than simply “come”, “fall”). It must still be\\nunderstood that the mere stem of primary verb like tul- cannot function as\\nan actual infinitive (“tul”) in a Quenya text (it must be tul¨\\ne instead). It is\\nsimply customary and convenient to give the meaning of a verb by quoting\\nits gloss in the infinitive. In the Vocabulary listings of Lessons 5 through\\n8, I had to write “verb” in front of the gloss of every new verb to make it\\ncrystal clear what part of speech the new word belonged to. Sometimes this\\nwas actually necessary: If I defined lanta- simply as “fall”, some student\\nwould surely manage to overlook the final hyphen of lanta- that is meant\\nto suggest that this is a verbal stem, and conclude that “fall” is here a noun\\n– autumn, or something! Finally having introduced the infinitive, I will use\\nthis form instead when glossing verbs – like “to fall” in this case.\\nNOTE 1: In English, infinitives introduced by “to” (or “in order to”) are often used to\\ndescribe an intention: “I came to see you.” In such a context, it seems that Quenya does\\nnot use the forms discussed so far, but a quite different construction (gerund in dative, to\\nbe discussed in a later lesson).\\n9.2\\nThe negative verb\\nThis may be a good place to introduce a somewhat peculiar Quenya verb.\\nEarlier we have mentioned the copula n´\\na “is”, which we can now refer to as\\na tense of the verb “to be”. (Don’t ask me if n´\\na is the present tense or the\\naorist, and the other tenses of this verb are unfortunately even more obscure:\\nThe verb “to be” is notoriously irregular in the languages of the world, and\\nTolkien may well have invented some nice irregularities for Quenya as well.)\\nAnyhow, Quenya also has a unitary verb meaning “not to be”; you can\\nexpress this meaning without combining some form of n´\\na with a separate\\nword for “not” (though Quenya does have such a negation as well). This verb\\nis listed in the Etymologies, entry ugu/umu, where it appears as umin “I am\\nnot” (another example of Tolkien’s frequent habit of listing primary verbs\\nin the 1st person aorist). The past tense is also listed, somewhat irregular:\\nit is ´\\num¨\\ne, not **umn¨\\ne as it would have to be according to the simplest\\n“regular” pattern. ´\\nUm¨\\ne as the past tense of a primary verb um- would\\nseem to belong to the same pattern as l´\\nav¨\\ne, pa.t. of lav- “to lick” (cf.\\nundul´\\nav¨\\ne “down-licked” = “covered” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR). One must take\\ncare not to confuse the past tense form ´\\num¨\\ne “was not” with the ending-less\\naorist um¨\\ne “is not”.\\nAs the future tense of this verb, we might expect umuva, and this unat-\\ntested form may well be permissible – but actually a shorter form ´\\nuva\\noccurs in F´\\nıriel’s Song. Here we have the phrase ´\\nuva . . . far¨\\nea, “will not\\nbe enough” (far¨\\nea = adjective “enough, sufficient”). Possibly, this ´\\nuva is\\nactually the future tense of another verb: Besides umin “I am not” from the\\n145\\n\\n\\nroot umu Tolkien also listed a form uin of the same meaning – apparently\\nderived from the root ugu. Perhaps ´\\nuva is strictly the future tense of the\\nlatter verb. It could represent a primitive form something like uguba, whereas\\nuin is to be derived from ugin (or ugi-ni at an even older stage). Between\\nvowels, g was lost in Quenya, so that the two u’s of uguba merged into one\\nlong ´\\nu in ´\\nuva, whereas the u and the i of ugin merged into a diphthong ui\\n(as in uin) when the disappearance of g brought the two vowels into direct\\ncontact. Whatever development Tolkien may have imagined, we will here\\nuse ´\\nuva as the future tense of um- “not to be”, avoiding the unattested\\n(and perhaps somewhat awkward) form umuva.\\nLike n´\\na, this “negative copula” can presumably be used to connect a\\nsubject with a noun or an adjective:\\nI Nauco um¨\\ne aran “the Dwarf is not a king”\\nI nissi umir tiuc¨\\ne “the women are not fat”\\nI rocco ´\\num¨\\ne mor¨\\ne “the horse was not black”\\nI neri ´\\numer sail¨\\ne “the men were not wise”\\nElda ´\\nuva ´\\num¨\\nea “an Elf will not be evil”\\nNissi ´\\nuvar ohtari “women will not be warriors” (sorry, ´\\nEowyn!)\\nOr, using pronominal endings instead of an independent subject:\\nUmin Elda “I am not an Elf”\\n´\\nUmen saila “I was not wise”\\n´\\nUvaly¨\\ne ohtar “you will not be a warrior”\\nBut above I said that this was a good place to introduce the negative verb.\\nThis is because it can probably be combined with infinitives as well. We lack\\nactual examples, but in the entry ugu/umu in Etym, Tolkien indicated that\\numin does not always signify “I am not”. It can just as well mean “I do\\nnot”. By combining such a verb with an infinitive, one can probably negate\\nthe verbs in question. Home-made examples involving various tenses of the\\nnegative verb:\\nUmin tur¨\\ne macil “I do not wield a sword”\\nM´\\nama um¨\\ne mat¨\\ne hr´\\nav¨\\ne “a sheep does not eat flesh”\\nI Nauco ´\\num¨\\ne tul¨\\ne “the Dwarf did not come”\\nI neri ´\\numer hir¨\\ne i harma “the men did not find the treasure”\\nI n´\\nıs ´\\nuva linda “the woman will not sing”\\nI neri ´\\nuvar cen¨\\ne i Elda “the men will not see the Elf”\\nWe must assume that following the negative verb, as well as in other\\ncontexts, several infinitives may sometimes be combined, like mer¨\\ne and\\ncen¨\\ne in this sentence (the finite verb in red, the two infinitives in blue and\\npink):\\nI Elda ´\\num¨\\ne mer¨\\ne cen¨\\ne i Nauco. “The Elf did not want to see the\\nDwarf.”\\n146\\n\\n\\nOr again, with the infinitives mer¨\\ne and cenda:\\nI Nauco ´\\nuva mer¨\\ne cenda i parma. “The Dwarf will not want to read\\nthe book.”\\nPresumably the present/continuous tense of the negative verb, which\\nwould have to be ´\\numa, can be used to deny the existence of an ongoing\\naction:\\nI Nauco ´\\numa linda “the Dwarf is not singing” (just now)\\nContrast the aorist: I Nauco um¨\\ne linda “the Dwarf does not sing”. The\\nlatter would often (but not necessarily) have a wider application, like “the\\nDwarf is not a singer”. Anyhow, we will stick to the aorist in the exercises\\nbelow.\\n9.3\\nActive participles\\nThe various parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, remain\\nrelatively distinct categories most of the time. However, some words fuse\\nthe properties of several parts of speech. The participles are words with a\\nbasically adjectival function, but they are directly derived from verbs, and\\nin the case of active participles, they are still able to take an object.\\nThe participles are subdivided into two categories, often called present\\nparticiples and past participles. These terms are somewhat misleading, for\\nthe most important distinction between has nothing to do with tenses. The\\nalternative terms active participles and passive participles are better, and I\\nwill try to use them consistently here.\\nWe will save the “past” or passive participle for the next lesson and focus\\non the “present” or active participles here. In English, this form is derived\\nby means of the ending -ing. For instance, the verb “follow” has the active\\nparticiple “following”. This verbal adjective describes the state of something\\nor someone that carries out the action of the corresponding verb: The day\\nthat follows can be described as the following day.\\nIf the verb is able to take an object, so is its corresponding participle. A\\nperson who loves Elves can be described as a person loving Elves.\\nIn English, the form derived from verbs by adding -ing is somewhat am-\\nbiguous. It can also function as a noun. The active participle of a verb like\\n“kill” is of course killing, as it is clearly adjectival in a phrase like “a killing\\nexperience”, but in a sentence like “the killing must stop”, it is equally clear\\nthat it is used as a noun. But in the latter sentence, “killing” is a verbal noun,\\nan abstract noun denoting the action of killing. Here we are only interested\\nin verbal adjectives = participles. In Quenya, the two do not coincide in\\nform.\\nThe Quenya ending corresponding to English -ing (when used to form\\nparticiples) is -la. There are many examples of active participles in the\\n147\\n\\n\\nMarkirya poem. For instance, Tolkien in his annotation indicated that “ilkala\\n[is the] participle of ilka ‘gleam (white)’” (MC:223). The participle ilcala\\n(as we would spell it here) thus means “gleaming”, and so it is used in the\\npoem, in a phrase translated “in the moon gleaming” (MC:215).\\nIt seems that in a Quenya active participle, the stem-vowel is lengthened\\nif possible. In ilcala the i cannot become long ´\\nı because there is a conso-\\nnant cluster following it. However, Tolkien in MC:223 also mentioned a verb\\nhlapu- “to fly or stream in the wind” (one of the rare U-stems, a rather\\nobscure category of verbs). Its participle appears as hl´\\napula on the previous\\npage: Winga hl´\\napula, translated “foam blowing” (cf. MC:214). We must\\nassume, then, that the participle of a verb like lala- “to laugh” is l´\\nalala\\n(!) “laughing”: The stem-vowel is lengthened. If the verbal stem includes a\\nvowel that is long already, it simply stays long in the participle: The partici-\\nples of p´\\nıca- “to lessen, dwindle” and r´\\numa- “to shift, move, heave” appear\\nas p´\\nıcala and r´\\numala in the Markirya poem.\\nIn the case of longer verbal stems where the stem-vowel occurs twice, as\\nin falasta- “to foam” (root evidently phalas), it seems that it is the second\\noccurrence of the stem-vowel that is to be lengthened if possible. In this\\ncase it cannot be lengthened, since it is followed by a consonant cluster;\\nthe participle “foaming” is attested (in Markirya) as falastala. The first\\noccurrence of the stem-vowel could have been lengthened as far as phonology\\nis concerned (**f´\\nalastala), but this first vowel evidently does not “count”\\nfor the purpose of lengthening. (Presumably it is not lengthened in the\\npresent tense, either: falast¨\\nea “is foaming”, hardly ?f´\\nalast¨\\nea, much less\\n**fal´\\nast¨\\nea.)\\nThe primary verbs are a problem. Adding the ending -la to their stems\\nwould usually result in consonant clusters not permitted in Quenya. For\\ninstance, the participle of the verb tir- “to watch” cannot be **tirla (let\\nalone **t´\\nırla), a quite impossible Quenya word. It has been assumed that in\\nsuch cases, one may start by constructing the “continuative stem” (similar to\\nthe present tense) by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, e.g. t´\\nıra “is\\nwatching”, and then derive the participle by adding the participial ending\\n-la to this form: t´\\nırala “watching”. Markirya has h´\\nacala as a participle\\n“yawning”; unfortunately the underlying verb “to yawn” is not attested,\\nbut if it is a primary verb hac-, the attested participial form would confirm\\nsuch a theory. But of course, the verb underlying the participle h´\\nacala could\\njust as well be an A-stem haca- or h´\\naca- (cf. hl´\\napula “blowing, streaming”\\nfrom hlapu- and p´\\nıcala “dwindling, waning” from p´\\nıca-).\\nWith the publication of The Peoples of Middle-earth in 1996, a form that\\nmay seem to be the participle of a primary verb became available: PM:363\\nrefers to the root “it [as in] itila ‘twinkling, glinting’, and ´\\nıta ‘a flash’, ita-\\nverb ‘to sparkle’.” But is itila really the participle of a primary verb it-?\\nTolkien refers to it- as a “stem” or root (cf. PM:346), not as a Quenya verb.\\nThe actual Quenya verb in question is listed as ita-, a short A-stem meaning\\n148\\n\\n\\n“to sparkle”. Its participle would presumably be´\\nıtala, not itila. If the latter\\nis a participle at all, it is a peculiar one: it shows no lengthening of the stem-\\nvowel (not **´\\nıtila), and a connecting vowel -i- is inserted before the ending\\n-la. Since the aorist of a verb it- would be iti- (becoming it¨\\ne only in the\\nabsence of any endings), one may wonder if itila is an aorist participle. This\\nwould mean that Quenya is able to carry the distinction of aorist/present\\ntense over into the participle, so that there are different forms for “doing”\\n(habitually or momentarily) and “doing” (continuously): perhaps something\\nlike carila and c´\\narala, respectively (from the verb car- “to do”). But this\\nis speculative, and I cannot recommend such a system to writers; we must\\nawait the publication of more material. It may be that itila is simply an old\\nadjectival formation that no longer “counts” as an adjective in Quenya. The\\nending -la occurs in adjectives as well, e.g. saila “wise”; undoubtedly -la is\\nin origin simply an adjectival ending that came to be favoured as the suffix\\nused to derive verbal adjectives = participles.\\nEven so, Quenya participles seem to have established themselves as for-\\nmations quite distinct from adjectives, for in one respect their behaviour\\ndiffers: Unlike adjectives, the active participles apparently do not agree in\\nnumber. For instance, Markirya has r´\\namar sis´\\nılala for “wings shining”\\n(the second word being the participle of the verb sis´\\nıla-, a longer variant of\\nthe verb sil- “shine white”). As we remember, normal adjectives in -a have\\nplural forms in -¨\\ne (representing archaic Quenya -ai). So if sis´\\nılala were to\\nbe agree in number with the noun it describes, we would have expected\\n**r´\\namar sis´\\nılal¨\\ne. Perhaps Tolkien did not want participles in -la to agree\\nin number precisely because the plural form of the participial ending would\\nhave to be -l¨\\ne: This ending could easily be confused with the prominent\\nabstract ending -l¨\\ne, which is added to verbal stems to derive verbal nouns\\n– e.g. lindal¨\\ne “singing” from linda- “to sing” (as in Ainulindal¨\\ne “Ainu-\\nsinging”, free rendering “Music of the Ainur”). While lindala and lindal¨\\ne\\nboth translate as “singing” in English, the latter is a noun (“a singing”),\\nwhereas the former is “singing” in the adjectival sense.\\nEnglish very often employs the active participle to express the mean-\\ning of a continuative tense, combining the participle with a copula like\\n“is” or “was”, e.g. “the boy is laughing”. But regarding present actions\\nat least, Quenya would rather express this meaning by using the genuine\\npresent/continuative tense: I seldo l´\\nal¨\\nea. None can say whether the Eng-\\nlish-style wording i seldo n´\\na l´\\nalala is a valid Quenya sentence; one suspects\\nthat while it would be intelligible, the Eldar (/Tolkien) would not think of\\nit as “good Quenya”.\\nWhile we have no attested example of an active participle taking an object,\\nwe must assume that it is possible, e.g. Nauco t´\\nırala Elda, “a Dwarf\\nwatching an Elf”.\\n149\\n\\n\\nSummary of Lesson Nine\\nThe infinitive is a form of the verb that is not inflected for tense and is\\ntherefore unable to function as the predicate of a sentence (as a finite verb\\ncan); an infinitive may be combined with other verbs to form longer verbal\\nphrases. While there are some obscurities, the (or one) Quenya infinitive\\nis apparently identical to the verbal stem itself, except that primary verbs\\nreceive the ending -¨\\ne – e.g. quet- “to speak” in the sentence polin quet¨\\ne “I\\ncan speak”. This infinitive would seem to be the one used when infinite and\\nfinite verbs are combined (as in the example just quoted, where the infinitive\\nquet¨\\ne is combined with a finite form of the verb pol- “can”). – The negative\\nverb um- (past tense ´\\num¨\\ne, future ´\\nuva) can apparently function both as a\\nnegative copula (“not be”) and as a verb that may be combined with the\\ninfinitive of other verbs to express “not do. . . ” something, e.g. umin quet¨\\ne\\n“I do not speak”. – The active participle, a verbal adjective describing the\\nstate of the one carrying out the action denoted by the corresponding verb,\\nis derived by adding -la to the corresponding verbal stem. The stem-vowel\\nis lengthened if there is no consonant cluster following it. It is somewhat\\nunclear how the ending -la is to be added to the stems of primary verbs,\\nbut one plausible assumption may be that the ending is suffixed to the\\n“continuous” form (with lengthened stem-vowel and ending -a, e.g. t´\\nıra\\nfrom tir- “to watch”, hence t´\\nırala as the participle “watching”).\\nVocabulary\\ntolto “eight”\\npol- “to be (physically) able to”, normally translated “can” (where this refers\\nto some physical ability – not “can” in the sense “know how to”, referring to intel-\\nlectual skill, or “can” in the sense “may” = “is permitted to”, referring to freedom\\nfrom prohibitions. For the two latter meanings, Quenya uses distinct words.)\\num- negative verb “not to do” or “not to be”, past tense ´\\num¨\\ne, future tense\\n´\\nuva\\nmer- “to wish, want”\\nhlar- “to hear”(related to Sindarin lhaw as in Amon Lhaw, the Hill of Hearing men-\\ntioned in LotR)\\nverya- “to dare” (from the same root as the Sindarin name Beren, meaning bold or\\ndaring one)\\nlelya- “to go, proceed, travel”, past tense lend¨\\ne, perfect [e]lendi¨\\ne (more\\nabout this “irregular” verb in the next lesson)\\npusta- “to stop”\\nruhta- “to terrify, to scare” (ultimately related to Urco or Orco, the Quenya words\\nfor “bogey, Orc”)\\n150\\n\\n\\ncoa “house” (building only, not “house” = “family”)\\nmir preposition “into”\\nter preposition “through” (a longer variant ter¨\\ne also exists, but I have used ter in\\nthe exercises below)\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. S´\\nılala Isil ort¨\\nea or Ambar.\\nB. I c´\\napala Nauco lantan¨\\ne ter i talan.\\nC. Polin hlar¨\\ne lindala vend¨\\ne.\\nD. Min¨\\ne n´\\ner t´\\nurala min¨\\ne macil ´\\nuva ruhta i tolto taur¨\\ne ohtari.\\nE. M´\\nol m´\\napala taura n´\\ner um¨\\ne saila.\\nF. I tolto r´\\navi caitala nu i aldar ortaner, an i r´\\navi merner\\nmat¨\\ne i neri.\\nG. R´\\na um¨\\ne pol¨\\ne pusta mat¨\\ne hr´\\nav¨\\ne.\\nH. I ruhtala ohtar pustan¨\\ne tir¨\\ne i li¨\\ne, an i ohtar ´\\num¨\\ne saila.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. The man pursuing the Dwarf is a warrior.\\nJ. The king wanted to go.\\nK. The maiden did not dare to see the queen.\\nL. The laughing women went into the house.\\nM. The eight traveling Dwarves can find many treasures.\\nN. You did not praise the Elf, you do not praise the Man [Atan],\\nand you will not praise the Dwarf.\\nO. I want to travel through the world and free all peoples.\\nP. A daring man went through the gate and into the mountain.\\n151\\n\\n\\nLesson 10\\nAdverbs. The pronominal endings -nt¨\\ne and -t. Infinitives\\nwith object pronouns. The past tense of intransitive verbs in\\n-ya. Passive participles.\\n10.1\\nAdverbs\\nAdverbs form a part of speech that is used to provide “extra information” in\\na sentence. A typical sentence provides information about who does what (to\\nwhom), involving a subject, a predicate and if necessary an object. But you\\nmay also want to slip in information about when, where or in what manner\\nthe verbal action occurs. This is where adverbs enter the linguistic stage.\\nIn many cases, adverbs are to verbs what adjectives are to nouns. Like\\nan adjective may describe a noun, an adverb may describe the nature of the\\nverbal action of the sentence. In a sentence like “they left swiftly”, the last\\nword is an adverb describing how or in what manner “they left”. If we say\\n“she is singing now”, the word “now” is an adverb answering the question\\nof when the verbal action is taking place. And if we say “they did it here”,\\nthe word “here” is an adverb telling us where the verbal action took place.\\nSome adverbs may be called “basic”, since they are not derived from an-\\nother part of speech. Just consider such an adverb of time as English “now”\\nand its Quenya equivalent s´\\nı; neither can be further analyzed. But very\\nmany English adverbs are not “basic” in this way. They are transparently\\nderived from adjectives, as in one of the examples we just used: The adverb\\n“swiftly” is obviously based on the adjective “swift”. The Great English\\nAdverb-Former is the ending -ly, which can in principle be added to any\\nadjective, turning it into an adverb (producing such pairs as deep/deeply,\\nfinal/finally, great/greatly, high/highly, swift/swiftly and countless others. . .\\nbut preferably not “good/goodly”, since the place of “goodly” is already oc-\\ncupied by the basic adverb well!) Since we have only a handful of words that\\nTolkien explicitly identified as adverbs, but plenty of adjectives, it would be\\nnice if we could pin down a Quenya adverb-former like the English ending\\n-ly. Then we could derive our own Quenya adverbs.\\nWe may have such a Quenya ending. It occurs in LotR, as part of the Cor-\\n152\\n\\n\\nmallen Praise (volume 3, Book Six, chapter IV: “The Field of Cormallen”).\\nAs part of the praise received by the Ringbearers we have the two words\\nandav¨\\ne laituvalmet, translated “long we will praise them” in Letters:308.\\nHere we have the adverb andav¨\\ne, “long” (here meaning “for a long time”).\\nWe know that the Quenya adjective “long” is anda (cf. Sindarin and as in\\nAnd+duin = Anduin, “Long River”). It would seem, then, that this adjective\\nhas been turned into an adverb by supplying the ending -v¨\\ne (probably re-\\nlated to the Quenya preposition ve “as, like”). In the case of anda/andav¨\\ne,\\nthe English translation is “long” in either case, but normally the ending -v¨\\ne\\nwould correspond to English “-ly”. So if alta is “great”, can we use altav¨\\ne\\nfor “greatly”? Since tulca is a word for “firm”, would “firmly” be tulcav¨\\ne?\\nKnowing that saila means “wise”, can we assume that sailav¨\\ne an accept-\\nable word for “wisely”? By and large, I think such formations are plausible,\\nthough the potential application of the ending -v¨\\ne may not be literally lim-\\nitless. The Quenya adjective “good” is m´\\nara; one wonders if m´\\narav¨\\ne for\\n“well” would sound just as weird as “goodly” in English! (A basic adverb\\nvand¨\\ne “well” occurs in Tolkien’s earliest “Qenya” wordlist [QL:99]; whether\\nthis was still a valid word in LotR-style Quenya some forty years later, none\\ncan say.)\\nLike anda “long”, the vast majority of Quenya adjectives end in -a. The\\nless frequent adjectives in -¨\\ne in practically all cases descend from Primitive\\nElvish forms in -i, which vowel would be preserved unchanged before an\\nending or in compounds: Compare mor¨\\ne “dark, black” with the compound\\nMoriquendi “Dark Elves”. We must assume that the original quality of\\nthe vowel would also be preferred before the adverbial ending -v¨\\ne – so if we\\ntry to derive an adverb “darkly” from mor¨\\ne, it should probably be moriv¨\\ne\\nrather than morev¨\\ne. Actually, very few of the adjectives in -¨\\ne are likely\\nto have any corresponding adverbs; they mostly denote colours. Perhaps\\nwe can have muss¨\\ne/mussiv¨\\ne “soft/softly”, nind¨\\ne/nindiv¨\\ne “thin/thinly”\\nand ring¨\\ne/ringiv¨\\ne “cold/coldly” (but in a later source, the word for “cold”\\nappears as ringa rather than ring¨\\ne, and then the adverb would simply be\\nringav¨\\ne).\\nHow the ending -v¨\\ne would be added to the few adjectives in -n is quite\\nunclear. The adjective melin “dear” (not to be confused with the similar-\\nsounding 1st person aorist “I love”) could have a corresponding adjective\\nmelinv¨\\ne “dearly”, for while nv does not occur in unitary words, it is a\\npossible Quenya combination (cf. Aragorn’s title Envinyatar “Renewer”,\\nwhere en- = “re-”). On the other hand, if the ending -v¨\\ne is related to the\\npreposition ve “as, like”, both probably descend from be in Primitive Elvish.\\nWe could then argue that the original melin-be would rather come out as\\nmelimb¨\\ne in Quenya. On the yet other hand (if we can postulate even more\\nhands), adjectives in -in seem to be shortened from longer forms in -ina,\\nand then one could argue that this a would be preserved before an ending.\\nThus, “dearly” could be melinav¨\\ne. (I’d say, forget about melin and start\\n153\\n\\n\\nfrom melda or moina instead, which adjectives also mean “dear”. Then we\\ncan simply have meldav¨\\ne or moinav¨\\ne!)\\nIn English at least, an adverb does not necessarily describe a verbal action.\\nIt can also be used to modify the meaning of an adjective (or even another\\nadverb). This is a kind of meta-description, one descriptive word describing\\nanother. Whether Quenya adverbs (or specifically the ones in -v¨\\ne) can be\\nused in such a way, nobody knows. For instance: Knowing that valaina is\\nthe Quenya adjective “divine”, can we feel free to use valainav¨\\ne vanya\\nfor “divinely beautiful”? Tolkien provided aqua as the adverb “fully, com-\\npletely, altogether, wholly” (WJ:392 – this is a “basic” adverb not derived\\nfrom an adjective, unlike the English glosses in -ly that are derived from the\\nadjectives “full, complete, whole”). It does seem very likely that this aqua\\ncan modify an adjective, e.g. aqua mor¨\\ne “completely dark”. If this is not\\nso, Tolkien ought to have told us. . . !\\nIt may be noted that in some early sources, Tolkien uses adverbs in -o\\nrather than -v¨\\ne. The one attestation of the latter is, as I have pointed\\nout, andav¨\\ne vs. the adjective anda “long”. However, there exists an early\\n“Qenya” sentence which translates as “the Elves were lying long asleep at\\nKovien´\\neni [later: Cuivi´\\nenen]”; see Vinyar Tengwar #27. In this sentence, the\\nadverb “long” appears as ando, not andav¨\\ne. Further examples of adverbs\\nin -o include ento “next” and rato “soon” (from an “Arctic” sentence\\nquoted in Father Christmas Letters – obviously a form of “Qenya”, though\\nappearing in a context that has nothing to do with Tolkien’s serious literary\\noutput). We may even include the adverb voro “ever, continually” from\\nsuch a relatively late source as the Etymologies (entry bor), though in this\\nword, the final -o may be simply the stem-vowel reduplicated and suffixed.\\nThe example ando “long” (not to be confused with the noun “gate”),\\nwhich is obviously derived from the adjective anda, would seem to indi-\\ncate that the ending -o can be used to derive adverbs from adjectives. May\\nwe then have (say) tulco “firmly” from tulca “firm”, as an alternative to\\ntulcav¨\\ne? Or are we to understand that Tolkien, by the LotR period, had\\ndropped -o as an adverbial ending? If so he introduced -v¨\\ne as a replacement,\\nnot an alternative (changing ando to andav¨\\ne).\\nWe cannot know whether -o is still a valid adverbial ending in LotR-style\\nQuenya. But when deriving adverbs from adjectives, I would recommend\\nusing the “safe” (or at least safer) ending -v¨\\ne instead. In the exercises below,\\nI have not used the ending -o, but only -v¨\\ne. On the other hand, at this stage\\nI would not tamper with attested adverbs like ento, rato, voro (changing\\nthem to ?entav¨\\ne etc.)\\nDo adverbs, like adjectives, agree in number? It has been suggested that\\nandav¨\\ne is actually a plural adverb, agreeing with a plural verb (andav¨\\ne\\nlaituvalmet “long we will praise them” – notice the plural subject ending\\nattached to the verb). If so, -v¨\\ne could be the plural form of a singular\\nadverbial ending -va, completely unattested. According to this system, we\\n154\\n\\n\\nwould have such variation as i n´\\ner lend¨\\ne andava “the man traveled long”\\n(singular adverb corresponding to a singular verb) vs. i neri lender andav¨\\ne\\n“the men traveled long” (plural adverb to go with a plural verb). But this is\\n100 % hypothetical. While nothing can be ruled out at this stage, I tend to\\nbelieve that this there is no such variation. More likely, the adverbial ending\\n-v¨\\ne is invariable in form, related to the preposition ve “as, like” as suggested\\nabove.\\nIn closing, I should mention that some Quenya adverbs are derived from\\nother parts of speech than adjectives. In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne we have oial¨\\ne as the ad-\\nverb “for ever” (or “everlastingly”, as the interlinear translation in RGEO:67\\ngoes). But the Etymologies, entry oy, indicates that oial¨\\ne is properly or in\\nits origin a noun meaning “everlasting age”. Apparently this noun is used\\nas an adverb in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne.\\nPhrases involving prepositions very often have an adverbial function to be-\\ngin with, and sometimes unitary adverbs may evolve from them: In Cirion’s\\nOath we have tennoio as another Quenya word meaning “for ever”, but\\nin UT:317, Tolkien explains that this form is simply a contraction of two\\noriginally distinct words: the preposition tenna “up to, as far as” + oio “an\\nendless period”.\\nFinally we have what I have already called “basic adverbs”, not derived\\nfrom any other part of speech. Aqua “completely” and s´\\nı “now” men-\\ntioned above are just two examples; we may also include words like amba\\n“up(wards)”, h´\\naya “far off” (read perhaps haiya as the Third Age form),\\noi “ever”, and others.\\n10.2\\nThe pronominal endings -nt¨\\ne and -t\\nIn Lesson Eight, we introduced three pronominal endings: -n or longer -ny¨\\ne\\nfor “I”, -l or longer -ly¨\\ne for “you”, and -s for “it”. But obviously there are\\nmore pronouns, and we will now attempt to identify the pronominal endings\\nof the Third Person Plural: as subject “they”, as object “them”.\\nCirion’s Oath in UT:305 includes the word tiruvantes, in UT:317 trans-\\nlated “they will guard it”. The verb tir- “watch, guard”, the future-tense\\nending -uva “shall, will” and the pronominal ending -s “it” ought to be\\nfamiliar to the student by now. We are left with -nte- as the element trans-\\nlated “they”. UT:317 explicitly confirms that -nt¨\\ne is the “inflection of 3[rd\\nperson] plural where no subject is previously mentioned”. Like most brief\\nlinguistic notes of Tolkien’s, this one does require some exegesis. I shall here\\nassume that Tolkien’s intention is this: If a sentence has a plural subject that\\nhas been “previously mentioned”, occurring before the verb, the verb would\\nonly receive the normal plural ending -r (e.g. i neri matir apsa “the men\\neat meat”). But if there is no subject “previously mentioned”, the ending\\n-r is replaced by -nt¨\\ne, meaning “they”: Matint¨\\ne apsa, “they eat meat”.\\n155\\n\\n\\nApparently, this ending would still be used if the subject is identified later in\\nthe sentence; perhaps we can have such a sentence as matint¨\\ne apsa i neri\\n“they eat meat(,) the men (do)”. Cirion’s Oath also identifies the subject\\nlater in the sentence (nai tiruvantes i h´\\narar mahalmassen mi N´\\numen\\n“be it that they will guard it, the ones who sit on thrones in the west. . . ”)\\nCirion’s Oath occurs in post-LotR material, so the information provided in\\nUT:305, 317 was certainly intended to be LotR-compatible. However, a quite\\ndifferent pronominal ending for “they” occurs in Tolkien’s early material. In\\nLT1:114, we find the “Qenya” form tulielto “they have come”, including\\nthe ending -lto for “they”. This ending was current as late as when Tolkien\\nwrote F´\\nıriel’s Song, which includes the forms c´\\narielto “they made” and\\nantalto “they gave” (LR:72). Whether it is also valid in LotR-style Quenya\\nis another matter. The ending -lto looks somewhat strange compared to\\nthe other known pronominal endings. Of the pronominal endings attested in\\nLotR or during the post-LotR period, all the subject endings that constitute\\na separate syllable end in the vowel -¨\\ne (six endings in all, if we include -nt¨\\ne\\ndiscussed above). A suffix -lto ending in -o doesn’t seem to fit in very well\\n(so some would alter -lto to -lt¨\\ne in LotR-style Quenya, though there is\\nno evidence for such an ending). I tend to assume that Tolkien eventually\\nscrapped this ending completely, replacing it with -nt¨\\ne.\\nThe opinion has been voiced that -lto is valid all the same. Some would in-\\nterpret Tolkien’s note about -nt¨\\ne being used “where no subject is previously\\nmentioned” in an absolute sense: It wouldn’t be enough that the subject has\\nnot been “previously mentioned” in the same sentence, as I assumed above.\\nOf course, when the word “they” is used in English, it usually refers back to\\nsome group mentioned earlier in the text or conversation. According to the\\nstrict interpretation of Tolkien’s note about -nt¨\\ne, this pronominal ending\\ncannot be used for any “they” that refers back to some group mentioned\\nearlier, even if it was in a quite different sentence. The ending -nt¨\\ne would\\nonly point forward, to some group that is to be identified later in the text\\nor sentence (as is the case in Cirion’s Oath). “They” referring back to some\\nother group (already mentioned in another sentence) would require a quite\\ndifferent ending, perhaps the -lto attested in earlier sources.\\nI can’t claim that this isn’t a possible interpretation of Tolkien’s words\\nor the available examples. However, I still have a bad feeling about using\\nthe ending -lto in LotR-style Quenya. In the exercises I have made for this\\ncourse, I have ignored -lto, assuming that -nt¨\\ne can be used as a pronominal\\nending signifying “they” in a general sense. When Tolkien speaks of -nt¨\\ne\\nbeing used only for a subject that has not been “previously mentioned”,\\nI assume that he means “not previously mentioned in the same sentence”\\n(for if a plural subject had already occurred, the verb would receive only\\nthe normal plural marker -r). Hence we can – presumably – have forms like\\nthese, with -nt¨\\ne attached to the various tenses of pusta- “to stop”:\\n156\\n\\n\\nAorist pustant¨\\ne “they stop”\\nPresent pust¨\\neant¨\\ne “they are stopping”\\nPast pustanent¨\\ne “they stopped”\\nFuture pustuvant¨\\ne “they will stop”\\nPerfect upustient¨\\ne “they have stopped”\\nAs indicated by the attested example tiruvantes = “they will guard it”, a\\nsecond pronominal ending can be attached following -nt¨\\ne (-nte-), denoting\\nthe object of the sentence. This brings us over to another question: If -nt¨\\ne is\\nthe subject ending “they”, what is the corresponding object ending “them”?\\nDiscussing adverbs above, we have already quoted the sentence andav¨\\ne\\nlaituvalmet “long we will praise them” from LotR. Knowing that laitu-\\nvalmet means “we will praise them”, we can easily isolate the final -t as\\nthe element translated “them”. (The cunning student will also be able to\\nisolate the pronominal ending signifying “we”, but we will save that one for\\nlater: Actually Quenya has several endings for “we”, with different shades\\nof meaning.)\\nAs usual, things are not quite crystal clear. The ones being praised here\\nare Frodo and Sam, two persons. Some have therefore assumed that this -t is\\na dual “them”, even suggesting that laituvalmet may be rendered “we will\\npraise both [of them]”. Those adhering to this theory have been encouraged\\nby the fact that there is also a dual ending -t (as in ciryat “2 ships”; look\\nup Lesson Three again). Nothing can be definitely ruled out at this time,\\nbut the ending -t “them” would seem to match -nt¨\\ne “they” quite well. I\\ndon’t think -t is exclusively dual, but in any case, this is one ending that\\ncan be translated “them”. Hence, forms like the following must be possible:\\nTirnenyet = “I watched them”\\nMelilyet = “you love them”\\nHiruvanyet = “I will find them”\\nand even:\\nPustanentet = “they stopped them”\\nLikely, this would refer to two different groups. “They stopped themselves”\\nis probably expressed in another way (unfortunately we don’t really know\\nhow).\\n10.3\\nInfinitives with object pronouns\\nSo far, we have identified two pronominal endings that can be used as the\\nobject of the sentence, -s for “it” and -t for “they”. As is evident from\\nattested examples (tiruvantes “they will guard it”, laituvalmet “we will\\npraise them”), these object endings may be attached to a finite verb following\\n157\\n\\n\\nanother pronominal ending denoting the subject. But what about a longer\\nverbal phrase involving an infinitive?\\nLet us start with a sentence like i m´\\nol veryan¨\\ne cen¨\\ne i aran ar i t´\\nari,\\n“the thrall dared to see the king and the queen”. Here we have a finite\\nverb veryan¨\\ne “dared” + an infinitive cen¨\\ne “to see”. Now we want to get\\nrid of the whole phrase “the king and the queen”, replacing it with the\\nobject pronoun “them”, hence “the thrall dared to see them”. (Notice that I\\ndeliberately construct an example that will be compatible with the theory of\\n-t “them” being dual only, even though I don’t believe this to be the case. . .\\nunnecessary risks are just that, unnecessary!) Well, where do we put the\\nending -t? Quite obviously, it must be attached to the infinitive cen¨\\ne “to\\nsee”. Cenet, then? Or, since the infinitive cen¨\\ne seems to represent Primitive\\nElvish keni and primitive -i changes to -¨\\ne only when final, one might think\\nthat cenit is a better choice. So “the thrall dared to see them” = i m´\\nol\\nveryan¨\\ne cenit, right?\\nWrong! In Vinyar Tengwar #41, July 2000, it was revealed that the in-\\nfinitive of primary verbs is formed with the ending -ita if any pronominal\\nendings are to be added (actually the suffix is only -ta-, which added to an\\ninfinitive like cen¨\\ne = ceni- produces cenita-). Tolkien in some of his late\\n(ca. 1969) notes refers to “the general (aorist) ‘infinitive’ formed by adding\\n-i (not as such capable of any further suffixion; with pronominal affixes it\\nwas the stem of the aorist tense); the particular infinitive with -ita differing\\nin use from the preceding mainly in being able to receive pronominal object\\naffixes” (VT41:17). He went on to quote the example caritas, “doing it” (or\\nprobably just as well “to do it”) – an infinitive of the verb car- “do” with\\nthe object ending -s “it” attached.\\nAs I pointed out in the previous lesson, it is unclear whether the reference\\nto an infinitive constructed by “adding -i” implies that there is a contempo-\\nrary Quenya infinitive that shows the ending -i. Tolkien may simply refer to\\nthe original form of the infinitive ending, e.g. Primitive Elvish kweti as the\\nform underlying the contemporary Quenya form quet¨\\ne “(to) speak” (at-\\ntested in the sentence polin quet¨\\ne “I can speak”). Anyhow, this infinitive\\nwas “not as such capable of any further suffixation”, apparently to avoid\\nconfusion with “the stem of the aorist tense”. The infinitive of car- “make,\\ndo” would be car¨\\ne (cari-), but if we tried to add an ending like -s “it” di-\\nrectly to it in order to express “to do it”, the resulting form **caris would\\nlook just like the aorist “it does” or “it makes”. The actual form caritas is\\nnot ambiguous.\\nIn the case of “they make” vs. “to make them”, there would be a dis-\\ntinction even without the extra -ta-, since the subject ending for “they”\\n(-nt¨\\ne) differs from the object ending “them” (-t). Even so, Tolkien appar-\\nently decided to eliminate any possible confusion between aorist forms with\\nsubject endings and infinitives with object endings: The infinitives insert\\n-ta- between the infinitive proper and the pronominal suffixes. Therefore,\\n158\\n\\n\\nthe infinitive “to see” is expanded from cen¨\\ne to cenita- when it is to receive\\nany object ending. “The thrall dared to see them” must actually be i m´\\nol\\nveryan¨\\ne cenitat, the extra -ta- intruding between the infinitive and the\\nobject ending.\\nIt is unclear whether A-stem verbs behave in the same way. Vinyar Teng-\\nwar #41 published only a very brief quote from Tolkien’s 1969 notes (the\\neditor apparently needed the space for more important things, like an in-\\ndepth article about the optimal Bulgarian translation of the Ring Poem).\\nThe quote, reproduced above, apparently only deals with the infinitive form\\nof primary verbs – the ones that have aorists in -¨\\ne or with endings -i-. Some\\nwriters have assumed that A-stem verbs functioning as infinitives would\\nsimilarly add -ta before any object pronominal endings are suffixed. So with\\nverbs like metya- “to end, to put an end to” and mapa- “to seize”, it would\\nwork something like this:\\nMerint¨\\ne metyatas “they want to end it”\\nI ohtari ´\\nuvar mapatat “the warriors will not seize them”\\nPerhaps such sentences are quite OK, perhaps not. Presently there is no\\nway of telling. One may doubt that the ending -ta would be added to the\\nstem of a verb that ends in -ta already, like orta- “to lift up, to raise”.\\nShould “I can lift it” really be polin ortatas? Generally, Quenya is not\\nvery fond of two adjacent similar-sounding syllables, like the two ta’s here.\\nLuckily, we can work around this uncertainty. We can simply avoid at-\\ntaching object pronominal endings to the infinitives of A-stem verbs, since\\nwe know at least some independent object pronouns (e.g. te “them” in-\\nstead of the ending -t – so for, say, “you wanted to seize them” we can have\\nmernely¨\\ne mapa te instead of the uncertain construction ?mernely¨\\ne ma-\\npatat). We will discuss the independent pronouns in a later lesson. In the\\nexercises below, the infinitives in -ita + object suffix only involve primary\\nverbs.\\nIt is interesting to notice that Tolkien translated caritas as “doing it”\\n(VT41:17). This may suggest that such infinitives can also function as the\\nsubject of a sentence, e.g. cenitas farya nin “seeing it is enough for me”\\n(farya- verb “to suffice, to be enough”; nin “to/for me”).\\n10.4\\nThe past tense of intransitive verbs in -ya\\nIn Lesson Six, we set out some rules for “regular” past tense formation, but\\nwe also touched on various “irregular” forms (that is, past tense formations\\nthat don’t readily fall into the most common patterns). Some of these may\\nactually form sub-groups that are “regular” enough according to their own\\nspecial rules.\\nLet me first introduce a couple of terms that will facilitate the following\\ndiscussion: transitive and intransitive. In linguist terminology, a verb is said\\n159\\n\\n\\nto be transitive if it can have an object. Most verbs readily can, but not all.\\nA verb like “to fall” is not transitive (= intransitive). The subject itself may\\n“fall”, but the subject cannot “fall” something else; there can be no object.\\nA typical intransitive verb only describes an action which the subject itself\\nperforms, not an action that is, or can be, done to someone or something. (I\\nsay “typical”, for Quenya actually has some verbs that cannot even have a\\nsubject, the so-called impersonal verbs – to be discussed in Lesson Eighteen.)\\nSome verbs form pairs where one verb is transitive, the other intransitive.\\nThe subject may raise an object (transitively), but the subject by itself can\\nonly rise (intransitively) – not involving any object at all. Other examples of\\nsuch pairs include transitive “to fell” vs. intransitive “to fall”, or transitive\\n“to lay” vs. intransitive “to lie”. But in many cases, English uses the same\\nverb form both intransitively and transitively, e.g. “to sink”. A subject may\\nsink an object (e.g. “the torpedo sank the ship”, transitive verb with both\\nsubject and object), or the subject just “sinks” all by itself, so to speak\\n(e.g. “the ship sank”, intransitive verb with subject only – obviously “sank”\\nis used with two quite different meanings here). Such ambiguity may also\\noccur in Quenya; for instance, orta- covers both “to raise” and “to rise”,\\nand the context must be taken into account to determine which meaning is\\nrelevant. (To be more concrete: check if the sentence includes an object or\\nnot! E.g. i aran orta = “the king rises”, but i aran orta ranco = “the\\nking raises an arm”.)\\nLet us then consider some “irregular” Quenya verbs. The verb farya- “to\\nsuffice, to be enough” is said to have the past tense farn¨\\ne, irregular in the\\nsense that the ending -ya of the verbal stem drops out before the past tense\\nending -n¨\\ne: We might have expected **faryan¨\\ne, but the Etymologies lists\\na few more verbs that exemplify the same phenomenon: Vanya- “to go,\\ndepart, disappear” has the past tense vann¨\\ne. (Likely, Tolkien later replaced\\nthe verb vanya- with auta- of similar meaning, but we may still consider it\\nhere.) To these examples from the Etymologies (see entries phar, wan) we\\nmay add a verb the student is supposed to have memorized as part of the\\nprevious lesson: lelya- “to go, proceed, travel” from WJ:363. Its past tense\\nis not **lelyan¨\\ne, but lend¨\\ne, seemingly a quite irregular form (though not\\nas wildly irregular as English “to go” vs. its past tense “went”!) The sudden\\nappearance of the cluster nd is no big mystery; it arises by nasal-infixion\\nof the original root led. (This root is listed in the Etymologies, though\\naccording to a later source, led is reworked from even more primitive del.\\nLelya- is meant to descend from primitive ledyˆ\\na- [ledjˆ\\na-], “since dj became\\nly medially in Quenya” [WJ:363]. The past tense lend¨\\ne would come from\\nlendˆ\\ne, not so dissimilar from the verb ledyˆ\\na- as these forms later became.)\\nThe real mystery here is this: Why do the verbs farya-, vanya-, and lelya-\\nsurrender the ending -ya in the past tense?\\nIt may be noted that by their meaning, all three verbs are distinctly\\nintransitive: To suffice, to disappear, to go. This could be just a coincidence,\\n160\\n\\n\\nof course, but the Etymologies provides us with another highly interesting\\nexample. In the entry ulu, a verb ulya- “to pour” is listed. Tolkien indicated\\nthat it has a double past tense. If the verb is used in a transitive sense,\\nas in “the servant poured water into a cup”, the past tense “poured” is\\nulyan¨\\ne. This would be an entirely “regular” form. However, if the verb\\nis used intransitively, the past tense of ulya- is ull¨\\ne instead (presumably\\nrepresenting older unl¨\\ne, formed by nasal-infixion from ul- without the ending\\n-ya; cf. vill¨\\ne as the past tense of vil- “to fly”, though in the latter case no\\nending -ya appears in any form of the verb). So if you want to translate\\n“the river poured into a gorge”, the form to use is ull¨\\ne, not ulyan¨\\ne.\\nIt seems, then, that we can discern a pattern here: Intransitive verbs in\\n-ya drop this ending in the past tense; the past tense is formed from the\\nending-less root, as in the case of primary verbs. Or put differently: In the\\npast tense, intransitive verbs in -ya surrender this ending to masquerade as\\nprimary verbs. In the rare cases where a verb can be both transitive and\\nintransitive, the ending -ya is retained when it is used in a transitive sense\\n(as in the pa.t. form ulyan¨\\ne), but dropped when the verb is used in an\\nintransitive sense (ull¨\\ne).\\nWhy this should be so is of course entirely obscure. In other tenses than\\nthe past, the verb ulya- “to pour” would seem to appear in the same form no\\nmatter whether it is transitive or intransitive (aorist ulya “pours”, present\\ntense uly¨\\nea “is pouring”, future ulyuva “shall pour” etc.) But it was never\\nTolkien’s intention to make a new Esperanto, a language aiming to be 100\\n% regular and logical. Within his mythos, Quenya is supposed to be an\\nordinary spoken tongue, developed over thousands of years. Hence, Tolkien\\nmay deliberately have included what you will find in any natural language:\\ncertain features that don’t necessarily make immediate “sense”.\\nMost verbs in -ya are transitive, and would presumably retain their ending\\nin the past tense, before the pa.t. suffix -n¨\\ne is added (as in the attested\\nexample ulyan¨\\ne). Here are most of the remaining intransitive verbs in -ya,\\nthough Tolkien did not actually mention any past tense forms in their case:\\nhwinya- “to swirl, to gyrate” (past tense hwinn¨\\ne?), mirilya- “to glitter”\\n(pa.t. mirill¨\\ne? – cf. ulya-, pa.t. ull¨\\ne), ranya- “to stray” (pa.t. rann¨\\ne?),\\ns´\\nuya- “to breathe” (pa.t. s´\\nun¨\\ne?), tiuya- “to swell, grow fat” (pa.t. tiun¨\\ne?)\\nThe verb yerya- can be both transitive “to wear (out)” and intransitive\\n“to get old”. Perhaps the past tense is yeryan¨\\ne in the former sense and\\nyern¨\\ne in the latter sense, just like we have transitive ulyan¨\\ne coexisting\\nwith intransitive ull¨\\ne as the past tense “poured”?\\nI should add that all of this is somewhat hypothetical, since Tolkien did\\nnot actually mention the past tense of very many intransitive verbs in -ya.\\nBut the student should at least notice the attested “irregular” past tenses,\\nincluding the double pa.t. of ulya- “to pour” and especially lend¨\\ne “went”\\nas the rather unexpected past tense form of lelya- “to go, travel, proceed”.\\nNOTE: The perfect tense of this verb appears as lendi¨\\ne in some texts. SD:56 indicates\\n161\\n\\n\\nthat in one draft, Tolkien used lendien rather than ut´\\nulien for “I have come” in Elendil’s\\nDeclaration (“out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth have I come”). Lendien would mean,\\nliterally, “I have gone/went/traveled” or something similar. This perfect form is not aug-\\nmented, possibly simply because Tolkien had not yet invented the augment that is usually\\nprefixed in the perfect tense. I would normally supply it, using elendi¨\\ne as the perfect of\\nlelya-. I have used this perfect in (the key to) one of the exercises below.\\n10.5\\nPassive participles\\nThen we will return to the participles. The logical counterpart of the active\\nparticiples discussed in the previous lesson is obviously the passive partici-\\nples. They are often called “past participles” instead (just like the active\\nparticiples are frequently referred to as “present participles”). However, the\\nterm “passive participle” is very fitting. This participle is an adjectival form\\nderived from the stem of a verb, and it describes the state that something\\nor someone is left in by being exposed to the corresponding verbal action.\\nFor instance: If you hide something, it is hidden. Therefore, “hidden” is the\\npassive participle of the verb “to hide”. The word “hidden” can be used as\\nan adjective, both predicatively (“the treasure is hidden”) and attributively\\n(“hidden treasure”). The passive participle “hidden” contrasts with the ac-\\ntive participle “hiding”: The latter describes the state of the subject, the\\nacting party, whereas the passive participle describes the state of the object,\\nthe one passively exposed to the verbal action.\\nIn the case of intransitive verbs, where no object can be involved, this\\nparticiple describes the state of the subject itself after carrying out the\\nverbal action in question: If you fall, you will thereafter be fallen; if you\\ngo, you will thereafter be gone. Here the often-used term “past participle”\\nmakes sense; participles like fallen or gone describe the condition of the\\nsubject after carrying out some “past” action. They are seen to contrast\\nwith the “present participles” (active participles) falling and going, which\\ndescribe the condition of the subject while the verbal action is still “present”\\nor on-going. But as long as we are dealing with transitive verbs – and most\\nverbs are transitive – I still think it is better to speak of “active participles”\\nvs. “passive participles”.\\nIn English, quite a few passive participles have the ending -en, as in the\\nexamples hidden, fallen above. But in very many cases, English passive\\nparticiples are similar in form to the past tense of verbs, though the words\\nhave wildly different functions (a form like tormented is a past tense verb\\nin a sentence like “they tormented the Dwarf”, but a passive participle in\\na sentence like “the Dwarf was tormented”). So what do the corresponding\\nQuenya forms look like?\\nThe vast majority of Quenya participles seem to be formed by means of\\nthe ending -na or its longer variant -ina. Some attested A-stem participles\\n162\\n\\n\\nare seen to include the longer ending, the final -a of the verbal stem and the\\ni of the suffix -ina merging into a diphthong -ai- (which receives the stress,\\nlike any diphthong in the second-to-last syllable). An example is provided by\\nthe phrase Arda Hastaina, “Arda Marred”, an Elvish term for the world\\nas it is, tainted by the evil of Morgoth (MR:254). This hastaina “marred”\\nwould seem to be the passive participle of a verb hasta- “to mar”, not\\notherwise attested. However, the verb hosta- “to gather, collect, assemble”\\nis attested both in the Etymologies (entry khoth) and in the Markirya\\npoem (MC:222–223). Its passive participle turns up in F´\\nıriel’s Song, where\\nit is implied to be hostaina (attested in the form hostaini´\\neva “will be\\ngathered”; the suffix -i´\\neva “will be” is hardly valid in LotR-style Quenya,\\nbut the underlying participle certainly is). We can probably conclude that\\nA-stems in -ta nearly always have passive participles in -taina. Since anta-\\nmeans “give”, the participle “given” would be antaina. Since orta- means\\n“raise” (or used intransitively, “rise”), the word for “raised” (and “risen”)\\nwould seem to be ortaina.\\nPerhaps the ending -ina can be added to nearly all A-stems? From a\\nverb like mapa- “grasp, seize”, I think we may well derive mapaina as\\nthe participle “grasped, seized”. (Indirect support for this: The ending -\\nina is also used to derive adjectives, as in valaina “divine” – obviously\\nan adjectival formation based on Vala, which noun is analogous in form\\nto a simple A-stem like mapa-. Indeed it is hinted that the noun Vala\\nis originally derived from a simple A-stem verb vala- “to order, to have\\npower”: WJ:403–4. If it had remained a verb only, valaina could have meant\\n“ordered” instead.)\\nThe behaviour of A-stems in -ya is slightly obscure. In the Etymologies,\\nTolkien listed a root per “divide in middle, halve” (cf. Sindarin Perian\\n“halfling, Hobbit”). He then mentioned a Quenya word perya, evidently a\\nverb preserving the root meaning. Immediately after perya, he listed an\\nundefined word perina. Is this the passive participle “halved”? I think this\\nis almost certainly the meaning of this word, but perhaps we should see it as\\nan independent adjectival formation derived directly from the root, not as\\nthe passive participle of the verb perya-. (We might have excepted p´\\nerina\\nwith a long ´\\ne if it were a passive participle; see below regarding the r´\\nacina\\npattern.)\\nElsewhere in the Etymologies, in the entry gyer, we have a verb yerya-\\n“to wear (out), get old”. The same entry also mentions a word yerna “worn”.\\nAs far as the English glosses are concerned, yerna could be the passive par-\\nticiple of the verb yerya-. Should we conclude, then, that verbs in -ya form\\ntheir passive participles by replacing this ending with -na? Again I think\\nyerna is not actually the participle of yerya-, but rather an independent ad-\\njectival formation. The following facts support this: 1) Tolkien traced yerna\\nall the way back to Primitive Elvish gyernˆ\\na, so it was not derived from the\\nverb later; 2) Tolkien actually listed the form yerna before he mentioned\\n163\\n\\n\\nthe verb yerya-, again suggesting that the former is not to be derived from\\nthe latter, 3) yerna is glossed “old” as well as “worn”, and the first gloss\\nsuggests that yerna is to be considered an independent adjective, not a par-\\nticiple. Same story as with perina above, then. This would also go for a pair\\nlike halya- “veil” vs. halda “veiled, hidden” (entry skal1): The latter form\\nTolkien referred to Primitive Elvish skalnˆ\\na (initial sk- becoming h- and ln\\nbecoming ld in Quenya). It may well be that in Primitive Elvish, skalnˆ\\na did\\ncount as the passive participle of the verbal root skal- “screen, hide”, but\\nits Quenya descendant halda has developed into an independent adjective\\n(one of Tolkien’s glosses for this word, “shady”, is also an adjective). Thus,\\nhalda is not necessarily the passive participle of the verb halya- derived\\nfrom the same root, though it has somewhat the same meaning as the actual\\nparticiple would have.\\nSo how, really, are we to treat verbs in -ya? I think a highly interesting\\nclue is provided in MR:326 (cf. MR:315), where Christopher Tolkien tells us\\nthat in a post-LotR text, Tolkien used Mirruyainar or Mirroyainar for\\n“the Incarnate” (plural). This may seem to be passive participles inflected\\nas nouns: “incarnated ones”. Removing the plural ending -r, we are left with\\nmirruyaina/mirroyaina as a possible participle “incarnated” – and if we\\npeel away the presumed participial ending as well, the verb “to incarnate”\\nwould seem to be mirruya- or mirroya-. Tolkien later changed the word\\nMirruyainar/Mirroyainar to Mirroanwi, not involving any -ya- at all,\\nbut the rejected forms may still give away what the passive participle of\\na verb in -ya should look like. Such verbs would seem to have participles\\nin -yaina, just like verbs in -ta have participles in -taina. So given that\\nlanya- is the verb “to weave”, the word for “woven” may well be lanyaina.\\nThe regular passive participles of the verbs perya- “to halve”, yerya- “to\\nwear (out)” and halya- “to veil” would similarly be peryaina, yeryaina,\\nhalyaina (meaning much the same as the related adjectives perina, yerna,\\nhalda, of course, but the latter may not so clearly imply that the described\\nstates are inflicted – see below regarding harna- vs. harnaina).\\nWe can probably conclude that nearly all A-stem verbs form their pas-\\nsive participles by adding -ina. The only exception occurring in the pub-\\nlished corpus is the form envinyanta “healed” or more literally “renewed”\\n(MR:405). It would seem to be the passive participle of a verb enviny-\\nata- “renew” (not attested by itself, but cf. Aragorn’s title Envinyatar\\n“Renewer”). This participle is formed by means of nasal-infixion intruding\\nbefore the ending -ta. We cannot know whether the more “regular” forma-\\ntion envinyataina, itself unattested, would be a valid form.\\nHowever, the ending -ina is not only used in the case of A-stems; pri-\\nmary verbs with c or t as their final consonant also form their passive\\nparticiples by means of this ending. The Markirya poem includes a form\\nr´\\nacina “broken” (man tiruva r´\\nacina cirya[?] “who shall see [/watch] a\\nbroken ship?”, MR:222). Tolkien explicitly identified r´\\nacina as the passive\\n164\\n\\n\\n(or “past”) participle of the verb rac- “to break” (MC:223). The verb “to\\nreckon, to count” is not-, and in F´\\nıriel’s Song we have n´\\notina as the passive\\nparticiple “counted”. It seems, then, that primary verbs ending in unvoiced\\nstops like c or t form their passive participles by lengthening the stem-vowel\\nand adding the long ending -ina. We don’t seem to have any attested exam-\\nple of the participle of a primary verb ending in -p (another unvoiced stop),\\nbut it would in all likelihood slip into the same pattern: The verb top- “to\\ncover” would have the passive participle t´\\nopina “covered”. (The verb top-\\nis listed in the Etymologies; the poem Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR may suggest that\\nTolkien later changed it to tup-. If so, the participle would of course be\\nt´\\nupina instead.) Perhaps primary verbs in -v also form their passive par-\\nticiples according to this pattern, e.g. l´\\navina “allowed, granted” from the\\nverb lav- “allow, grant” (not to be confused with a similar-sounding verb\\nmeaning “lick”). We lack examples, though.\\nAttested examples don’t exactly abound for other primary verbs either,\\nbut most of them probably prefer the short ending -na to -ina. MR:408 (cf.\\nMR:405) indicates that Tolkien used vincarna for “healed”; the more literal\\nmeaning is transparently “renewed” or wholly literally “newly-made”: Vin-\\nis the stem of the Quenya adjective vinya “new”, and carna “made” can\\nonly be the passive participle of the verb car- “make”. So primary verbs\\nending in -r have passive participles in -rna (and because of the consonant\\ncluster here arising, the stem-vowel preceding it obviously can not be length-\\nened as in the r´\\nacina class discussed above). Given that mer- is the Quenya\\nverb “to want”, the Wanted posters of the Quenya Wild West would evi-\\ndently read Merna. Perhaps m´\\nerina, c´\\narina (following r´\\nacina) would be\\npossible alternative passive participles of mer-, car-, perhaps not. I think\\nit is best to let the attested example carna guide us here.\\nFor primary verbs in -m and -n, we only have what may be called in-\\ndirect examples of their passive participles, but they are probably good\\nenough. The verb nam- “to judge” (namin “I judge”, VT41:13) seems\\nto have the passive participle namna. This form is attested as a noun\\nmeaning “statute” (as in Namna Finw¨\\ne M´\\nıriello, “the Statute of Finw¨\\ne\\nand M´\\nıriel”, MR:258). Apparently the participle namna, basically meaning\\n“judged”, is also used as a noun “judgement, juridical decision” and then\\n“statute”. As for primary verbs in -n, we may consider such nouns as anna\\n“gift” and onna “creature” vs. the verbs anta- “to give” and onta- “to\\ncreate” (see the entries ana1, ono in Etym). These are not primary verbs,\\nof course (and in Quenya we would expect them to have the participles an-\\ntaina, ontaina) – but the nouns anna, onna may descend from primitive\\nparticipial formations based on the naked root-word, before -ta was added\\nto produce the verbs as they appear in Quenya. So anna may come from\\na primitive participle “given”, only later used as a noun “something that is\\ngiven” = “gift”. Onna might likewise represent an original passive partici-\\nple “created”, later used as a noun “created one” = “creature”. I tend to\\n165\\n\\n\\nthink, therefore, that the ending -na can be added to the stems of Quenya\\nprimary verbs ending in -n. For instance, since cen- is the verb “to see”,\\ncenna may well be the passive participle “seen”. But again, c´\\nenina may be\\na permissible alternative formation (perhaps we can also have n´\\namina for\\n“judged”, for all I know).\\nWhat about primary verbs in -l, such as mel- “love”? If we don’t resort\\nto the pattern of r´\\nacina once again, using m´\\nelina for “loved”, the ending\\n-na would have to be added directly to the verbal stem. But since **melna\\nis not a possible Quenya word, ln would become ld, just as in one example\\ndiscussed above (Quenya halda descending from Primitive Elvish skalnˆ\\na).\\nThe Etymologies actually lists a word melda, glossed “beloved, dear”. These\\nglosses are adjectives, but by their meaning they are of course very close to\\nthe participle “loved”. So are we once again looking at an original participle\\nthat has developed into an independent adjective? Would the actual partici-\\nple of mel- differ in form, precisely to distinguish it from this adjective? If\\nso we might consider m´\\nelina again. Or is melda both the adjective “dear”\\nand the participle “loved”? One may well ask whether there is any point\\nin even trying to distinguish between them, since their meanings would be\\nvirtually the same.\\nAnother example may also be considered: The Quenya verb “to bear, to\\nwear, to carry” seems to be col-, though it has never been independently\\nattested: Only various derivations are found in our corpus. One of them\\nappears in MR:385: colla = “borne, worn” (also used as a noun “vest-\\nment, cloak”, considered as “something that is worn”). Is this an example\\nof the past participle of a primary verb ending in -l? Can we use mella for\\n“loved”, then? I tend to think that colla is rather an adjectival derivative –\\nperhaps representing primitive konlˆ\\na with nasal-infixion of the root kol (not\\nin Etym). By its original derivation it would then parallel such a Quenya ad-\\njective as panta “open” (which Tolkien referred to Primitive Elvish pantˆ\\na,\\nderived from the root pat listed in Etym). I’m afraid no quite certain con-\\nclusion can be reached regarding the passive participles of primary verbs in\\n-l, but I think the safest would be to either use the ending -da (representing\\nearlier -na), or the longer ending -ina combined with lengthening of the\\nstem-vowel.\\nShould passive participles agree in number, like normal adjectives do? In\\nother words, should the final -a turn into -¨\\ne (for older -ai) if the participle\\ndescribes a plural noun? As far as I can see, the corpus provides no example\\nthat could guide us. We recall that active participles (ending -la) do not\\nagree in number. However, I tend to think that passive participles do be-\\nhave like normal adjectives in this regard. We have just seen that in many\\ncases it is difficult to even determine whether a form is to be considered a\\npassive participle or an adjective, since adjectives may be derived with the\\nsame endings. (For that matter, this goes for English as well: An adjective\\nlike naked could well have been a passive participle by its form; however,\\n166\\n\\n\\nthere is no corresponding verb **nake “denude”, so we can’t set up a pair\\n**nake/naked like we have love/loved.) Since adjectives like valaina “di-\\nvine” and yerna “old” must be assumed to agree in number, it is difficult\\nto imagine that participles like hastaina “marred” or carna “made” would\\nnot show such agreement. So I would change the final -a to -¨\\ne where the\\nparticiple describes a plural noun (or several nouns).\\nIn English, past/passive participles are used as part of the circumlocutions\\nwhich simulate the function of a true perfect tense: “The Dwarf has seen\\nthe Elf”; “the woman is (or, has) fallen”. But here Quenya would simply\\nuse the real perfect tense instead: I Nauco ec´\\neni¨\\ne i Elda; i n´\\nıs alanti¨\\ne.\\nPerhaps n´\\na lantaina is also permissible for “is fallen”, but rendering “the\\nDwarf has seen the Elf” as **i Nauco harya cenna i Elda (copying the\\nEnglish wording directly) only results in nonsense.\\nA final note: In some cases, forms in -na that were originally participial or\\nadjectival have themselves become A-stem verbs. The primitive word skarnˆ\\na,\\nlisted in the entry skar in the Etymologies, was perhaps originally a passive\\nparticiple “torn, rent” (since the root skar itself is said to mean “tear,\\nrend”). In Quenya, skarnˆ\\na turned into harna “wounded”, probably felt to\\nbe an adjective rather than a participle. The funny thing is that harna- also\\ncame to be used as a verb “to wound”, and if this verb has its own passive\\nparticiple harnaina, we would have come full circle! In English, both harna\\nand harnaina must be translated “wounded”, but whereas harna would\\nmerely describe the state of being wounded, harnaina clearly implies that\\nthe wounds were inflicted. Cf. the English adjective “full” (merely describing\\na state) vs. the passive participle “filled” (implying that the state in question\\nresults from the act of filling).\\nSummary of Lesson Ten\\nAdverbs are words used to fill in extra information about the how, the when,\\nor the where of the verbal action described in a sentence. In English at least,\\nan adverb can also be used to modify the meaning of an adjective, or even\\nanother adverb. – The Quenya pronominal ending for “they” is apparently\\n-nt¨\\ne (Tolkien probably dropped the ending -lto occurring in early material);\\nthe corresponding object ending “them” seems to be -t (though some think\\nit is dual “the two of them” only). – Primary verbs, which have infinitives in\\n-¨\\ne (e.g. quet¨\\ne “to speak, to say”), turn into forms in -ita- if a pronominal\\nending denoting the object is to be added (e.g. quetitas “to say it”, with\\nthe ending -s “it”). – Available examples seem to suggest that intransitive\\nverbs in -ya drop this ending in the past tense, which is formed directly\\nfrom the stem instead (as if the verb were a primary verb). For instance, the\\npa.t. of farya- “to suffice” is farn¨\\ne, not **faryan¨\\ne. – Passive participles\\nare adjectival derivatives that usually describe the state that is inflicted on\\n167\\n\\n\\nsomeone or something by the corresponding verbal action: what you hide\\n(verb) becomes hidden (passive participle). A-stem verbs seem to form their\\npassive participles in -ina (e.g. hastaina “marred” from hasta- “to mar”).\\nThis ending is also used in the case of primary verbs ending in -t and -c,\\nprobably also -p and possibly even -v; in this class of verbs, the ending is\\ncombined with lengthening of the stem-vowel (e.g. r´\\nacina “broken” from\\nrac- “to break”). It may be that the same pattern can be applied to all\\nprimary verbs, but verbs in -r are seen to take the simple ending -na instead,\\nwith no lengthening of the stem-vowel (carna “made” from car- “to make”).\\nPrimary verbs in -m, and probably also -n, would similarly take the simple\\nending -na (e.g. namna “judged” from nam- “to judge”, cenna “seen”\\nfrom cen- “to see”). It is somewhat uncertain how we should treat primary\\nverbs in -l; if we are to use the simple ending -na, it would turn into -da for\\nphonological reasons (e.g. melna > melda “loved” as the passive participle\\nof mel- “to love”; melda is attested as an adjective “beloved, dear”). Passive\\nparticiples probably agree in number in the same way as adjectives, changing\\n-a to -¨\\ne if they describe a plural noun or several nouns.\\nVocabulary\\nnert¨\\ne “nine”\\nn´\\nura “deep”\\nanwa “real, actual, true”\\nnulda “secret”\\ntelda “final” (adjective derived from the same root as the name of the Teleri, the Third\\nClan of the Eldar, so called because they were always the last or hindmost during\\nthe March from Cuivi´\\nenen – far behind the Vanyar and the Noldor, who were more\\neager to reach the Blessed Realm)\\nlinta “swift” (pl. lint¨\\ne in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, which poem refers to lint¨\\ne yuldar = “swift\\ndraughts”)\\nhosta- “to assemble, gather”\\nn´\\nor¨\\ne “land” (a land associated with a particular people,WJ:413)\\nlamb¨\\ne “tongue = language” (not “tongue” as a body part)\\ncar- “to make, to do”\\nfarya- “to suffice, to be enough”, pa.t. farn¨\\ne (NOT **faryan¨\\ne – because the\\nverb is intransitive?)\\nve preposition “as, like”\\n168\\n\\n\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Melinyet n´\\nurav¨\\ne.\\nB. Lindant¨\\ne vanyav¨\\ne, ve Eldar.\\nC. Ily¨\\ne nert¨\\ne andor nar tirn¨\\ne.\\nD. Merint¨\\ne hiritas lintav¨\\ne.\\nE. Haryaly¨\\ne atta parmar, ar teldav¨\\ne ecendielyet.\\nF. Anwav¨\\ne ec´\\nenien Elda.\\nG. I nurtaina harma ´\\nuva hirna.\\nH. ´\\nUment¨\\ne mer¨\\ne caritas, an cenitas farn¨\\ne.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. They have traveled [/gone] secretly through the land.\\nJ. The assembled Elves wanted to see it.\\nK. Written language is not like spoken language.\\nL. Five ships were not enough [/did not suffice]; nine sufficed.\\nM. I will really stop doing it [/truly cease to do it].\\nN. They swiftly gathered the nine terrified Dwarves.\\nO. Finally you will see them as you have wanted to see them.\\nP. They don’t want to hear it.\\n169\\n\\n\\nLesson 11\\nThe concept of cases. The Genitive case.\\n11.1\\nCases\\nLessons 1–10 have mainly been concerned with adjectives and verbs. As for\\nnouns, we have only discussed how their plural and dual forms are con-\\nstructed. There is, however, much more to say about the inflection the\\nQuenya noun. The second half of this course will predominantly be con-\\ncerned with the elaborate case system of Quenya, which is indeed the most\\ncharacteristic feature of the language. It is in the treatment of nouns that\\nthe grammatical structure of Quenya most clearly reflects two of Tolkien’s\\ninspirations, Finnish and Latin.\\nWhat, linguistically speaking, are cases? A noun may have many functions\\nin a sentence. English may indicate what function a noun has by means of\\nword order alone. In a sentence like “the man loves the woman”, it is merely\\nthe word order that gives away the fact that “the man” is the subject and\\n“the woman” is the object. The rule that very early slips into the subcon-\\nscious mind of children exposed to English goes something like this: “The\\nnoun in front of the predicate verb is its subject, while the noun that comes\\nafter it is normally its object.” Where word order is not enough, English\\nmay slip in clarifying prepositions in front of a noun, e.g. “to” in a sentence\\nlike “the Elf gives a gift to the Dwarf”. There are languages that wouldn’t\\nneed to have a “to” here; instead the noun “Dwarf” would occur in a special,\\ninflectional form.\\nOf course, Quenya also has prepositions, and the student will already have\\nencountered several: nu “under”, or “over”, imb¨\\ne “between”, ve “as, like”,\\nmir “into” (which word, by the way, is formed from the simpler preposition\\nmi “in”). But it is a characteristic of Quenya that where English would\\noften place a preposition in front of a noun, or rely on word order alone to\\nindicate what the function of a noun is, Quenya would have a special form\\nof the noun which by itself indicates its function. These various, specialized\\nnoun-forms are called cases. For instance, our example above – “the Elf gives\\na gift to the Dwarf” – would translate into Quenya something like i Elda\\n170\\n\\n\\nanta anna i Naucon, where the case ending -n added to Nauco “Dwarf”\\ncorresponds to the English preposition “to”. (This particular case is called\\nthe dative, to be fully discussed in Lesson 13.)\\nCertain prepositions may also demand that the word (noun or pronoun)\\nfollowing them appears inflected for some case – sometimes quite irrespective\\nof the normal, independent function of this case. The relevant preposition is\\nthen said to “take” (or “govern”) this or that case. The same phenomenon\\nmay be found in English, if one looks closely. While the case system is all\\nbut gone as far as English nouns are concerned, many English pronouns at\\nleast preserve a specific form that is used when the pronoun is the object\\nand not the subject of a sentence. That is why “Peter saw he” is wrong; it\\nmust be “Peter saw him”, with the object form of this pronoun. (“He” is the\\nsubject form instead, and therefore quite proper in a sentence like “he saw\\nPeter”.) But while the primary function of the form “him” is to function as\\nthe object of a sentence, very many prepositions also insist on being followed\\nby this form. For instance, “from he” does not sound well; it must be “from\\nhim”, though “him” is not the object of a sentence here.\\nThe Quenya noun-forms so far discussed (whether singular, plural or dual)\\nare examples of the nominative case. The most important grammatical func-\\ntion of the nominative is that this is the form a noun has when it functions\\nas the subject of a verb. In Lesson Five, we very briefly touched on another\\nform of the noun – the accusative case, which is the form a noun assumes\\nwhen it is the object of a verb. Modern English does not preserve any distinc-\\ntion between nominative and accusative in nouns (though such a distinction\\npersists in parts of the pronoun table, like nominative “he” vs. accusative\\n“him” in our examples above). English nouns do not change their form de-\\npendent on whether the noun is the subject or the object of the sentence\\n– and neither do nouns in Third Age Quenya. Tolkien imagined an archaic\\nform of Quenya, “Book Quenya”, that did have an accusative case distinct\\nin form from the nominative. The noun “ship” would be cirya (pl. ciryar) if\\nit was used as the subject of a sentence, but ciry´\\na (pl. ciryai) if it appeared\\nas the object: nominative vs. accusative. However, the distinct accusative\\ndisappeared from the language as spoken in Middle-earth; the forms cirya\\n(pl. ciryar) came to be used both as subject and object. So either you can\\nsay that in Third Age Quenya, the nominative and the accusative cases have\\ncome to be identical in form, or you can say that the nominative has taken\\nover the functions of the distinct accusative so that in effect, there is no\\naccusative anymore. It boils down to exactly the same thing.\\nBut as far as we know, the accusative was the only Quenya case that was\\nlost among the Exiles. The remaining cases, in addition to the nominative,\\nare the genitive, the possessive, the dative, the allative, the ablative, the\\nlocative, and the instrumental. (I should add that learning the form and\\nfunction of the cases is more important than learning their Latin names.)\\nThere is also a mysterious case which Tolkien listed in the Plotz Letter, but\\n171\\n\\n\\nwithout discussing its name or use – so there is little I can say about it here.\\nIn Lessons 11–16, we will work our way through the list of Quenya cases,\\ndiscussing their functions and how they are formed. Precisely because we\\nhave the blessed Plotz Letter, we are now on somewhat more solid ground\\nthan we usually find ourselves upon when discussing Quenya grammar.\\n(Tolkien really should have sent Dick Plotz a list of pronouns and verb\\nforms as well!)\\n11.2\\nThe Genitive\\nWe will start our discussion of the Quenya cases with the few Quenya noun\\nforms that actually have a direct English equivalent (sort of). Where Quenya\\nhas nine or ten noun cases, English has only two: nominative and genitive.\\nThe nominative we have already discussed: In English as in Exilic Quenya,\\na noun appears in the nominative when it is the subject or the object of a\\nnoun. In both languages, the nominative singular may well be considered the\\nsimplest form of the noun. There is no special ending or other inflectional\\nelement to signal that “this is a nominative form”; rather it is the absence\\nof any such element that tells us what case the noun is.\\nAll the other cases – or in English, the one other case – do display spe-\\ncial endings, though. The one noun case of modern English, except for the\\nnominative, is the genitive. (Please notice the spelling; I am tired of seeing\\n“genetive” on certain mailing lists.) In the singular, it is formed by adding\\nthe ending ’s to the noun, e.g. girl’s from girl. In the plural, this ending nor-\\nmally merges with the plural ending -s, but its theoretical presence is hinted\\nat in writing by means of an apostrophe (girls’ for **girls’s. . . Gollum would\\nhave loved the latter form).\\nThe grammatical function of this case ought to be familiar enough to\\nanyone who is capable of reading this text; already in Lesson Two, we briefly\\ntouched on this “ownership form”. As stated in my handy Oxford Advanced\\nLearner’s Dictionary of Current English, the genitive case is used to indicate\\n“source or possession”. In a combination like the girl’s doll, the genitive\\ncase is used to coordinate two nouns so as to indicate that the former is\\nthe owner or possessor of the latter. (This latter word which the genitive\\nform connects with, like “doll” in our example, is sometimes said to be\\ngoverned by the genitive. Conversely, the genitive form itself may be said to\\nbe “dependent on” this other word; this is Tolkien’s wording in UT:317.) The\\nEnglish genitive does not necessarily connote “ownership” in the strictest\\nsense, but may also be used to describe other kinds of “belonging”, such as\\nfamily relationships – e.g. the girl’s mother. As for the genitive suggesting\\nsource, we can think of such phrases as the architect’s drawings (the drawings\\nmade by the architect, not necessarily owned by him, but originating with\\nhim). The genitive noun may not even denote a sentient being, e.g. Britain’s\\n172\\n\\n\\nfinest artists (the finest artists coming from/living in Britain). The latter\\nexample may also be termed genitive of location; Britain’s finest artists are\\nthe finest artists located in Britain.\\nThe noun a genitive form is dependent on may well be another genitive,\\nwhich in turn refers to a third noun – e.g. “the queen’s sister’s house”.\\nIn principle we can string up an infinite number of genitives (“the king’s\\nfather’s aunt’s brother’s dog’s. . . [etc. etc.]) – though it should not come\\nas a great shock to anyone that people who care about style and legibility\\nnormally won’t push this too far.\\nSomewhat like adjectives, genitives can be used both attributively and\\nas predicates. All the examples above are examples of attributive genitives,\\ndirectly teamed up with a noun which the genitive is then dependent on. A\\ngenitive would however function as a predicate in a sentence like the book is\\nPeter’s. But rather than using genitives as predicates, English often resorts\\nto circumlocutions (like the book belongs to Peter).\\nQuite often, English does not use a genitive, but instead employs a phrase\\ninvolving a preposition – predominantly of, e.g. the finest artists of Britain\\nrather than Britain’s finest artists. In some contexts, “of”-constructions are\\nactually preferred to genitives, e.g. the end of the road rather than the road’s\\nend.\\nSo what about Quenya? The functions of English genitives, as well as\\nEnglish “of”-constructions, are covered by two Quenya noun cases; we will\\ndiscuss the other relevant case in the next lesson. The functions of the case\\nnormally referred to as the Quenya genitive are somewhat more limited than\\nthe functions of the English genitive. But first of all, let us discuss how the\\nQuenya genitive is formed.\\nThe basic Quenya genitive ending is -o. Starting from nouns that should\\nbe well known to the student by now, we can derive genitives like arano\\n“king’s”, t´\\nario “queen’s”, vend¨\\neo “maiden’s”. If the noun ends in -o al-\\nready, the genitive ending normally becomes “invisible”. In UT:8 we have\\nciryamo for “mariner’s”. This is our sole attestation of this noun, but\\nthere is no reason to doubt that its nominative form “mariner” is like-\\nwise ciryamo (this word is obviously derived from cirya “ship”, and the\\nmasculine/personal ending -mo [WJ:400] is well attested elsewhere: hence\\ncirya-mo = “ship-person”). A name like Ulmo could be both nominative\\n“Ulmo” and genitive “Ulmo’s”; the context must decide how the form is\\nto be understood. (However, in the case of nouns in -o that have special\\nstem-forms in -u, like curo, curu- “skillful device”, we would probably see\\ncuruo as the genitive form.)\\nNouns ending in -a lose this vowel when the genitive ending -o is added:\\nSince Quenya phonology does not permit the combination ao, it is simplified\\nto o. For instance, Nam´\\nari¨\\ne demonstrates that the genitive “Varda’s” is\\nVardo, not **Vardao. It follows, then, that a few otherwise distinct nouns\\ncoincide in the genitive; for instance, it would seem that anta “face” and\\n173\\n\\n\\nanto “mouth” both have the genitive form anto. The context must be taken\\ninto account to determine which noun is meant.\\nIn the plural, the genitive ending -o is expanded to -on (as we shall see\\nlater, the plural marker -n occurs in several of the Quenya case endings).\\nThis ending -on is added to the simplest (nominative) plural form of the\\nnoun, in -r or -i. Hence an r-plural like aldar “trees” has the genitive plu-\\nral aldaron “trees’, of trees” – whereas an i-plural like eleni “stars” has\\nthe genitive form elenion “stars’, of stars”. (The normal stress rules still\\napply, so while eleni is accented on the first syllable, the stress must fall\\non -len- in the longer form elenion.) Both of these are attested in LotR:\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne has r´\\namar aldaron for “wings of trees” (a poetic circumlocution\\nfor “leaves”), and Frodo speaking in tongues in Cirith Ungol referred to\\nE¨\\narendil as ancalima elenion, “brightest of stars”.\\nA prominent example of a genitive plural is the very title of the Silmar-\\nillion, formed from the nominative plural Silmarilli “Silmarils”. This title\\nmakes good sense considering that it is properly only one half of a longer\\ngenitive phrase, found on the title page following the Ainulindal¨\\ne and the\\nValaquenta: Quenta Silmarillion, “The History of the Silmarils”. As is\\nalready evident, a Quenya genitive is often best rendered as an English of -\\nconstruction, not as an English genitive with the ending -’s or -s’: “Stars’\\nbrightest” or “the Silmarils’ History” would not be good English.\\nAs for dual genitive, Tolkien indicated that its ending is -to, combining\\nthe dual ending -t with the basic genitive ending -o. In the Plotz letter,\\nTolkien used the example ciryato, “of a couple of ships”. There is one\\nuncertainty here, not addressed in Plotz: Should the ending be -to also in\\nthe case of the nouns that have dual forms in -u rather than -t? Or would\\nthe u simply replace t here, so that such nouns have dual genitives in -uo\\ninstead? Concretely: if the nominative “(the) Two Trees” is Aldu, should\\nthe genitive “of (the) Two Trees” be Alduto or Alduo? A form like Alduto\\nwould have a double dual marker, both u and t, but then attested plural\\ngenitives likewise include double plural markers (elenion, aldaron). Even\\nso, I am not ready to rule out the possibility that genitives in -u should have\\ngenitives in -uo, e.g. i cala Alduo for “the light of (the) Two Trees”. But\\nsince published material allows no certain conclusions in this matter, I have\\nsimply avoided the problem in the exercises below.\\nThe special “stem forms” of some nouns are relevant for the formation of\\ngenitives as well. From r´\\na (r´\\nav-) “lion” we would have the genitive r´\\navo\\n“lion’s”; from n´\\nıs (niss-) “woman” we would have nisso “woman’s”. The\\nplural forms would be r´\\navion “lions’, of lions” and nission “women’s, of\\nwomen” – cf. the nominative plurals r´\\navi, nissi. I am not quite sure about\\nthe dual forms; perhaps we can have r´\\naveto, nisseto (an -e- intruding\\nbefore the ending -to so that impossible consonant clusters do not arise; see\\nlater lessons regarding attested examples of an extra -e- being slipped in\\nlike this).\\n174\\n\\n\\nSo far the formation of the genitive; now we must return to its function. In\\nEnglish, the genitive very often indicates who owns what, as in “the man’s\\nhouse”. Indeed this is the main function of the English genitive. However,\\nthe Quenya genitive case is not normally used to describe simple ownership\\nof things. Tolkien expressly noted that properly this case was “not [used] as\\na ‘possessive’, or adjectivally to describe qualities” (WJ:368).\\nTo understand its function it is often useful to bear in mind its ultimate\\nderivation. Tolkien explained that “the source of the most used ‘genitive’\\ninflection of Quenya” was an ancient adverbial or “prepositional” element\\nbasically meaning from or from among. According to WJ:368, it originally\\nhad the form ho, or as an element added to nouns, -hˆ\\no. The latter was the\\ndirect source of the Quenya case ending -o (plural -on). But according to\\nthe Etymologies, Quenya also had a regular preposition ho “from”, and in\\nWJ:368 Tolkien mentions h´\\no- “from, off” as a verbal prefix, e.g. in h´\\notuli-\\n“come away” or literally “from-come”.\\nEven the case ending -o may occasionally express “from”, the most basic\\nmeaning of the primitive element ho. In the prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, we have the\\nline Varda . . . ortan¨\\ne m´\\naryat Oioloss¨\\neo, “Varda . . . raised her hands\\nfrom Oioloss¨\\ne” (essentially the same in the version in LotR, but with a more\\ncomplicated, “poetic” word order). The translation in LotR goes “Varda . . .\\nfrom Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands” – Oioloss¨\\ne “Ever-white”\\nbeing a name of Taniquetil, the great mountain of the Blessed Realm where\\nManw¨\\ne and Varda dwell.\\nHowever, Oioloss¨\\neo is our sole example of the Quenya genitive being\\nused with such a meaning. (For “from”, Quenya regularly uses another case\\n– the ablative, to be discussed in a later lesson.) Normally, the ending -o\\nis seen to have acquired other, more abstract meanings. Nonetheless, one\\nimportant function of the Quenya genitive still clearly reflect the idea of\\nsomething coming “from” something or someone else: The Quenya genitive\\ncan be used to describe the source, origin or former possessor of some-\\nthing – so-called “derivative genitives” (WJ:369). Tolkien explained that\\nr´\\noma Orom¨\\neo “Orom¨\\ne’s horn” refers to a horn coming from Orom¨\\ne, not a\\nhorn that Orom¨\\ne still has, or still had at the time that is being considered\\n(WJ:168). Likewise, lamb¨\\ne Eldaron could not be used for “the language\\nof the Eldar”, for this would mean “the language coming from the Eldar”;\\nTolkien added that such a wording would only be valid “in a case where\\nthe whole language was adopted by another people” (WJ:368–369). In light\\nof this, the genitive phrase Vardo tellumar “Varda’s domes” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nmay not necessarily imply that the heavenly “domes” were somehow owned\\nby Varda, but rather that she made them, that they originated with her.\\nTolkien also listed “from among” as one of the meanings of the primitive\\nelement ho, and this meaning is discernable in Quenya examples of parti-\\ntive genitive, the genitive indicating what something or someone is part of.\\nIn the phrase E¨\\narendil Elenion Ancalima “E¨\\narendil brightest of stars”\\n175\\n\\n\\n(Letters:385), the words elenion ancalima actually imply “the brightest\\none among the stars”: After his mythical transformation, E¨\\narendil carrying\\nthe Silmaril is himself one of the stars, as indicated by the chapter The Mir-\\nror of Galadriel in Volume One of LotR (“E¨\\narendil, the Evening Star, most\\nbeloved of the Elves, shone clear above. . . ”)\\nIt seems that a partitive genitive can denote what something is part of\\nin a wholly physical sense as well: In a phrase translated “the hands of the\\nPowers”, F´\\nıriel’s Song uses the plural genitive Valion for “of the Powers”\\n(sc. “of the Valar” – as indicated by the Etymologies, entry bal, Vali is\\na valid alternative to Valar as the plural form of Vala). The hands of\\nthe Valar, whenever they are incarnated, are physically part of the Valar\\nthemselves.\\nThe relationship between a place and something located in that place\\ncan also be expressed by means of the genitive case (cf. our own example\\n“Britain’s finest artists”). Nam´\\nari¨\\ne has Calaciryo m´\\nıri for “Calacirya’s\\njewels = the jewels of Calacirya” (Calacirya “Light-cleft” being a place in\\nthe Blessed Realm; notice that as in the case of Vardo “Varda’s”, the geni-\\ntive ending -o swallows up the final -a). Perhaps this can also be analyzed as\\na partitive genitive, if something located in a place is somehow considered a\\npart of that place. A more abstract, but perhaps basically similar construc-\\ntion is found in C´\\nırion’s Oath: Elenna·n´\\nor¨\\neo alcar “the glory of the land\\nof Elenna” or literally “(the) Elenna-land’s glory”. If we don’t perceive the\\nalcar or glory as being somehow “located” in Elenna (= N´\\numenor), we must\\nthink of it as emanating from Elenna, so that the genitive denotes source.\\n(See the next lesson concerning the comparable case alcar Orom¨\\neo.)\\nFamily relationships are denoted by the genitive case. In Treebeard’s\\nGreeting to Celeborn and Galadriel occurs the genitive phrase vanim´\\nalion\\nnostari, “parents of beautiful children” (Letters:308) or more literally “be-\\ngetters of fair ones” (SD:73) – vanim´\\nali meaning “fair ones” (genitive pl.\\nvanim´\\nalion) and nostari meaning “begetters”. One could also argue that\\nthis example shows that a noun denoting some kind of agent, and another\\nnoun denoting the one whom this agent does something to, can be coor-\\ndinated by means of the genitive case (the “fair ones” were begotten by\\nthe begetters). Whatever the case, we have other examples of family rela-\\ntionships described by means of a genitive. In the Silmarillion Index, entry\\n“Children of Il´\\nuvatar”, we learn that this is a translation of H´\\nıni Il´\\nuvataro.\\nSince Il´\\nuvatar (“All-father”) is a title of God, this example is somewhat pro-\\nfound, but the genitive case would certainly also be used in such phrases as\\n“the king’s sons” (probably i arano yondor). As long as the genitive case\\ndescribes parents’ relationship to their offspring, we could analyze the con-\\nstructions as derivative genitives, parents being the physical origin of their\\nchildren. But in the example Indis i·Ciryamo “the Mariner’s Wife” (UT:8),\\nthe genitive unquestionably describes a family relationship and nothing else,\\nsince the “Mariner” is not in any way the source or origin of his wife.\\n176\\n\\n\\nPerhaps we can generalize even further and say that relationships between\\npeople can be described by the Quenya genitive case. In WJ:369, Tolkien\\nindicated that the genitive would be used in such a phrase as Elw¨\\ne, Aran\\nSindaron “Elw¨\\ne [= Thingol], King of the Sindar [Grey-elves]”. Here the\\nrelationship is that between a ruler and the ruled. The same construction\\ncould however be used with reference to the area that is ruled: “King of\\nLestan´\\nor¨\\ne” would be Aran Lestan´\\nor¨\\neo (Lestan´\\nor¨\\ne being the Quenya name\\nof the land called Doriath in Sindarin). The genitive case may also refer to\\nthings that are ruled: In a booklet which accompanied an exhibition at the\\nMarquette University Archives in September 1983, Catalogue of an Exhibit\\nof the Manuscripts of JRRT, Taum Santoski presented Tolkien’s Quenya\\ntranslation of the title “Lord of the Rings”: Heru i Million, which is heru\\n“lord” + i “the” + what is probably the plural genitive of a noun mill¨\\ne\\n“ring”, not otherwise attested. In the LotR itself, the Quenya word for “ring”\\nis given as corma instead, Frodo and Sam being hailed as Cormacolindor\\nor Ring-bearers (this word occurring in the Cormallen Praise). For “Lord\\nof the Rings” we might therefore have expected Heru i Cormaron, but\\nanyhow, the phrase Heru i Million confirms that the genitive case can be\\nused to describe the relationship between a ruler and the ruled (people, area\\nor thing).\\nOne of the most abstract meanings the genitive case may take on is of =\\nabout, concerning, as in Quenta Silmarillion “the History of (= concern-\\ning) the Silmarils”. Another attested example is quental¨\\ne Noldoron “the\\nhistory of the Noldor” (VT39:16). It may well be that the genitive can be\\nused in this sense also in connection with verbs like nyar- “tell, relate” or\\nquet- “speak”, e.g. nyarnen i Eldo “I told about the Elf” or i Naucor\\nquetir alt¨\\ne harmaron “the Dwarves speak of great treasures”. We lack\\nattested examples, though.\\nSometimes the precise meaning of a genitive is difficult to clearly define.\\nIn the famous greeting elen s´\\nıla l´\\numenn’ omentielvo, “a star shines upon\\nthe hour of our meeting” or literally “. . . our meeting’s hour”, the genitive\\nsimply coordinates the nouns “meeting” and “hour” to indicate that the\\n“meeting” took place in the “hour”. In the phrase Heren Istarion “Or-\\nder of Wizards” (UT:388), one may ask whether the genitive Istarion “of\\nWizards” implies that the order was founded by wizards, that it belongs to\\nwizards, that it is made up of wizards, that it organizes or controls (or even\\nis controlled by) wizards, etc. In all likelihood, several or all of these shades\\nof meaning could be involved at the same time.\\nAlso consider this passage from LotR, in the chapter The Houses of Heal-\\ning in the third volume:\\nThereupon the herb-master entered. ‘Your lordship asked for\\nkingsfoil, as the rustics name it,’ he said, ‘or athelas in the noble\\ntongue, or to those who know somewhat of the Valinorean. . . ’\\n177\\n\\n\\n‘I do so,’ said Aragorn, ‘and I care not whether you say now as¨\\nea\\naranion or kingsfoil, so long as you have some.’\\nSo as¨\\nea aranion is the Quenya (or “Valinorean”) for “kingsfoil”, the herb\\ncalled athelas in Sindarin. The word as¨\\nea refers to some kind of helpful or\\nbeneficial plant, but what precise meaning does the genitive plural aranion\\n“of kings” express here? The kings didn’t own or originate the kingsfoil; it\\nwas merely used by them for healing purposes. Unless this is comparable to a\\nCalaciryo m´\\nıri-construction because the kingsfoil was physically with the\\nkings when they used it for healing (“life to the dying / In the king’s hand\\nlying!”), we must conclude that the genitive can also be used to indicate\\nrather ill-defined states of “belonging”, or mere association.\\nWord order: In the prose version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, Tolkien placed a genitive\\nin front of the noun it is dependent on: Aldaron lassi = literally “trees’\\nwings”, ´\\nomaryo l´\\nırinen = literally “in her voice’s song”, Calaciryo m´\\nıri\\n= literally “Calacirya’s jewels” – cf. the interlinear translation in RGEO:66–\\n67. (It should be noted that aldaron lassi was altered from lassi al-\\ndaron in the “poetic” version in LotR.) Above the entire “prose” version,\\nTolkien also placed the superscript Altariello naini¨\\ne, “Altariel’s (= Gal-\\nadriel’s) lament”. Cirion’s Oath displays the same word order: N´\\nor¨\\neo alcar\\n“the glory of the land” or literally “(the) land’s glory”, Elendil vorondo\\nvoronw¨\\ne “the faith of Elendil the Faithful” or literally “Elendil (the) Faith-\\nful’s faith” (the genitive ending being attached to the last word in the phrase\\nElendil voronda “E. [the] Faithful”; as usual, the ending displaces a final\\n-a). In LotR we also have elenion ancalima for “stars’ brightest [one]” =\\n“the brightest [one] of [the] stars”. So in normal prose, should the genitive\\nalways precede, just like the English genitive in ’s?\\nNot necessarily, it would seem. Most attested Quenya genitives follow the\\nnoun they are dependent on, with the same word order as an English of -\\nconstruction. In the case of most of these attestations, we have no reason\\nto suppose the word order is particularly “poetic”: Quenta Silmarillion\\n“History of the Silmarils”, Heru i Million “Lord of the Rings”, l´\\numenn’\\nomentielvo “on the hour of our meeting”, as¨\\nea aranion “as¨\\nea [helpful\\nplant] of kings” (kingsfoil; the two latter examples are from LotR), H´\\nıni\\nIl´\\nuvataro “Children of Il´\\nuvatar” (Silmarillion Index), mannar Valion\\n“into the hands of the Powers” (F´\\nıriel’s Song), Heren Istarion “Order\\nof Wizards” (UT:388), Pel´\\nori Valion “Fencing Heights of the Vali [Valar]”\\n(MR:18), aran Sindaron “King of the Sindar” (WJ:369), Aran Lesta-\\nn´\\nor¨\\neo “King of Doriath” (ibid.), i equessi R´\\numilo “the sayings of R´\\numil”\\n(WJ:398), lamb¨\\ne Eldaron or lamb¨\\ne Quendion “the language of the\\nElves” (WJ:368/PM:395), Rithil-Anamo “Ring of Doom” (WJ:401).\\nWhere Tolkien rendered such a construction by employing an English gen-\\nitive in -’s, he must of necessity reverse the Quenya word order: Indis\\ni·Ciryamo “The Mariner’s Wife” (UT:8).\\n178\\n\\n\\nOne potential misunderstanding may be mentioned here: Occasionally\\npeople are seen to be completely seduced by English of -constructions, think-\\ning that the genitive ending -o should appear at the same place in the phrase\\nas the English preposition of does. Therefore they end up attaching the gen-\\nitive ending to the wrong word in an hopeless attempt to copy the English\\norder of all the elements in the phrase. Ask ten people to translate “the glory\\nof Aman” into a Quenya genitive phrase, and it is a good bet that several\\nof them will come up with something like i alcaro Aman, which actually\\nmeans “the glory’s Aman” or “Aman of the glory”! What we want is either\\nAmano alcar (think “Aman’s glory”) or (i) alcar Amano.\\nAs for the word order employed when a preposition is used in conjunction\\nwith a genitive phrase, the prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne provides the strange example\\nVardo nu luini tellumar. Tolkien translated this as “under Varda’s blue\\ndomes”. As we see, the Quenya wording is literally “Varda’s under blue\\ndomes”, the preposition following the genitive noun – a most unexpected\\norder, especially considering that this is supposed to be normal prose. Yet the\\nprose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne also has ve aldaron r´\\namar for “like the wings of trees” (or\\nliterally “like trees’ wings”). Here the word order is exactly what we would\\nexpect, namely preposition + genitive + the noun it governs (not **aldaron\\nve r´\\namar or whatever!) It is almost tempting to assume that Vardo nu\\nluini tellumar is simply an error for ?nu Vardo luini tellumar. At this\\nstage at least, I would always use the “English-style” word-order exemplified\\nby ve aldaron r´\\namar. Perhaps Vardo nu luini tellumar is an example\\nof the exceedingly esoteric syntax preferred by the Eldar, whose thoughts\\nare not like those of Mortal Men. . . or perhaps it is just a typo. We must\\nawait the publication of more material.\\nThe use of the article: A genitive determines the noun it is dependent\\nupon, just like the definite article does: Indis i·Ciryamo does mean “the\\nMariner’s Wife” = “the Wife of the Mariner”. It cannot be interpreted “a\\nwife of the mariner” in an indefinite or undetermined sense, even though\\nthe definite article i is missing before the noun indis “wife, bride”. Same\\nwith lamb¨\\ne Quendion “the language of the Elves” (PM:395, emphasis\\nadded); this cannot be interpreted “a language of the Elves”, for lamb¨\\ne is\\ndetermined by the genitive Quendion. Cf. English “the Elves’ language”\\n= “the [not a] language of the Elves”, even though there is no “the” before\\n“language” in a phrase like “the Elves’ language”. One must understand\\nthat while the first noun of an English of -construction may or may not be\\ndefinite and accordingly receives the appropriate article (the or a), a Quenya\\nnoun connecting with a following genitive is always determined, whether or\\nnot the article i is used. The system is actually the same as in English, with\\none minor complication added: whereas an English genitive always precedes\\nthe noun it is dependent on, a Quenya genitive may come after this noun\\nas well. The latter word order inevitably makes one think of English of -\\nconstructions, but they are strictly not comparable as far as grammar is\\n179\\n\\n\\nconcerned – even though Quenya genitive phrases are often best rendered\\nas English of -constructions.\\nWhere the genitive follows the noun it is dependent upon, the use of\\nthe definite article before this noun is apparently optional. The noun is\\ndefinite anyway, so including the article is in a way superfluous; yet we\\nhave the examples i arani Eldaron “the kings of the Eldar” (WJ:369) and\\ni equessi R´\\numilo “the sayings of R´\\numil” (WJ:398). Equessi R´\\numilo,\\narani Eldaron without the article would have meant precisely the same\\nthing. Conversely, the phrase indis i ciryamo “the mariner’s wife” could\\npresumably have been expanded to read i indis i ciryamo “the wife of the\\nmariner”, again without altering the meaning.\\nNo attested example of a preceding genitive is followed by an article.\\nBut if we can choose freely between i equessi R´\\numilo and just equessi\\nR´\\numilo, perhaps this principle would still apply if the genitive is moved to\\nthe beginning of the phrase? R´\\numilo equessi “R´\\numil’s sayings” is certainly\\na valid wording, but what about R´\\numilo i equessi? Would this be equally\\npossible, or would it sound just as weird as “R´\\numil’s the sayings” in English?\\nI, for one, would avoid this uncertain and unattested construction.\\nA few prepositions govern the genitive case. It is said that ´\\nu “without”\\nis normally followed by genitive, Tolkien mentioning the example ´\\nu calo\\n“without light” (VT39:14). This calo would seem to be the genitive form of\\na noun cala “light” (as in Calaquendi “Light-elves” or Calacirya “Light-\\ncleft”).\\nSummary of Lesson Eleven:\\nThe Quenya noun is inflected for a number of cases, special noun-forms which\\nclarify what function a noun has in a sentence. The forms so far discussed\\nare examples of the nominative case, used when a noun is the subject or the\\nobject of a sentence (a distinct “object” case, the accusative, had formerly\\noccurred but fell out of use in Exilic Quenya). The Quenya genitive case\\nhas the ending -o (displacing a final -a, where such is present); the plural\\nform is -on (added to the nominative plural), whereas dual genitives receive\\nthe ending -to (but nouns with nominative dual forms in -u would possibly\\nhave genitive duals in -uo rather than -uto). The noun governed by the\\ngenitive can come either before or after it; R´\\numilo equessi or (i) equessi\\nR´\\numilo would work equally well for “R´\\numil’s sayings/the sayings of R´\\numil”.\\nThe Quenya genitive properly indicates source or origin (including former\\npossessors), but also covers most relationships between people (like family\\nrelationships), as well as the relationship between a ruler and the ruled\\n(people or territory). “Xo Y” or “Y Xo” may also imply “Y of X” in the\\nsense of Y being a physical part of X, or (if X is a plural word) Y being\\none of X. Thus E¨\\narendil is said to be elenion ancalima “stars’ brightest”\\n180\\n\\n\\n= “the brightest one of (/among) stars”. The relationship between a place\\nand something located in that place may also be expressed by means of\\na genitive: Calaciryo m´\\nıri “the jewels of Calacirya”. A genitive can also\\nexpress “of = about, concerning”, as in Quenta Silmarillion “the History\\nof the Silmarils”. Furthermore, the preposition ´\\nu “without” normally takes\\nthe genitive case.\\nVocabulary\\ncainen “ten”\\nlaman (lamn-) “animal” (the stem-form may also simply be laman-, but we will\\nuse lamn- here)\\nyulma “cup”\\nlimp¨\\ne “wine” (within Tolkien’s mythos, limp¨\\ne was some special drink of the Elves\\nor of the Valar – but in the Etymologies, entry lip, Tolkien also provided the\\nparenthetical gloss “wine”, and we will use the word in that sense here)\\nrass¨\\ne “horn” (“especially on living animal, but also applied to mountains” – Etym.,\\nentry ras)\\ntoron- (torn-) “brother”\\nMenel “the firmament, sky, heaven, the heavens” (but the Quenya word is\\nsingular. It is apparently not used in a religious sense, but refers to the physical\\nheavens only. Cf. Meneltarma “Pillar of Heaven” as the name of the central\\nmountain in N´\\numenor. The word Menel is capitalized and apparently treated as\\na proper name, hence not requiring any article.)\\nulya- “to pour” (transitive past tense ulyan¨\\ne, intransitive ull¨\\ne)\\ns´\\nır¨\\ne “river”\\ncilya “cleft, gorge” (also cirya, as in Calacirya “Pass of Light” or “Light-cleft”,\\nwhich name actually appears as Calacilya in some texts – but since cirya also\\nmeans “ship”, we will use cilya here)\\nanto “mouth” (possibly representing earlier amatˆ\\no, amto; if so it likely comes from\\nthe same root as the verb mat- “to eat”)\\n´\\nu preposition “without” (normally followed by genitive)\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Hirnent¨\\ne i firin ohtaro macil.\\nB. Menelo eleni s´\\nılar.\\nC. Tirnen i nisso hendu.\\n181\\n\\n\\nD. Cenuvant¨\\ne Aran Atanion ar ily¨\\ne n´\\norion.\\nE. Coa ´\\nu talamion um¨\\ne anwa coa.\\nF. I t´\\nario ´\\numi¨\\ne torni merir tur¨\\ne Ambaro lier.\\nG. I rassi i lamnion nar alt¨\\ne.\\nH. I cainen r´\\navi lintav¨\\ne manter i rocco hr´\\nav¨\\ne.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. The birds of heaven will see ten warriors between the great rivers.\\nJ. The king’s thrall poured wine into the biggest of the cups. (“Big-\\ngest, greatest” = analta. Time to repeat Lesson Five, where we discussed\\nsuperlatives?)\\nK. The Elf’s brother gathered (together) the ten books about stars.\\nL. The great river of the land poured into a gorge.\\nM. A man without a mouth cannot speak.\\nN. I have seen the greatest of all mountains under the sky.\\nO. I want to find a land without great animals like lions.\\nP. You will see an animal without horns (dual: a couple of horns)\\n182\\n\\n\\nLesson 12\\nThe Possessive-Adjectival case. Verbal or Abstract nouns\\nand how they interact with the Genitive and Possessive\\ncases.\\nThis lesson is mainly devoted to a case that by its function in many ways\\ncomplements the genitive case. But first of all, let me say that there is no\\neasy answer to the question of what this case should be called. Tolkien listed\\nit in the Plotz Letter, but he did not name it. The case in -o or -on that\\nwe discussed in the previous lesson is referred to simply as the “genitive”\\nin several sources. But in WJ:369, Tolkien refers to the forms in -o(n) as\\n“partitive-derivative genitives”, whereas the other case that we will now dis-\\ncuss is called a “possessive-adjectival [genitive]”. On the previous page, he\\nnoted regarding the case with the ending -o(n) that “properly it was used\\npartitively, or to describe the source or origin, not as a ‘possessive’” (em-\\nphasis added). The context indicates that the other case that he went on to\\ndescribe is used as a “possessive”. So simply to have a some suitable desig-\\nnation of this case, I shall adopt the word possessive as its name. (Another\\nplausible term is “adjectival case”, which is also used by some students.)\\n12.1\\nThe Possessive\\nBy its function, this case – rather than the case in -o(n) which Tolkien nor-\\nmally terms the “genitive” when discussing Quenya grammar – corresponds\\nmuch better to the English genitive in -’s. Even so, in certain contexts this\\ncase is also best translated using English of -constructions.\\nThe possessive case is formed by adding the ending -va, e.g. Eldava as\\nthe possessive form of Elda. In the case of a noun ending in a consonant, the\\nending probably takes the form -wa instead. The assumption that the end-\\ning -va appears in the variant form -wa after consonants is also supported\\nby this fact: The suffix -va is in origin a mere adjectival ending, found in\\nsome common adjectives as well, and in such cases it is seen to appear as\\n-wa following a consonant – e.g. anwa “real, actual, true” or helwa “pale\\nblue”. In Primitive Elvish, the ending had the form -wˆ\\na, but in Quenya, w\\n183\\n\\n\\nnormally became v when intervocalic (occurring between vowels). Cf. an-\\nother common adjective displaying this ending, tereva “fine, acute”, which\\nword Tolkien noted had been terˆ\\newˆ\\na in Primitive Elvish (see Etym., entry\\nter, teres). Since most Quenya nouns end in a vowel, the w of -wˆ\\na typi-\\ncally became intervocalic when this ending was added, and normally turned\\ninto v (e.g. Eldˆ\\na-wˆ\\na, Eldawˆ\\na becoming Eldava, just like terˆ\\newˆ\\na became\\ntereva). But if we combine this ending with a noun ending in a consonant,\\ne.g. atar “father” (unchanged since Primitive Elvish), atar-wˆ\\na would pre-\\nsumably produce Quenya atarwa, original w remaining w because it is not\\nhere intervocalic.\\nThe Plotz Letter lists no dual forms of the possessive case, but I can’t\\nimagine why such forms should not exist. Even so, I won’t construct any\\nexercises involving these slightly hypothetical forms, but presumably the\\nsimple suffix -va would be used after a dual form in -u – e.g. Alduva as the\\npossessive form of Aldu “Two Trees”. The more frequent dual forms in -t\\nwould likely have possessive forms in -twa, a dual like ciryat “a couple of\\nships” becoming ciryatwa (accented on the second-to-last syllable because\\nof the consonant cluster tw).\\nJust like the Plotz Letter lists no dual form of the possessive case, Tolkien\\nmentioned no plural form either – which fact led some investigators to con-\\nclude that this case has no plural at all! But other material does indicate\\nthat such a form exists (suggesting that we can also feel free to extrapolate\\na dual form as we tried to do above: the Plotz Letter does not necessarily\\ninclude everything). In WJ:368 Tolkien indicates that the possessive has a\\nplural form in -iva, combining the simple ending -va with the plural marker\\n-i. In this case, this ending is used even if the possessive suffix is added\\nto words that would normally have nominative plurals in -r, like Eldar:\\nThe plural possessive is not **Eldarva or **Eldarwa or whatever, but\\nEldaiva, attested in the phrase lamb¨\\ne Eldaiva “language of the Eldar”\\n(WJ:369). The plural form -iva is said to be an innovation in Quenya, not\\na form inherited from older stages of Elvish.\\nWhen the initial vowel of the ending -iva merges with the last vowel of\\nthe noun to produce a diphthong, like ai in Elda + iva = Eldaiva, this\\ndiphthong of course receives the stress (eld-AI-va). Most nouns in -¨\\ne would\\nat an older stage have behaved in a similar way, a diphthong ei arising; the\\nplural possessive of lass¨\\ne “leaf” may at one point have been lasseiva (for\\neven older ?lasseiwˆ\\na, if such a form was ever in use). But the diphthong\\nei eventually became long ´\\nı in Quenya, so perhaps the current form was\\nlass´\\nıva – with a long ´\\nı still attracting the stress. In the Plotz Letter, such a\\nlong ´\\nı is observed in the plural form of another case: lass´\\nınen as the plural\\ninstrumental, to be discussed in a later lesson.\\nIt is not quite clear what would happen when the ending -iva is added to\\na noun already ending in -i, like t´\\nari “queen”, or a noun with a stem-form\\nin -i, like l´\\nom¨\\ne (l´\\nomi-) “night” (SD:415). Possibly the two i’s would merge\\n184\\n\\n\\ninto a long ´\\nı, so that “of queens” or “of nights” is something like ?t´\\nar´\\nıva,\\n?l´\\nom´\\nıva – whereas the singular forms “of a queen” and “of a night” must\\nbe t´\\nariva, l´\\nomiva. (The pronunciation would be markedly different: these\\nsingular forms are accented on the first syllable, the third from the end, while\\nthe plural forms would be accented on the second-to-last syllable because\\nof the long vowel that suddenly turns up there – if the final -i of the noun\\nand the first vowel of the ending -iva do indeed merge into a long ´\\nı.) But\\nit is also possible that a form like t´\\nariva has to do duty for both singular\\nand plural, so that one must rely on the context to distinguish “of a queen”\\nfrom “of queens”.\\nThere are a few more things to say about the formation of the possessive\\ncase (see “Various notes” below), but we will now return to its function.\\nThis is the case you use to describe simple possession, the typical func-\\ntion of the English genitive. In the previous lesson, we have described how\\nthe Quenya genitive is rather used to indicate source or origin, not simple\\nownership. If the genitive describes the relationship between owners and\\nthe things they own, we are dealing with former rather than current owner-\\nship. Tolkien nicely explained this by contrasting the genitive and possessive\\ncases, and we can well afford to quote him, recapitulating the function of\\nthe genitive in the process:\\n’Possession’ was indicated by the adjectival ending -va. . . Thus\\n‘Orome’s horn’ was r´\\noma Orom´\\neva (if it remained in his posses-\\nsion) . . . but [the genitive phrase] r´\\noma Orom¨\\neo meant ‘a horn\\ncoming from Orome’, e.g. as a gift, in circumstances where the\\nrecipient, showing the gift with pride, might say ‘this is Orome’s\\nhorn’. If he said ‘this was Orome’s horn’, he would say Orom´\\neva.\\nSimilarly [the genitive phrase] lambe Eldaron would not be used\\nfor ‘the language of the Eldar’ (unless conceivably in a case where\\nthe whole language was adopted by another people), which is\\n[rather] expressed . . . by . . . lambe Eldaiva. [WJ:368–369]\\nSo the possessive case may indicate simple ownership at the time that is\\nbeing considered (past or present – whereas origin, or former possession, is\\nindicated by the genitive case). An example from the Silmarillion is Mindon\\nEldali´\\neva, the “Tower of the Eldali¨\\ne [= Elf-people]”, meaning simply a\\ntower owned by the Eldali¨\\ne. (Certainly they had also originated it, but they\\nwere still its owners, so a genitive would be less appropriate.) We would\\nalso have such phrases as (i) coa i Eldava “the Elf’s house”/”the house\\nof the Elf”, i parmar i vend´\\nıva “the books of the maidens”, i m´\\nıri i\\nNaucoiva “the jewels of the Dwarves”. As for this word order, it should\\nbe observed that the noun which receives the possessive ending appears as\\nthe last word of the possessive phrase in all attested instances: The noun\\nit governs (denoting the thing that is owned) comes before it. It may well\\n185\\n\\n\\nbe that one could reverse the word order and say (for instance) ?i Eldava\\ncoa with the same word order as in English: “the Elf’s house”. However, I\\nwould avoid this construction until we have it attested in Tolkien’s papers.\\nThe noun governed by the possessive form does not receive the arti-\\ncle in most of our attested examples; it is already sufficiently determined:\\nR´\\noma Orom´\\neva is not indefinite “a horn of Orom¨\\ne’s”, as if it is first in-\\ntroduced into the story, or it is implied that Orom¨\\ne had other horns as\\nwell. (According to Tolkien, this meaning would be expressed by means of\\na “loose compound”, the words simply being juxtaposed without involv-\\ning any case endings at all: Orom¨\\ne r´\\noma = “an Orom¨\\ne horn”.) R´\\noma\\nOrom´\\neva is “Orom¨\\ne’s horn” = “the horn of Orom¨\\ne”, r´\\noma being deter-\\nmined by Orom´\\neva. But we could certainly slip in an explicit article and\\nsay i r´\\noma Orom´\\neva without changing the meaning; as demonstrated in\\nthe previous lesson, both constructions are equally valid in a phrase involv-\\ning a genitive noun. An attested example involving the possessive case is the\\nphrase i arani Eldaiv¨\\ne “the Kings of the Eldar” (WJ:369; this primarily\\nmeans “those kings in a particular assembly who were Elvish”, whereas i\\narani Eldaron with a genitive means “those among the Eldar who were\\nkings”, or simply “the kings ruling the Eldar”). The article could probably\\nbe omitted without changing the meaning: Arani Eldaiv¨\\ne would still mean\\n“the kings of the Eldar”, the possessive form Eldaiv¨\\ne determining arani\\nanyway. (As for why the ending -iva here appears as -iv¨\\ne, see below; this\\nprobably contradicts some evidence from LotR, so we may read Eldaiva\\ninstead.)\\nThe possessive case does not always indicate “possession” in the narrowest\\nsense, but may also describe somebody’s relationship to their more-or-less\\nabstract attributes or properties. In such contexts, one can use the genitive\\nas well. Tolkien mentioned that “the splendour (glory) of Orom¨\\ne” could be\\nexpressed in two ways: One may use the possessive-adjectival case and say\\nalcar Orom´\\neva, referring to Orom¨\\ne’s alcar or splendour as a permanent\\nattribute of his. But one could also use the genitive case; the wording alcar\\nOrom¨\\neo emphasizes that Orom¨\\ne is the source of the splendour. This could\\nrefer to “his splendour as seen at the moment (proceeding from him) or at\\nsome point in a narrative” – focusing on the moment rather than on some\\npermanent state (WJ:369). Cirion’s Oath uses the genitive in the phrase\\nElenna·n´\\nor¨\\neo alcar “the glory of the land of Elenna”. If one used the\\npossessive instead, to produce the wording (i) alcar Elenna·n´\\noreva, it\\nwould apparently put the emphasis on the “glory” of Elenna as a permanent\\nattribute of the land. In Middle-earth time, Cirion’s Oath was spoken long\\nafter Elenna (N´\\numenor) had been destroyed and its “glory” proven to be\\nrather less than permanent, so perhaps this would be inappropriate.\\nIn our home-made example alcar Elenna·n´\\noreva, we added the posses-\\nsive ending to a noun that does not denote a sentient being. This is hardly\\nimproper, for we have such attested examples as Taur¨\\ne Huin´\\neva “For-\\n186\\n\\n\\nest of Gloom” and Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva “Hiding of Valinor”. Where no\\nsentient is involved, the possessive case obviously takes on other shades of\\nmeaning; no “ownership” can be involved, since things or substances can’t\\nown anything. Cf. for instance the first example of this case that was ever\\npublished, in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR. Here we have yuldar . . . lisse-miruv´\\noreva\\nfor “draughts of [the] sweet mead” (in the prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in RGEO:68, the\\nwords are actually directly juxtaposed as yuldar lisse-miruv´\\noreva; in the\\npoetic version in LotR, a number of other words intrude between the two\\nelements of this phrase). For decades, this was the sole available example\\nof the case in -va. Here, this case ending implies “(made) of”: The yuldar\\nor “draughts” consist of lisse-miruv´\\nor¨\\ne or “sweet mead”. Following this\\nexample, two nouns like ri¨\\ne “crown” and telp¨\\ne “silver” can evidently be\\ncombined as ri¨\\ne telpeva, “crown of silver”. It may be noted that in such\\na case – the possessive noun denoting a material – the noun it governs is\\nnot necessarily be determined by it (not “the crown of silver”). Otherwise,\\nyuldar lisse-miruv´\\noreva would have to mean **“the draughts of sweet\\nmead”, but Tolkien did not translate it in this way. – Having only this one\\nexample from Nam´\\nari¨\\ne to work from, early researchers thought the case in\\n-va was what they called a “compositive” case denoting what something\\nconsists of (is composed of). This usage should be noted, but we now know\\nthat this is only one of the secondary functions of this case.\\nYet the fact remains that the ending -va is in origin simply adjectival, so\\nthis case may easily take on a “descriptive” function. Regarding the geni-\\ntive case in -o, Tolkien noted that properly it was NOT used “adjectivally\\nto describe qualities” (WJ:368): this is rather the function of the case in\\n-va. The example Taur¨\\ne Huin´\\neva (Etym, entry phuy) apparently means\\n“Forest of Gloom”; cf. the nouns taur¨\\ne “forest” and huin¨\\ne “deep shadow,\\ngloom”. One may almost just as well treat huin´\\neva as a regular adjective\\nand translate Taur¨\\ne Huin´\\neva as “Gloomy Forest” or “Shadowy Forest”.\\nThe idea is that the “forest” is characterized by “gloom”, so the case in -va\\ncan describe what characterizes something or someone. This “characteris-\\ntic” may also be an abstract or action: In early material (LT1:14) we find\\nthe example Mar Vanwa Tyali´\\neva “Cottage of Lost Play” – the mar or\\n“cottage” being characterized by vanwa tyali¨\\ne, “lost play” (one must read\\nthe earliest Silmarillion manuscripts as reproduced in LT1 and LT2 to un-\\nderstand precisely what this refers to). It should however be noted that the\\ngenitive case may also be used in such a context; in the late essay Quendi and\\nEldar we have Rithil-Anamo for “Doom-ring” or more literally “Ring of\\nDoom” (WJ:401; the Old Quenya word rithil “ring, circle” would probably\\nbecome risil in Exilic Quenya). Rithil-Anamo does not refer to Sauron’s\\nRing, but to the M´\\nahanaxar, the circle where the Valar passed judgement.\\nThe word anamo is not otherwise attested, but must be the genitive of\\neither anama or anan (with stem anam-); it apparently means “doom,\\njudgement, judging” – the activity characterizing or going on in the Circle\\n187\\n\\n\\n(Rithil). Perhaps the possessive case could have been used instead (?Rithil\\nAnam´\\nava or ?Rithil Ananwa) without changing the meaning.\\nIn some instances one may indeed be in doubt which case to use, the gen-\\nitive or the possessive; sometimes Tolkien’s own choice is slightly surprising.\\nHe used the possessive in the phrase Noldo-quentasta Ingoldova “In-\\ngoldo’s History of the Noldor” (VT39:16) – the Elf Ingoldo being the author\\nof this particular Noldo-quentasta or “Noldo-history”. Yet the emphasis is\\nhardly on the fact that Ingoldo owns this “Noldo-history” (unless copyright\\nwas a big issue in Valinor). Ingoldo is just the author or originator, and for\\nthis meaning we might expect the genitive case to be used instead, since it\\nfrequently describes origin or source. Yet there may be certain conflicting\\nconcerns here: Since the genitive case may also signify about, concerning\\n(as in Quenta Silmarillion), perhaps Noldo-quentasta Ingoldo with a\\ngenitive instead could easily have been misunderstood as “the Noldo-history\\nabout Ingoldo”.\\nAnyhow, in one attested example, Tolkien’s choice of case certainly\\namounts to an outright contradiction of what he had written earlier, in the\\nessay Quendi and Eldar: We have quoted his explanation of why it would\\nnormally be improper to use the genitive in a phrase like lamb¨\\ne Eldaron\\n“the language of the Eldar” – this would imply “the language coming from\\nthe Eldar, later taken over by others”! One had to use the possessive case\\ninstead: lamb¨\\ne Eldaiva. Yet Tolkien himself used lamb¨\\ne Quendion for\\n“the language of Elves” in a very late source (PM:395) – and Quendion is\\nunmistakably a plural genitive. The fact that Tolkien here uses another word\\nfor “Elf” (Quend¨\\ne instead of Elda) can hardly make any difference: Ac-\\ncording to the system set out in Quendi and Eldar, we would expect lamb¨\\ne\\nQuend´\\nıva, the possessive case being used of current ownership. Perhaps we\\ncan resolve the contradiction in “internal” terms, appealing to a linguistic\\ndevelopment within the mythos: Tolkien noted that there was an increasing\\ntendency to prefer the genitive case, people sometimes using it instead of\\nthe possessive case (WJ:369). So in “late usage” it would perhaps be more\\nnatural to say lamb¨\\ne Quendion rather than lamb¨\\ne Quend´\\nıva, the former\\ndistinctions fading away. If one is in doubt which case to use, the genitive\\nor the possessive, it is probably best to pick the former.\\n12.2\\nVarious notes\\nfilling in some details\\nNOTE #1: Vowel-lengthening in the syllable preceding the case ending: The\\nobservant student will have noted that sometimes, the last vowel of a noun\\nis lengthened when the ending -va is added. For instance, Eldali¨\\ne + va\\nproduces Eldali´\\neva with a long ´\\ne (which must then receive the stress, ac-\\ncording to the normal rules). Orom´\\neva and tyali´\\neva as the possessive forms\\n188\\n\\n\\nof the nouns Orom¨\\ne and tyali¨\\ne are other examples. Notice that the words\\nEldali¨\\ne, Orom¨\\ne, tyali¨\\ne all end in two short syllables (containing neither\\nconsonant clusters, diphthongs or long vowels). If the ending -va were added\\nafter them and no further changes were made, the extra syllable provided\\nby this ending would make the stress move to what is now the third syllable\\nfrom the end (cf. the stress rules set out in Lesson One). This would result\\nin the rather awkward pronunciations **orOMeva, **eldaLIeva, **tyaLIeva.\\nSo where the ending -va is added to a noun ending in two short syllables,\\nand there is no final consonant, the vowel of the last of these syllables is\\napparently lengthened to make sure that it will receive the stress: oroM ´\\nEva,\\neldali´\\nEva, tyali ´\\nEva. But if the noun ends in a consonant, there is never any\\nneed to lengthen the vowel, for where we are dealing with a noun of such\\na shape, the suffixing of the case ending (probably appearing as -wa) will\\nresult in a consonant cluster which will make the stress move to the vowel be-\\nfore the new cluster anyhow. For instance, while a name like Menelmacar\\n(the Quenya name of Orion) is naturally accented on the third syllable from\\nthe end because it ends in two short syllables, its possessive form Menel-\\nmacarwa would be accented on -arw- because of the cluster rw here arising:\\nThis cluster makes what is now the second-to-last syllable long, and therefore\\nit receives the stress.\\nIt is unclear whether the system just sketched – the final vowel of a noun\\nending in two short syllables being lengthened before the ending -va – would\\nstill be valid in the case of a word that only consists of these two short\\nsyllables. Such words are stressed on the first syllable when they occur by\\nthemselves, e.g. li¨\\ne “people”. The example Eldali´\\neva shows lengthening of\\nthe ´\\ne, but li¨\\ne is here compounded, and Eldali¨\\ne without the case ending is\\naccented on the a. It may be that if li¨\\ne occurred by itself, its possessive form\\nwould be lieva (accented on the first syllable) rather than li´\\neva (accented\\non the ´\\ne). We cannot know. In the case of a word like Vala, my gut feeling\\nis that its possessive form should be Valava rather than ?Val´\\nava. But since\\nthere is no way of being certain, I will avoid these problems in the exercises\\nbelow.\\nHuin´\\neva (instead of **huineva) as the possessive form of huin¨\\ne “sha-\\ndow, gloom” is however a puzzling example. For a while I actually thought\\nfinal -¨\\ne is always lengthened before the ending -va, but the Plotz Letter\\nindicates that the possessive form of lass¨\\ne “leaf” is lasseva (not **lass´\\neva).\\nIf the ui of huin¨\\ne is counted as two syllables (u-i), not as a diphthong, this\\nexample would conform with the rule set out above: hu-i-n¨\\ne would have\\nits final vowel lengthened when -va is added, producing huin´\\neva. But since\\nTolkien explicitly stated that Quenya ui is a diphthong – hence pronounced\\nas one long syllable and not as two short ones – this explanation is not\\nsatisfactory. Yet ui is supposed to be a diphthong in Sindarin as well, but in\\none Sindarin poem, ui occurs where the poetic meter demands two syllables.\\nPerhaps ui, although a diphthong, is somehow “overlong” and sometimes\\n189\\n\\n\\ncounts as two syllables, even though it is perceived as one syllable by the\\near. Bottom line is, if the case ending -va is to be added to a noun with\\nui in its second-to-last syllable, the vowel in the final syllable is apparently\\nlengthened before -va is suffixed. So the possessive form of nouns like cuil¨\\ne\\n“life” or tuima “sprout” should evidently be cuil´\\neva, tuim´\\nava.\\nAs for the genitive ending -o, there is no similar lengthening when the\\nending is to be added to a noun ending in two short syllables: The genitive\\nform of Orom¨\\ne is attested as Orom¨\\neo, not **Orom´\\neo (contrast possessive\\nOrom´\\neva). The form Orom¨\\neo must be accented on -rom-. It seems likely,\\nthen, that nothing special happens when -o is added to a word like huin¨\\ne\\neither (genitive probably huin¨\\neo, hardly ?huin´\\neo). However, I should like\\nto see an attested example of what happens when the ending -o is added\\nto a noun ending in two short vowels in hiatus – most frequently -i¨\\ne, as in\\nVali¨\\ne “female Vala”. ?Vali¨\\neo would have to be accented on i, which sounds\\nrather awkward; the same goes for the plural form ?Valieron. I strongly\\nsuspect that in such a case, the vowel in the syllable before the genitive\\nending would be lengthened, thus attracting the stress: Vali´\\neo, Vali´\\neron.\\nBut once again, there is no way of being certain; we must await further\\npublications.\\nNOTE #2: Special stem-forms of nouns: Where a noun has a special\\nstem-form, it would always appear when the genitive ending -o is added. The\\ngenitive of n´\\nıs (niss-) “woman” or talan (talam-) “floor” would be nisso\\n“woman’s” and talamo “floor’s”. Yet the ending -va or -wa for possessive\\nmay sometimes produce more complex results. Adding -wa to a noun like\\ntalan, talam- would probably result in talanwa, not **talamwa, since\\nmw regularly becomes nw in Quenya. Suffixing -wa to filit (filic-) “bird”\\nwould result in filicwa all right, but this we must spell filiqua according\\nto the normal conventions. I am not quite sure what the possessive form\\nof n´\\nıs (niss-) “woman” should be. **Nisswa is certainly not a possible\\nQuenya word; perhaps we would see something like nisseva, an extra e\\nturning up before the ending to break up the impossible consonant cluster\\n(and following a vowel, we would regularly see -va instead of -wa). – The\\n“stem-form” of some nouns is simply a contraction, e.g. fern- as the stem of\\nferen “beech-tree”. Surely the genitive would be ferno, but the possessive\\nmay well be ferenwa with no contraction, since other examples indicate\\nthat such contraction does not occur before a consonant cluster (**fernwa\\nis not a possible Quenya word). Of course we could slip in an e here as well,\\nproducing ?ferneva, but I would certainly put my money on ferenwa.\\nNOTE #3: A Tolkienian rule we can afford to ignore (!): In WJ:407,\\nTolkien states that the case derived by adding -va never lost it strong adjec-\\ntival connotations; he actually says that it “was and remained an adjective”.\\nAs we remember from Lesson Four, adjectives in -a have plural forms in -¨\\ne\\n(for archaic -ai). According to what Tolkien says in WJ:407, a possessive\\nnoun (with ending -va) that governs a plural word would agree with it in\\n190\\n\\n\\nnumber just like any other adjective, the ending -va turning into -v¨\\ne. For this\\nreason, he used i arani Eldaiv¨\\ne for “the Kings of the Eldar” in WJ:369:\\nEldaiva “of the Eldar” becomes Eldaiv¨\\ne (archaic Eldaivai) to agree in\\nnumber with the plural noun it is dependent on, namely arani “kings”.\\nHowever, this may be one of the cases of Tolkien revising Elvish grammar\\nwithout noticing that his new ideas contradicted something he had already\\npublished. For in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in LotR, we have yuldar . . . lisse-miruv´\\noreva\\nfor “draughts of sweet mead”, and Tolkien later confirmed this construction\\nin The Road Goes Ever On. Since yuldar “draughts” is a plural word, lisse-\\nmiruv´\\noreva should have been lisse-miruv´\\norev¨\\ne according to the system\\nTolkien later set out in WJ:407. As I said, the likeliest “external” explanation\\nis simply that Tolkien introduced a new rule without noticing that he had\\nalready published something that contradicted it. In “internal” terms, we\\nmay perhaps assume that the possessive form was still perceived as a kind of\\nderived adjective in the older period, and therefore it also agreed in number\\nlike regular adjectives. But as the Ages went by in Middle-earth, the forms\\nderived by means of the ending -va came to be perceived more strictly as\\na noun case only, and by the late Third Age when Galadriel composed her\\nLament, the adjective-style agreement in number had been abandoned. I do\\nnot use it in the exercises I have made for this course.\\n12.3\\nVerbal or Abstract nouns\\nand how they interact with the genitive and possessive cases\\nWe have earlier defined nouns as words denoting things, whereas verbs are\\nwords that denote actions – but we have also hinted that linguists would\\nfind such definitions rather simplistic. Some nouns do denote actions, and\\nthey are appropriately called verbal nouns. Since such nouns may interact\\nwith the genitive and possessive cases in a way that should be noted, this is\\na good place to introduce them.\\nA verbal noun is derived from the stem of a verb; in English, the relevant\\nending is -ing. (This is also the ending used to derive active participles,\\nbut they are adjectives, not nouns; the forms merely happen to coincide in\\nEnglish.) Singing is the verbal noun corresponding to the verb sing; in other\\nwords, singing is the action you perform when you sing.\\nIn Quenya, the stems of some primary verbs are the source of abstract for-\\nmations in -m¨\\ne; some of them seem to have been verbal nouns in origin. For\\ninstance, whereas the verb “to love” is mel-, the noun “love” (or “loving”)\\nis melm¨\\ne. Some of these may take on more specialized meanings. Carm¨\\ne\\nis used for “art” (UT:439), though this is basically simply a kind of verbal\\nnoun derived from the verb car- “make, do” – hence literally “making”. (See\\nbelow regarding oiencarm¨\\ne.)\\nPrimary verbs may also receive the ending -i¨\\ne; the verb tyal- “to play”\\n191\\n\\n\\ncorresponds to the abstract formation tyali¨\\ne “play, playing” (as noun; cf.\\nthe Mar Vanwa Tyali´\\neva or “Cottage of Lost Play” mentioned above).\\nAdded to an A-stem verb, the ending -i¨\\ne makes the final -a drop out; cf.\\nnaina- “to lament” producing the abstract noun naini¨\\ne “a lament(ing)”.\\nYet another frequent formation is to lengthen the stem-vowel of a primary\\nverb and add the ending -¨\\ne. The verb ser- “rest” corresponds to the abstract\\nnoun s´\\ner¨\\ne “rest, repose, peace”. Very often, the nouns so derived have taken\\non a somewhat more concrete meaning. From the verb sir- “to flow” we\\nhave s´\\nır¨\\ne, which would basically refer to a “flowing”, but this noun is used\\n= “river”. The noun n´\\nut¨\\ne connects with the verb nut- “to tie”, but the\\nnoun has developed beyond the full abstract “tying, binding” and has come\\nto signify “knot” instead. From lir- “to sing, chant” we have l´\\nır¨\\ne, used for\\n“song” rather than just “singing, chanting”. Yet the underlying idea of a\\nverbal noun is often still discernible.\\nThe stems of some A-stem verbs, especially in -ta, can also be used as\\nabstract nouns with no additions. Vanta- is the verb “to walk”, but vanta\\nis also used as an abstract: “a walk” (that is, “walking” considered as a\\nnoun). Likewise, the verbs lanta- “to fall” corresponds to the noun lanta\\n“a fall(ing)”. However, the noun may also be lant¨\\ne, as in the name of the\\nsong Noldolant¨\\ne or “Fall of the Noldor” mentioned in the Silmarillion. In\\nQuenya, abstract nouns indeed show a great preference for the ending -¨\\ne,\\neither alone or as part of a longer ending.\\nOne such ending is -l¨\\ne, which seems to one of the most versatile Quenya\\nabstract suffixes. It may be that it can in principle be added to any A-\\nstem verb, and the resulting word is basically a verbal noun. The verb\\nlaita- “to bless/praise” occurs in LotR (in the Cormallen Praise), and\\nthe corresponding abstract noun laital¨\\ne “praise” or “praising” occurs in\\nUT:166, 436 (where reference is made to the Erulaital¨\\ne or “Praise of Eru”,\\na N´\\numen´\\norean festival). In earlier lessons we have used the verb nurta- “to\\nhide”, which is actually only attested as a verbal noun nurtal¨\\ne “hiding” (see\\nbelow concerning the phrase Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva “Hiding of Valinor”).\\nThen let us return to the genitive and possessive cases. If you combine a\\nverbal noun (or an abstract formation that still clearly connects with a verb)\\nwith a noun in the genitive case, it suggests that this noun is the “subject” of\\nthe corresponding verb. An attested example is Altariello naini¨\\ne for “Gal-\\nadriel’s lament” (RGEO:66; the Quenya form of Galadriel’s name is Altariel\\nwith stem Altariell-). The genitive Altariello “Galadriel’s” governing the\\nabstract noun naini¨\\ne “lament, lamenting” indicates that Galadriel is the\\none who does the lamenting: subject genitive. Perhaps the phrase i equessi\\nR´\\numilo “the sayings of R´\\numil” (WJ:398) may also be analyzed in such a\\nway: R´\\numil is the subject who originally “said” the “sayings”. An obvious\\ncase is provided by the phrase Oiencarm¨\\ne Eruo “the One’s [Eru’s, God’s]\\nperpetual production” (MR:471). Eru is the one who does the “perpetual\\nproduction” (oi-en-carm¨\\ne = probably “ever-re-making”), and this is indi-\\n192\\n\\n\\ncated by the genitive form Eruo: subject genitive yet again.\\nWay back in Lesson Two, I pointed out the error contained in the title\\nof the fanzine Parma Eldalamberon; it should have been Parma El-\\ndalambion instead. I must now take affair with the title of another (good!)\\nTolkien-linguistic journal, Tyali¨\\ne Tyelelli´\\neva. This was meant to signify\\n“Play of the Tyelelli¨\\ne” (a folk of little Elves). But since the Tyelelli¨\\ne are the\\nsubject of the abstract noun “play” (the ones who do the playing), it would\\nprobably have been better to use the genitive case here: perhaps Tyali¨\\ne\\nTyelelli´\\neo.\\nSo far subject genitive; what about object genitive? This kind of geni-\\ntive is usually replaced by an of -construction in English: “the discovery of\\nAmerica” = the discovery which America was the object of. Subject and\\nobject genitive can even be combined in a phrase like “Columbus’ discovery\\nof America” (Columbus is the subject who does the discovery, America is\\nthe object that is discovered).\\nOur one-and-only attested example of a Quenya object genitive seems\\nto indicate that for this meaning, Quenya uses the case in -va. This one\\nexample is found in the Silmarillion, near the end of Chapter 11: Nurtal¨\\ne\\nValin´\\noreva, the “Hiding of Valinor” (Valin´\\noreva is formed from Valin´\\nor¨\\ne,\\nan older variant of the name normally shortened as Valinor). The point\\nis that the Valar hid Valinor, so Valinor is the object of the nurtal¨\\ne or\\n“hiding”. If one used the genitive case instead, saying Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\nor¨\\neo,\\nit might imply that this is a subject genitive – Valinor doing the hiding\\ninstead of being its object. This would make little sense, since Valinor is not\\na person who can “hide” anything. Conversely, oiencarm¨\\ne Eruo cannot\\nbe understood as “perpetual production of the One” even if some kind of\\nsense could be made of this, for if Eru were the grammatical object that is\\nproduced, we would evidently see oiencarm¨\\ne Eruva instead.\\nProbably, the o-case could be used for subject genitive and the va-case for\\nobject genitive within the same phrase; if so it would probably be best to let\\nthe former genitive precede the verbal noun. Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva or “Hid-\\ning of Valinor” could then be expanded to Valaron nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva,\\n“the Valar’s hiding of Valinor”. Or, to use a wholly home-made example:\\nEruo melm¨\\ne Ataniva = “God’s love of Men”\\nand conversely:\\nAtanion melm¨\\ne Eruva = “Men’s love of God”\\nSummary of Lesson Twelve\\nThe possessive (or adjectival) case is formed by adding the ending -va (prob-\\nably -wa after nouns ending in a consonant), in the plural -iva. (There is\\nno explicit information about dual forms; presumably the ending -va can be\\n193\\n\\n\\nadded to nouns with dual forms in -u, whereas the case ending might appear\\nas -wa when added to a dual form in -t.) If the ending -va is to be added\\nto a noun ending in two short syllables, and there is no final consonant,\\nthis final vowel is lengthened before the case ending is added, so that it at-\\ntracts the stress: the possessive form of Orom¨\\ne is therefore Orom´\\neva (not\\n**Oromeva). For some reason, such lengthening also occur if the diphthong\\nui occurs in the second-to-last syllable of the noun; the possessive form of\\nhuin¨\\ne “gloom” is therefore huin´\\neva. – A possessive phrase like “X Yva”\\n(this is the only attested word order) may mean “Y’s X” or “Y of X” refer-\\nring to simple ownership, e.g. lamb¨\\ne Eldaiva “the language of the Elves”\\nor coa i Eldava “the Elf’s house”. The pattern “X Yva” may also refer\\nto a permanent attribute (e.g. alcar Orom´\\neva “the glory of Orom¨\\ne”), or\\nto the prevalent characteristic of a place (e.g. Taur¨\\ne Huin´\\neva “Forest of\\nGloom”). Another use of this case is expressing “X that consists of Y” (e.g.\\nyuldar lisse-miruv´\\noreva “draughts of sweet mead”). – Verbal nouns, or\\nabstract nouns derived from verbs, denote an action viewed as a “thing”\\nor process. Such nouns may be derived in a variety of ways; relevant end-\\nings include -m¨\\ne, -l¨\\ne, -i¨\\ne and -¨\\ne. Notice especially the ending -l¨\\ne, which (it\\nseems) may in principle be added to any A-stem verb, as when the verb\\nlinda- “to sing” produces lindal¨\\ne “singing, music”. When dependent on a\\nverbal noun or an abstract clearly associated with some verb, the genitive\\ncase takes on the meaning of a subject genitive (as in Altariello naini¨\\ne\\n“Galadriel’s lament”), whereas the possessive case is used for object genitive\\n(Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva “Hiding of Valinor”).\\nVocabulary\\nminqu¨\\ne “eleven”\\nvarya- “to protect”\\nalya “rich”\\nseler (sell-) “sister”\\nmalta “gold” (so according to Appendix E of LotR; the Etymologies, entry smal, gives\\nmalda instead – but post-LotR sources seem to indirectly confirm that malta was\\nTolkien’s final decision, as when PM:366 cites the Eldarin root yielding words for\\n“gold” as malat.)\\nengw¨\\ne “thing”\\nmuil¨\\ne “secrecy” (including one of the abstract endings mentioned above, -l¨\\ne; in this\\ncase it is added directly to the root muy, here manifesting as mui-. Apparently\\nthis word is related to Sindarin muil as in one place-name occurring in LotR:\\nEmyn Muil, possibly meaning something like Hills of Secrecy or Hidden Hills).\\ns´\\ner¨\\ne “peace” (in origin an abstract formation based on the verb ser- “to rest”, derived\\nfrom the same root sed which also produces the name of Est¨\\ne [from Esdˆ\\ne/Ezdˆ\\ne],\\nthe Vali¨\\ne or “goddess” of rest and sleep)\\n194\\n\\n\\nramba “wall”\\nondo “stone” (as material, though ondo is also used = “a rock”; the Sindarin equiv-\\nalent gon, gond occurs in the names Gondor and Gondolin, the latter of which is\\nadapted from Quenya Ondolind¨\\ne)\\nosto “city” (according to late sources also used = “fortress”, but we will use it in the\\nsense of “city” here; the word seems to refer primarily to a fortified city, so there\\nmay not be much of a distinction anyway)\\nmorni¨\\ne “darkness” (cf. mor¨\\ne “black”; the word morni¨\\ne is actually an abstract for-\\nmation based on another adjective derived from the same primitive root mor,\\nnamely morna = “dark”)\\nExercises\\nThese exercises involve both the genitive case and the possessive/adjectival\\ncase. Make sure to pick the right case in Exercises I–P (though sometimes,\\neither case will do).\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. I limp¨\\ne Eldaron vs. i limp¨\\ne Eldaiva (and since both phrases may\\nhave the same English translation, explain what the difference is)\\nB. Haryaly¨\\ne yulma maltava.\\nC. I rocco i Eldava alanti¨\\ne mir i n´\\nura cilya.\\nD. Neri s´\\nereva ´\\nuvar ohtari.\\nE. Alt¨\\ne rambar ondova nurtaner i coar i cainen analy¨\\ne ner-\\niva i osto.\\nF. I coa i arano selerwa n´\\na carn¨\\ne.\\nG. Min¨\\ne i m´\\nolion am´\\napi¨\\ne i macil i aranwa.\\nH. I vend¨\\neo toron hirn¨\\ne ily¨\\ne i harmar i minqu¨\\ne Naucoiva\\nimb¨\\ne i canta rassi i ninqui orontion.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. Rivers of wine poured into the man’s mouth.\\nJ. The boys’ sister [/the sister of the boys] gathered (together) the\\nthings of the boys and went into the house of the queen.\\nK. The secrecy of the women protected a great treasure of gold.\\nL. The eleven warriors could not protect the peace of the city, for a\\ngreat darkness fell.\\nM. They will go through a land of great trees and many rocks, for\\nthey want to see the city of the mighty warrior.\\n195\\n\\n\\nN. A wall of secrecy protected the hidden gold of the city, and I did\\nnot find it.\\nO. The land of the Elves is a land of many beautiful things; a land\\nwithout Elves is a land of darkness, for the Men (Atani) of the\\nland do not hear the rich language of the Elves.\\nP. The king’s sister’s gathering of books about Elves. (To make an\\nabstract noun “gathering”, try adding the ending -l¨\\ne “-ing” to the verb hosta-\\n“to gather”.)\\n196\\n\\n\\nLesson 13\\nThe Dative case. The Gerund. Pronominal endings -lm¨\\ne and\\n-mm¨\\ne. An indefinite pronoun.\\n13.1\\nThe Dative case\\nBack in Lesson Five, we introduced the concept of grammatical objects, the\\n“target” of the verbal action performed by the subject: I Elda m´\\nata massa\\n= “the Elf is eating bread”, i Nauco hirn¨\\ne harma = “the Dwarf found a\\ntreasure”.\\nSo far in this course, all the objects that we have concerned ourselves\\nwith have been, more precisely, direct objects. These are objects directly\\naffected by the verbal action. In archaic Quenya, such objects had their\\nown grammatical case, the accusative – but this case no longer had any\\ndistinct forms in Third Age Quenya. But there are also indirect objects, to\\nwhich Quenya grammar likewise assigns special case forms. The case marking\\nindirect objects, the dative, was still alive and well in Third Age Quenya.\\nBut before discussing how dative forms are constructed, let us have a closer\\nlook on indirect objects.\\nAn indirect object is, logically, an object indirectly affected by the verbal\\naction of the sentence. Thus the indirect object is often the beneficiary of the\\nverbal action (though it may also denote a party that is adversely affected\\nby this action). The archetypal example involves the verb “to give”, which\\nmust logically entail three parties: the subject that does the giving, the\\ndirect object which is the thing that is given, plus the indirect object that\\nis the recipient of the gift and thus the beneficiary of the verbal action:\\nThe man [subject] gave the boy [indirect object] a book [direct object].\\nModern English (unlike, say, German) has no distinct dative case, so in\\nthe English example above, the noun “boy” receives no extra inflectional\\nelements to explicitly mark it as the indirect object of the sentence. In En-\\nglish, indirect objects may be indicated simply by word order; the indirect\\nobject is then jammed into the sentence in front of the direct object, just\\nlike “the boy” appears before “a book” in our example above. But just like\\n197\\n\\n\\nEnglish often uses a phrase involving the preposition “of” instead of the gen-\\nitive case, the absence of a distinct dative case is frequently compensated\\nfor by means of prepositional circumlocutions: The two prepositions most\\noften used to simulate the function of the dative case are “to” and “for”. So\\ninstead of saying “the man gave the boy a book” (word order alone identi-\\nfying “the boy” as the indirect object), one might say “the man gave a book\\nto the boy”. Examples with “for” could be, say, “we did it for the children”,\\nor “the men work for the queen”.\\nIn Quenya, “the boy”, “the children” and “the queen” of these examples\\nwould be considered indirect objects – the parties indirectly affected by the\\nverbal action – and the corresponding nouns would be inflected for the dative\\ncase. There would be no need to maintain a specific word order, or to use\\nprepositions like “to” or “for”. Cf. the question occurring in the middle of\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, where the pronoun ni “I” (related to the pronominal ending -n or\\n-ny¨\\ne of similar meaning) appears in the dative case:\\nS´\\nı man i yulma nin enquantuva? “Now who will refill the cup for me?”\\nThe element here translated “for” is not a separate word in Quenya; it is\\nsimply the final -n of nin – which -n is the Quenya dative ending. Hence\\nnin = “I-for”, or in correct English: “for me”. In other contexts it could\\nalso have been translated “to me” or (where in English the indirect object is\\nidentified by word order alone) simply “me”: The verb “to give” being anta-,\\nthe Quenya equivalent of “you will give me a book” would in all likelihood go\\nsomething like antuvaly¨\\ne nin parma. The dative pronoun nin turns up in\\nthe last line of F´\\nıriel’s Song, as part of a sentence which Tolkien translated\\n“what will the Father . . . give me. . . ?” (LR:72). Of course, one might also\\ntranslate “. . . give to me”.\\nThe Plotz Letter confirms that the ending -n for dative is not only ap-\\nplicable to pronouns; it can also be attached to common nouns. (Plotz lists\\nciryan as the dative form of cirya “ship” and points to lassen as the dative\\nform of lass¨\\ne “leaf”.) Thus we can build sentences like carnelyes i Naucon\\n“you did it for the Dwarf” or i n´\\ner antuva i parma Eldan “the man will\\ngive the book to an Elf”. In English, the latter sentence could also be trans-\\nlated “the man will give an Elf the book”, word order alone indicating that\\n“an Elf” is to be understood as the indirect object of the English sentence.\\nIn Quenya, word order would be much freer (the main advantage of a highly\\ninflected language!), the case ending indicating that the noun in question is\\nthe indirect object no matter where the noun occurs in the sentence. This\\nenables the speaker to move the indirect object around to express subtle\\nnuances of emphasis. For instance, we may probably front the indirect ob-\\nject to put special focus on it: Eldan i n´\\ner antuva i parma, meaning\\nsomething like “it is to an Elf [not to a Dwarf, etc.] the man will give the\\nbook”. Whether the direct or the indirect object comes first may not be very\\n198\\n\\n\\nmaterial; while i n´\\ner antuva i parma Eldan means “the man will give\\nthe book to an Elf”, i n´\\ner antuva Eldan i parma may be translated “the\\nman will give an Elf the book”.\\nIn the plural, dative forms end in -in. Nouns with nominative plurals in\\n-i would in effect simply add the dative ending -n; the Plotz Letter points\\nto lassin as the dative form of lassi “leaves”. The dative plural of a word\\nlike laman (lamn-) “animal” would therefore be lamnin = “to animals”\\nor “for animals”. The ending -in is however also added to nouns that would\\nhave nominative plurals in -r; the plural marker -r does not appear in da-\\ntive forms. From the first line of F´\\nıriel’s Song (translated “the Father made\\nthe World for Elves”), we know what the plural dative of Elda would be:\\nEldain. It should be noted that the ending -in merges with the last vowel\\nof the noun to form a diphthong, like ai in this case. F´\\nıriel’s Song also pro-\\nvides the dative plural of “Mortals”: F´\\nırimoin (nominative plural F´\\nırimor,\\nLR:245; Tolkien later came to prefer the form F´\\nırimar, as in the published\\nSilmarillion, chapter 12. The dative plural would then become F´\\nırimain,\\nof course.)\\nIn the previous lesson I pointed out that “it is not quite clear what would\\nhappen when the [plural possessive-adjectival] ending -iva is added to a noun\\nalready ending in -i, like t´\\nari ‘queen’, or a noun with a stem-form in -i, like\\nl´\\nom¨\\ne (l´\\nomi-) ‘night’ (SD:415)”. The same problem arises in the case of the\\nplural dative forms. The dative singular “to/for a queen” would presumably\\nbe t´\\narin, but when trying to derive a plural dative by adding -in to t´\\nari,\\nwe are probably left with t´\\narin once again (the final -i or the noun and the\\ninitial i- of the ending simply merging). Conceivably the two vowels might\\nmerge into a long i, producing t´\\nar´\\nın as the word for “to/for queens”, but\\nthis seems a somewhat unlikely word: Quenya rarely has a long vowel in a\\nfinal unaccented syllable (though there is the word palant´\\nır). It may well\\nbe that t´\\narin has to do duty for both singular and plural, so that one must\\nrely on the context to find out which number is meant.\\nThe dual dative ending is given as -nt in the Plotz Letter, the dual dative\\nform of cirya “ship” being listed as ciryant – which would mean something\\nlike “for a couple of ships”. Of course, this ending -nt simply combines the\\ndative ending -n with the dual ending -t. Already in Lesson One I briefly\\nmentioned that this -nt seems to be the sole example of a final consonant\\ncluster being allowed in LotR-style Quenya. – It may be that only nouns\\nwith nominative dual forms in -t would have dative dual forms in -nt; in\\nthe case of nouns with dual forms in -u, it may well be that the simplest\\ndative ending -n would be employed. Once again using Aldu “Two Trees”\\nas our example, the dative form should perhaps not be Aldunt, but rather\\nAldun (or possibly Alduen; see below concerning Ar-Veruen). We lack\\nexamples either way, though.\\nIn some instances, a sentence may include an indirect object (in Quenya,\\na dative object) even though the sentence contains no direct object. In the\\n199\\n\\n\\nQuenya equivalent of “the men work for the king”, the English preposition\\n“for” would be represented by the case ending -n added to aran (probably\\nproducing aranen, a helping vowel -e- intruding before the ending). There is\\nat least one attested example of a sentence having a dative object, but no di-\\nrect object: Tolkien in his Quenya version of the Pater Noster used a dative\\nform of the pronoun “we, us” when rendering the phrase “. . . those who tres-\\npass against us”. (This, by the way, is an example of the dative case being\\nused to identify a party adversely affected by the verbal action: The con-\\ntext must decide whether the dative form should be translated “against us”\\nor “for us”. Grammatically speaking, both interpretations would be equally\\nvalid, but “those who sin for us” would not make sense in this particular\\ncontext.) The verb “to trespass” or “to sin” can have no direct object, but\\nobviously some party may be indirectly affected by the trespassing or sin-\\nning, so there can be an indirect object – aptly presented as a dative object\\nin Quenya.\\nDative forms may also turn up in sentences having no subject, a grammat-\\nical phenomenon virtually unheard of in modern English. Yet such sentences\\nmay be compared to phrases like “it seems to me that. . . ”, where the for-\\nmal subject “it” is actually nothing but a grammatical dummy with no real\\ncontent: In informal speech it may even be omitted, “seems to me that. . . ”,\\nand the meaning is quite intact. Such English wordings are comparable to\\nQuenya phrases like or¨\\ne nin caritas, literally “[it] impels for me to do it”,\\nexpressing the meaning that in English might be worded something like “I\\nwould like [or, feel moved] to do so” (VT41:13). Notice that the sentence or¨\\ne\\nnin caritas has no subject, but it does have a dative object: nin “to me, for\\nme”. Or- or ora- “impel, urge” is one of the Quenya impersonal verbs which\\ninvite such constructions; we will return to these verbs in a later lesson.\\nAn earlier application of the case ending -n: In Tolkien’s long evolution\\nof Quenya, -n was not always the dative ending. From the perspective of the\\nLotR scenario, one of the few things that are “wrong” with the Quenya of\\nthe Etymologies (written in the mid-thirties) is that -n is here the genitive\\nending instead. For instance, the entry lep lists the names of various Vali-\\nnorean weekdays, including Ar Manwen = Day of Manw¨\\ne, or Ar Ulmon\\n= Day of Ulmo (cf. the noun ar(¨\\ne) “day” – though later Tolkien changed\\nthe word for “day” to aur¨\\ne or r´\\ne, as indicated by the LotR appendices).\\nThis use of the ending -n is also found in a phrase written in the mid-\\nforties, reproduced in SD:303: Quenta Eldalien, “History of the Elves\\n[Eldali¨\\ne, Elf-people]”. In draft versions of the poem that was to become\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, Tolkien used Vardan as the genitive “Varda’s” (see for instance\\nthe early version reproduced in TI:284-285). In one of the later manuscripts,\\nTolkien still wrote Vardan, but then he crossed it out and replaced it with\\nVardo. This may seem to pinpoint the moment when Tolkien changed the\\ngenitive ending from -n to -o. Actually the genitive ending -o turns up in\\nearlier sources as well; a “Qenya” poem of the early thirties already has\\n200\\n\\n\\nciryo (spelt kiryo) as the genitive of cirya “ship” (langon veakiryo “the\\nthroat of the sea-ship”, MC:216). As for the dative case, the “Qenya” of the\\npre-LotR composition F´\\nıriel’s Song already uses -n (pl. -in) as the dative\\nending, as is evident from some examples quoted above. Later, -n for a while\\nreverted to being the genitive ending, as reflected by the Nam´\\nari¨\\ne drafts. It\\nwould seem that Tolkien changed his mind back and forth over the decades\\n– but the final resolution, as reflected in LotR and as codified in the Plotz\\nLetter, was that -o is to be the genitive ending, while -n is the dative ending.\\nSome of the obsolete genitives from the Etymologies are still interesting\\nas forms. In the entry ay, the noun ailin “pool, lake” is said to have the\\n“g.sg.” (genitive singular) ailinen. Because of Tolkien’s later revisions, the\\nform ailinen must rather be understood as a dative singular in LotR-style\\nQuenya – meaning “for a lake” instead of genitive “of a lake”. The example\\nailinen is interesting insofar as it shows us what happens if the case ending\\n-n (no matter what case it is assigned to!) is added to a noun ending in a\\nconsonant, like ailin. Since **ailinn is not a possible Quenya word, an e is\\ninserted before the ending, producing ailinen. Though the ending -n had\\nits meaning redefined, the principle of inserting this helping vowel whenever\\nit is required would still be valid.\\nIf the noun has a special stem-form – the final consonant turning into\\nanother consonant or a consonant cluster when endings are to be added –\\nsuch changes occur before this extra -e- as well: In the entry lin2 in the\\nEtymologies, we learn that Laurelin (Laurelind-), the name of the Golden\\nTree of Valinor, has the “g.sg.” Laurelinden. In LotR-style Quenya, this\\nwould be the dative singular instead, but the form as such is presumably\\nvalid still. The same goes for lissen as a form of lis (liss-) “honey”; see the\\nentry lis. We may then assume that a noun like n´\\nıs (niss-) “woman” would\\nbe treated in a similar fashion: dative nissen.\\nOne of the “genitive” forms of the Etymologies may even throw some\\nlight upon what the later dative of dual forms in -u should look like. One\\nValinorean weekday listed in the entries bes and lep is Arveruen or Ar-\\nVeruen, the “Day of the Spouses”, referring to the Vala couple Aul¨\\ne and Ya-\\nvanna. Here we have veruen as the genitive of the dual form veru “spouses,\\nmarried pair”. It should be noticed that the helping vowel -e- is employed\\nhere as well (somewhat surprisingly: one might have thought that **verun\\nwould be an acceptable form). If this genitive veruen would still be a valid\\nform after Tolkien redefined the ending -n so that veruen is a dative form\\nin LotR-style Quenya, it would indicate that nouns with nominative dual\\nforms in -u should have dative forms in -uen. The dative of Aldu “Two\\nTrees” would then be neither Aldunt nor Aldun, but rather Alduen. But\\nI hardly have to say that we are not on solid ground here, and I will not\\nconstruct any exercises based on such hypotheses.\\n201\\n\\n\\n13.2\\nThe Gerund\\nMost of the time, nouns and verbs are distinct parts of speech. There are,\\nof course, the verbal nouns discussed in the previous lesson, but they are\\nunquestionably genuine nouns – abstract formations denoting verbal actions\\nconsidered as “things”. But verbs have one form, the gerund, which almost\\ndefies the dichotomy of noun vs. verb. One might say that a gerund is a verb\\nmasquerading as a noun.\\nIn Cirion’s Oath occurs the word enyalien, literally meaning “for recall-\\ning” (that is, “in order to remember”). The prefix en- means “re-”, and the\\nfinal -n is the case ending discussed above, the dative marker corresponding\\nto the English preposition “for”. Stripping away these extra elements, we\\nare left with -yalie-, yali¨\\ne. In his notes on Cirion’s Oath, as reproduced\\nin UT:317, Tolkien makes it clear that yali¨\\ne is an “infinitive (or gerundial)\\nform” of a verb yal-, meaning to call or to summon. Thus we can isolate -i¨\\ne\\nas a grammatical ending used to derive ‘infinitive or gerundial’ forms.\\nEarlier in this course, we have discussed another kind of infinitive, which\\nis simply the stem of the verb (with -¨\\ne added, in the case of primary verbs).\\nAn attested example is the sentence polin quet¨\\ne, “I can speak” (VT41:6),\\nwith quet¨\\ne as the infinitive form of the verb quet- “speak”. Since Tolkien\\nclearly identifies -i¨\\ne as an infinitive ending in UT:317, it may be that polin\\nqueti¨\\ne would have be equally possible (more on this below). In her tutorial\\nBasic Quenya, written before the example polin quet¨\\ne became available,\\nNancy Martsch uses -i¨\\ne as the Quenya infinitival ending throughout. This\\nmay not necessarily be wrong; Tolkien definitely imagined an old Elvish\\ninfinitive in -ie. In the Etymologies, entry nar2, the Old Noldorin word\\ntrenarie “to recount” is explicitly called an “inf.” form (“Old Noldorin”\\nbeing the language Tolkien might later have referred to as Old Sindarin,\\nafter he revised his linguistic mythos in the early fifties). However, I think\\nthat in many cases, the Quenya verb forms derived by means of the suffix\\n-i¨\\ne are best termed gerunds.\\nIn English, gerunds are derived by means of the ending -ing, e.g. “finding”\\nvs. the verb “to find”. Now a form like “finding” can of course also be\\nan abstract noun (synonymous with “discovery”) as well as an adjectival\\nparticiple (as in “the man finding the treasure”). But what we are interested\\nin here, is rather the word “finding” as it appears in a sentence like “finding\\nthe treasure was wonderful”. Here, “finding” in a way behaves like a noun, for\\nit is the subject of the sentence. But we can tell that in some sense, “finding”\\nis still a verb, for it has not lost one of the unique characteristics of a verb:\\nthe ability to take an object. In the phrase “finding the treasure”, “the\\ntreasure” is the object of “finding”. If “finding” had here been an abstract\\nnoun, one would have to use an “of”-construction to bring in the thing which\\nis found: “the finding (= discovery) of the treasure”. Cf. our discussion of the\\nQuenya object genitive (as in Nurtal¨\\ne Valin´\\noreva, “Hiding of Valinor”)\\n202\\n\\n\\nin the previous lesson.\\nSince we are able to tell that in the sentence “finding the treasure was\\nwonderful”, the word “finding” is not a verbal noun, we can conclude that\\nit is actually a gerund. A gerund is a form of the verb which can function as\\na noun, with much the same meaning as a genuine verbal noun. However, a\\ngerund is still capable of taking an object, and this goes for Quenya gerunds\\nas well: Regarding the Quenya gerundial form in -i¨\\ne which Tolkien used in\\nCirion’s Oath, he noted that it was “governing a direct object” (UT:317).\\nNOTE: In Quenya as in English, gerunds and abstract nouns cannot always be clearly\\ndistinguished. Just like the English ending -ing is used to derive both gerunds and verbal\\nnouns, the Quenya ending -i¨\\ne may also be used to derive abstracts, e.g. tyali¨\\ne “play” (as\\nnoun) from the verb tyal- “to play”. Indeed -i¨\\ne is also used as a general abstract ending,\\nmuch like English “-ness”, cf. for instance morni¨\\ne “darkness”.\\nAs usual, there is an extreme scarcity of attested examples. But we must\\nassume that in Quenya as in English, gerunds may often function as the\\nsubjects of sentences, perhaps something like this:\\nHiri¨\\ne harma caruva n´\\ner alya “finding a treasure will make a man rich”\\nTiri¨\\ne i aiwi anta i vendin alta alass¨\\ne “watching the birds gives the\\nmaidens [vendin, dative] great joy”\\nIn these examples we have equipped the gerunds with objects (harma\\nand i aiwi), but a gerund could certainly function as subject without any\\nfurther additions, for instance like this: Mati¨\\ne n´\\na i analta alass¨\\ne ily¨\\ne\\ntiuc¨\\ne Naucoron, “eating is the greatest joy of all fat Dwarves”.\\nPresumably Quenya gerunds can also function as the object of a sentence,\\ncomparable to such English constructions as “I love fishing”. The gerund\\nfunctioning as object may in turn govern its own object: A sentence like “I\\nlove watching the birds” may perhaps be rendered into Quenya as melin\\ntiri¨\\ne i aiwi (“watching” being the object of the phrase “I love”, and “the\\nbirds” in turn being the object of the gerund “watching”). Perhaps the latter\\nmight also be expressed as “I love to watch the birds” = melin tir¨\\ne i aiwi\\n(?), using an infinitive instead of a gerund. Gerunds and infinitives may well\\nbe interchangeable in many contexts, in Quenya as in English.\\nIndeed our terminology may be stricter than the one Tolkien himself used,\\nif we reserve the term infinitive for forms like tir¨\\ne “to watch” and insist on\\ncalling tiri¨\\ne “watching” a gerund only: In UT:317, quoted above, Tolkien\\nhimself refers to the forms in -i¨\\ne as both “infinitival” and “gerundial”. As we\\nmentioned above, in the “Old Noldorin” of the Etymologies one form in -ie\\nis explicitly identified as an infinitive. The post-LotR example polin quet¨\\ne\\n“I can speak” demonstrates that -i¨\\ne at least cannot be a universal infinitive\\nending. Would polin queti¨\\ne be a possible wording, or would this sound\\nabout as weird as “I can speaking” in English? And what about “I want to\\nfind a treasure”? Would merin hiri¨\\ne harma be OK, or would the Eldar\\nfind this wording as awkward as “I want finding a treasure” in English? It\\n203\\n\\n\\nmay be safer to use the simplest infinitive, hir¨\\ne, in such a context.\\nWhen a verbal action is the subject or object of a sentence, one may to\\nsome extent choose between the infinitives and gerunds in English: “To err\\nis human, to forgive is divine” = “Erring is human, forgiving is divine”.\\nEspecially when a verbal action functions as subject, I think it would be\\nsafer to use the gerund (the form in -i¨\\ne) in Quenya. But since we have no\\nactual examples, it is presently impossible to say with any confidence what\\nTolkien would have thought of as acceptable Quenya in this regard.\\nThere is, however, one important use of the gerund which luckily is at-\\ntested in our tiny corpus. In English, the normal infinitive (marked by “to”)\\nis often used to indicate purpose: “They have come to see the king.” Whether\\nthis could be rendered “directly” into Quenya as ?ut´\\nulient¨\\ne cen¨\\ne i aran\\nnone can say at present – but I tend to doubt that this is a valid construc-\\ntion. Notice the wording used in Cirion’s Oath: Vanda sina termaruva\\nElenna·n´\\nor¨\\neo alcar enyalien. Tolkien’s translation in UT:305 goes “this\\noath shall stand in memory of the glory of the Land of the Star”, but more\\nliterally the Quenya wording is something like “this oath shall stand for\\nrecalling [the] Elenna-land’s glory”. Cf. Tolkien’s comments on the form\\nenyalien in UT:317, already quoted in part:\\nyal- ‘summon’, in infinitive (or gerundial) form en-yali¨\\ne, here in\\ndative ‘for the re-calling’, but governing a direct object [namely\\nalcar “glory”]: thus ‘to recall or “commemorate” the glory’.\\nSo here we have a verb en-yal- “re-call-” = “commemorate”. Add the\\ngerundial ending -i¨\\ne, and we get the gerund enyali¨\\ne, “recalling”. Since a\\ngerund may be described as a verb functioning as a noun, it may also receive\\ncase endings as a noun. So Tolkien supplied the dative ending -n “for” to\\nproduce enyalien “for recalling”. The word can now function as the indirect\\nobject of the sentence, the “benefactor” of the verbal action: The oath ter-\\nmaruva “shall stand”, and this action promotes “recalling” (enyali¨\\ne). The\\ndative gerund enyalien “for recalling” in turn has Elenna·n´\\nor¨\\neo alcar,\\n“[the] Elenna-land’s glory”, as its object.\\nOf course, in English one does not say “this oath shall stand for recalling\\nthe Elenna-land’s glory”, but rather “this oath shall stand (in order) to recall\\nthe glory of the land of Elenna”. Nonetheless, this example seems to tell us\\nthat English infinitives indicating purpose should be rendered into Quenya\\nas gerunds with a dative ending attached. “They have come (in order) to\\nsee the king” would then translate into ut´\\nulient¨\\ne cenien i aran, literally\\n“they have come for seeing the king”. (If we were to slavishly follow the\\nword order Tolkien used in Cirion’s Oath, with the gerund at the end of\\nthe sentence, we would actually have to say ut´\\nulient¨\\ne i aran cenien =\\n“they have come the king for seeing”! However, Quenya word order is in\\nall likelihood quite flexible.) The rule we have tried to make out may be\\n204\\n\\n\\nsummarized like this: If in English you can add the words “in order” in\\nfront of a infinitive without destroying the meaning (never mind the style!),\\nthis infinitive indicates purpose and should be rendered into Quenya as a\\ngerund inflected for dative.\\nForming gerunds from A-stem verbs: All the gerunds so far exemplified\\nhave been formed from primary (ending-less) verbs. What happens if the\\nending -i¨\\ne is to be added to an A-stem verb? We have no direct, explicit\\nattestations to guide us, so I saved this problem for the end. But all the\\nindirect evidence points to one conclusion: the final -a should be dropped\\nbefore -i¨\\ne is suffixed.\\nThe Etymologies, entry oro, lists the Quenya verb orta- “rise, raise”,\\nbut a form ortie is also cited, though this is “Old Noldorin” (/Old Sindarin)\\nrather than Quenya. This word ortie, simply glossed “rise”, would be an\\narchaic Elvish form that later involved into a Sindarin infinitive. But it\\ncould very well correspond to a Quenya gerund orti¨\\ne “rising, raising”, since\\n“Old Noldorin” is relatively close to Quenya. This would indicate that when\\nthe ending -i¨\\ne is to be added to an A-stem verb, the final -a drops out\\nbefore the ending. We have one possible attestation of a Quenya form which\\nwould confirm this conclusion: Listing various forms of the verb ora- “urge”,\\nTolkien did include ori¨\\ne (VT41:13), and while he did not clearly identify\\nthis or any other of the forms, ori¨\\ne may well be intended as the gerund. Also\\nnotice naini¨\\ne “lament(ing)” as a derivative of the verb naina- “to lament”\\n(compare RGEO:66 with the Etymologies, entry nay): Naini¨\\ne may be seen\\neither as a gerund or as a verbal noun.\\nAs we have already touched on, -i¨\\ne can also function as a general ab-\\nstract ending, somewhat like English “-ness”. Where -i¨\\ne is used to form\\nabstract nouns from adjectives, adjectives in -a lose this final vowel before\\n-i¨\\ne is added; morni¨\\ne “darkness” is apparently formed from morna “dark”.\\nAnother attested pair of this kind is l´\\nata “open” vs. l´\\nati¨\\ne “openness”. The\\nabstract ending -i¨\\ne is certainly closely related to the gerundial ending -i¨\\ne;\\nbasically it is the same ending we are dealing with (as noted above, the\\ndistinction between gerunds and abstract nouns often becomes blurred). If\\nthe ending -i¨\\ne causes a final -a to drop out when it is added to adjectives, it\\nseems very likely that this also happens when it is added to A-stem verbs.\\nSo starting from verbs like orta- “raise” and nurta- “hide”, we may proba-\\nbly derive the gerunds orti¨\\ne, nurti¨\\ne and build sentences like orti¨\\ne Pel´\\nori\\nnurtien Valinor ´\\num¨\\ne m´\\nara noa “raising [the] Pel´\\nori to hide Valinor was\\nnot a good idea”. (It wasn’t – see MR:401, 405 for Tolkien’s critical com-\\nments on this move by the Valar!)\\nIn the case of verbs in -ya, e.g. harya- “to possess”, the entire ending -ya\\nwould probably drop out before -i¨\\ne is suffixed. Otherwise the gerund would\\nhave to be **haryi¨\\ne, but yi is not a possible Quenya combination. Abstract\\nnouns formed by means of the ending -i¨\\ne from adjectives in -ya are seen to\\nsurrender the latter ending, e.g. veri¨\\ne “boldness” from verya “bold” (see\\n205\\n\\n\\nthe Etymologies, entry ber). We may probably assume that veri¨\\ne would\\nalso be the gerund of the related verb verya- “to dare”. So the gerund of a\\nverb like harya- “to possess” is most likely hari¨\\ne (e.g. in a platitude like\\nhari¨\\ne malta ´\\nuva car¨\\ne n´\\ner anwav¨\\ne alya, “possessing gold will not make\\na man truly rich”).\\n13.3\\nThe pronoun “we”\\nWe have been practicing various pronominal endings: -n or -ny¨\\ne “I” (the\\nshort form must not be confused with the dative ending!), -ly¨\\ne “you”, -s\\n“it”, -nt¨\\ne “they” and -t “them”. It is time to introduce the endings for the\\nfirst person plural, corresponding to the English pronoun “we”.\\nThere are actually several Quenya endings for “we”. One of them occurs\\nin the Cormallen Praise: Andav¨\\ne laituvalmet, “long shall we bless them”.\\nHere we have a future-tense verb with pronominal endings for “we” (subject)\\nand “them” (object): lait·uva·lme·t, “bless·shall·we·them”. The ending for\\n“we” is seen to be -lm¨\\ne (-lme-).\\nHowever, in WJ:371 Tolkien discusses the Quenya exclamation v´\\na, signal-\\ning refusal or prohibition: in effect “no!” in the sense of “I will not” or “do\\nnot!” Tolkien also indicated that this v´\\na could receive explicit pronominal\\nendings, such as -n(y¨\\ne) for “I”, producing the form v´\\nan or v´\\nany¨\\ne for “I\\nwon’t”. But Tolkien also mentioned the form vamm¨\\ne, “we won’t”. So here\\nthe pronominal ending for “we” is suddenly not -lm¨\\ne, but rather -mm¨\\ne.\\nNOTE: Notice, by the way, how the long ´\\na of v´\\na is shortened in the form vamm¨\\ne.\\nThis is one of the examples indicating that Quenya cannot have a long vowel in front of a\\nconsonant cluster or a long consonant – a phonological rule we have repeatedly alluded to\\nearlier in this course. The fact that the vowel remains long in v´\\nany¨\\ne suggests that ny is\\nperceived as a single consonant, palatalized n like Spanish ˜\\nn, and not as a cluster n + y.\\nThe fact that there are two endings for “we”, -mm¨\\ne and -lm¨\\ne, is easily\\nexplained once we realize that this part of the Quenya pronoun table makes\\na distinction not found in English. Tolkien referred to the ending -mm¨\\ne\\nas the “first [person] plural exclusive” (WJ:371, emphasis added). The end-\\ning -mm¨\\ne denotes an exclusive “we”, a “we” that excludes the person(s)\\naddressed. The exclamation vamm¨\\ne “we won’t” represents a refusal as it\\nwould be spoken to some other party (likely the one whose will “we” refuse\\nto obey). This other party is not included in “we”, but stands outside the\\n“we” group. Therefore, the exclusive “we” is proper here.\\nOn the other hand, the ending -lm¨\\ne apparently denotes an inclusive “we”:\\nThe party being addressed is included in “we”. In the example andav¨\\ne\\nlaituvalmet, “long shall we bless them”, the people who are praising Frodo\\nand Sam are addressing one another, not the Ring-bearers. If they had said\\n“long shall we bless you” instead, addressing Frodo and Sam directly, they\\nwould have had to use an exclusive “we”: ending -mm¨\\ne instead of -lm¨\\ne.\\n206\\n\\n\\nFrodo and Sam would not be part of this exclusive “we”; they would stand\\noutside the “we” group addressing them. (Conversely, a group of people\\nconspiring among themselves about refusing an order would have to say\\nvalm¨\\ne, not vamm¨\\ne, for “we won’t!”)\\nIn written works, the word “we” would normally be exclusive (-mm¨\\ne),\\nunless the writer has reason to believe that the reader will be part of the\\n“we” group referred to. In such a case, -lm¨\\ne for inclusive “we” would be\\nproper.\\nBack in Lesson Eight, it was noted that while the author of this course may\\nsometimes seem to refer to himself as “we”, this is not (necessarily!) because\\nhe has an ego of royal dimensions. The author tends to include the reader\\nin this “we”, as if implying that the author and the readers somehow share\\nthis odyssey through the various aspects of Quenya grammar. (You can take\\nit as a friendly gesture, or as a particularly cunning brain-wash technique\\nwhich the author uses to somehow make you an accomplice whenever he\\ndraws conclusions that he should actually take the full responsibility for\\nhimself!) Anyhow, in Quenya there could have been no misunderstanding.\\nA royal “we”, excluding the people addressed, could only be -mm¨\\ne. An\\nauthor using the word “we” to refer to himself and his readers, directly\\naddressing them in his text, would have to use the inclusive “we”: -lm¨\\ne.\\nThere is yet another ending for “we”, namely the dual inclusive, which is\\n“we” referring to two persons only – in effect “you and I” or “the two of us”.\\n(The ending -lm¨\\ne would refer to an inclusive “we” involving three or more\\npersons.) Unfortunately, the ending denoting dual inclusive “we” must be\\nextrapolated in a two-step operation, and we cannot be quite certain about\\nits form (most likely either -lw¨\\ne or -lv¨\\ne). We will return to this problem\\nlater; in the exercises below, we will only practice the endings -lm¨\\ne and\\n-mm¨\\ne.\\nNOTE: There has been much confusion regarding the Quenya endings for “we”. An\\nearlier interpretation, set forth in Jim Allan’s Introduction to Elvish in the late seventies,\\nhad it that the ending -lm¨\\ne is exclusive rather than inclusive. The extrapolated ending\\n-lv¨\\ne was thought to be the inclusive “we” (and inclusive it would certainly have to be, but\\nit is a dual inclusive form, referring to a “we” of two persons only). The true ending for\\nexclusive “we”, -mm¨\\ne, was unknown until WJ was published in 1994 (providing the exam-\\nple vamm¨\\ne). The wrong interpretation haunts many post-Tolkien Quenya texts written\\nbefore the mid-nineties, and it also made its way into Nancy Martsch’ Basic Quenya.\\n13.4\\nAn indefinite pronoun\\nIn English, words like “one” and “you” are often used with deliberately\\nvague or general reference: “One has to earn a living. . . ” or “you have to\\nwonder. . . ” Here, “one” is not the number 1 (Quenya min¨\\ne), and “you”\\ndoes not refer to the one who is addressed. For such meanings, Quenya\\n207\\n\\n\\nhas the pronoun quen (WJ:361) – essentially an unstressed variant of the\\nnoun qu´\\nen, which simply means “person”. Though ultimately related to\\nQuend¨\\ne “Elf”, these words have no special reference to Elves. As usual, we\\nlack attested examples, but we must assume that quen would be used for\\n“one” or “someone” in such sentences as quen milyan¨\\ne leryal¨\\ne “one longed\\nfor release” or quen hant¨\\ne i yulma “someone broke the cup”. Presumably\\nquen may also receive case endings, e.g. genitive queno “one’s” or dative\\nquenen (which in English would often be translated “for you” rather than\\n“for one”: Mati¨\\ne y´\\nav¨\\ne n´\\na m´\\nara quenen, “eating fruit is good for you” –\\n“you” here meaning “people in general”!)\\nMost Quenya pronouns usually appear as endings, and it may be that\\nTolkien at one stage even reckoned with a pronominal ending for the indefi-\\nnite pronoun “one”. There exists an early “Qenya” text where this meaning\\nseems to be associated with an ending -o: Kildo kirya ninqe, translated “a\\nwhite ship one saw” (MC:220–221). However, transforming this into LotR-\\nstyle Quenya would probably require rather more than altering the spelling\\nto cildo cirya ninqu¨\\ne: While the two last words would certainly be ac-\\nceptable, the verb form kildo does not seem to fit Tolkien’s later system,\\nand the status of the ending -o at the LotR stage is highly doubtful. If we\\naim for LotR-style Quenya, it is certainly much safer to use the indefinite\\npronoun quen from a post-LotR source.\\nSummary of Lesson Thirteen\\nThe Quenya dative case identifies indirect objects, the party indirectly af-\\nfected by a verbal action (often the beneficiary of this action, though the\\nindirect object may also be adversely affected by it). In the singular, the\\ndative ending is -n (when it is to be added to a noun ending in a consonant,\\na helping vowel -e- is inserted before it). Nouns with nominative plurals in\\n-i have dative plurals in -in; this ending -in is also used in case of nouns\\nwhich have nominative plurals in -r, so that the dative form corresponding\\nto nominative Eldar is Eldain. The dual dative ending is -nt, at least in\\nthe case of nouns which have nominative dual forms in -t. (Nouns with nom-\\ninative dual forms in -u should perhaps have dative dual forms in -uen, if\\nwe can put any trust in earlier material where the ending -n was actually\\nassigned to the genitive case rather than the dative.) – A gerund is a form\\nof the verb which can function almost like a noun, denoting the correspond-\\ning verbal action, but unlike regular verbal nouns, gerunds are still able to\\ntake objects. Quenya gerunds are formed with the ending -i¨\\ne (also a general\\nabstract ending); if this suffix is to be added to an A-stem, the final -a evi-\\ndently drops out. In the case of verbs in -ya, this entire ending is apparently\\nomitted before the suffix -i¨\\ne. English infinitives expressing purpose (i.e., in-\\nfinitives signifying “[in order] to do” something) translate into Quenya as\\n208\\n\\n\\ngerunds inflected for dative, e.g. hirien “(in order) to find”. – Quenya has\\nseveral pronominal endings corresponding to English “we”. One of them is\\n-lm¨\\ne, denoting a “we” that includes the party that is addressed, whereas the\\nending -mm¨\\ne expresses an exclusive “we”, used when the speaker addresses\\na party outside the “we” group that the speaker himself belongs to. – The\\nindefinite pronoun “one” or “someone” is in Quenya quen. Presumably it\\ncan receive case endings, e.g. genitive queno “one’s”.\\nVocabulary\\nIn each Vocabulary section, we have first of all introduced a new number.\\nThe numbers 1-11 are explicitly mentioned in the Etymologies: min¨\\ne, atta,\\nneld¨\\ne, canta, lemp¨\\ne, enqu¨\\ne, otso, tolto, nert¨\\ne, cainen and minqu¨\\ne.\\nThe Elvish way of counting, with base 12 instead of 10, would obviously\\nrequire a word for “twelve” as well – the last of the basic numbers. However,\\nthe Etymologies does not mention the Quenya word for “twelve”, and neither\\nis it attested elsewhere. Etym only cites the primitive root-word for this\\nnumber: r´\\nasat. “No other forms are given,” Christopher Tolkien notes.\\nHowever, students of Elvish agree that a Quenya word derived from this root\\nwould most likely have the form rasta (the complete Primitive Elvish word\\nbeing something like r´\\nasatˆ\\na, the accent mark here indicating stress rather\\nthan length). Some writers have used rasta in their own compositions, so it\\nis at least a post-Tolkien Quenya word. To complete our survey of the basic\\nnumbers, I have included rasta in the vocabulary below – but it must be\\nunderstood that while this is definitely a plausible word, it is not explicitly\\ngiven in published material.\\n?rasta “twelve”\\nmahta- “to fight”\\nanta- “to give”, irregular past tense ´\\nan¨\\ne. (This past tense is listed in a very\\nold source, the Qenya Lexicon p. 31. It is entirely possible that in Tolkien’s later\\nQuenya, the past tense of anta- could just as well be regular: antan¨\\ne. However, the\\nSindarin verb form ´\\nonen “I gave” occurring in LotR Appendix A would correspond\\nto Quenya ´\\nanen rather than ?antanen. The Etymologies, entry ono, indicates that\\nthe past tense of the verb onta- “beget, create” may be both ´\\non¨\\ne and ontan¨\\ne;\\nperhaps the past tense of anta- may likewise be both ´\\nan¨\\ne and antan¨\\ne. We will\\nuse the attested form ´\\nan¨\\ne here.)\\nsuc- “to drink”\\nanna “gift”\\nalass¨\\ne “joy”\\nhroa “body” (related to a word introduced earlier, hr´\\nav¨\\ne “flesh”; Tolkien meant them\\nto be descended from Primitive Elvish srawˆ\\na and srˆ\\nawˆ\\ne, respectively. See MR:350.)\\n209\\n\\n\\nnoa “idea”\\ncala “light” (as in Calaquendi “Light-elves”, Calacirya/-cilya “Light-cleft”)\\nm´\\nara “good” (in the sense of “fit, useful” – Quenya has other words for “good” in the\\nmoral sense)\\nquen indefinite pronoun “one”, “someone”\\narwa adjective “possessing”, “in control of”, “having”, followed by genitive\\n(see note)\\nNOTE ON ARWA “POSSESSING, IN CONTROL OF”: This adjective is listed in\\nthe Etymologies, entry 3AR (though it is derived from a variant root gar). It can be used\\nto form compound adjectives; Tolkien mentioned the example aldarwa “having trees” =\\n“tree-grown” (alda + arwa, “tree-having”). But apparently arwa “having, possessing”\\ncan also be used by itself, and then it would be followed by a genitive form. (As we have\\ntouched on above, the Quenya genitive ending was -n when Tolkien wrote the Etymologies,\\nbut we must assume that the rule as such was still valid when he changed the ending to -o\\nlater.) So we may probably have phrases like n´\\ner arwa collo, “a man having/possessing a\\ncloak” (colla “cloak”, genitive collo). Perhaps this may simply be translated “a man with\\na cloak”, and if we use arwa to mean “with”, it would mean that the words for “with”\\nand “without” (arwa and ´\\nu, respectively) are both followed by genitive! Yet arwa is said\\nto be an adjective and not a preposition, so arwa presumably agrees in number, becoming\\narw¨\\ne (for archaic arwai) when pointing back to a plural word: Neri arw¨\\ne collo, “men\\npossessing a cloak”, Naucor arw¨\\ne harmaron “Dwarves possessing treasures”, arani\\narw¨\\ne ohtarion “kings in control of warriors”.\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. I n´\\ner ´\\nan¨\\ne i nissen anna.\\nB. Anar anta cala Ambaren.\\nC. Hiruvalm¨\\ne i harma, ar antuvalmes i rasta Naucoin.\\nD. Mati¨\\ne hr´\\nav¨\\ne car¨\\ne quen tiuca, ar umilm¨\\ne mer¨\\ne tiuc¨\\ne hroar,\\nan tiuc¨\\ne hroar umir vany¨\\ne.\\nE.\\nLendemm¨\\ne mir i osto hirien i sail¨\\ne nissi, an mernemm¨\\ne\\ncenitat.\\nF. N´\\ner arwa m´\\nar¨\\ne noaron n´\\na saila ar antuva s´\\ner¨\\ne ar alass¨\\ne i\\noston.\\nG. Utultiemmet quetien rimb¨\\ne engwion.\\nH. Suci¨\\ne limp¨\\ne um¨\\ne m´\\nara queno hroan.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\n210\\n\\n\\nI. Someone gave the warrior a great sword.\\nJ. Making a house for the boys is a good idea.\\nK. We (inclusive) fight for peace; fighting does not give the people\\n[any] joy, for we (inclusive) have seen the light.\\nL. Speaking the Elven-tongue (Eldalamb¨\\ne) is a great joy to Men\\n(Atani).\\nM. The warriors of the two lands will fight for the [twin] peoples\\n(dual), and we (exclusive) will go through a great darkness to\\nfind light.\\nN. The men having the good wine wanted cups to drink the wine,\\nand the king’s thralls gave the men twelve cups of gold.\\nO. We (exclusive) want to go into the city to free all Men (Atani)\\nand (to) give the gold of the king to the thralls.\\nP. The walls of the city are great; we (inclusive) have made them to\\nprotect the people.\\n211\\n\\n\\nLesson 14\\nThe Allative and Ablative cases. Equ¨\\ne and auta: two\\npeculiar verbs. Possessive pronominal endings: -nya, -lya,\\n-lma, -mma.\\n14.1\\nThe Allative and Ablative cases\\nThe dative case ending -n presented in the previous lesson may sometimes\\ncorrespond to the English preposition “to”, as when it is appended to\\ngerunds: enyalien = “to recall” (UT:317). Yet this is a rather abstract\\nkind of “to”; as we have seen, the Quenya dative may also be translated as\\nphrases involving the preposition “for”, or it may simply correspond to a\\nspecific English word order.\\nHowever, Quenya does have a special case form implying “to” in the more\\nbasic sense of “towards” or “against”; the Latin term for such a case is alla-\\ntive. The relevant Quenya ending is -nna: In the entry Eldanna in the UT\\nIndex, Christopher Tolkien identifies this ending as a “suffix . . . of move-\\nment towards”. The word Eldanna itself is not a bad example; it may be\\ntranslated “Elfwards” and was used by the N´\\numenoreans as the name of\\na bay on the west coast of N´\\numenor, thus in the direction of the Blessed\\nRealm where the Eldar dwelt (UT:164). In Elendil’s Declaration, repeated\\nby Aragorn at his coronation, the ending -nna carries the full force of “to”\\nwith the implication of motion towards: Et E¨\\narello Endorenna ut´\\nulien\\n= “out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth [Endor] I am come.” Cf. also the\\nsentence Sin Quent¨\\ne Quendingoldo Elendilenna (PM:401) – apparently\\nmeaning “Thus Spoke Quendingoldo to Elendil” (or perhaps “This Quendin-\\ngoldo Said to Elendil”; the meaning of the word sin is not quite clear). As\\nthe allative forms of cirya “ship” and lass¨\\ne “leaf”, the Plotz Letter points\\nto ciryanna “to a ship” and lassenna “to a leaf”. (Of course, the stress\\nnow falls on the vowel of the second-to-last syllable because of the following\\nconsonant cluster introduced by the ending -nna: ciryAnna, lassEnna.) So\\nif you want to say “I’ll go to the ship” in Quenya, you don’t normally use\\na separate word for “to”, but employ the ending -nna instead: Lelyuvan i\\nciryanna.\\n212\\n\\n\\nWhile the ending -nna may sometimes be rendered “-wards” in English,\\ne.g. Elenna “Starwards” as a name of N´\\numenor (see below), the English\\nending “-wards” cannot be freely applied to any noun like the Quenya end-\\ning can. But if the day ever comes when Columbus lend¨\\ne Americanna\\ncan be translated “Columbus went Americawards”, people thinking this is\\nacceptable English, the language shall have acquired a living allative case.\\nNOTE: Besides -nna, there are also traces of an older allative ending in Quenya. In\\nprimitive Elvish it had the form -da, later reduced to -d (WJ:366). In Quenya, this -d\\nbecame -z and later -r, and we have already met it in the word mir “into” (this is literally\\nmi-r “in-to”, cf. mi “in”!) Since this ending came to clash with the plural ending -r,\\nas in Eldar, it only survived in a handful of words indicating motion to or towards a\\npoint. Attested examples include tar “thither”, oar “away”, yar “to whom” and mir\\n“into”. Actually “into” can also be minna with the normal, “modern” allative ending\\n-nna. Likewise, “thither” can be tanna as well as tar.\\nIn the plural, the ending -nna changes to -nnar, hence lassennar “to\\nleaves” and ciryannar “to ships” (e.g. lelyuvan i ciryannar “I’ll go to\\nthe ships”). The final -r here appearing seems to be the same plural element\\nthat we are familiar with from the nominative.\\nSince Quenya may express “to, towards” by means of a case ending, the\\nquestion naturally arises whether there is an ending for “from” as well. There\\nis.\\nAs we pointed out in Lesson 11, the genitive ending -o may occasion-\\nally take on this meaning, as in one word in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: Oioloss¨\\neo = “from\\nOioloss¨\\ne” (Mount Everwhite). However, the idea of “from” is more regularly\\nexpressed by the ablative case, which is marked by the ending -llo. According\\nto Plotz, we can have forms like lassello “from a leaf” and ciryallo “from\\na ship” (again accented on the second-to-last syllable, of course). So we may\\nbuild sentences like tulin i ciryallo “I come from the ship”. For a Tolkien-\\nmade example, cf. the phrase m´\\netima hrestallo “from the last shore” in\\nthe Markirya poem. Both the ablative and the allative cases are exemplified\\nin the phrase telmello talmanna “from hood [telm¨\\ne] to base [talma]”,\\nthat is, “from top to bottom”. (In the entry tel of the Etymologies as re-\\nproduced in LR, this expression is actually cited as “telmello telmanna”,\\nbut this is plainly a typo, for as is evident from the entry tal, the word for\\n“base, foundation, root” is not telma, but talma.)\\nAs for the plural form of the ablative, there are apparently several options.\\nJust like the suffix -nna for allative turns into -nnar in the plural, the\\nablative ending -llo may have a plural equivalent -llor: In the Markirya\\npoem, Tolkien used elenillor as the plural ablative of elen “star”, hence\\n“from stars”. However, according to the Plotz letter, the plural ablative is\\nto have the ending in -llon instead. Here we have the same plural marker\\n-n as in the ending -on for plural genitive (the basic genitive ending -o +\\nthe plural sign -n, WJ:407). One of Tolkien’s earlier tables of Quenya case\\nendings lists both -llor and -llon as possible plural ablative endings. So “I\\n213\\n\\n\\ncome from the ships” could evidently be both tulin i ciryallor and tulin i\\nciryallon. I generally prefer -llon, the Plotz variant, since the Plotz letter\\nis our best late source regarding the Quenya case system – but -llor must\\nbe considered a valid alternative.\\nDual allative/ablative: The dual forms of the allative and ablative end-\\nings include the already-familiar dual element -t, which replaces one of the\\nconsonants of the suffixes -nna and -llo to produce -nta and -lto instead.\\nThus the nominative ciryat “two ships, a couple of ships” corresponds to an\\nallative form ciryanta “to(wards) a couple of ships” and an ablative form\\nciryalto “from a couple of ships”. These are the examples Tolkien used in\\nthe Plotz letter, but again it is uncertain whether the same endings would\\nbe suffixed to a noun that forms its nominative dual in -u rather than -t.\\nStill using Aldu as our standard example, should “to the Two Trees” be\\nAldunta or simply Aldunna? Similarly, should “from the Two Trees” be\\nAldulto or simply Aldullo? I tend to think of Aldunna, Aldullo as the\\nlikeliest forms, but lacking attested examples we cannot be sure.\\nAdditional shades of meaning of the Allative and Ablative cases: While\\nthe primary implication of these cases is “to(wards)” and “from”, they may\\nhave other shades of meaning as well.\\nThe idea of actual, physical motion towards or from something is not\\nalways present. Notice the use of the ablative in a phrase found in J.R.R.\\nTolkien – Artist and Illustrator: Itarild¨\\ne Ondolindello, “Itarild¨\\ne from On-\\ndolind¨\\ne”, or using the better-known Sindarin forms: Idril from Gondolin. In\\nEnglish, this is best rendered Idril of Gondolin, identifying Idril as a person\\nliving in Gondolin; the Quenya wording may not necessarily imply that Idril\\nhad actually left Gondolin. Possibly, the ablative can also be used in other\\nways that carry no implication of motion. It may be noted that regarding\\nthe Quenya verb ruc- “to feel fear or horror”, Tolkien wrote that it is “con-\\nstructed with ‘from’ of the object feared” (WJ:415). He did not provide any\\nfurther information or examples, but “from” is regularly expressed by the\\nablative case in Quenya. So given that the Quenya word for “monster” is\\nulundo, perhaps “I fear the monster” would translate something like rucin\\ni ulundollo. (Insofar as the words “from” and “of” express related mean-\\nings, this may be compared to such an English wording as “I’m afraid of the\\nmonster”.)\\nAs for the allative, it does not always mean “to(wards)”, but may also\\nimply “on, upon”: The meanings are related insofar as an object that rests\\n“upon” something also presses “towards” it, though there is no actual mo-\\ntion. This use of the allative may typically occur in connection with the verb\\ncaita- “lie”, as in this sentence from the prose Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: Morni¨\\ne caita i\\nfalmalinnar, “darkness lies on the foaming waves” (falma “foaming wave”,\\nhere not only with the plural allative ending -nnar but also the “parti-\\ntive plural” marker -li, in this context possibly implying a great number of\\nwaves: In his interlinear translation in RGEO:67, Tolkien analyzed falma-\\n214\\n\\n\\nli-nnar as “foaming waves-many-upon”). Further examples of allative forms\\nimplying “on, upon” are found in the Markirya poem; we have atalanti¨\\ne\\nmindoninnar (or, mindonnar) “upon fallen towers” and axor ilcalannar\\n“on bones gleaming”.\\nHowever, the student should also notice that while the allative and ab-\\nlative cases may not always imply physical motion to or from something,\\ntheir basic meanings of “to, towards” and “from” may also be strengthened.\\nInstead of just indicating motion “towards” something, the allative may also\\nsuggest motion “into” it: Attested examples include ¨\\neari lantier cilyanna\\n“seas fell into a chasm” (LR:56) and mannar Valion “into the hands of\\nthe Vali [Valar]” (F´\\nıriel’s Song). The ablative may likewise indicate motion\\n“out of” something rather than merely “from” it: The word sindan´\\noriello\\noccurring in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne Tolkien translated “out of a grey country” (though in\\nthe interlinear analysis in RGEO:67, he broke it down as sinda-n´\\norie-llo,\\n“grey-country-from”).\\nThese additional uses of the allative and ablative cases may lead to some\\nambiguities: Is lenden i coanna to be interpreted “I went to the house” or\\n“I went into the house”? Where confusion may arise, it is probably best to\\nuse the independent word mir (or minna) if “into” is the desired meaning:\\nLenden mir/minna i coa. As for “out of” as opposed to merely “from”,\\nElendil’s Declaration demonstrates that the word et “out” can be placed in\\nfront of an ablative form to clarify the meaning: Et E¨\\narello . . . ut´\\nulien,\\n“out of [or, out from] the Great Sea I am come.” Some would even analyze et\\n“out” as a preposition governing the ablative case (like ´\\nu “without” governs\\nthe genitive case).\\nAdding the allative and ablative endings to nouns ending in a conso-\\nnant: Suffixes like -nna and -llo and their dual/plural variants can never\\nbe added directly to a noun ending in a consonant without creating im-\\npossible consonant clusters. For instance, the allative “to Elendil” cannot\\nbe **Elendilnna, for Quenya phonology does not permit the group “lnn”.\\nAs is evident from the actual form Elendilenna occurring in PM:401, the\\nlanguage may work around this problem by inserting a connecting vowel e\\nbefore the case ending. The ablative and allative forms occurring in Elendil’s\\nDeclaration in LotR may be examples of the same: et E¨\\narello “out of the\\nGreat Sea” (E¨\\nar: Quenya name of the Ocean), Endorenna “to Middle-\\nearth” (Endor: Quenya for “Mid-land” = “Middle-earth”). However, the\\nword E¨\\nar is also cited in the form E¨\\nar¨\\ne (SD:305), and Endor is shortened\\nfrom an older form End´\\nor¨\\ne, so we cannot be absolutely certain that the\\ne’s occurring before the case endings in the forms E¨\\narello, Endorenna\\nare not simply part of the nouns proper. On the other hand, the example\\nElendilenna almost certainly includes a connecting vowel e, for there is\\nno reason to assume that the name Elendil ever ended in -¨\\ne. So the main\\nstrategy for avoiding unwanted consonant clusters before case endings is\\nprobably to insert an -e- before the ending.\\n215\\n\\n\\nIt should be noted, though, that in the case of a plural noun requiring\\na connecting vowel, it seems that -i- rather than -e- is preferred. We have\\nalready mentioned that in the Markirya poem, Tolkien used elenillor as\\nthe plural ablative form of elen “star”. If effect, the pl. ablative ending\\n-llor has been added to the nominative plural eleni. One version of the\\nMarkirya poem also had mindoninnar as the pl. allative “upon towers”\\n(before Tolkien decided to go for a contracted form instead; see below). Here,\\nthe pl. allative ending has been added to the nominative plural mindoni\\n“towers”.\\nNOTE: Notice, though, that nouns in -¨\\ne with nominative plurals in -i (e.g. lass¨\\ne “leaf”,\\npl. lassi) do not change their final -¨\\ne to -i before -nnar or -llon/-llor is suffixed: Plotz\\nindicates that the pl. allative and ablative forms of lass¨\\ne are lassennar and lassellon,\\nrespectively – not **lassinnar, **lassillon. In this respect, the allative and ablative cases\\ndiffer from the genitive case: A noun that forms its nominative plural in -i always receives\\nthis ending before the genitive plural ending -on is added – the genitive plural of lass¨\\ne\\nbeing lassion, not **lass¨\\neon.\\nIf one does not insert any connecting vowel, another way of getting rid of\\nan unwanted consonant cluster is to simply omit the final consonant of the\\nnoun that is to receive a case ending. Especially where the final consonant\\nof the noun is identical to the first consonant of the case ending, these two\\nconsonants may simply merge. As indicated above, Tolkien first used min-\\ndoninnar as the plural allative of mindon “tower”. But then he decided\\nto drop the connecting vowel intruding before -nnar and introduced a con-\\ntracted form instead: Mindonnar, which simply represents mindon-nnar.\\nAs we see, the final -n of mindon merges with the first n of the ending\\n-nnar. A more-well known example is Elenna (for Elen-nna) as a name of\\nN´\\numenor: After following the Star of E¨\\narendil across the ocean to their new\\nland, the Edain “called that land Elenna, which is Starwards” (Akallabˆ\\neth;\\ncf. UT:317: Elenna·n´\\nor¨\\ne = “the land named Starwards”). In a similar fash-\\nion, perhaps the ablative of Menel “heaven” could – or even should – be\\nMenello (for Menel-llo) rather than Menelello.\\nNOTE: We may wonder how certain nouns with special stem-forms would be treated.\\nIn the case of talan, talam- “floor”, the allative “to a floor” or “(up)on a floor” might\\nprobably be expressed as talamenna with a connecting vowel inserted (the ablative should\\nalmost certainly be talamello), but perhaps we could also start from talan and use\\ntalanna (for talan-nna) as the allative form? And what about a noun like toron, torn-\\n“brother”? Should “to a brother” be tornenna with a connecting vowel e inserted between\\nthe stem-form and the case ending, or may we simply say toronna for toron-nna? At this\\nstage, we cannot know what Tolkien would have accepted as correct Quenya. I would not\\nreject any of these alternatives as wrong.\\nIt seems that the final -n of the four directions Formen, Hyarmen,\\nR´\\nomen, N´\\numen “North, South, East, West” quite regularly drops out\\nbefore the case endings for allative, ablative and locative (the locative case\\nwill be discussed in the next lesson). One haven in the east of N´\\numenor was\\n216\\n\\n\\ncalled R´\\nomenna, literally “Eastwards” (see its entry in the UT index, and\\ncf. LR:47) – clearly because ships sailed eastwards from it. Of course, R´\\nomen-\\nnna > R´\\nomenna as such is just another example of a final consonant of\\na noun merging with the first consonant of the case ending because they\\nhappen to be identical. However, Nam´\\nari¨\\ne provides R´\\nomello “from the\\nEast” as the ablative of R´\\nomen “East”, and here there can be no doubt\\nthat the final -n has been omitted to avoid the impossible form **R´\\nomenllo.\\nIt may be that R´\\nomenello with a connecting vowel inserted would also be\\na valid form, but as I said, contracted forms seem to be normal when the\\nwords for four basic directions are to be inflected for allative or ablative.\\n14.2\\nEqu¨\\ne and auta: two peculiar verbs\\nThe verb equ¨\\ne: We have earlier introduced the Quenya word for “say” or\\n“speak”: quet- (aorist quet¨\\ne, present tense qu´\\neta, past tense quent¨\\ne). Yet\\nthis verb is not always used; there is an alternative word that may be used\\nto introduce quotations. In WJ:392, Tolkien refers to\\n. . . a curious and evidently archaic form that survives only in the\\nlanguages of Aman: [primitive] *ekwˆ\\ne, Q[uenya] eque, T[elerin]\\nepe. It has no tense forms . . . being mostly used before either a\\nproper name (sg. or pl.) or a full independent pronoun, in the\\nsenses say / says or said. A quotation then follows, either direct,\\nor less usually indirect after a ‘that’-conjunction [e.g., “Galadriel\\nsaid that she wants to go to Middle-earth”]\\nSo as far as inflection is concerned, this equ¨\\ne may well be the simplest verb\\nin the entire language. “It has no tense forms”, so equ¨\\ne may be interpreted\\neither as a past tense “said” or as present tense “say(s)”, depending on the\\ncontext (perhaps it could even cover the future tense “shall say”!) It is used\\nmainly where the subject is a full independent pronoun (to be discussed\\nlater in this course) or a proper name (not a common noun). Also notice the\\nword order indicated by Tolkien: The word equ¨\\ne comes before its subject.\\nTolkien gave us no actual sentences containing the word equ¨\\ne, but based on\\nthe information he provided, something like the following must be possible:\\nEqu¨\\ne Elendil: “Et E¨\\narello Endorenna ut´\\nulien.”\\nElendil says/said: “Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come.”\\nTolkien glossed equ¨\\ne not only as “says”, but also as “say”. Since “say”\\nmust be understood as a plural verb in English, it seems that unlike normal\\nverbs, equ¨\\ne does not receive the ending -r even where it has a plural subject\\nor more than one subject. Notice that Tolkien stated that equ¨\\ne is typically\\n“used before . . . a proper name (sg. or pl.)”. Now proper names normally\\ndon’t appear in the plural (except in sentences like “there are many Johns\\nin this town”), so when Tolkien speaks of “pl.” proper names, he probably\\n217\\n\\n\\nmeans several proper names occurring together. So we must assume that a\\nsentence like this would be acceptable:\\nEqu¨\\ne Altariel ar Teleporno: “Ut´\\nuliemm¨\\ne Valinorello.”\\nAltariel and Teleporno [Galadriel and Celeborn] say/said: “We have come\\nfrom Valinor.”\\nTolkien indicated that equ¨\\ne rarely received suffixes of any kind, usually\\nnot even pronominal endings (WJ:392), though forms like equen “said I”\\nmay also occur (WJ:415).\\nIt cannot be wrong to replace equ¨\\ne with a form of the verb quet-, com-\\nplete with all the normal inflections (Elendil quet¨\\ne/quent¨\\ne. . . “Elendil\\nsays/said. . . ”, Altariel ar Teleporno quetir/quenter. . . “Galadriel and\\nCeleborn say/said. . . ”) Where the subject is not a proper name or a full\\nindependent pronoun, it would seem that a form of quet- is usually to be\\npreferred: I n´\\nıs quent¨\\ne. . . “the woman said. . . ” Perhaps word order is also\\nsignificant. Tolkien seems to be saying that equ¨\\ne is used to introduce a fol-\\nlowing quotation; if the speaker and the act of speaking is mentioned after\\nthe quotation, it is perhaps better to use a form of quet-, e.g.\\nEqu¨\\ne Elendil: “Ut´\\nulien.” = Elendil said: “I am come.”\\nbut:\\n”Ut´\\nulien,” Elendil quent¨\\ne = “I am come,” Elendil said.\\nAlso where no direct or indirect quotation is included in the sentence at\\nall, it is probably best to use a form of quet-. Cf. the attested example\\nSin Quent¨\\ne Quendingoldo Elendilenna referred to above (PM:401) –\\napparently meaning “Thus Spoke Quendingoldo [= Pengolodh] to Elendil”.\\nPerhaps quent¨\\ne could have been replaced by equ¨\\ne here as well – but prob-\\nably not.\\nThe verb auta-: This verb means “pass” or “go away, leave (the point\\nof the speaker’s thought)” (WJ:366). Readers of the Silmarillion will have\\nencountered it in chapter 20, as part of a battle-cry: Auta i l´\\nom¨\\ne! “The\\nnight is passing!”\\nAccording to the rules so far set out in the course, this verb is quite\\nirregular, though Tolkien may not have thought of it that way: In WJ:366\\nhe refers to its various “regular forms”. Anyway, the past tense of auta- is\\nnot **autan¨\\ne as we might expect. There are actually several possible past\\ntense forms. One of them is anw¨\\ne, formed by nasal-infixion of the primitive\\nroot-word awa; the ending -ta seen in auta- (primitive ?awatˆ\\na-) does not\\nappear at all in this past tense form. However, the form anw¨\\ne was “only\\nfound in archaic language”, so we will concentrate on the “modern” forms\\ninstead.\\nThere are two sets of past and perfect forms of the verb auta-, with\\nsomewhat different shades of meaning. If the meaning is “went away” in a\\npurely physical sense, about someone leaving one place and going to another,\\n218\\n\\n\\nthe past tense form oant¨\\ne is used. According to Tolkien, this form is “regular\\nfor a -ta verb of this class” (though most verbs in -ta seem to form their\\npast tense simply by adding the ending -n¨\\ne). The past tense is supposed\\nto descend from awantˆ\\ne, evidently a nasal-infixed form of awatˆ\\na, and in\\nQuenya, these words regularly developed into oant¨\\ne and auta, respectively.\\n(For the shift awa > oa, cf. one word introduced in the previous lesson:\\nhroa “body”, which Tolkien derived from primitive srawˆ\\na.) – The perfect\\ntense of auta- used in the same “physical” sense is oanti¨\\ne = “has gone\\naway [to another place]”. This perfect form is obviously influenced by the\\npast tense oant¨\\ne. Tolkien noticed that the form oanti¨\\ne shows “intrusion of\\nn from the past [tense form]” (WJ:366): Normally, nasal-infixion does not\\noccur in the perfect tense.\\nThe other set of past and perfect forms of the verb auta- seems no less ir-\\nregular. The alternative past tense is v´\\nan¨\\ne, the perfect av´\\nani¨\\ne. The first syl-\\nlable of v´\\nan¨\\ne is apparently the Quenya descendant of the stem wˆ\\na (WJ:366,\\napparently another manifestation of awa), whereas the ending -n¨\\ne must be\\nsimply the normal past tense ending. (Again, the perfect form seems influ-\\nenced by the past tense form – the n of v´\\nan¨\\ne sneaking into the perfect\\nav´\\nani¨\\ne.)\\nThe form v´\\nan¨\\ne and the corresponding perfect av´\\nani¨\\ne have acquired a\\nmore “abstract” meaning than the forms oant¨\\ne, oanti¨\\ne. V´\\nan¨\\ne does not\\nmean “went away (to another place)”, but rather “disappeared”, “passed”.\\nThe perfect av´\\nani¨\\ne occurs (with the plural ending -r) in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, in the\\nsentence y´\\neni ve lint¨\\ne yuldar av´\\nanier = “long years have passed like\\nswift draughts”. This sentence nicely illustrates the meaning of this perfect\\nform, for obviously the meaning is not that the y´\\neni or “long years” have\\ngone away to another place (sc. oantier!) They “long years” have simply\\npassed, and now they are gone. Where the subject is more tangible than\\n“long years”, the forms v´\\nan¨\\ne/av´\\nani¨\\ne would imply that the subject has\\ndisappeared, is lost, has died offetc.\\nIndeed Tolkien indicated that the meaning of v´\\nan¨\\ne/av´\\nani¨\\ne was influ-\\nenced by the related word vanwa “gone”, “lost”, “vanished”, “past and\\nover”. It occurs twice in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: S´\\nı vanwa n´\\na, R´\\nomello vanwa, Val-\\nimar = “now lost, lost [to those] from the East, is Valimar”. In WJ:366,\\nTolkien calls vanwa the “past participle” of auta-, though it obviously has\\nno connection with the past or passive participles we have discussed earlier\\nin this course (constructed with the ending -na or -ina). There is some ev-\\nidence for an alternative, rarer participle in -nwa. However, for all intents\\nand purposes, it matters little whether we call vanwa a participle or merely\\na verbal adjective (as does Nancy Martsch in her Basic Quenya).\\nNOTE 1: As pointed out in Lesson Eight, it may well be that when Tolkien wrote\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, he thought of the word av´\\nanier as the perfect form of a verb listed in the\\nEtymologies: vanya- “go, depart, disappear” (see the entry wan). We should still accept\\nTolkien’s post-LotR ideas about the verb auta-; it occurs, after all, in such a primary\\n219\\n\\n\\nsource as the Silmarillion. Interestingly, the adjectival word vanwa “gone, lost, over” is\\nfound already in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915 (QL:99) and was retained throughout all\\nstages of Tolkien’s development of Quenya.\\nNOTE 2: In the Etymologies, entry gawa, a quite distinct verb auta- “to invent” is\\nlisted. It would seem that the later verb auta- “go away” did not exist at the time Tolkien\\nwrote Etym. If we nonetheless accept both verbs as valid Quenya, we can distinguish\\nbetween them in some tenses, for auta- “to invent” may perhaps have the simplest past\\ntense: autan¨\\ne.\\n14.3\\nPossessive pronominal endings\\nSo far, we have discussed five pronominal endings that may be suffixed to\\nverbs to function as their subject: -ny¨\\ne (often shortened to -n) “I”, -ly¨\\ne\\n“you”, -lm¨\\ne and -mm¨\\ne “we” (inclusive and exclusive), plus -nt¨\\ne “they”.\\nWe have also pointed out that Quenya pronouns usually appear as endings,\\nnot so often as separate words as in English.\\nPronouns may also describe possession or belonging. Among the En-\\nglish possessive pronouns we have “my” (and “mine”), “your(s)”, “our(s)”,\\n“their(s)”. Quenya has endings for these pronouns as well, though these\\nendings are logically added to nouns, not to verbs. For instance, the end-\\ning for “my” is -nya. Thus, “my house” is coanya, while “my land” would\\nbe n´\\norenya. The accent now falls on the syllable before the pronominal\\nending: co-A-nya, n´\\no-RE-nya. All the pronominal endings begin in a con-\\nsonant cluster, and in accordance with the normal rules, the stress falls on\\nthe second-to-last syllable when its vowel is followed by a group of conso-\\nnants.\\nNotice that the subject endings that we have already introduced, all end\\nin the vowel -¨\\ne: -ny¨\\ne “I”, -ly¨\\ne “you” etc. The corresponding possessive\\npronominal endings can be derived simply by changing the final vowel to -a.\\nHere are the attested correspondences:\\n-ny¨\\ne “I” / -nya “my”\\n-ly¨\\ne “you” / -lya “your”\\n-lm¨\\ne “we” (incl.) / -lma “our” (incl.)\\n-mm¨\\ne “we” (excl.) / -mma “our” (excl.)\\nSo besides coanya “my house” we can have coalya “your house”, whereas\\ncoalma and coamma would both translate as “our house” in English.\\nNOTE: As for the distinction between inclusive and exclusive “our”, it would closely\\ncorrespond to the distinction between inclusive and exclusive “we”, explained in the pre-\\nvious lesson. Hence “our house” is expressed as coalma if the one(s) you are addressing is\\n(are) also among the owners of the house and thus included in the word “our”. Conversely,\\ncoamma is the word to use for “our house” if you are talking to a party that is not among\\nthe owners of the house and hence is not included in the word “our”.\\n220\\n\\n\\nIt seems very reasonable to assume that the ending -nt¨\\ne “they” has a\\ncounterpart -nta “their”, though the latter suffix is not attested in published\\nmaterial. One problem may seem to be that it would clash with the dual\\nallative ending, but in context it would hardly be very difficult to tell whether\\n(say) ciryanta is to be interpreted “to a couple of ships” or “their ship”.\\nPresumably the endings could even be combined: ciryantanta, “to their\\ncouple of ships”! I won’t construct any exercises involving the unattested\\nending -nta “their”, but I think it is safe enough to be recommended to\\nwriters.\\nCombining pronominal possessive endings with endings for case and num-\\nber: Combining these two kinds of endings is what truly makes the total\\nnumber of forms that a Quenya noun can assume explode. We are left with\\nhundreds of possible combinations, but since they are just that – combina-\\ntions – the endings involved are not nearly as numerous, and the load on\\nthe student’s memory is not so great after all.\\nHere follows sambelya “your room” (samb¨\\ne “room, chamber” + -lya\\n“your”) inflected for the all the numbers and cases so far discussed in\\nthis course. If this list appears somewhat complicated and daunting at first\\nglance, the student will be relieved to discover that it is actually perfectly\\nregular and in a way contains no new information at all: Just start from\\nsambelya “your room” and treat it as you would any other noun in -a,\\nadding the normal endings for number and case. One consequence of this is\\nthat the word now has a plural in -r (sambelyar “your rooms”), though\\nsamb¨\\ne “room” occurring by itself would be an i-plural (sambi “rooms”).\\n• Nominative/Accusative: singular sambelya “your room”, dual\\nsambelyat “your couple of rooms”, plural sambelyar “your rooms”.\\n(In the archaic form of Quenya that had a distinct accusative, we would presum-\\nably see the acc. sing. sambely´\\na and the acc. pl. sambelyai, but in this course,\\nwe don’t use distinct accusative forms.)\\n• Genitive: singular sambelyo “of your room” (the genitive ending -o\\nregularly displacing the final -a of sambelya even though the -a is here\\npart of another ending), dual sambelyato “of your couple of rooms”,\\nplural sambelyaron “of your rooms”.\\n• Possessive: singular sambelyava “of your room”, dual ?sambelya-\\ntwa “of your couple of rooms”, plural sambelyaiva “of your rooms”.\\n(While we here provide the same translations for the genitive and pos-\\nsessive cases, there are of course certain subtle shades of meaning that\\ndistinguish them.)\\n• Dative: sambelyan “for your room”, dual sambelyant “for your\\ncouple of rooms”, plural sambelyain “for your rooms”.\\n• Allative: sambelyanna “to your room”, dual sambelyanta “to\\nyour couple of rooms”, plural sambelyannar “to your rooms”.\\n221\\n\\n\\n• Ablative: sambelyallo “from your room”, dual sambelyalto “from\\nyour couple of rooms”, plural sambelyallon (or, -llor) “from your\\nrooms”. (In the case of the allative and the ablative, the accent falls on\\nthe vowel in front of the case ending [e.g. sambelyAllo], in accordance\\nwith the normal stress rules – which apply for all the forms here listed.)\\nNOTE: Elendil’s Declaration includes the words sinom¨\\ne maruvan, ar hildinyar “in\\nthis place will I abide, and my heirs”. From the example hildinyar “my heirs”, one might\\nargue that plural nouns with plural forms in -i (like hildi “heirs”) should assume this\\nending before pronominal endings and secondary plural markers (like the -nya- and -r\\nof hildinyar) are added. If so, “your rooms” should actually be sambilyar rather than\\nsambelyar as we suggested above. This is possible, but the example hildinyar may have\\nits own peculiarities; see below.\\nNotice that the possessive pronominal ending is added first, and endings\\nfor number and case are added after it: “From your room” is therefore sam-\\nbelyallo, not **sambellolya. For a Tolkien-made example, cf. the greeting\\nAnar caluva tielyanna “the Sun shall shine upon your path” (UT:22, 51):\\nThe noun ti¨\\ne “path” here appears combined with the pronominal ending -\\nlya “your”, and tielya “your path” is further expanded with the allative\\nending -nna “upon” to express “upon your path”.\\nAnother example of a noun equipped with both a pronominal ending and\\na case ending occurs in the most famous Elvish greeting of all, “a star shines\\non the hour of our meeting”: Elen s´\\nıla l´\\numenn’ omentielmo, as the ver-\\nsion printed in the first edition of LotR went. With this lesson we have fi-\\nnally presented all the grammar one needs to fully understand this sentence:\\nElen “a star”, s´\\nıla “shines” or rather “is shining” (the present/continuative\\ntense of the verb sil-), l´\\numenn’ or in full l´\\numenna “on (the) hour” (the\\nnoun l´\\num¨\\ne “hour” + the allative ending -nna “on”), and finally the word\\nthat is relevant for our present discussion: omentielmo. This must be an-\\nalyzed as an abstract noun (or gerund?) omenti¨\\ne “meeting” + the ending\\n-lma for inclusive “our” (WJ:367), and omentielma “our meeting” is then\\nequipped with the genitive ending -o to express “of our meeting”: Hence\\nomentielmo, since the ending -o displaces a final -a.\\nDual inclusive “our”: In the revised edition of LotR (1966), Tolkien altered\\nthe word omentielmo to omentielvo, though the translation remained the\\nsame: “of our meeting”. Tolkien made up an “internal” explanation for this\\nchange, briefly referred to in one of Humphrey Carpenter’s notes on the\\ncollection of Tolkien’s letters that he edited (Letters:447, notes on letter\\n#205):\\nThe Elvish language Quenya makes a distinction in its dual in-\\nflexion, which turns on the number of persons involved; failure\\nto understand this was, Tolkien remarked, ‘a mistake generally\\nmade by mortals’. So in this case, Tolkien made a note that\\n222\\n\\n\\nthe ‘Thain’s Book of Minas Tirith’, one of the supposed sources\\nof The Lord of the Rings, had the reading omentielvo, but that\\nFrodo’s original (lost) manuscript probably had omentielmo; and\\nthat omentielvo is the correct form in the context.\\nThe point seems to be this: In the greeting “a star shines on the hour\\nof our meeting”, the word “our” refers to a meeting of two people (Frodo\\nand Gildor, the former speaking to the latter). Therefore, a dual “our” is\\nappropriate here – “our” meaning “of you (sg.) and me”. Frodo’s “lost”\\noriginal manuscript instead had a plural “our” (ending -lma, or with the\\ngenitive ending -lmo), but this is the kind of “our” that is used to refer\\nto something belonging to three or more people. It was inappropriate when\\nonly 2 persons, Frodo and Gildor, were involved in “our meeting”. Frodo’s\\nlittle grammatical error was mercifully corrected in the “Thain’s Book of\\nMinas Tirith”, one of the copies of his original manuscript.\\nThis “internal” explanation is of course mere rationalizing on Tolkien’s\\npart. From an “external” point of view, it is obvious what is going on:\\nAfter publishing LotR, the Professor couldn’t resist the temptation to con-\\ntinue tinkering with the Quenya pronoun table (a process that had already\\nbeen going on for decades). Tolkien apparently decided to introduce special\\ndual forms of (inclusive) “we” and “our”, used when only two persons are\\ninvolved: the speaker and the one who is addressed. Unfortunately, this re-\\nvision conflicted with a piece of already-published Quenya, but even so, the\\nProfessor changed omentielmo to omentielvo and made up a little story\\nthat would explain the discrepancy from an “internal” point of view: Frodo\\njust couldn’t get his grammar right! Gildor’s remark to the other Elves,\\n“here is a scholar in the Ancient Tongue”, suddenly ring rather ironic! Per-\\nhaps we are to imagine mocking smiles twitching in their lips – “ah, after\\nall these centuries, mortals still can’t get their dual pronouns right. . . ”\\nSo let us poor mortals try to figure it out: What, really, is the ending\\nfor dual (inclusive) “our” – and the corresponding ending for dual inclusive\\n“we”? The most straightforward extrapolation would go like this: Removing\\nthe genitive ending -o from omentielvo gives us omentielva, for surely this\\npronominal possessive suffix ends in -a just like all the other attested endings\\nof this kind. We proceed to isolate -lva as the ending for dual inclusive “our”,\\ne.g. coalva “our house” of a house owned by two persons, one of them\\nspeaking to the other. According to the pattern observed in such pairs as\\n-lya “your” vs. -ly¨\\ne “you”, we may further assume that our reconstructed\\nending -lva “our” corresponds to an ending -lv¨\\ne “we” – a dual inclusive\\n“we” meaning “you (thou) and I”: Lelyuvalv¨\\ne i ostonna “we will go to\\nthe city [, you and I]”. Notice that the ending for inclusive “we” introduced\\nin the previous lesson, namely -lm¨\\ne, would refer to a group of at least three\\npeople.\\nNOTE: As far as is known, Quenya has no specific ending for dual exclusive “we” – sc.\\n223\\n\\n\\nan ending meaning “I and exactly one other person”! It is assumed that -mm¨\\ne is used\\nfor exclusive “we”, and -mma for exclusive “our”, no matter whether two or more people\\nare involved. Cf. one of our home-made examples above; we put the words ut´\\nuliemm¨\\ne\\nValinorello into the mouths of Galadriel and Celeborn. On the other hand, let none be\\nsurprised if it turns out that Tolkien actually did invent specific endings for dual exclusive\\n“we” and “our”, to make the pronoun table wholly symmetric.\\nAs I said, the most straightforward reconstruction based on the form\\nomentielvo “of our meeting” would lead us to extrapolate the inclusive\\ndual endings -lva “our” and -lv¨\\ne “we”. This reconstruction may well be\\ncorrect, and the student should notice these forms, for many writers have\\nused them. Yet there are other possibilities as well. If we are to isolate the\\nspecifically dual element of the word omentielvo, it has to be the v, that\\nmust somehow be related to the dual ending -u (as in Aldu “Two Trees”).\\nBut if u were to be transmuted into a consonant, we would rather expect it\\nto become w, which is the corresponding “semi-vowel” – the vowel u used\\nas a de facto consonant. Therefore it has been suggested that the ending\\nfor dual inclusive “our” may not be -lva after all, but perhaps rather -lwa.\\nAccording to this theory, adding the genitive ending -o produces -lvo in-\\nstead of **-lwo for the simple reason that wo (unlike wa) is not a possible\\nQuenya combination. Therefore, w (the consonant corresponding to u) here\\nbecomes v before -o. A possible phonological parallel is provided by some of\\nthe names quoted in PM:352–353. One example is Telufinw¨\\ne “Last Finw¨\\ne”,\\nwhich is said to have a shorter form Telvo. This is apparently the initial\\nelement of the full name, telu-, + the suffix -o (here functioning as a mascu-\\nline ending). Notice how the -u of telu- has become a v in the name Telvo,\\nevidently because of the following -o. Perhaps we are to imagine a develop-\\nment whereby a form “Teluo” is reduced to two syllables by pronouncing\\nit “Telwo”, and this form in turn has to be altered to Telvo to get rid\\nof the unwanted combination wo. Similarly, “omentielwo” could plausibly\\ntransmute into the attested form omentielvo.\\nIf the ending for dual inclusive “our” is actually -lwa rather than -lva,\\nwe may also assume that the ending for dual inclusive “we” is -lw¨\\ne rather\\n-lv¨\\ne. But extrapolating from a form that is itself reconstructed is of course\\na risky business.\\nAdding pronominal endings to nouns ending in a consonant: To avoid im-\\npossible consonant clusters, an extra vowel -e- may be inserted before the\\npronominal ending where necessary. As we remember, this extra vowel may\\nalso turn up before case endings. Combining atar “father” with -lya “your”\\nto express “your father” would probably produce atarelya (since **atarlya\\nis not a possible Quenya word). “Our father” would be ataremma (exclusive\\n“our”) or atarelma (inclusive “our”) – and either atarelva or atarelwa if\\n“our” is a dual inclusive pronoun (“the father of the two of us”). It may be\\nthat if the noun is plural, one would use i as the connecting vowel, if pronomi-\\nnal endings and case endings behave in the same way. Cf. Tolkien’s elenillor\\n224\\n\\n\\nfor “from stars”. Thus, “your stars” might similarly be elenilyar, and “our\\n(excl.) fathers” should evidently be atarimmar rather than ataremmar.\\n(Of course, it is primarily the final -r which functions as a plural marker\\nhere, so there can be no misunderstanding regarding the number anyway.) It\\nmay be that hildinyar “my heirs” from Elendil’s Declaration is an example\\nof this, if the noun “heir” is ?hil with a stem hild-, hence pl. hildi.\\nHowever, the ending -nya “my” seems to be somewhat special. Where a\\nconnecting vowel is required, it apparently always prefers -i-, whether the\\nnoun it is added to is singular or plural. It seems that this connecting vowel\\nreflects the vowel of the primitive root producing the Eldarin 1st person\\npronouns, namely ni2 (listed in the Etymologies and simply defined “I”).\\nF´\\nıriel’s Song has Anarinya, not **Anarenya, for “my Sun”. Similarly,\\n“my father” is atarinya (LR:61) rather than ?atarenya; we cannot know\\nwhether the latter form is valid at all. The (nominative) plural “my fathers”\\nwould of course be atarinyar, so the singular and plural remain distinct. In\\nthe same fashion, the singular form of hildinyar “my heirs” would perhaps\\nbe hildinya “my heir” with the same connecting vowel i, since it is always\\npreferred by the ending -nya. In the case of another ending, like -mma\\n“our”, we might conceivably see a variation between hildemma (?) “our\\nheir” and hildimmar “our heirs”; in the latter case, the -i is the normal\\nnominative plural ending used as a connecting vowel. (The Etymologies,\\nentry khil, lists precisely such a plural form hildi – there glossed “followers”,\\nclose enough to “heirs” in meaning.)\\nIt has been suggested that the ending -nya, added to a noun in -¨\\ne, would\\nalso displace this -¨\\ne with -i- (much like the plural ending -i displaces a final -¨\\ne\\nwhen added to a noun). However, one Tolkien example that was published in\\nthe summer of 2000 demonstrates that this is not so: VT41:11 has ´\\norenya,\\nnot **´\\norinya, for “my heart” (´\\nor¨\\ne: “heart” in the sense of “inner mind”).\\nAccording to the system we are trying to sketch, even the plural “my hearts”\\nwould be ´\\norenyar rather than ?´\\norinyar, since ´\\nor¨\\ne ends in -¨\\ne and thus\\nrequires no connecting vowel before suffixes anyway. Cf. the Plotz Letter:\\nlassennar, not **lassinnar, as the plural allative of lass¨\\ne “leaf” – though\\nthe nominative pl. is lassi. In a similar fashion, we would probably see\\nlassenya “my leaf” vs. lassenyar “my leaves” (hardly **lassinyar). The\\nconnecting vowel -i- only turns up where plural nouns ending in a consonant\\nare to receive endings; singular nouns have -e- instead, except in the case\\nof the ending -nya “my” which prefers -i- whether the noun it is added to\\nis singular or plural. (If it is plural, this will be sufficiently indicated by the\\nsecondary endings for number and/or case that are added after the ending\\n-nya.)\\nNOTE: Of course, we must assume that nouns in -¨\\ne that have stem-forms in -i- would\\nappear in the latter form when endings are to be added. So if l´\\nır¨\\ne (l´\\nıri-) means “song”,\\n“my song” would evidently be l´\\nırinya (plural l´\\nırinyar “my songs”). But this is actually a\\nquite different matter, for here we would evidently see l´\\nıri- before any suffix, for pronoun\\n225\\n\\n\\nor case (l´\\nırilya “your song”, ablative l´\\nırillo “from a song”, etc.)\\nIn some instances, contracted forms are used instead of inserting any con-\\nnecting vowel. UT:193 provides the form aranya, untranslated but appar-\\nently meaning “my king” (Erendis uses this word when addressing the King\\nof N´\\numenor). This is apparently aran “king” + -nya “my”, the impossible\\nform **arannya being simplified to aranya. Possibly ?araninya would also\\nbe acceptable Quenya, but when the noun ends in the same consonant as the\\npronominal ending begins in, it may be permissible to let the last consonant\\nof the noun and the first consonant of the ending merge – a phenomenon\\nalso observed where case endings are involved. (Cf. mindonnar rather than\\nmindoninnar as the pl. allative of mindon “tower”; perhaps “my towers”\\nwould be mindonyar rather than mindoninyar.)\\nEspecially where the ending -nya “my” is concerned, contracted forms\\nmay turn up even where no contraction would be “necessary” to achieve\\na permissible Quenya word. The High-elven word for “son” is yondo, so\\n“my son” might simply be yondonya, and there is little reason to doubt\\nthat this is a valid form. Yet in LR:61 Elendil addresses his son as yonya,\\napparently a contracted variant of yondonya. Perhaps yonya would be\\nused for “my son” primarily when addressing the son concerned. If so, it\\nwould parallel another example: One Quenya word for “child” is h´\\nına, or\\nhina with a short vowel – the latter only being used when “addressing a\\n(young) child” (WJ:403). Tolkien went on to note that this hina, used as a\\nform of address, often appeared in the form hinya “my child” – the latter\\nbeing contracted from hinanya (still WJ:403).\\nSummary of Lesson Fourteen\\nThe Quenya allative case has the ending -nna (plural -nnar) and expresses\\nthe basic idea of “to, toward”, e.g. ciryanna “to a ship”. In certain con-\\ntexts, this case may also express “on, upon” or “into”. The ablative case has\\nthe ending -llo (plural -llon, alternatively -llor) and signifies “from”, e.g.\\nciryallo “from a ship”; sometimes the ablative may also imply “out of”. The\\ndual forms of the allative and ablative endings are -nta and -lto, respec-\\ntively (at least in the case of nouns with nominative dual forms in -t; it may\\nbe that nouns with nominative dual forms in -u would rather have the basic\\nendings -nna or -llo following this vowel). If a noun ending in a consonant is\\nto receive the case ending for allative or ablative, a connecting vowel (in the\\nsingular -e-, in the plural -i-) may be inserted before the case ending to avoid\\nan impossible consonant cluster; otherwise, a contracted form is used (e.g.\\nR´\\nomello “from the East”, for R´\\nomen-llo). – The verb equ¨\\ne is a peculiar\\nform that is not inflected for tense and rarely receives endings of any kind; it\\nmeans “said” or “says” and is used to introduce quotations where the sub-\\nject (which follows the verb equ¨\\ne and precedes the quotation) is a proper\\n226\\n\\n\\nname or an independent pronoun. – The verb auta- “pass, go away, leave”\\nhas rather surprising past and perfect forms: oant¨\\ne or oanti¨\\ne if the verb\\nrefers to physically leaving one place (and going to another), but v´\\nan¨\\ne and\\nav´\\nani¨\\ne if the verb refers to disappearing, being lost, or dying off. – Quenya\\npossessive pronouns are normally expressed as endings added to the rele-\\nvant noun (the thing that is owned). These suffixes include -nya “my”, -lya\\n“your”, -lma “our” (inclusive), and -mma “our” (exclusive). Notice that\\nthese possessive endings correspond to the subject pronominal endings suf-\\nfixed to verbs, the former ending in -a whereas the latter end in -¨\\ne (therefore\\nthe unattested ending for “their” may well be -nta, corresponding to -nt¨\\ne\\n“they”). There is also a specific ending for dual inclusive “our”, but its form\\ncannot be confidently reconstructed (either -lva or -lwa; only -lvo with the\\ngenitive ending added is attested). Where required, connecting vowels may\\nbe fitted in before the noun and the pronominal ending, probably by much\\nthe same rules that apply to the case endings -nna and -llo, except that\\nthe ending -nya “my” seems to consistently prefer the connecting vowel -i-.\\nOnce a noun has received a possessive pronominal ending, this noun may be\\nfurther inflected for number or case just like a regular noun in -a would be.\\nVocabulary\\nWe have now exhausted the basic numbers 1–12 (including the extrapolated\\nnumber rasta). Higher numbers are unfortunately rather uncertain, though\\nwe have some clues. I may add some thoughts about this later, but in this\\nand the next couple of lessons we will introduce the attested ordinal numbers\\n– showing order or position in a series, like English “first”, “second”, “third”\\netc.\\nminya “first” (cf. the number min¨\\ne “one” and the adjectival ending -ya. The original\\nname of the First Clan of the Elves was Minyar, literally “Firsts”, though the\\nNoldor later called them Vanyar or “Fair Ones” instead [WJ:380, 382–383].)\\nequ¨\\ne “say(s), said” (tense-less verb introducing quotations)\\nauta- “to leave, to go/pass away” (past tense oant¨\\ne and perfect oanti¨\\ne, alterna-\\ntively v´\\nan¨\\ne and av´\\nani¨\\ne, the latter two forms referring to disappearing or dying\\noffas explained above). The “past participle” of auta- is said to be vanwa “lost,\\ngone, passed, vanished” – but this word may be treated almost as an independent\\nadjective.\\nmenta- “to send”\\nruc- “to feel fear or horror”; “to fear” (said to be constructed with “from” of the\\nobject feared, presumably meaning that what would be the direct object in English\\nappears in the ablative case in Quenya)\\nambo “hill”\\n227\\n\\n\\nmindon “(great) tower” (cf. the Mindon Eldali´\\neva or “Great Tower of the Eldali¨\\ne”\\nmentioned in the Silmarillion. The first syllable of mindon is related to the number\\nmin¨\\ne “one”, since a mindon is an isolated tower, not part of a larger structure.)\\nN´\\numen “West” (cf. N´\\numenor, N´\\numen´\\nor¨\\ne “Westernesse” or “West-land”: n´\\nu-\\nme(n)-n´\\nor¨\\ne). It seems that the names of the basic directions are treated as proper\\nnames, capitalized and not requiring the article; cf. R´\\nomello in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne (which\\nTolkien translated “from the East” even though there is no i in the Quenya text).\\nsamb¨\\ne “room, chamber” (Sindarin sam, samm-; cf. the Sammath Naur or “Cham-\\nbers of Fire” inside Mount Doom)\\nyondo “son”\\nhaira “far, remote”\\net “out” (followed by ablative to express “out of”)\\nIn addition to our traditional list of twelve new glosses we will also introduce a couple\\nof proper names, required in these exercises. In accordance with our established policy we\\nwill avoid explicit references to Tolkien’s mythos in these exercises, so no proper names\\ncoined by him will appear here. Yet we can readily coin new names using his principles.\\nThe ending -(n)dil often occurs in masculine names and signifies “friend” or “lover”,\\ne.g. E¨\\narendil “Sea-friend” or Elendil “Star-friend” (but also implying “Elf-friend” since\\nthe words elen and Elda are ultimately related and were even confused by the Edain:\\nWJ:410). So we can venture, say, Calandil “Friend of Light”. As for feminine names, one\\nobserved pattern is that an adjective in -a can be turned into a fem. name by changing the\\nending to -¨\\ne (not to be confused with the plural form of the adjective). For instance, one of\\nthe queens of N´\\numenor was called Ancalim¨\\ne, transparently formed from the superlative\\nform ancalima “brightest, exceedingly bright”. (Similarly, masculine names can be made\\nby changing the ending -a to -o or -on, cf. Sauron vs. the adjective saura “foul, putrid”\\n– one suddenly understands why the Dark Lord didn’t permit his servants to use the name\\nthe Elves had given him!) Starting from a suitable adjective like nessima “youthful”, we\\ncan derive a plausible woman’s name Nessim¨\\ne “Youthful One”. However, the meaning of\\nthe names Calandil and Nessim¨\\ne is of no importance for the exercises.\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Lelyuvalm¨\\ne i mindonello i coanna.\\nB. Ily¨\\ne Eldar av´\\nanier Ambarello.\\nC. I Naucor ut´\\nulier i orontillon; elendient¨\\ne i coannar ar\\ns´\\nucar limpelma.\\nD. I ´\\numi¨\\ne ohtari mapuvar i malta lielmava mentien harmal-\\nmar haira n´\\norenna.\\nE. I n´\\nıs oant¨\\ne coanyallo ar lend¨\\ne i s´\\nırenna.\\n228\\n\\n\\nF. I minya cirya tuluva N´\\numello.\\nG. Quen ruc¨\\ne i r´\\navillon, an am´\\natient¨\\ne i aran liemmo, ar\\n´\\nuvant¨\\ne auta n´\\noremmallo.\\nH. Equ¨\\ne Nessim¨\\ne Calandilenna: “Yondonya av´\\nani¨\\ne sambe-\\nnyallo!”\\n2. Translate into Quenya (and notice that inclusive “our” is meant to be a plural\\npronoun throughout, since the exact form of the ending for dual inclusive “our”\\ncannot be reconstructed with certainty):\\nI. Calandil said to Nessim¨\\ne: “Your son has gone out of the house,\\nfor all the boys went to the hill.”\\nJ. From heaven [Menel: the sky] the sun is giving light to our (in-\\nclusive) world, and the darkness has passed.\\nK. Calandil said to the evil king: “You have sent your warriors to\\nthe tower to find my sons. My thrall will protect the boys, and\\nthey will not be lost!”\\nL. The man having [arwa] the ships wanted to leave, and all the\\nships went away west[wards].\\nM. We (exclusive) went to a two-room apartment [dual of samb¨\\ne!],\\nand the man from the hills gave your son a great sword, saying\\n[qu´\\netala]: “The sword comes from a remote land, out of the\\noutermost West.” (“Outermost”: use the superlative of haira.)\\nN. All trees died and disappeared from our (incl.) land, and Calandil\\nand Nessim¨\\ne said: “We (excl.) will send our (excl.) thralls to find\\na land with [or, ‘having’ = arwa] many trees.”\\nO. The maiden said to the animal: “I fear [/I’m afraid of] your big\\nhorns (dual).”\\nP. I went to our (incl.) room to gather my things, for I wanted to\\ngive my brother my first book; the book lay [/was lying] on the\\nfloor.\\nAdditional exercises\\ninvolving Quenya nouns combining pronominal endings with suffixes for\\nnumber and/or case\\n(Students may check the keys to the exercises above before proceeding to\\nthese exercises.) There exercises above include several examples of nouns\\nwith both pronominal endings and case endings, e.g. lielmava “of our peo-\\nple”. A skilled Quenyaist would be able to extract the meaning of such forms\\nat a glance, indeed perceiving a single word like ostolmallon as something\\n229\\n\\n\\nlike a single meaning, “from our cities”, without having to consciously break\\nthis down into osto-lma-llo-n “city-our-from-plural”. Of course, a skilled\\nQuenyaist would also be able to readily produce such words, combining the\\nrelevant endings without hesitation.\\n3. Translate the following list of single Quenya words into English phrases.\\nNOTE: In the keys to this exercise, the following simplified “equivalents” are used:\\ngenitives and possessive-adjectival forms are all turned into “of”-constructions,\\ndative forms are represented as prepositional phrases in “for”, whereas allative\\nand ablative forms are represented as phrases involving the prepositions “to” and\\n“from”, respectively. The same system is used in the English-to-Quenya exercises\\nbelow, with specification of whether “of” is to be rendered as a genitive (gen.) or\\na possessive-adjectival (poss.) form. – In these exercises, there are also a few ex-\\namples of the suffix for dual inclusive “our”, though conveniently always with the\\ngenitive ending attached, since we know with certainty (from the attested example\\nomentielvo) what form it then assumes.\\na) Coalmallon\\nb) Hroanyan\\nc) Hroalmain\\nd) Lambelmar\\ne) N´\\norelyanna\\nf) Engwemmar\\ng) Aranelyallo\\nh) M´\\nolinyo\\ni) M´\\nolinyaron\\nj) Ostolmannar\\nk) Lielvo\\nl) Yondolyava\\nm) Sambemmat\\nn) Sambenyant\\no) Sambelyato\\np) Sambelmanta\\nq) Sambelyalto\\nr) Lienyava\\ns) Yondolmaiva\\nt) T´\\narilyan\\nu) Liemmaiva\\nv) Nerinyaiva\\nw) Nerinyava\\nx) Seldonyain\\ny) Ciryammalto\\nz) Yondolvo\\n4. Translate into single Quenya words (“of” = genitive or possessive as\\nfurther specified, “for” = dative, “to” = allative, “from” = ablative):\\na) To your hills\\nb) For our (excl.) peace\\nc) Your two-volume book (use a dual form of parma)\\nd) To your tower / To your towers (translate the sg. and pl. sepa-\\nrately)\\ne) Of (poss.) our (excl.) queen\\nf) Of (poss.) my sisters\\ng) From my sister\\nh) Of (gen.) our (incl.) gifts\\ni) Of (gen.) our (incl.) gold\\nj) For our (incl.) joy\\nk) Of (gen.) your wine\\n230\\n\\n\\nl) From your world\\nm) Of (gen.) my sun\\nn) For my king\\no) Of (poss.) our (excl.) son\\np) Of (gen.) our (excl.) cups\\nq) For your pair of birds (use a dual form of aiw¨\\ne)\\nr) To our (excl.) double walls (use a dual form of ramba)\\ns) From our (incl.) double walls (same)\\nt) From your lands\\nu) Of (gen.) my [two twin] sisters (use a dual form of seler, sell-)\\nv) Of (gen.) our (excl.) treasures\\nw) To our (incl.) horses\\nx) Of (gen.) our (dual incl.) house (= “of the house of the two of\\nus”)\\ny) For my brother\\nz) To our (excl.) trees\\n231\\n\\n\\nLesson 15\\nThe ending -rya and more about possessive pronominal\\nendings. The Locative case. Relative sentences. Third Person\\nobscurities.\\n15.1\\nMore about possessive pronominal endings\\n(plus a slightly digressive inquiry into the true nature of the\\ncombinations ly, ny, ry, ty)\\nIn the previous lesson we introduced a series of possessive pronominal end-\\nings that can be added to nouns: -nya “my”, -lya “your”, -lma “our” (incl.)\\nand -mma “our” (excl.); furthermore, there is an ending for dual inclusive\\n“our”, either -lva or -lwa (only attested in the form -lvo with the geni-\\ntive ending -o added). Ignoring a strange variant of the ending -lya “your”\\n(-lda, to be discussed later), only one of the attested pronominal endings\\nremains to be mentioned: -rya. It occurs twice in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne. The first time it\\nis followed by the genitive ending, regularly producing the form -ryo: The\\nrelevant word if ´\\nomaryo, translated “of her voice”, the genitive form of\\n´\\nomarya “her voice”. The word ´\\noma “voice” is attested by itself elsewhere\\n(Etym., entry om; VT39:16).\\nThe second time -rya occurs in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, it also has another ending fol-\\nlowing it, in this case the dual marker -t: the word m´\\naryat is translated\\n“her hands”, referring to a natural pair of hands (the word m´\\na “hand” is\\nalso attested by itself). Anyhow, the ending -rya is seen to mean “her”, and\\nfrom the Namari¨\\ne examples it is clear that it can be used and combined\\nwith other endings just like any of the other pronominal suffixes we have\\nalready discussed and practiced (samberya “her room”, samberyan “for\\nher room”, samberyanna “to her room”, samberyallo “from her room”,\\nsamberyo and samberyava “of her room”. . . and so on with plural and\\ndual forms: samberyar “her rooms”, samberyat “her couple of rooms/her\\ntwo-room apartment”, etc. etc.)\\nFor thirty years, from The Fellowship of the Ring (with Nam´\\nari¨\\ne in it)\\nappeared in 1954 until Christopher Tolkien published The War of the Jew-\\n232\\n\\n\\nels in 1994, “her” was the sole known meaning of the ending -rya. In the\\nmeantime, we had one more example of -rya = “her” in the Markirya poem,\\nwhich was published in The Monsters and the Critics in 1983 (though in\\nMarkirya, “her” does not refer to a person, but to a ship). But when WJ\\nappeared in 1994, it became evident that the suffix -rya actually covers not\\nonly “her”, but also “his”: Coarya is shown to be the Quenya for “the\\nhouse of him” or “his house” (WJ:369, there spelt k¨\\noarya). Of course, the\\nform coarya as such could just as well mean “her house”, and conversely\\nthe Nam´\\nari¨\\ne forms m´\\naryat, ´\\nomaryo could in another context mean “his\\nhands” and “of his voice”: We have to conclude that Quenya simply does\\nnot make a distinction between “his” and “her”. Indeed it is entirely possible\\nthat -rya covers “its” as well (see below) – so that there is one single ending\\nfor the entire third person singular in the table of possessive pronouns. The\\nEnglish translation would depend on the context, of course.\\nThere is more to learn from the two examples of -rya in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne. Notice\\nthe dual form m´\\naryat “her (pair of) hands”. As described in Lesson Three,\\nQuenya developed a system whereby -t is the normal dual ending, ordinarily\\nreplaced by -u only where euphonic concerns demand this, as when the\\nword that is to receive a dual ending already includes t or d (Letters:427,\\nfootnote). But in Lesson Three we also argued from the example peu “(pair\\nof) lips” that body-parts occurring in pairs occur in “fossilized” dual forms,\\nalways taking the ending -u – “reflecting the older system in which only\\n-u denoted a natural or logical pair”. Nonetheless, the student may also\\nremember a parenthetical warning to the effect that “the other ending -t\\nmay however be used if certain other endings intrude before the dual ending\\nitself; we will return to this in a later lesson”. It is time to have a closer look\\non this.\\nIt has often been assumed that removing the ending -rya “her” from\\nm´\\naryat “her hands” would simply leave us with m´\\nat “(a pair of) hands”.\\nYet since the dual form of p´\\ne “lip” is attested as peu, we might reasonably\\nassume that the dual form of m´\\na “hand” is likewise mau “pair of hands”,\\nthough the latter form remains unattested. If the noun that normally has a\\ndual form in -u is to receive a possessive pronominal suffix, it seems that the\\ndual ending -u is suppressed and duality is instead expressed by means of the\\nending -t, suffixed after the pronominal suffix – as in m´\\naryat. Though the\\ndual “(pair of) lips” is peu, we can assume that “her (two) lips” would be\\nconstructed by starting from the singular form p´\\ne “lip” and adding -rya for\\n“his/her” and then -t for dual number, so that as a parallel to m´\\naryat we\\nwould see p´\\neryat. (It then follows that the genitive is p´\\neryato, the dative\\np´\\neryant, the allative p´\\neryanta, the ablative p´\\neryalto, etc.) Aldu may be\\nthe normal dual “pair of trees”, but “her pair of trees” would perhaps be\\nconstructed from the singular alda with the appropriate suffixes, producing\\naldaryat. Even so, we may suspect that the dual ending -u could function\\nas a connecting vowel where one is needed – just as the plural ending -i\\n233\\n\\n\\nis known to function in certain instances. The word for “foot” is t´\\nal with\\nstem tal-, so perhaps the dual “(pair of) feet” is talu. Adding a possessive\\npronominal ending to t´\\nal, tal- would however require a connecting vowel\\nbefore we can even think about adding -t as a dual marker at the end of\\nthe word. Should “her pair of feet” perhaps be something like taluryat\\nwith double dual markers, -u- and -t, just like there would apparently be\\ndouble plural markers (-i- and -r) in a plural word like (say) talimmar “our\\nfeet”? If so, this would be an exception to the apparent rule that the dual\\nmarker -u is not used before a possessive pronominal suffix. As usual, we\\nlack attested examples, but since Elendil’s Declaration indicates that “my\\nheirs” is hildinyar, it would not be wildly implausible to assume that a\\ncorresponding dual form would be something very much like hildunyat.\\n(Or maybe the rule that -nya “my” prefers -i- as its connecting vowel would\\nprevail, producing hildinyat, but we might still see -u- as a connecting\\nvowel before other pronominal endings, e.g. hilduryat “her pair of heirs”.)\\nAnother thing to be learnt from the Nam´\\nari¨\\ne examples m´\\naryat “her\\nhands” and ´\\nomaryo “of her voice” has to do with whether ry here counts\\nas a consonant cluster (r + y) or as a single consonant: palatalized r. What\\nwe learn is however somewhat paradoxical. We touched on these problems\\nalready in Lesson One, but a new inquiry may be in place here, since the\\ncombinations in -y (like ry, ly, ny, ty) occur in several of the possessive\\npronominal endings. Tolkien repeatedly indicated that ´\\nomaryo is accented\\non the a in the second-to-last syllable (in one of his Nam´\\nari¨\\ne transcripts\\nin RGEO, he indicated all major and minor stresses in this song, and we\\nalso have two actual recordings where he is heard to use this accentuation).\\nFor ´\\nomaryo to be accented in such a way, ry must count as a consonant\\ncluster, not as a single consonant. If ry were a single consonant, the normal\\nrules dictate that the stress would not land on the vowel before it, but on\\nthe third syllable from the end.\\nYet we have repeatedly referred to another observed rule of Quenya pho-\\nnology: there cannot be a long vowel in front of a consonant cluster. Thus\\nthe long vowel of m´\\na “hand” is logically shortened in the plural allative form\\nmannar “into . . . hands”, attested in F´\\nıriel’s Song. **M´\\nannar would not\\nbe a possible Quenya word. So if ry is also a consonant cluster as we thought\\nwe had just established, why is ´\\na not shortened in the form m´\\naryat? Why\\ndon’t we see ?maryat as a parallel to mannar?\\nFrankly, I can’t think of any obvious explanation. Apparently we must\\nsimply accept that ry – as well as ly, ny, ty – count as consonant clus-\\nters for the purpose of stress, but a preceding long vowel does not have\\nto be shortened. Thus we would have m´\\narya “his/her hand”, m´\\nanya “my\\nhand” and m´\\nalya “your hand” with the preceding long vowel intact. Be-\\nfore the other attested pronominal suffixes, it would have to be shortened,\\nsince these endings unquestionably introduce a following consonant cluster:\\nmalma and mamma = “our hand” (inclusive and exclusive). **M´\\nalma,\\n234\\n\\n\\n**m´\\namma would hardly be possible Quenya words. Such variations would\\nclosely parallel a couple of attested forms we have referred to earlier, though\\nthey involve subject endings (-mm¨\\ne for “we” and -ny¨\\ne for “I”) rather than\\nthe pronominal possessive endings added to nouns: The exclamation v´\\na\\nsignifying refusal has its long vowel shortened before the cluster mm in\\nvamm¨\\ne “we won’t”, but the long vowel is seem to persist in v´\\nany¨\\ne “I\\nwon’t” (WJ:371). So we can tell that while mm is unquestionably a cluster,\\nny may well count as a single consonant – palatalized n like Spanish ˜\\nn.\\nThere are only a handful of nouns that can be affected by these variations\\nin vowel-length, words of a single syllable that end in a long vowel: Besides\\nm´\\na “hand”, only c´\\nu “bow”, p´\\ne “lip”, r´\\ne “day” (24 hours) and l´\\nu “time,\\noccasion” spring to mind – if we don’t bring in Tolkien’s early “Qenya”\\nmaterial as well. Of course, the long vowels of these words would also be\\nshortened before case endings introducing a following consonant cluster,\\nas indicated by the plural allative mannar “into hands” in F´\\nıriel’s Song.\\nBut “into your hands” would evidently be m´\\nalyannar, or m´\\nalyanta as a\\ndual form – since ly, ny, ry, ty do not count as consonant clusters for this\\npurpose.\\nOn the other hand, there is also some evidence suggesting that these com-\\nbinations should be taken as clusters. In a Nam´\\nari¨\\ne manuscript reproduced\\nin RGEO:76, Tolkien split the word ´\\nomaryo into its constituent syllables\\nand seemingly indicated that -ar- and -yo are separate syllables – as if ry\\nis a genuine consonant cluster after all, not just palatalized r. (Sure enough,\\nr would probably be palatalized before y, but if y is also to be sounded as\\na distinct consonant, we would still have a cluster.) Likewise, Tolkien split\\nthe words fanyar “clouds” and ily¨\\ne “all” into fan/yar, il/y¨\\ne. If ry, ny,\\nand ly, and by implication ty as well, really are to be taken as consonant\\nclusters when they occur in the middle of words, that would explain the\\nobserved stress patterns. But then we are left with the problem of why long\\nvowels are not shortened before these combinations. Luckily, these seeming\\ninconsistencies cause no problems to people trying to write in Quenya, since\\nwe can simply imitate the system or systems that Tolkien used.\\nEven so, I haven’t bored the student with the paragraphs above only as\\nan academic exercise, for there remains the problem of how ly, ny, ry, ty\\noccurring in the middle of words should really be pronounced: Are we dealing\\nwith single, unitary palatalized consonants, long palatalized consonants, or\\nsingle consonants followed by a distinct y? It seems that we can’t reach\\nany definite answer based on what has been published so far. When Tolkien\\nin RGEO:76 syllabified fanyar as fan/yar, it seems to demonstrate that\\nhe at least can’t have the pronunciation **fa˜\\nn-ar in mind, though palatals\\nlike ny and ty must always be pronounced as single, unitary consonants\\nwhen they occur initially (as Quenya cannot have consonant clusters at the\\nbeginning of words: SD:416–417). The choice apparently stands between\\nfa˜\\nn-˜\\nnar (with a long or double palatal ˜\\nn) and fan-yar or rather fa˜\\nn-yar (a\\n235\\n\\n\\ndistinct y being sounded). In either case, a word like atarinya “my father”\\n(that is, atari˜\\nn˜\\nna or atari˜\\nnya) would then logically be accented on the i\\naccording to the normal rules. Why this combination ny, as well as ly, ry,\\nty, apparently lack the power to make a preceding long vowel become short\\nremains a mystery. If they are pronounced with a distinct y, as I tend to\\nthink, these combinations may not be counted as regular consonant clusters\\nbecause y is a “semi-vowel” rather than a quite “proper” consonant.\\nPossessive pronominal endings used with infinitives: In Lesson Ten we\\ndescribed how infinitive forms of verbs have an extended form in -ta which\\nis used when the infinitive is to receive a suffix denoting an object pronoun:\\nthus car¨\\ne (cari-) “to do”, but caritas “to do it” or “doing it”. To such an\\nextended infinitive it is also possible to add a pronominal ending denoting\\nthe subject of the verbal action. Our attested example is caritalya(s), which\\nTolkien translated “your doing (it)” (VT41:17). “You” is here the subject of\\nthe verbal action (that is, the “doing”), and this is expressed as a possessive\\npronominal ending -lya “your”. A second pronominal ending, denoting the\\nobject, may then be added at the end of the word: caritalyas, “your doing\\nit”, tiritanyat “my watching them”. Such a phrase can probably be used\\nas a noun, functioning, for instance, as the subject or object of a sentence.\\nPerhaps “I want you to watch them” would be expressed something like\\nmerin tiritalyat, literally “I want your watching them”. The object of\\nthe infinitive could certainly be an independent word as well, e.g. merin\\ntiritalya i seldor, “I want you to watch the boys” (“I want your watching\\nthe boys”).\\nBy their meaning, such infinitives would come very close to gerunds. In-\\ndeed we must assume that regular gerunds (in -i¨\\ne) may also receive posses-\\nsive pronominal endings, e.g. tulierya “his coming” (tuli¨\\ne “coming”). It is,\\nhowever, uncertain whether a second pronominal ending denoting the object\\nmay then be suffixed (?carieryas “his doing it”).\\n15.2\\nThe Locative case\\nIn connection with the forms mir, minna “into” we have referred to the\\nQuenya preposition mi “in”, which is sometimes combined with the definite\\narticle to produce the form (mi + i =) m´\\nı “in the”. It occurs in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne,\\nin the phrase m´\\nı oromardi, translated “in the high halls” (so in RGEO:66,\\nat least – the text in LotR has mi with a short vowel, though this should\\nbe a simple “in” with no article incorporated, and indeed the translation\\nprovided in LotR goes simply “in lofty halls”).\\nYet Quenya often dispenses with prepositions, using special case forms\\ninstead, as when “to, towards” is normally expressed by the allative ending\\n-nna, whereas “from” is usually expressed by means of the ablative ending\\n-llo – though Quenya does have separate prepositions that could express\\n236\\n\\n\\nthe same meanings. It should be no surprise, then, that Quenya instead of\\nusing a preposition like mi often prefers a specific case form in order to\\nexpress the meaning of “in” (or “on, upon”). The relevant case is called\\nthe locative, marked by the ending -ss¨\\ne (probably inspired by the Finnish\\nending -ssa, -ss¨\\na of similar meaning). For instance, “in a house” can be ex-\\npressed as coass¨\\ne, “in the house” could be i coass¨\\ne, “in my house” would\\nbe coanyass¨\\ne, etc. (Of course, the stress moves to the vowel immediately\\npreceding the case ending, since the ending begins in a consonant cluster.)\\nThe locative can refer to “location” in time as well as space: In an early ver-\\nsion of the greeting “a star shines on the hour of our meeting”, Tolkien had\\nthe noun l´\\num¨\\ne “hour” appearing in the locative case (l´\\numess¨\\ne, RS:324).\\nNOTE 1: Students should notice that the ending -ss¨\\ne is not always a locative marker,\\nmeaning “in” or “on” wherever it occurs. Sometimes -ss¨\\ne functions as an abstract ending.\\nWe have already introduced the noun alass¨\\ne “joy, merriment”. Entuless¨\\ne is attested as\\nthe name of a ship, said to mean “Return” (UT:171; entul- would be the verb “to re-come”\\n= “to return”). Caimass¨\\ne could be the locative form of caima “bed”, but caimass¨\\ne is\\nalso used as a noun “lying in bed” = “sickness”, and this is even the basis of the adjective\\ncaimass¨\\nea “bedridden, sick” (Etym., entry kay). Sometimes -ss¨\\ne as a noun ending is not\\nabstract, but it is seen to maintain the connotations of locality that it also has when used\\nas a locative ending: The noun aicass¨\\ne “mountain peak” is derived from the adjective\\naica “sharp”, so the term aicass¨\\ne basically refers to some kind of ‘sharp place’. The\\nending -ss¨\\ne also turns up in the names of a couple of the months of the Elvish calendar,\\nlisted in LotR Appendix D: V´\\nıress¨\\ne and L´\\notess¨\\ne, roughly corresponding to April and\\nMay. The meaning of the word V´\\nıress¨\\ne is uncertain, but L´\\notess¨\\ne certainly connects with\\nl´\\not¨\\ne “flower” and would seem to mean essentially “In Flower”, a fitting description of the\\nmonth of May. – Whether the locative ending -ss¨\\ne could or should be attached to a noun\\nalready ending in -ss¨\\ne is uncertain. L´\\notessess¨\\ne does seem like a rather cumbersome way\\nof expressing “in May”, and aicassess¨\\ne for “on a mountain peak” is not much better.\\nInstead of adding the locative ending to nouns of such a shape, it may be better to use\\nthe preposition mi “in”: Mi L´\\notess¨\\ne, mi aicass¨\\ne.\\nNOTE 2: As we remember, the allative case in -nna does not always denote motion\\ntowards something, but may also express the idea of “on, upon”. In some contexts, it would\\nperhaps be permissible to use either the locative or the allative, resulting in pretty much\\nthe same meaning (caitan caimanyass¨\\ne = “I lie in my bed” / caitan caimanyanna\\n“I lie on my bed”). Yet Tolkien sometimes translated a Quenya locative form using the\\nEnglish preposition “upon”. Cf. for instance ciryass¨\\ne “upon a ship” (MC:216, there spelt\\nkiryasse); cf. also mahalmassen below.\\nIn the plural, the simple locative suffix -ss¨\\ne is expanded with the same\\nplural element -n that is also seen in the plural forms of the endings for\\ngenitive (-on) and ablative (-llon). Thus, plural locative forms end in -ssen.\\nThe plural locative of mahalma “throne” occurs in Cirion’s Oath, where\\nthe Valar are referred to as i h´\\narar mahalmassen mi N´\\numen, “those\\nwho sit upon [the] thrones in the West”.\\nThe dual locative ending is formed by substituting the dual element t\\n237\\n\\n\\nfor the first of the s’s of the ending -ss¨\\ne. The resulting ending -ts¨\\ne is not\\nattested in any actual Quenya composition by Tolkien, but he listed it in the\\nPlotz letter, so presumably we can have forms like sambets¨\\ne “in a two-room\\napartment” or ciryanyats¨\\ne “on my [two sister] ships”. (These words may\\nbe seen as the simplest dual forms sambet, ciryanyat with the locative\\nending -ss¨\\ne attached, though it is simplified to -s¨\\ne to avoid the impossible\\ncombination **-tss¨\\ne.)\\nOf course, endings like -ss¨\\ne, -ssen, -ts¨\\ne can never be added directly to a\\nnoun ending in a consonant without producing impossible consonant clus-\\nters. Lacking attested examples, we can only assume that connecting vowels\\nwould be fitted in by much the same rules as the ones that are seen to ap-\\nply in the allative and ablative cases: -e- is used as a connecting vowel in\\nthe singular, whereas plural forms have -i-. Hence presumably eleness¨\\ne “in\\na star”, elenissen “in stars”. The dual “in a couple of stars” might pre-\\nfer the connecting vowel -e- (?elenets¨\\ne). Contracted forms may also turn\\nup, e.g. eless¨\\ne for elen-ss¨\\ne. The directions Formen, Hyarmen, N´\\numen,\\nR´\\nomen = North, South, West, East would almost certainly surrender their\\nfinal -n in the locative, just as they are seen to do in the allative and abla-\\ntive cases. Hence probably Formess¨\\ne “in the North”, etc. F´\\nıriel’s Song has\\nN´\\numessier for “they are in the west”. This strange form seems to include\\nthe ending -i¨\\ne “is”, pl. -ier “(they) are” which Tolkien probably dropped\\nlater. Even so, an underlying locative form N´\\numess¨\\ne “in the West” must in\\nany case be presupposed here. Since the noun N´\\numen “West” also appears\\nin the shorter form N´\\num¨\\ne, we cannot be certain that a final -n has dropped\\nout here, but this locative form may be noted all the same.\\nWould nouns with dual forms in -u also form their dual locatives in -\\nts¨\\ne, or does this ending occur only where we are dealing with nouns that\\nhave nominative dual forms in -t? We may well wonder what the locative\\nform of Aldu “Two Trees” would be. Alduss¨\\ne with the simplest ending -\\nss¨\\ne, because duality is already sufficiently expressed by -u? Aldats¨\\ne formed\\nfrom the uninflected form alda? Alduts¨\\ne with double dual markers, -u and\\n-t-? Personally I lean toward Alduss¨\\ne, but I would like to see a Tolkien-\\nmade example.\\nThe locative ending(s) can of course be combined with possessive pronom-\\ninal endings just like the other case endings we have discussed. The Markirya\\npoem has ringa s´\\numaryass¨\\ne for “in her cold bosom” (ringa “cold”, s´\\numa\\n“bosom”; the reference is to the “bosom” of a ship).\\n15.3\\nRelative sentences\\nIn LotR, there is one single example of a Quenya locative. The ending -ssen\\nfor plural locative occurs in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, in the phrase Vardo tellumar. . . ,\\nyassen tintilar i eleni = “Varda’s domes. . . , wherein [or, in which] the\\n238\\n\\n\\nstars twinkle. . . ”\\nThe word ya “which”, here appearing with the locative ending -ssen to\\nimply “in which”, is a relative pronoun. It can be used to build relative sen-\\ntences, that is, sentences embedded in other sentences as a kind of descriptive\\nphrases. Two sentences like “the treasure is great” and “you found it” can\\nbe combined as “the treasure which you found is great”. Notice that the\\npronoun “it” of the sentence “you found it” is replaced by “which”. This\\nrelative pronoun is capable of referring back to the words “the treasure”,\\nand “which I found” now becomes a descriptive phrase providing extra in-\\nformation about “the treasure”. The probable Quenya equivalents of these\\nexamples:\\nI harma n´\\na alta “the treasure is great”\\n+ hirnelyes “you found it”\\n= i harma ya hirnely¨\\ne n´\\na alta “the treasure which you found is great”\\nAs a relative pronoun, English may also use “that” (“the treasure that\\nyou found. . . ”)\\nIn German, the definite articles der, das, die (all = English “the”, for var-\\nious genders and numbers) are also used as relative pronouns. The Quenya\\narticle i may likewise take on this function. This is evident from Cirion’s\\nOath, the last words of which exemplify i used first as article, then as rel-\\native pronoun: . . . i Eru i or ily¨\\ne mahalmar ¨\\nea tennoio, “the One who\\nis above all thrones forever”. Since “the One” (Eru, God) is a person and\\nnot a thing, the relative pronoun must here be translated “who” rather than\\n“which”. If there is any distinction in meaning between i and ya used as\\nrelative pronouns, this may indeed be it: i refers back to a person (English\\n“who”), while ya refers back to a thing or a situation (English “which”).\\nNotice, by the way, that these glosses have nothing to do with the question-\\nwords “who” and “which”: The word i cannot be used for “who” in a ques-\\ntion, like “who are you?” The Quenya word for “who” in this sense is quite\\ndifferent (man).\\nNOTE: This “who/which” distinction is not the only possible interpretation of our\\nscarce examples. By another suggestion, i is used when the relative pronoun is the subject\\nof the relative sentence, while ya is used when it is the object: Elda i tir¨\\ne Nauco “an\\nElf who watches a Dwarf”, but Elda ya tir¨\\ne Nauco “an Elf whom a Dwarf watches”\\n(English uses “whom” as the object form of the relative pronoun “who”). We need more\\nexamples before we can pick the right interpretation with confidence.\\nThe word i is in Quenya the “indeclinable article ‘the’” (Etymologies,\\nentry i). That is, i = “the” cannot be declined; it cannot receive any case\\nendings. We must assume that this is still true when i functions as a relative\\npronoun “who” instead. However, ya is perfectly able to receive case endings,\\nas indicated by the example yassen “in which” from Nam´\\nari¨\\ne. The locative\\nending is plural because the relative pronoun refers back to a plural word,\\n239\\n\\n\\ntellumar “domes”; in the case of a single telluma or “dome”, the relative\\npronoun referring back to it would likewise be singular: yass¨\\ne. Likewise with\\nother nouns: coa yass¨\\ne “a house in which. . . ”, but plural coar yassen. . .\\n“houses in which. . . ”\\nBesides the form yassen in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, we have one more example of ya\\noccurring with a case ending. An early Elvish poem by Tolkien includes\\nthe words tanya wende . . . yar i vilya anta miqilis, translated “that\\nmaiden . . . to whom the air gives kisses” (MC:215, 216). This is not quite\\nLotR-style Quenya, so I don’t regularize the spelling, but the form yar “to\\nwhom” is interesting. The final -r here suffixed to ya seems to be the old\\nallative ending, as in mir “into”; hence yar = “whom-to”, “to whom”. The\\nexamples yassen “in which” and yar “to whom” suggest that if you need a\\nrelative pronoun to receive case endings, such endings are always attached\\nto ya-. Even if ya means “which” and i means “who” as we theorized above,\\na form like yassen may well cover both “in which” and “in whom” (since we\\ncan’t have a distinct form **issen for the latter meaning if i is indeclinable).\\nWe must assume that ya can receive all the various endings for number and\\ncase, being inflected like a noun in -a, as in these examples:\\n• Dative: i n´\\ner yan ´\\nanen annanya “the man to whom I gave my\\ngift”, plural i neri yain. . . “the men towhom. . . ” (The attested form\\nyar “to whom”, occurring in a context involving the verb “give”, may\\nevidently also take on dative-like functions – but yar is properly an\\narchaic allative, and generally I think yan, pl. yain, is to be preferred.)\\n• Genitive: i n´\\nıs yo yondo cennen “the woman whose [= who’s] son I\\nsaw” (we must assume that ya + the genitive ending -o would produce\\nyo, a final -a being displaced as usual), plural i nissi yaron. . . “the\\nwomen whose [= who’s]. . . ” (for a form like yaron, cf. aldaron as\\nthe plural genitive of alda “tree”)\\n• Possessive: i aran yava malta mapuvan “the king whose [= who’s]\\ngold I will seize”, plural i arani yaiva. . . “the kings whose [= who’s]. . . ”\\n• Allative: i coa yanna lenden “the house to which I went / the\\nhouse whither I went / the house that I went to”, plural i coar\\nyannar. . . “the houses to which. . . ”\\n• Ablative: i coa yallo tullen “the house from which I came / the\\nhouse whence I came / the house that I came from”, plural i coar\\nyallon [alternatively, yallor]. . . “the houses from which. . . ”\\n• Locative: i coa yass¨\\ne marin “the house in which I live / the house\\nthat I live in / the house where I live”, plural i coar yassen. . . “the\\nhouses in which. . . ”\\nIn the nominative singular, the simple form ya is of course used: i parma\\nya et´\\necien, “the book which I have written”. It may be that this would\\n240\\n\\n\\nbecome yar (with the plural ending -r) when referring back to a plural\\nword: i parmar yar. . . “the books which. . . ” (Distinguish the attested\\nrelative pronoun yar “to whom”, MC:215, 216; this form includes the old\\nallative ending -r instead.) Where i is used as a relative pronoun, it receives\\nno plural ending, since i is indeclinable: Eldar i lindar “Elves who sing”.\\nWe have listed no dual forms, but they would presumably be quite reg-\\nular: nominative yat (e.g. i peu yat. . . “the [pair of] lips that. . . ”), da-\\ntive yant (e.g. i veru yant. . . “the [married] couple to/for whom. . . ”),\\ngenitive yato, possessive yatwa (?), allative yanta, ablative yalto, loca-\\ntive yats¨\\ne (e.g. i sambet yanta/yalto/yats¨\\ne. . . “the two-room apartment\\nto/from/in which. . . ”)\\nIt should be noted that in some grammatical contexts, a case ending that\\ncould have been added to ya may be omitted and understood. For instance,\\ngiven that the word for “night” is l´\\nom¨\\ne (l´\\nomi-), we could presumably have\\na sentence like l´\\nomiss¨\\ne yass¨\\ne cennenyes “in [the] night in which I saw\\nit” = “(in/on) the night when I saw it”, but it is also permissible to let ya\\noccur by itself: L´\\nomiss¨\\ne ya cennenyes, a construction paralleling English\\n“in [the] night that I saw it” (very frequently, English would drop the initial\\n“in”, but in Quenya the locative ending should probably be included).\\nNotice that the article may be dropped before the first noun (l´\\nomiss¨\\ne in\\nour example); it is perhaps sufficiently determined by the following relative\\nphrase. Tolkien employed such a construction in his Quenya translation of\\nthe Hail Mary (he paraphrased “in the hour of our death” as “in [the] hour\\nthat we shall die”).\\nUsually, a relative pronoun refers back to a noun so that the following\\nrelative sentence provides information about that noun, as in all the exam-\\nples above. Notice, however, the example i carir quettar “those who form\\nwords”, quoted as a description of the Elves (WJ:391). I carir quettar by\\nitself is a relative sentence, and we could certainly connect it with a noun\\nand let the relative sentence refer back to it, e.g. Eldar i carir quettar\\n“Elves who form words”. However, it appears that i can be put in front of a\\nverb to express “the one who” (if the verb is singular) or “those who”, “the\\nones who” (if the verb is plural, marked by the ending -r). Cirion’s Oath pro-\\nvides another example: i h´\\narar mahalmassen mi N´\\numen “those who sit\\nupon thrones in the West”. We can probably feel free to build sentences like\\nthese:\\nI lind¨\\nea n´\\na n´\\nıs “[the one] who is singing is a woman”\\nI hirner i malta nar aly¨\\ne “[the ones] who found the gold are rich”\\nHiruvan i suncer limpenya “I will find [the ones] who drank my wine”\\n(singular . . . i sunc¨\\ne limpenya, “[the one] who drank my wine”)\\nIf ya can also be used in such constructions, and we are right to assume\\nthat i signifies “who” while ya means “which”, there may be distinctions\\nin meaning like ec´\\nenien i t´\\nula “I have seen [the one] who is coming” vs.\\n241\\n\\n\\nec´\\nenien ya t´\\nula “I have seen what is coming” (literally, “I have seen [that]\\nwhich is coming”). The sentence “what I want is wine” would perhaps trans-\\nlate something like ya merin n´\\na limp¨\\ne (i.e., “[that] which I want is wine”).\\nWord order: Some languages employ a special word order in relative sen-\\ntences. German insists on placing the verb last, so that we have constructions\\nlike “the man who there stands” (der Mann der dort steht) for “the man\\nwho stands there”. For a while I wondered if Quenya employed a similar sys-\\ntem; the verb ¨\\nea “is, exists” appears near the end of the relative sentence\\nconcluding Cirion’s Oath: i or ily¨\\ne mahalmar ¨\\nea tennoio, literally “who\\nover all thrones is forever”. However, as we see, the verb is not absolutely\\nfinal; an entirely “German” word order would require “who over all thrones\\nforever is”.\\nIn Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, the verb actually follows immediately after the relative pro-\\nnoun in the relative sentence yassen tintilar i eleni “wherein the stars\\ntwinkle”, literally “in which twinkle the stars”. We might think that this\\nis just a “poetic” word order, but Tolkien did not change it in the prose\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne in RGEO:66–67. Does it make any difference that this is a relative\\npronoun with a case ending attached? Would it be wrong to say yassen i\\neleni tintilar, with the subject of the verb preceding rather than follow-\\ning the verb? We cannot tell. Especially in the case of yasse(n), yanna(r),\\nyallo(n) “in/to/from which”, I would imitate our attested example and let\\nthe verb immediately follow the relative pronoun: I osto yass¨\\ne mar¨\\ne i\\nn´\\ner “the city in which the man dwells”, i tol yanna c´\\nırar i ciryar “the\\nisland whither the ships are sailing”, i n´\\nori yallon tulir i ohtari “the\\nlands whence the warriors come”. Otherwise, I will not try to make out any\\nhard-and-fast rules for what word order Quenya relative sentences should\\nhave.\\n15.4\\nThird Person obscurities\\nAbove we introduced the possessive pronominal ending -rya, covering “his”\\nand “her”. So what is the corresponding subject ending, meaning “he” and\\n“she”?\\nSince the ending -lya “your” is known to correspond to an ending -ly¨\\ne\\n“you”, many researchers, starting from -rya “her”, have extrapolated an\\nunattested suffix -ry¨\\ne as the subject ending = “she”. If, as indicated by\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, the Quenya for “you will find” is hiruvaly¨\\ne, “she will find” would\\nthen be hiruvary¨\\ne. Nancy Martsch uses this extrapolated ending -ry¨\\ne “she”\\nthroughout her Basic Quenya – and it may well be correct. Now that it is\\nknown that -rya covers “his” as well as “her”, we would have to assume\\nthat -ry¨\\ne may similarly signify “he” as well as “she”.\\nThe subject endings of the Third Person Singular – the endings for “he”,\\n“she”, and “it” – however belong to one of the more obscure parts of the\\n242\\n\\n\\nQuenya pronoun table. In material closely related to F´\\nıriel’s Song, one end-\\ning for “he” is seen to be -ro. It occurs in the form antav´\\naro “he will give”,\\nattested in the question e man antav´\\naro? “what will he give indeed?”\\n(LR:63). Ant´\\nava as the simple future tense “will give” occurs on the same\\npage (and in the full text of F´\\nıriel’s Song as printed in LR:72). This may\\nnot be quite LotR-style Quenya; as we argued in Lesson Seven, the future\\ntense of anta- should perhaps be antuva rather than ant´\\nava according to\\nthe system Tolkien decided upon later. Even so, the form antav´\\naro nicely\\nillustrates one apparent property of the ending -ro: For some reason, the\\nvowel immediately preceding this ending is lengthened, ant´\\nava becoming\\nantav´\\naro when -ro is added (and the original long vowel of ant´\\nava is\\nshortened to avoid the form **ant´\\nav´\\naro: It may be that Quenya cannot\\nhave a long vowel in the syllable immediately preceding the vowel receiving\\nthe main accent except when this syllable is also the first syllable of the\\nword). Should we update antav´\\naro to something like antuv´\\naro in LotR-\\nstyle Quenya?\\nThis ending -ro also turns up in a “Qenya” poem reproduced in MC:220,\\nthere added to a couple of verb forms including the past-tense ending -n¨\\ne,\\nand again the vowel preceding -ro is lengthened so that it receives the accent.\\nOne of them is laustan´\\nero, which would seem to be a verb lausta- “make\\na windy noise” (cf. MC:216) + the past tense ending -n¨\\ne + the ending -\\nro “he” (and “it”?) The whole phrase goes s´\\nuru laustan´\\nero, translated\\n“the wind rushed” (literally perhaps “[the] wind, he/it [-ro] rushed”). Since\\nthis is “Qenya” rather than LotR-style Quenya, we shouldn’t put too much\\nemphasis on the details, but Tolkien does seem to be using an ending -\\nro, that may mean “he” (but also “it”?), and that has the strange power of\\nmaking the preceding vowel long. It has been suggested that the vowel rather\\nremains long in this position because Tolkien imagined it to have been long\\nin Primitive Elvish. If so, the vowel -i- seen in the aorist of primary verbs\\n(e.g. tulin “I come”) should not be lengthened, since this vowel was never\\nlong (?tuliro rather than ?tul´\\nıro for “he comes”).\\nWhere would this ending -ro for “he” come from, and what is the ending\\nfor “she”? The entry s- in the Etymologies throws some light on what Tolkien\\nimagined. Various Elvish words for “he, she, it” are there discussed. One\\nprimitive word for “he” is cited as sˆ\\no or so, “cf. -so inflection of verbs” –\\napparently meaning that the primitive Elvish language might express “he”\\nby means of an ending -so added to verbs. This -so could be the origin of\\nthe Quenya ending -ro, for in Quenya, -s- occurring between vowels was\\nnormally voiced to -z-, which later became -r- (the sound z merging with\\noriginal r). In the Etymologies, Tolkien went on to cite one primitive word\\nfor “she” as sˆ\\nı or si, “cf. -se inflexion of verbs”. If -so produces -ro as a\\nQuenya ending for “he”, we would have to assume that -se similarly yields\\n-r¨\\ne (earlier -z¨\\ne) as an ending for “she”. This -r¨\\ne is possibly directly attested\\nin the “Qenya” phrase kirya kalli´\\nere, translated “the ship shone” (MC:220,\\n243\\n\\n\\n221) – literally “[the] ship, she shone”? Turning the form kalli´\\nere into LotR-\\nstyle Quenya would probably take more than just altering the spelling to\\ncalli´\\ner¨\\ne, but it may be noted that the ending -r¨\\ne, like -ro, seems to prefer\\nthe company of a long vowel in the preceding syllable.\\nMany writers have used the endings -ro = “he” and -r¨\\ne = “she”, so\\nstudents of Quenya should certainly memorize them – but as far or short as\\nwe know, they are only attested in material predating the writing of LotR.\\nIn 1994, there finally turned up a tiny scrap of evidence regarding Tolkien’s\\npost-LotR ideas about the pronominal ending for “he, she”. In the essay\\nQuendi and Eldar, in the discussion of the tense-less verb equ¨\\ne “said, says”,\\nTolkien noted that while this form normally does not receive endings of any\\nkind, it may occur with certain pronominal endings. He cited two examples\\nof this: equen, translated “said I”, and also eques, translated “said he /\\nshe” (WJ:414) or “said he, said someone” (WJ:392). So here we have an\\nending -s that covers both “he” and “she” (or even “someone”). In the post-\\nLotR period, Tolkien demonstrably used the ending -rya for both “his” and\\n“her”, so it is not surprising that he might have decided that Quenya used\\none ending for both “he” and “she” as well (cf. also the Finnish gender-\\nneutral pronoun h¨\\nan.) Actually this ending -s must also cover “it”, for it\\ncan hardly be kept apart from the ending -s that we have already met in\\nobject position – as in tiruvantes “they will keep it” (Cirion’s Oath) or\\ncaritalyas “your doing it” (VT41:17). So eques could probably mean “it\\nsaid” just as well as “(s)he said”. Conversely, -s may probably refer to people\\nin object position as well: Perhaps tiruvantes might also mean “they will\\nkeep [or, watch] him/her”.\\nA form like tulis would have to be translated either “he comes”, “she\\ncomes”, or “it comes” depending on the context. The existence of such an\\nending does not necessarily contradict the references Tolkien made to primi-\\ntive “-so inflexion” and “-se inflexion” of verbs in the Etymologies: Normally,\\nthe final short -o and -e of primitive Elvish have been lost in Quenya, so\\nprimitive forms like tuli-so “he comes” and tuli-se “she comes” might well\\nmerge as tulis “(s)he comes”. Where this would leave the longer, gender-\\nspecific endings -ro and -r¨\\ne found in early material is unclear. Tolkien may\\nhave meant them to descend from variant endings with long vowels (-sˆ\\no and\\n-sˆ\\ne), final -ˆ\\no and -ˆ\\ne becoming -o and -¨\\ne in Quenya. Perhaps the gender-\\nspecific endings would be used where the short, general 3rd person ending\\n-s “he, she, it” is not specific enough? But there is every reason to believe\\nthat Tolkien repeatedly changed his mind about the details; we can’t even\\nrule out the possibility that the long endings -ro “he” and -r¨\\ne “she” were\\ndropped altogether.\\nAnyhow, if -s is to be the ending for “(s)he”, where does this leave the\\nunattested ending -ry¨\\ne that some students have (plausibly) extrapolated\\nfrom the possessive ending -rya “his, her”? The ending -ry¨\\ne may still be\\nvalid. Perhaps the ending for “(s)he” alternates between -s and -ry¨\\ne just\\n244\\n\\n\\nlike the ending for “I” may appear as either -n or -ny¨\\ne. (While the endings\\n-s and -ry¨\\ne may seem less similar than -n vs. -ny¨\\ne, it should be understood\\nthat -ry¨\\ne would come from earlier -sye: Following a vowel, the combination\\nsy turns into zy and then ry. Cf. the Etymologies, entry sus; from this root,\\nTolkien derived the Quenya word surya “spirant consonant”, which must\\nbe understood to come from susyˆ\\na in the primitive language.) The longer\\nending -ry¨\\ne would be used primarily when a second pronominal ending\\ndenoting the object is to be added, e.g., tiriryet “(s)he watches them” –\\nwhereas “(s)he watches” by itself could be either tiris or tiriry¨\\ne, but more\\ncommonly the former. But writers who want to avoid the unattested ending\\n-ry¨\\ne may opt for the gender-specific endings -ro and -r¨\\ne instead, to bring in\\na connecting vowel: tirirot “he watches them”, tiriret “she watches them”.\\nIn the exercises below, we will however avoid all speculative endings and\\nconstructions and concentrate on the only known facts we have at our dis-\\nposal regarding the 3rd person singular of the pronoun table: In Quenya as\\nTolkien had come to see this language in the post-LotR period, the end-\\ning -s may be used for “he, she, it”, whereas -rya covers “his” and “her”.\\n(We may plausibly assume that -rya covers “its” as well: Notice that in the\\nphrase ringa s´\\numaryass¨\\ne “in her cold bosom” cited above, the reference is\\nactually to a ship, so “its bosom” would seem to be an equally appropriate\\ntranslation.) The long endings -ro and -r¨\\ne are not used in the exercises or\\nthe keys, since their status in LotR-style Quenya is slightly uncertain (not\\nthat I necessarily discourage writers from using them).\\nSummary of Lesson Fifteen\\nThe Quenya pronominal possessive ending for “his, her” is -rya, behaving\\nlike the other endings of this kind (endings for number or case may be\\nadded after it). If a dual noun is to receive a pronominal ending, its duality\\nis indicated by -t added to this ending (cf. m´\\naryat “her [pair of] hands” in\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne), apparently even in the case of nouns that would otherwise receive\\nthe alternative dual marker -u instead. – The extended infinitives in -ta\\nwhich may receive pronominal endings denoting the object (e.g. caritas “to\\ndo it”) may also receive possessive pronominal endings denoting the subject,\\ne.g. caritalya(s) “your doing (it)”. – Nouns ending in a long vowel, e.g.\\nm´\\na “hand”, would shorten this vowel before a consonant cluster; thus the\\nplural allative is attested as mannar (for the impossible form **m´\\nannar).\\nCuriously, long vowels are not shortened before ry, ly, ny, ty, though these\\ncombinations do count as consonant clusters for the purpose of stress. –\\nThe Quenya locative case has the ending -ss¨\\ne, plural -ssen, and dual -ts¨\\ne\\n(at least in the case of nouns with nominative dual forms in -t; nouns with\\nnominative dual forms in -u may simply add -ss¨\\ne). These endings express\\nthe idea of “in”, “on”, “upon”, e.g. ciryass¨\\ne “(up)on a ship”, coassen\\n245\\n\\n\\n“in houses”. – Quenya relative sentences may be formed using the relative\\npronoun ya “which, that”. Ya may also receive endings for case and number,\\ncf. the plural locative yassen “in which” or “wherein” occurring in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\n(plural because it refers back to a plural word). The article i “the” may also\\nbe used as a relative pronoun, cf. i Eru i or ily¨\\ne mahalmar ¨\\nea tennoio,\\n“the One who is above all thrones” in Cirion’s Oath, but i apparently cannot\\nreceive endings for case or number. In front of a verb, i can be used by itself\\nto express “the one(s) who do(es)” whatever the verb expresses, e.g., i carir\\nquettar “the ones/those who form words”. – The pronominal endings for\\n“he” and “she” are somewhat uncertain. Early material contains verbs with\\nthe endings -ro “he” and -r¨\\ne “she” (often combined with lengthening of\\nthe vowel of the preceding syllable). In post-LotR material, we have one\\nattestation of -s as an ending covering both “he” and “she”, and since the\\nsame ending is attested with the meaning “it” elsewhere (as object), we may\\nassume that -s is a general ending covering the entire 3rd person singular,\\nas subject or object. One educated guess has it that this -s alternates with\\na longer form -ry¨\\ne (plausibly extrapolated from the possessive ending -rya\\n“his/her”), but only the attested ending -s is used in the exercises below.\\nVocabulary\\ntatya “second” (The original name of the Second Clan of the Elves was Tatyar,\\nliterally “Seconds, Second Ones”, though the Eldarin branch of that clan would\\nlater be called Noldor instead [WJ:380–381]. A variant form of tatya is atya\\n[attested, compounded, in VT41:10], which connects more clearly with the basic\\nnumber atta “two”. As will be explained in Lesson 17, “second” was later expressed\\nas att¨\\nea, but students should know the archaic form tatya as well, and we will use\\nthis form here.)\\nmar- “to dwell, abide”; to “live” somewhere in the sense of dwelling there\\n(cf. Elendil’s Declaration: sinom¨\\ne maruvan = “in this place will I abide”) ya\\nrelative pronoun “that, which”, often with case endings; as relative pronoun alter-\\nnating with i (= “who”, referring to people and used when no ending for case or\\nnumber is to be added?)\\naur¨\\ne “day” (the actual daylight period, not a full 24-hour cycle) veru “(married)\\ncouple, man and wife, pair of spouses” (an old dual form apparently lacking\\nany singular; there are only the gender-specific words verno “husband” and vess¨\\ne\\n“wife” from the same root)\\nm´\\na “hand”\\np´\\ne “lip”, nominative dual peu (so according to VT39:9, reproducing a post-LotR\\nsource. Earlier, in the entry peg of the Etymologies, the word p´\\ne had been glossed\\n“mouth” instead – which would be pure plagiarism of the Hebrew word for “mouth”!\\nBut Tolkien apparently thought better of it: in LotR Appendix E, the Quenya word\\nfor “mouth” is given as anto instead, which word we introduced in Lesson Eleven.)\\n246\\n\\n\\nmall¨\\ne “road, street” (nominative pl. maller, LR:47, 56; SD:310 – as we theorized in\\nLesson Two, nouns in -l¨\\ne may regularly have plural forms in -ler rather than -li.)\\nhr´\\nıv¨\\ne “winter”\\napa preposition “after” (only attested compounded; cf. Apan´\\nonar “the Afterborn”\\nas an Elvish name of Men, the Elves themselves being the Firstborn – see the\\nSilmarillion, near the beginning of chapter 12. We will here assume that apa may\\nalso function as an independent preposition.)\\nHyarmen “the South”\\nhyarya adjective “left”\\nNOTE: As suggested by their shapes, the words for “south” and “left” are closely\\nrelated. As explained by Tolkien in LotR Appendix E, the four directions N´\\numen,\\nHyarmen, R´\\nomen, Formen = West, South, East, North were normally listed in that\\norder, “beginning with and facing west” – apparently because that was the direction of the\\nBlessed Realm. It may be no coincidence that the directions are listed counterclockwise so\\nthat the North is named last, for in the First Age when this convention was presumably es-\\ntablished, North was the direction of Morgoth’s stronghold (Angband or Thangorodrim).\\nOur imaginary speaker facing the West would have the South on his left hand, and Tolkien\\nexplained that Hyarmen means basically “left-hand region”. As Tolkien also noted, this\\nsystem is “the opposite to the arrangement in many Mannish languages”, which tend\\nrather to use the East (the direction of the sunrise) as the starting-point “faced” by the\\nspeaker. Thus the words for “south” and “right” may be associated or identical – cf. for\\ninstance Hebrew yamˆ\\nın.\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English (the pronominal ending -s may have various\\nEnglish equivalents):\\nA. Tuluvas i tatya auress¨\\ne.\\nB. I hr´\\nıvess¨\\ne rimb¨\\ne aiwi autar marien Hyarmess¨\\ne; apa i hr´\\nıv¨\\ne\\nautant¨\\ne Hyarmello ar tulir n´\\norelmanna.\\nC. Hiritarya malta i orontissen ´\\nan¨\\ne alass¨\\ne lieryan, an hiri-\\ntaryas carn¨\\ne lierya alya.\\nD. Tatya hr´\\nıvess¨\\ne ya marnes i coass¨\\ne hirnes harma nu i talan.\\nE.\\nQuetis lambelma, an maris n´\\norelmass¨\\ne.\\nF. Eques: “Cennen macil i ohtaro hyarya mass¨\\ne.”\\nG. I n´\\ner i hirn¨\\ne i harma nurtuva i engwi yar ih´\\nıries sam-\\nberyats¨\\ne.\\nH. I amboss¨\\ne cenis i veru yat it´\\nıries coaryallo, ar yant ´\\nanes\\nannarya.\\n247\\n\\n\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. She saw a couple in the street.\\nJ. I found the woman who lives in the house between the rivers, and\\nI watched her lips (dual) and her hands (dual); in her left hand I\\nsaw a book.\\nK. I saw his cup in his hands (dual), the cup from which he poured\\nwine into his mouth.\\nL. The ones who dwell in the towers to which the man is going are\\nwarriors.\\nM. His drinking the wine was not a good idea, for what he did after\\nhis drinking it was not wise.\\nN. After we (excl.) went away [pa.t. of auta-] from our (excl.) land\\nin the South, we have seen many Dwarves on the roads.\\nO. The towers on the hills are great; the one who owns [harya =\\npossesses] the greatest tower, from which one [quen] can see the\\nElven-land [Eldan´\\nor¨\\ne], is the richest man in the city.\\nP. A people whose king is wise will dwell in peace in a good land\\nwhich they will love deeply.\\n248\\n\\n\\nLesson 16\\nThe Instrumental case. Verbs with an unaccented vowel +\\n-ta. The imperative. The nai formula.\\nIf we accept the information provided in the Plotz letter as Tolkien’s definite\\nversion of Quenya case system, we have now discussed all the Quenya noun\\ncases except two. One of them is somewhat obscure; Tolkien supplied no\\nfurther information about it, not even telling us what this case is called. The\\nrelevant ending is -s, plural -is. The Plotz lay-out suggests that this “Mystery\\nCase” is simply a shorter, alternative version of the locative: The word\\nexemplifying this case is listed in a parenthesis below the locative form of the\\nsame word. So instead of coass¨\\ne “in a house”, plural coassen “in houses”,\\none may perhaps use the shorter forms coas, pl. coais. However, since we\\ncannot be entirely confident regarding the function of this case, I will not\\nconstruct any exercises involving it. On the other hand, the function of the\\nlast Quenya case we will discuss in this course is relatively well understood.\\nWe are talking about:\\n16.1\\nThe Instrumental case\\nThe rule for how the instrumental case is constructed can (for pedagogical\\npurposes!) be stated very simply: Just add -en to the dative form! So where\\nthe dative has the ending -n, corresponding to plural -in and dual -nt,\\nthe instrumental has the endings -nen, plural -inen, dual -nten. Before\\ndiscussing the function of this case, we will fill in some more details about\\nthe instrumental forms as such.\\nWe must assume that the basic instrumental ending -nen can be added\\ndirectly to nouns ending in -n and -r without creating impossible clusters,\\nso that we could have elennen as the instrumental form of elen “star”, or\\nAnarnen as the instrumental of Anar “Sun”. (These instrumental forms\\nwould of course be accented on the second-to-last syllable because of the\\nconsonants cluster -nn- or -rn- now following the vowel of this syllable.)\\nNouns ending in -s with stems in -r- (for older -z-) would probably also\\nshow -rn- in the instrumental, e.g. olornen as the instrumental form of\\n249\\n\\n\\nolos, olor- “dream”. Nouns in -n with stems in -m- must be assumed to\\nhave instrumental forms in -mnen, e.g. talamnen as the instrumental form\\nof talan, talam- “floor”. But from this point, we can’t be sure. Since the\\ngroup ln regularly becomes ld in Quenya, it could be that the instrumental\\nform of (say) estel “trust, hope” should be ?estelden for older estelnen.\\nOtherwise, as in the case of nouns in -t, it becomes even more difficult.\\nWhat is the instrumental form of a noun like nat “thing”? Since **natnen\\nis not a possible Quenya form, would it turn into ?nanten with metathesis\\ntn > nt, or would a connecting vowel (possibly -e-) materialize to produce\\na form like natenen? In the case of nouns with special stem-forms ending in\\nconsonant clusters, a connecting vowel must be inserted before the ending\\n-nen; the instrumental form of n´\\nıs (niss-) “woman” may be something like\\nnissenen.\\nSome otherwise long-lost final vowel may also be preserved before case-\\nendings, as when ambar “fate, doom” is seen to have the instrumental form\\nambartanen (the relevant example is further discussed below). The stem\\nof ambar may be given as ambart(a)-: Presumably the word did end in\\n-rta way back in primitive Elvish, but except when shielded by grammatical\\nendings, the final vowel and (later) the -t had been lost.\\nIf the plural ending -inen is added to a noun ending in one of the three\\nvowels -a, -o, or -u, the initial -i- of the ending merges with the last vowel of\\nthe noun to form a diphthong. Constituting the new second-to-last syllable,\\nit naturally attracts the stress. Thus WJ:391 has ´\\nomainen as the plural\\ninstrumental form of ´\\noma “voice”, the form ´\\nomainen being accented on\\nthe diphthong -ai-. Nouns ending in -¨\\ne may originally have behaved in a\\nsimilar fashion, so that lass¨\\ne “leaf” once had the plural instrumental form\\nlasseinen, accented on the diphthong ei – but in Quenya, older ei eventually\\nturned into a long ´\\nı, and the Plotz letter points to lass´\\nınen as the current\\nform. Of course, this long ´\\nı still attracts the stress, like any long vowel\\noccurring in the second-to-last syllable of a word. It is possible that nouns\\nending in -i, like t´\\nari “queen”, would also show´\\nı in their plural instrumental\\nforms, t´\\nari+inen manifesting as t´\\nar´\\nınen since two short i’s would merge into\\none long ´\\nı. This plural form t´\\nar´\\nınen, accented on the ´\\nı in the second-to-\\nlast syllable, would then contrast with the singular t´\\narinen, accented on\\nt´\\nar-. Nouns in -¨\\ne with stem-forms in -i may behave in a similar fashion.\\nThe singular instrumental form of the noun l´\\nır¨\\ne, l´\\nıri- “song” is attested\\nin Nam´\\nari¨\\ne as l´\\nırinen (this would be simply l´\\nıri+nen); perhaps the plural\\nform would be l´\\nır´\\nınen (for l´\\nıri+inen).\\nFor the last time in the course proper I must bore the student with the\\nquestion of dual forms: Some dual instrumentals have the ending -nten as\\nindicated by Plotz, but the dual element is obviously the t, intruding into\\nthe simplest instrumental ending -nen. So is the ending -nten peculiar to\\nnouns with nominative dual forms in -t, so that nouns with nominative dual\\nforms in -u would rather add the simplest ending -nen after this -u? I tend\\n250\\n\\n\\nto think so; the instrumental form of Aldu “Two Trees” would then be\\nAldunen rather than ?Aldunten (or ?Aldanten or whatever).\\nAs the name suggests, the function of the instrumental case is to identify\\nthe “instrument” (in a wide sense) by which some action is achieved. The\\nbest example available is probably the phrase i carir quettar ´\\nomainen\\n“those who make words with voices” (WJ:391). This description of the Elves,\\ninvolving the plural instrumental form of ´\\noma “voice”, identifies their voices\\nas the “instrument” or means by which they make words. Lacking an instru-\\nmental case, English often uses the preposition “with” instead, as in Tolkiens\\ntranslation of ´\\nomainen: “with voices”. However, it should be understood\\nthat the Quenya instrumental endings correspond to English “with” only\\nwhere this preposition means “using” or “by means of” (i carir quettar\\n´\\nomainen could also be translated “those who make words using voices”).\\nIt is highly unlikely that the endings marking the instrumental case can\\nbe used for English “with” in the sense of “together with” (and please allow\\nme to dwell on this point for a moment, for some writers have actually\\nmisapplied the Quenya instrumental case in such a way!) A sentence like “I\\nsaw them with an Elf” can hardly be translated as **cennenyet Eldanen,\\nfor to the extent this makes any sense at all, it implies that the Elf is\\nthe instrument by which “I saw them”! On the other hand, in a sentence\\nlike “I saw them with my binoculars”, it would be quite all right to use the\\ninstrumental case for the English preposition “with”. (Unfortunately, I can’t\\nreconstruct the actual Quenya wording, for Tolkien doesn’t seem to mention\\nany Elvish word for “binoculars” anywhere: Perhaps the far-sighted Elves\\njust didn’t need such artifices!)\\nThe Quenya instrumental endings may also be rendered into English by\\nmeans of other prepositions than “with”. The two instrumental forms oc-\\ncurring in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne Tolkien translated as phrases involving the preposition\\n“in”; yet it is clear from the context that the instrumental does not really\\nintrude on the area otherwise covered by the locative. The first instrumental\\nform occurs at the end of the first line of the song: Ai! lauri¨\\ne lantar lassi\\ns´\\nurinen, “ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind”. Despite Tolkien’s trans-\\nlation, the context indicates that the “wind” (s´\\nur¨\\ne, s´\\nuri-) is here thought\\nof as the “instrument” which makes the leaves fall: “In the wind” actually\\nimplies “by means of the wind”, or simply “because of the wind”. This ex-\\nample shows that the Quenya instrumental case may indicate simply the\\nreason why something happens (the instrumental ending marking the noun\\ndenoting what makes it happen). The second example of the instrumental\\ncase in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne is similar, involving the noun l´\\nır¨\\ne, l´\\nıri- “song”: Quoting\\nfrom the prose version in RGEO, reference is made to Vardo . . . tellumar,\\nyassen tintilar i eleni ´\\nomaryo l´\\nırinen, that is, “Varda’s . . . domes, in\\nwhich the stars twinkle by the song of her voice” (´\\nomaryo l´\\nırinen = “her\\nvoice’s song-by”). So the song of Varda’s voice is what makes the stars twin-\\nkle, and the word for “song” is accordingly marked with the instrumental\\n251\\n\\n\\nending -nen.\\nAnother instrumental ending translated “in” by Tolkien is found in F´\\nıriel’s\\nSong, one line of which says that the Valar gave everyone the gifts of Il´\\nuvatar\\nlestanen = “in measure”. Here the instrumental noun tells us something\\nabout how the verbal action was accomplished.\\nThe Markirya poem includes the plural instrumental form (ending -inen)\\nof the word r´\\nama “wing”, the sails of a ship being poetically referred to as\\nits “wings”: The ship is described as wilwarin wilwa . . . r´\\namainen elvi¨\\ne,\\nmeaning something like “fluttering like a butterfly . . . on starlike wings” (or,\\n“with starlike wings”, “by means of starlike wings”). We could imagine a less\\npoetical example using the same plural instrumental form, e.g. aiwi vilir\\nr´\\namainen, “birds fly with (or, using) wings”. Talking about a single bird\\nwe could use a dual instrumental form: aiw¨\\ne vil¨\\ne r´\\namanten, “a bird flies\\nwith [a pair of] wings”.\\nOne (actually the only) example of an instrumental form occurring in\\nthe Silmarillion is particularly interesting. Near the end of chapter 21, Of\\nT´\\nurin Turambar, N´\\nıniel refers to her brother as Turambar turun ambar-\\ntanen, “master of doom by doom mastered”. UT:138 indicates that the\\nmore proper reading is Turambar tur´\\nun’ ambartanen. This sentence is\\npeculiar for several reasons. The word for “doom” (= “fate”) is here am-\\nbar with stem ambart(a)-, as in the name Turambar “master of doom”\\nand the instrumental form ambartanen “by doom”. Other sources point to\\numbar as the Quenya word for “fate, doom” (it is even mentioned in LotR\\nAppendix E as the name of a Tengwa letter). Ambar elsewhere occurs with\\nthe meaning “world”, as in Elendil’s Declaration in LotR (where reference\\nis made to the Ambar-metta or “end of the world”), but ambar “doom”\\nonly partially coincides with this noun, since the stem-form ambart(a)- is\\ndistinct. Conceivably the “proper” Quenya word for “doom” was umbar,\\nbut the variant form ambar appeared in Exilic Quenya because of influ-\\nence from the corresponding Sindarin word (ammarth or amarth). We must\\nhave faith: perhaps Tolkien explains the seeming discrepancies in some still\\nunpublished note.\\nAnother peculiar feature of N´\\nıniel’s cry is the word turun or more prop-\\nerly tur´\\nun’, translated “mastered”. The translation would seem to indicate\\nthat this is a passive participle, and the complete form must be tur´\\nuna,\\nthe final -a here dropping out because the next word (ambartanen) begins\\nin the same vowel. This form tur´\\nun[a] “mastered” must be related to the\\nverb tur- “govern, control, wield” that we introduced in Lesson Seven. How-\\never, according to the rules for the formation of passive participles set out\\nin Lesson Ten, the participle of tur- ought to be turna (cf. carna “made”\\nas the attested passive participle of car- “make”), or less likely t´\\nurina\\n(cf. r´\\nacina “broken” as the attested participle of rac- “break”). The form\\ntur´\\nun[a] is quite perplexing. It could belong to some peculiar phase in\\nTolkien’s evolution of Quenya, an experiment later abandoned. Since we are\\n252\\n\\n\\ndealing with posthumously published material here, we can never be certain\\nthat all the linguistic samples represent the Professor’s definitive decisions\\non what Quenya grammar was “really” like.\\nWe must hope that future publications will throw more light upon the\\nstrange form tur´\\nun[a], but if we accept it as some kind of passive partici-\\nple, we can make out one important grammatical rule from N´\\nıniel’s cry:\\nFollowing a passive participle, the agent who brought about the condition\\ndescribed can be introduced as a noun in the instrumental case. In our at-\\ntested example, T´\\nurin Turambar was “mastered”, and since N´\\nıniel wanted to\\nadd information about what it was that “mastered” her brother, she used\\nthe instrumental form ambartanen = “by doom”. A less gloomy exam-\\nple could involve, say, t´\\necina “written”, the passive participle of the verb\\ntec- “to write”: We could build a phrase like i parma t´\\necina i Eldanen,\\n“the book written by the Elf”. Following a participle, the instrumental form\\ncould surely also assume its more basic function of denoting an instrument,\\nso that we could have a phrase like t´\\necina quessenen “written with a\\nfeather [pen]” (quess¨\\ne = “feather”).\\nWe must assume that the instrumental endings can be added to the rel-\\native pronoun ya- to express “by which”, “with which”: Singular i cirya\\nyanen lenden amba i s´\\nır¨\\ne “the ship by which I went up the river” (amba\\n= “up”), plural i ciryar yainen. . . “the ships by which. . . ”, dual i ciryat\\nyanten. . . “the couple of ships by which. . . ”\\nThough our attested examples involve other cases, there is no reason\\nto doubt that also instrumental endings can be combined with possessive\\npronominal endings – producing forms like m´\\nanyanen “with my hand”,\\n“using my hand” (m´\\na-nya-nen “hand-my-with”).\\nCombined with a gerund (ending in -i¨\\ne), the instrumental case may per-\\nhaps express the idea of “by doing so and so”, e.g. tiri´\\nenen “by watch-\\ning” (for instance, in a sentence like “I found out by watching”). When\\nthe instrumental ending is added to nouns in -i¨\\ne, the vowel in front of the\\nending would likely be lengthened, thus receiving the accent (a quite awk-\\nward stress-pattern being avoided): Hence I go for tiri´\\nenen rather than\\n?tirienen, which would have to be accented on the second i. We have no\\nattested example involving the instrumental case, but cf. Tolkien’s tyali´\\neva\\nas the possessive form of tyali¨\\ne “play”. The instrumental would likely be\\ntyali´\\nenen, then. Such vocalic lengthening – apparently to avoid cumber-\\nsome stress-patterns – is also observed in other parts of speech, as we will\\ndiscover in the next thrilling section:\\n16.2\\nVerbs with an unaccented vowel + -ta\\nWe have earlier discussed what must be the main categories of Quenya verbs.\\nThere are some minor sub-groups of verbs that may have their own peculiar\\n253\\n\\n\\nfeatures, but our knowledge is very limited since (the litany of Tolkienan\\nlinguistics:) we have so few examples. All the same, a few observations about\\nsome of these sub-categories may be made, and we will deal with one of them\\nhere.\\nIn some of my examples and exercises I have combined the verb car-\\n“make, do” with an adjective, e.g. exercise C in the previous lesson: Hiri-\\ntaryas carn¨\\ne lierya alya, “his finding it made his people rich”. I should\\npoint out that we have no Tolkien-made example of an adjective being com-\\nbined with car- in such a way, and it may be that I am here imposing an\\nEnglish idiom on Quenya. Now this may not be such a disaster: If we are\\never to develop a usable form of Quenya, it would almost inevitably become\\nsomewhat coloured by modern usage (and if the Eldar return from Valinor\\nto protest against their language being mistreated, that would not be a bad\\nthing, either). Even so, it may be noted that Quenya vocabulary includes\\nwhat may be termed causative verbs derived from adjectives; perhaps fully\\n“idiomatic” Quenya would rather use such formations.\\nThese verbs express, in a single word, the idea of “making” an object have\\nthe properties described by the corresponding adjective. The student should\\nalready be familiar with the ending -ta, which occurs in many Quenya verbs\\n(e.g. pusta- “to stop”). Often it is just a verbal ending with no particular\\nimplications, but occasionally it may take on a causative meaning; compare\\nthe primary verb tul- “to come” and the derived verb tulta- “to summon”\\n(= to cause to come). Added to adjectives, it seems that this ending may\\nsimilarly be used to derive causative verbs. We have only a handful of exam-\\nples, but the adjective air¨\\ne “holy” apparently corresponds to a verb airita-\\n“to hallow” – that is, “to make holy”. (The final -¨\\ne of air¨\\ne “holy” appears\\nas -i- in airita- because the -¨\\ne of air¨\\ne descends from -i in the primitive\\nlanguage, and it changed to -¨\\ne only when final. Cf. the similar variation in\\nthe aorist: sil¨\\ne “shines”, but with a plural subject silir “shine”, because if\\nyou add any ending the final vowel is no longer final at all.)\\nThe one form of the verb airita- that is actually attested is the past tense.\\nIt reportedly appears as airit´\\nan¨\\ne in an unpublished Tolkien manuscript\\nstored at the Bodleian: According to a footnote in Vinyar Tengwar #32,\\nNovember 1993, p. 7, the manuscript page in question “dates to c. 1966\\nand gives much information about Quenya verbs. It will be published in\\nan upcoming issue of Vinyar Tengwar.” Eight years and nine Vinyar Teng-\\nwars later, we are unfortunately still waiting to see this apparently highly\\ninteresting document – but at least VT#32 cited the past tense airit´\\nan¨\\ne.\\nIt obviously includes the well-known past tense ending -n¨\\ne, but it should\\nbe noted that the vowel of the ending -ta- is here lengthened when the past\\ntense ending is added. In this way, the now long syllable -t´\\na- attracts the\\nstress. **Airitan¨\\ne with no lengthening would have a rather awkward stress-\\npattern (accented on -rit-), and it is perhaps for this reason the lengthening\\noccurs. This may also imply that if some further ending is added after -n¨\\ne so\\n254\\n\\n\\nthat the stress would not threaten to land on -rit- after all, the lengthening\\nof -ta- may not occur: Perhaps, say, “we hallowed” is airitanelm¨\\ne rather\\nthan ?airit´\\nanelm¨\\ne, since the stress must here fall on -ne- and -ta- receives\\nno stress at all. Some think Quenya cannot have a long vowel in a wholly\\nunaccented syllable unless this syllable is also the first one of the word.\\nWhatever the case may be, we can apparently infer this rule: As long as\\nthe past tense form of such a verb (that is, a verb with an unaccented vowel\\nin front of the verbal ending -ta) is not to receive any further endings that\\nmay shift the stress, the ending -ta is lengthened to -t´\\na- when the past\\ntense ending -n¨\\ne is added after it: Thus airit´\\nan¨\\ne as the pa.t. of airita-.\\nOf course, not all endings that may be suffixed to -n¨\\ne have the power to\\nshift the stress, and then the lengthening of -t´\\na- must remain to prevent\\nthe accent from going someplace it shouldn’t: Airit´\\naner “hallowed” (with\\na plural subject), airit´\\nanes “(s)he hallowed”, airit´\\nanen “I hallowed”. But\\nquite possibly, it should be airitaneny¨\\ne with no lengthening of -t´\\na- if you\\nuse the longer form of the ending for “I” – so that the stress moves to -ne-,\\nand -ta- becomes a wholly unaccented syllable.\\nIn the Etymologies, Tolkien listed at least one more verb that seems to\\nbelong to this class. The entry nik-w- provides a verb ninquit´\\na- “whiten”,\\ni.e. “make white”, derived from the adjective “white”: ninqu¨\\ne (stem nin-\\nqui-; the primitive form is given as ninkwi). By writing ninquit´\\na-, Tolkien\\nobviously suggested that the final vowel is often long, and we may safely\\nassume that the past tense is ninquit´\\nan¨\\ne.\\nNOTE: In the entry nik-w-, Tolkien also listed a verb ninquita- “shine white” that\\nwould probably inflect otherwise: perhaps the past tense would rather be ?ninquint¨\\ne with\\nnasal infixion (allow me to state explicitly that this is speculation!) In the aorist, the two\\nverbs must probably coincide as ninquita, the context determining whether this is to be\\ninterpreted “whitens” or “shines white”.\\nWe may be able to tell one more thing about this class of verbs: how the\\npassive (or “past”) participle is formed. The evidence is widely scattered,\\nthough.\\nIn The Houses of Healing, Chapter 8 of Book Five in The Return of the\\nKing, Tolkien has Aragorn saying that “in the high tongue of old I am\\nElessar, the Elfstone, and Envinyatar, the Renewer”. The Quenya title En-\\nvinyatar = “Renewer” is interesting. As for the final -r seen here, this\\nending may be added to (A-stem) Quenya verbs with much the same mean-\\ning as the English agent ending -er, so Envinyatar “Renewer” points to\\nan underlying verb envinyata- “to renew”. The prefix en- means “re-”,\\nand vinya is the Quenya adjective “new”, so apparently we are looking at\\nanother verb derived from an adjective by means of the ending -ta.\\nInterestingly, what may be seen as the passive participle of this verb\\nenvinyata- “to renew” is attested in MR:405, in the phrase Arda En-\\nvinyanta. This Tolkien translated “Arda Healed” (the reference is to a\\nfuture world healed from the consequences of the evil of Morgoth). Compar-\\n255\\n\\n\\ning it with Aragorn’s title Envinyatar = “Renewer”, we can tell that Arda\\nEnvinyanta more literally means “Arda Renewed”. It should be noted how\\nthe passive participle is formed: by nasal-infixion intruding before the t of\\nthe ending -ta of the verb envinyata-. The resulting form envinyanta dif-\\nfers from the passive participles of “normal” verbs in -ta, which seem to\\nhave participles in -taina. (Compare hastaina “marred” from the same\\ntext that provides the example Arda Envinyanta “Arda Healed”: Arda\\nHastaina or “Arda Marred” was the world as it actually appeared, marred\\nby Morgoth. See MR:405, cf. 408, note 14. It is important to notice that\\nthese divergent types of participles occur in the same source text, allowing\\nus to know with certainty that the different formations do belong to the\\nsame version of Quenya: Otherwise, it would be tempting to dismiss some of\\nthe formations as representing merely a certain stage in Tolkien’s evolution\\nof the language – ideas he later abandoned.)\\nIf envinyata- “to renew” has the passive participle envinyanta, we\\nmay plausibly assume that the pass. part. of airita- “to hallow” is sim-\\nilarly formed by means of nasal-infixion: airinta “hallowed” (rather than\\n?airitaina, though perhaps this form would also be acceptable). And if\\nairita- has the past tense form airit´\\nan¨\\ne with lengthening of -ta- to -t´\\na-, we\\ncan probably assume that envinyata- “to renew” becomes envinyat´\\nan¨\\ne in\\nthe past tense. Similarly, if ninquit´\\na- is the verb “to whiten”, with the past\\ntense ninquit´\\nan¨\\ne, the participle “whitened” may well be ninquinta. (The\\nforms envinyanta, airinta, ninquinta would of course agree in number\\nlike adjectives in -a, changing this final vowel to -¨\\ne in the plural.)\\nWe have mentioned pretty much all the very few known verbs that may\\ntentatively be assigned to this sub-class. There is no direct evidence for how\\nthey would behave in other forms than the past tense and the passive par-\\nticiple. (As for the active participle in -la, we would almost certainly see the\\nsame lengthening of the ending -ta as we observe before the past tense end-\\ning -n¨\\ne: hence airit´\\nala “hallowing”, envinyat´\\nala “renewing”. Again, the\\n“motivation” for lengthening the vowel of -ta would be to achieve euphonic\\nstress-patterns.)\\nIt is of course difficult to know to what extent we should feel free to derive\\nnew Quenya verbs ourselves by adding -ta to adjectives (remembering that\\nadjectives in -¨\\ne change this vowel to -i- before endings, as in airita- “to\\nhallow” from air¨\\ne “holy”). To return to the sentence we started with, hir-\\nitaryas carn¨\\ne lierya alya “his finding it made his people rich”, perhaps\\nthis might better be expressed as hiritaryas alyat´\\nan¨\\ne lierya? We then\\nassume that the adjective alya- can be used as the basis for a verb alyata-\\n“make rich” or “enrich”, with past tense alyat´\\nan¨\\ne (and passive participle\\nalyanta). In this as in other matters, people who want to write in Quenya\\nface a difficult choice: Should we try to make the language work using solely\\nthe words Tolkien himself provided, introducing unattested idioms or long\\ncircumlocutions where necessary to work around gaps in the Tolkien-made\\n256\\n\\n\\nvocabulary? Or should we feel free to derive new words from Tolkienian ele-\\nments by applying the Professor’s principles as far as we understand them,\\nsomething that may be perceived as diluting Tolkien’s actual linguistic out-\\nput with “fake” elements (however cleverly constructed)? Some post-Tolkien\\ncreativity must unquestionably be allowed if we are ever to develop Quenya\\ninto anything like a useable language, but there are no easy answers here.\\n16.3\\nThe imperative\\nThe imperative is a form of the verb used to express commands or requests.\\nIn English, imperatives are often preceded by the word “please” to make\\nthem more polite, but it should be understood that an imperative form as\\nsuch is not necessarily to be taken as a blunt order. In Tolkien’s Quenya\\nrendering of the Lord’s Prayer, several imperatives occur, and such a prayer\\nas “deliver us from evil” is of course just that – a prayer, not an attempt to\\norder God around.\\nAccording to Tolkien, the primitive Elvish language had an imperative\\nparticle that could be used in conjunction with a verbal stem to indicate\\nthat it was to be taken as an imperative. The particle had the form ˆ\\na, and it\\nwas “originally independent and variable in place” (WJ:365). Sometimes it\\nwas placed after the stem, and in such cases it came out as an ending -a in\\nQuenya. WJ:364 mentions an “imperative exclamation” heca! meaning “be\\ngone!” or “stand aside!” – and on the next page, this is suggested to come\\nfrom the primitive phrase hek(e) ˆ\\na. There is also the primitive exclamation\\nel-ˆ\\na, “lo!”, “look!”, “see!”, which is supposed to be the very first thing the\\nElves ever said as they awoke at Cuivi´\\nenen and first saw the stars (WJ:360).\\nIn Quenya, this word came out as ela! It was “an imperative exclamation\\ndirecting sight to an actually visible object” (WJ:362).\\nIf we were to be guided by examples like heca and ela, we would have\\nto conclude that in the case of primary verbs at least, imperatives may be\\nformed by adding -a to the verbal stem. For instance, tir- “to watch” would\\nhave the imperative tira! “watch!”, representing primitive tir-ˆ\\na or tir(i) ˆ\\na.\\nThe corresponding Sindarin form tiro! is actually attested. (Notice that the\\nimperative tira “watch!” would be distinct from the present/continuative\\nform t´\\nıra “is watching”, since in the latter form, the stem-vowel is length-\\nened.) This may be one way of constructing Quenya imperatives, but it is\\nalso possible that exclamations like heca and ela are to be taken as “fos-\\nsilized” forms descending from earlier stages of Elvish.\\nAs for the typical “modern” way of forming imperatives, there is some\\nevidence that a descendant of the original particle ˆ\\na was still treated as an\\nindependent word: it was placed in front of the verbal stem instead of be-\\ning suffixed as an ending. In the LotR itself, an example is provided by the\\nCormallen Praise, the crowd hailing Frodo and Sam with the words a laita\\n257\\n\\n\\nte. . . Cormacolindor, a laita t´\\narienna! “Bless them. . . The Ring bear-\\ners, bless (or praise) them to the height” (translated in Letters:308). Notice\\nhow the verbal stem laita- “bless, praise” is here preceded by the imperative\\nparticle a to form an imperative phrase a laita! “bless!” or “praise!” The\\nparticle a also appears in the long form ´\\na, directly from primitive ˆ\\na, as in\\nthe exclamation ´\\na vala Manw¨\\ne! “may Manw¨\\ne order it!” (WJ:404). Here,\\nthe verb vala- “rule, govern” (the origin of the noun Valar and in later\\nusage therefore referring to “divine” power only) is combined with the im-\\nperative particle ´\\na: The literal meaning of ´\\na vala Manw¨\\ne! is transparently\\nsomething like “do rule Manw¨\\ne!”, if we make an effort to translate ´\\na as a\\nseparate word. Incidentally, this example demonstrates that the subject of\\nthe imperative (the one who is to carry out the “order” or request) may be\\nexplicitly mentioned after the imperative phrase proper.\\nIs there any reason why the imperative particle appears in the short form\\na in a laita, but in the long form ´\\na in ´\\na vala? It has been suggested that\\n´\\na is shortened to a whenever it occurs in front of a long syllable (like lai-,\\nbecause of the diphthong ai), but we cannot be sure. Perhaps ´\\na vs. a is just\\nan example of random variation: Presumably being unaccented, the particle\\ncould well tend to become shortened if speakers don’t enunciate with care\\n(the ecstatic crowds at Cormallen, hailing the hobbits who had saved the\\nworld, hardly did!) I would normally prefer the long form ´\\na, avoiding con-\\nfusion with a as a particle of address, like English “o” (as in Treebeard’s\\ngreeting to Celeborn and Galadriel: a vanimar = “o beautiful ones”, Let-\\nters:308). For instance, since the verb “to go” is lelya-, the imperative “go!”\\nwould be ´\\na lelya!\\nThe imperative particle ´\\na can also be combined with the negation v´\\na\\nto form the word ´\\nava, used in negative commands: ´\\nAva car¨\\ne! “Don’t do\\n[it]!” (WJ:371). This example also gives away how primary verbs behave in\\nimperative phrases: they appear with the ending -¨\\ne, just like they do when\\nthey are used as infinitives (and ending-less aorist forms). So from a primary\\nverb like tir- “watch”, we can probably form a command like ´\\na tir¨\\ne! “(do)\\nwatch!” – negative ´\\nava tir¨\\ne! “don’t watch!”\\n16.4\\nThe nai formula\\nIf one does not want to issue a command (however polite), but is merely\\nexpressing a wish that something will be done or will happen, Quenya has\\na special “wishing formula”.\\nNear the end of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, we find these lines: Nai hiruvaly¨\\ne Valimar!\\nNai ely¨\\ne hiruva! In LotR, this is translated “maybe thou wilt find Valimar!\\nMaybe even thou wilt find it!” The word nai is here rendered into English\\nas “maybe”, but elsewhere, Tolkien indicated that this Quenya word does\\nnot merely imply that something is possible. He noted that nai “expresses\\n258\\n\\n\\nrather a wish than a hope, and would be more closely rendered ‘may it be\\nthat’ (thou wilt find), than by ‘maybe.’” (RGEO:68) We may wonder why\\nhe used the “misleading” translation maybe in the first place; possibly there\\nare some “conceptual developments” involved here (i.e., Tolkien changed his\\nmind about the precise meaning of a Quenya text he had already published!)\\nAnyway, his final decision on the meaning of the phrase nai hiruvaly¨\\ne\\nValimar was that it is to be interpreted “be it that thou wilt find Valimar”\\nor “may thou find Valimar”. Nai ely¨\\ne hiruva likewise means “be it that\\neven thou wilt find [it]”. (The word ely¨\\ne “even thou” here occurring is an\\nemphatic, independent pronoun corresponding to the ending -ly¨\\ne “thou,\\nyou”, whereas Valimar here stands as an alternative to Valinor: Galadriel\\nsinging Nam´\\nari¨\\ne thus expresses a wish that Frodo will eventually “find” or\\ncome to the Blessed Realm – and as we remember, both he and Galadriel\\nherself went over the Sea in the end.)\\nWe have one more attestation of the nai wishing-formula. It occurs in\\nCirion’s Oath, Cirion expressing a wish that the Valar will guard the oath:\\nNai tiruvantes, “be it that they will guard [/watch over] it”. Tolkien noted\\nthat this is the equivalent of “may they guard it” (UT:305, 317).\\nAs for the basic meaning of the word nai itself, Tolkien implied that it\\nis quite literally “be (it) that”: He derived Quenya nai from earlier nˆ\\na-i\\n(RGEO:68). The nˆ\\na part would seem to be the element meaning “be!”,\\nundoubtedly closely related to the Quenya copula n´\\na “is”, itself a form of\\nthe verb “to be”. The final i must be the element corresponding to the\\n“that” of “be (it) that”, and this i is certainly meant to be related to the\\nQuenya article i “the”.\\nWhatever the precise origin or basic meaning of nai may be, it is a useful\\nword that can apparently be put in front of any sentence including a future-\\ntense verb, turning a simple statement about the future into a wish about\\nwhat the future may bring:\\n• Elda tuluva coalmanna “an Elf will come to our house” > Nai\\nElda tuluva coalmanna! “be it that an Elf will come to our house!”\\n= “(I) wish that an Elf will come to our house!” or “may an Elf come\\nto our house!”\\n• Hiruvan i malta “I will find the gold” > Nai hiruvan i malta! “be\\nit that I will find gold!” = “wish that I will find the gold!”\\n• Caruvantes “they will do it” > nai caruvantes! “be it that they\\nwill do it!” = “wish that they will do it!”\\nIn our attested examples, nai is combined with the future tense, but since\\nwe have only three examples, it certainly cannot be ruled out that nai may\\nbe used in conjunction with other tenses as well. (One may even say we\\nhave only two examples, Cirion’s Oath + Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, since the two examples\\nof the nai formula near the end of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne are very similar.) Perhaps nai\\n259\\n\\n\\ncan also describe the speaker’s hope that a certain wish is already being\\nfulfilled, or has been fulfilled in the past – the speaker still not knowing\\nwhether the wish came true or not. If so, we could have constructions like\\nnai t´\\nıras “be it that (s)he is watching” = “I hope (s)he is watching” (with\\nthe present or continuative tense of tir- “watch”), nai hirnentes! “be it\\nthat they found it” = “I hope they found it” (with the past tense of hir-\\n“find”), or nai ut´\\nulies “be it that (s)he has come” = “I hope (s)he’s come”\\n(with the perfect tense of tul- “come”). However, in the exercises below,\\nnai is only combined with the future tense – as in our attested examples.\\nSummary of Lesson Sixteen\\nThe instrumental case has the basic ending -nen, plural -inen, dual -nten\\n(at least in the case of nouns with nominative dual forms in -t; nouns with\\ndual forms in -u may just add the simplest ending -nen to this vowel). The\\ninstrumental ending is added to nouns denoting the “instrument” or means\\nby which some action is done or accomplished, as when Elves are described\\nas making words ´\\nomainen = “with voices” (´\\noma “voice”). The instrumen-\\ntal ending may correspond to such English prepositions as “with” or “by”\\nwhere these words mean “using”, “by means of”. Sometimes the instru-\\nmental ending may mark a noun simply indicating what makes something\\nhappen, as when the first line of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne says leaves fall s´\\nurinen = “in the\\nwind”, i.e., because of the wind. Following a passive participle, a noun in\\nthe instrumental case may indicate who or what brought about the situation\\ndescribed, as when T´\\nurin is described as tur´\\nun’ ambartanen, “mastered\\nby doom”. – Verbs including an unaccented vowel + the ending -ta seem to\\nhave past-tense forms in -t´\\nan¨\\ne (notice the long ´\\na) and passive participles\\nin -nta. Attested examples include airit´\\nan¨\\ne, past tense of airita- “to hal-\\nlow”, and envinyanta, passive participle of envinyata- “to renew, heal”.\\nThese verbs are causative formations derived from adjectives by means of\\nthe ending -ta, as when air¨\\ne (airi-) “holy” is the basis of the causative verb\\nairita- “to make holy” = “to hallow”. – Quenya imperatives are marked\\nby the particle ´\\na (variant a, negative ´\\nava “don’t”), which is placed in front\\nof the verbal stem: A laita = “(do) praise!”, ´\\na vala “(do) rule!” In this\\ngrammatical context, the stem of primary verbs assume the ending -¨\\ne, as\\nin the negative command ´\\nava car¨\\ne “don’t do [it]!” A few (old, fossilized?)\\nimperative forms are seen to replace the independent imperative particle ´\\na\\nor a with the corresponding ending -a (ela “lo! behold!”, heca! “be gone!”)\\n– The word nai, meaning “be it that. . . ”, can be placed at the beginning of\\na sentence to express a wish: Nai tiruvantes “be it that they will guard it”\\nor “may they guard it” (cf. tiruvantes “they will guard/watch it”). In our\\nattested examples, nai is placed in front of sentences including a future-tense\\nverb; whether nai can be combined with other tenses is unclear.\\n260\\n\\n\\nVocabulary\\nnelya “third” (The original name of the Third Clan of the Elves was Nelyar, literally\\n“Thirds, Third Ones”, though the Eldarin branch of that clan would later be called\\nLindar or Teleri instead [WJ:380, 382].)\\n´\\na imperative particle (variant a, but we will use ´\\na here)\\n´\\nava “don’t!” (i.e., the imperative particle combined with a negation. Also in the form\\nav´\\na, the sole attested two-syllable Quenya word that is definitely known to be\\naccented on the last syllable [WJ:371] – but we will use ´\\nava here.)\\nrac- “to break”\\nenvinyata- “to renew”\\nairita- “to hallow”\\nharna- “to wound” (and the passive participle is evidently also harna, defined as\\n“wounded” in the entry SKAR in the Etymologies. The adjectival or participial\\nformation harna “wounded” is the primary derivative from the original root; even-\\ntually harna- also came to be used as a verbal stem “to wound”. Of course, if this\\nword were to go like a regular A-stem verb, the passive participle should then be\\n?harnaina. But the ending -ina is just a longer variant of the ending -na which is\\npresent from the beginning, and suffixing it twice to the same word should hardly\\nbe necessary!)\\nnamba “hammer”\\neht¨\\ne “spear”\\ny´\\nana “holy place, sanctuary”\\nnilm¨\\ne “friendship”\\nR´\\nomen “the East” (the initial r´\\no- is ultimately related to the or- of the verb orta-\\n“rise”, since the Sun rises in the East.)\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Ut´\\nulies R´\\nomello ninqu¨\\ne rocconen.\\nB. I n´\\ner harnan¨\\ne i r´\\na ehtenen, ar eques: “ ´\\nAva mat¨\\ne yon-\\ndonya!”\\nC. Quentemm¨\\ne i Eldanna: “Nilmelma n´\\na envinyanta an-\\nnalyanen!”\\nD. I nelya auress¨\\ne quentes i vendenna: “ ´\\nA car¨\\ne ya merily¨\\ne!”\\nE. Quen um¨\\ne pol¨\\ne hir¨\\ne harma nurtaina Naucoinen, an Nauco\\nmel¨\\ne n´\\nurav¨\\ne i malta ya haryas.\\nF. I n´\\ner n´\\na harna rassenten i lamno; nai ´\\nuvas fir¨\\ne!\\n261\\n\\n\\nG. Lind¨\\neas alassenen.\\nH. ´\\nA lelya i ostonna ar ´\\na quet¨\\ne i taura t´\\narinna: “Nai varyu-\\nvaly¨\\ne n´\\norelma i ´\\numi¨\\ne ohtarillon!”\\n2. Translate into Quenya (consistently using the independent imperative\\nparticle rather than the ending -a, which possibly only occurs in fos-\\nsilized forms):\\nI. He said to the Dwarf: “Break the cup with a hammer!”\\nJ. By ship I went away [past tense of auta-] to a remote land in the\\nEast.\\nK. The city is protected by great walls, and warriors who fight with\\nspears cannot break the walls.\\nL. Calandil said to his wounded son: “Don’t die!”\\nM. May your queen find the sanctuary hallowed by the Elves!\\nN. The king and the queen went to my house and renewed our (excl.)\\nfriendship with great gifts.\\nO. She seizes the boy with her hands (dual), and she says: “Don’t\\ngo to the river!”\\nP. The woman who lives (/dwells) in the third house in the street\\nsaid to the Elf: “Watch the men who are coming from the sanc-\\ntuary that you see on the hill, the ones who go to the east.”\\n262\\n\\n\\nLesson 17\\nThe demonstratives: Sina, tan(y)a, enta, yana. Inflecting\\nthe “Last Declinable Word”. U-stem nouns. Ordinals in -¨\\nea.\\n17.1\\nQuenya demonstratives\\n”Demonstratives” are such words as English this or that, with the corre-\\nsponding plural forms these and those. Thus, they have a stronger meaning\\nthan the mere article the (though in the languages of the world, many defini-\\ntive articles descend from older demonstratives that were overused so that\\ntheir meaning faded). The demonstratives may be used together with nouns,\\nproducing phrases like “this house” or “that man”.\\nIn LotR-style Quenya we have only one demonstrative attested in an ac-\\ntual text: Cirion’s Oath commences with the words vanda sina, translated\\n“this oath”. The Quenya word order is actually “oath this”, sina being the\\nword for “this”: The root si- has to do with present position in time or space\\n(cf. such words as s´\\nı “now” or sinom¨\\ne “in this place” = “here”, the latter\\nfrom Elendil’s Declaration in LotR).\\nA word for “that” appears as tanya in an early “Qenya” text published\\nin MC:215, which has tanya wende for “that maiden”. Here, the word-\\norder is “English-style” with the demonstrative first and the noun it qualifies\\nfollowing it – the opposite of the word order seen in Cirion’s Oath. Perhaps\\nthe word order is free, so that vanda sina could just as well be sina vanda\\n– and conversely, tanya wende could also be wende tanya? Be that as it\\nmay, we cannot be quite certain that the word tanya is still valid in LotR-\\nstyle Quenya. The Etymologies lists ta as the Elvish “demonstrative stem\\n‘that’,” and the actual Quenya word for “that” is given as tana. Since this\\nform seems like a perfect counterpart to sina “this”, we will here use tana\\nrather than tanya as the word for “that” (though it is also possible that the\\n“Qenya” form tanya survived into the later stages of Tolkien’s conception).\\nSo given that vanda sina is “this oath”, we must assume that “that oath”\\nwould be vanda tana. Maybe we should update the “Qenya” phrase tanya\\nwende “that maiden” to LotR-style Quenya vend¨\\ne tana (or wend¨\\ne tana\\nwith the older form or archaic spelling of the word for “maiden”). Then we\\n263\\n\\n\\nalso implement the word-order seen in Cirion’s Oath, with the demonstrative\\nfollowing rather than preceding the noun it connects with: In the entry ta\\nin the Etym, Tolkien actually described tana an anaphoric word for “that”,\\nmeaning that it refers back to something already mentioned.\\nHowever, sina “this” and tan(y)a “that” are not the only Quenya demon-\\nstratives known. Though not actually observed in any Quenya texts, other\\ndemonstratives are mentioned in Tolkien’s notes. Another word for “that”\\nis enta, mentioned in the entry en in the Etymologies and there described\\nas an adjective meaning “that yonder”. The root en itself is said to be an\\n“element or prefix = over there, yonder”. Still letting the demonstrative fol-\\nlow the noun it connects with, we may perhaps construct a phrase like coa\\nenta, expressing “that house” in the sense of “yonder house”, “that house\\nover there”.\\nIt may be that Tolkien meant Quenya to distinguish three degrees of\\nnearness or remoteness, as do certain languages of our own world. English\\ntypically only distinguishes two degrees, “this” and “that”: To simplify mat-\\nters rather drastically, we may say that “this” refers to something near the\\nspeaker, whereas “that” refers to something away from the speaker. But in\\nsome languages, the position of the listener is also considered. There are\\ntwo words for “that”, one referring to something away from the speaker but\\nnear the person addressed (“that thing over by you”) and another word\\nreferring to something that is not close to either the speaker or the listener\\n(“that thing we see over there”). Could it be that in Quenya, tana as a\\nword for “that” refers to something close to the person addressed, whereas\\nenta refers to something that is remote from both the speaker and the per-\\nson (s)he addresses? There is presently little or no evidence to back up such\\na theory, but we can at least be certain that the word enta clearly con-\\nnotes the idea of “over there”, “that yonder”, of something separated from\\nthe speaker by physical distance. It may be noted that one Sindarin word\\nfor “there”, namely ennas (SD:129 cf. 128), is understood to represent an\\nolder locative form that could correspond to a Quenya word entass¨\\ne = “in\\nyonder [place]”. (Perhaps tana is simply a more general word for “that”,\\nmerely focusing on the special identity of someone or something: “that one”\\nas opposed to any other.)\\nYet another word for “that” is yana, mentioned in the entry ya in Etym:\\nAfter the gloss “that”, Tolkien added a parenthetical specification: “(the\\nformer)”. Perhaps aran yana would mean “that king” with the implication\\nthat we are talking about a former king, now dead or at least no longer ruling.\\nThere may be interesting contrasts between yana and enta as words for\\n“that”: In the Etymologies, Tolkien noted that the root ya signifies “there,\\nover there; of time, ago”. He added that en, the root producing enta, “of\\ntime points to the future”. So “that day” may translate as aur¨\\ne enta if\\nwe are talking about some future day, not yet come, whereas aur¨\\ne yana is\\n“that day” with reference to some day in the past. (A “neutral” wording,\\n264\\n\\n\\nwith no special implications, may be aur¨\\ne tana.)\\nAs for plural demonstratives, like English “these” and “those”, we have no\\nattested Quenya forms. Yet the words sina “this” and tana, yana “that”\\ndo look like adjectives by their form (-na being an adjectival or participial\\nending), and enta “that yonder” Tolkien explicitly identified as an adjective\\n(Etym, entry en). So in all likelihood, we can inflect all of these words as\\nadjectives, and then we can derive their plural forms simply by changing the\\nfinal -a to -¨\\ne:\\nvanda sina “this oath” / vandar sin¨\\ne “these oaths”\\nn´\\nıs tana “that woman” / nissi tan¨\\ne “those women”\\ncoa enta “that house [over there]” / coar ent¨\\ne “those houses”\\naur¨\\ne yana “that day [in the past]” / auri yan¨\\ne “those days”\\nAs in the case of normal adjectives with the ending -a, the plural forms\\nin -¨\\ne would represent archaic forms in -ai (vandar sinai etc.) Indirect ev-\\nidence confirms that demonstratives could receive the plural ending -i in\\nolder Elvish: In LotR, in the inscription on the Moria Gate, occurs the Sin-\\ndarin phrase i thiw hin, translated “these runes”. Tolkien would have meant\\nthis to represent something like in te˜\\nnwˆ\\nai sinˆ\\nai at an older stage – and in\\nQuenya, an old plural demonstrative sinˆ\\nai “these” would first become sinai\\nand then sin¨\\ne.\\nIt is not clear whether the demonstratives discussed above could occur\\nby themselves, independently, and not only in conjunction with nouns. Can\\nwe use sina for “this” in a sentence like “this is a good house”? (And if\\nwe needed a plural form “these”, should we inflect sina as a noun when it\\noccurs by itself, so that the plural would now be sinar rather than sin¨\\ne?)\\nIn PM:401, we have the sentence sin quent¨\\ne Quendingoldo. Tolkien pro-\\nvided no translation, but it must mean either “this Quendingoldo said” or\\n“thus spoke Quendingoldo”. The latter interpretation has it that sin is an\\nadverb “thus”, but if sin means “this”, it would be what we may call a\\ndemonstrative pronoun – corresponding to sina, the latter however being\\nan adjective only occurring in conjunction with a noun. By this interpreta-\\ntion, it would be sin, rather than sina, we should use in sentences like “this\\nis a good house” or “I have seen this”. (And should the independent word\\nfor “these” be something like sini, then?) As for the other demonstratives,\\nwe have ta as an “independent” form of “that”, corresponding to the adjec-\\ntive tana (see Etym, entry ta). Of other such “independent” forms, little\\nor nothing is known, and in the exercises below, we will concentrate on the\\nadjectival demonstratives sina, tana, enta, yana used in conjunction with\\nnouns.\\n265\\n\\n\\n17.2\\nInflecting the “Last Declinable Word”\\nNow that we have presented all the Quenya cases, we may also point out that\\nthe various case endings are not always attached to the noun they logically\\n“belong” to. Where that noun is part of a longer phrase, like when the noun\\nis followed by an attributive adjective describing it, the case ending may be\\nadded to the last word of the phrase.\\nCirion’s Oath provides the classical example. It includes a reference to\\nElendil Voronda, “Elendil the Faithful”, voronda being a Quenya ad-\\njective meaning “steadfast, faithful”. Wrote Tolkien: “Adjectives used as a\\n‘title’ or frequently used attribute of a name are placed after the name.”\\n(UT:317; as we have pointed out earlier, Quenya here differs from English\\nby not inserting a definite article between the name and the adjective –\\nhence not Elendil i Voronda, at least not necessarily).\\nIn Cirion’s Oath, the name-and-title phrase Elendil Voronda is to ap-\\npear in the genitive case: The Oath includes the words Elendil Vorondo\\nvoronw¨\\ne, “Elendil the Faithful’s faith” – or (as it is translated in UT:305,\\nwith an English-style word order) “the faith of Elendil the Faithful”. Notice\\nthat the genitive ending -o, which we underlined, is added to the adjective\\nvoronda (regularly displacing a final -a) rather than to the noun Elendil.\\nIn a way, the adjective following the noun is treated as an extension of\\nthe noun proper, and so the case ending is added at the end of the whole\\nphrase. Tolkien commented on the construction Elendil Vorondo: “As is\\nusual in Quenya in the case of two declinable names in apposition only the\\nlast is declined” (UT:317). Voronda “faithful” here stands in apposition to\\n“Elendil” as an additional “name” or title, and only the latter “name” is\\ndeclined (inflected for case).\\nThis principle would work with all the various cases. The allative of\\nElendil when the name occurs alone is attested as Elendilenna “to Elen-\\ndil” (PM:401), but “to Elendil the Faithful” would apparently be Elendil\\nVorondanna, the last word of the phrase receiving the case ending.\\nWhere a proper name followed by some epithet (like Voronda in this case)\\nis concerned, the system of adding any case endings to the last word of the\\nphrase may be more or less universal. Yet common nouns, not just proper\\nnames, may also be qualified by adjectives following rather than preceding\\nthe noun. Cf. for instance a phrase like mall¨\\ne t´\\nera “road straight” = “a\\nstraight road” (LR:47). If we were to add the locative ending to express “on\\na straight road”, to what word should it be attached? Should we apply the\\n“last declinable word” rule again (mall¨\\ne t´\\nerass¨\\ne) or attach the locative\\nending to the noun (malless¨\\ne t´\\nera)?\\nIt seems that both constructions would be permissible. The Markirya\\npoem provides a string of examples of noun-phrases where the noun proper\\nis followed by an adjective (in most cases a participle). Three consecutive ex-\\namples involve the noun isilm¨\\ne “moonlight” combined with various partici-\\n266\\n\\n\\nples (ilcala “gleaming”, p´\\nıcala “waning”, lantala “falling”), and all three\\nnoun phrases are inflected for the locative case by attaching the locative\\nending to the last word of the phrase:\\nisilm¨\\ne ilcalass¨\\ne = “in gleaming moonlight”\\nisilm¨\\ne p´\\nıcalass¨\\ne = “in waning moonlight”\\nisilm¨\\ne lantalass¨\\ne = “in falling moonlight”\\n(Tolkien’s more poetic translation in MC:215 goes “in the moon gleaming,\\nin the moon waning, in the moon falling”.)\\nAnother phrase, again involving the participle ilcala “gleaming” but here\\ncombined with the allative case, is particularly interesting:\\naxor ilcalannar = “upon gleaming bones”\\nNotice that the noun axo “bone” is here plural. The plural allative “upon\\nbones” occurring by itself would of course be axonnar. But here, where\\nthe plural allative ending -nnar is attached to the last word of the phrase\\ninstead, the noun axo itself receives only the simplest plural ending -r. Nor-\\nmally, axor would be taken as a nominative plural, but actually the -r merely\\nmarks the word as a plural form in the simplest possible way: The actual\\ncase marker follows later in the phrase. Words with nominative plurals in -i\\nwould of course receive this plural marker instead, e.g. vendi lindalaiva =\\n“of singing maidens” (home-made example involving the possessive case, but\\nthe principle would be the same for all the cases: dative vendi lindalain,\\nallative vendi lindalannar, etc.) We must assume that dual nouns would\\nalso appear in their simplest (normally “nominative”) form at the beginning\\nof the phrase: The noun would merely assume the dual ending -u or -t, and\\nthe full dual case ending would follow later in the phrase. To construct a\\nTolkienesque example: Aldu caltalanta = “upon [the] shining couple of\\ntrees”.\\nHowever, it is apparently not a hard-and-fast rule that you must attach\\na case ending to the last word of the entire phrase rather than to the noun\\nproper. Markirya contains examples of phrases where an attributive adjec-\\ntive follows the noun it describes, and yet the case ending is added to the\\nnoun, not the adjective. The first example involves a plural instrumental\\nform (ending -inen), whereas the second example involves the locative case\\n(the ending -ss¨\\ne being added to a noun that is inflected for the somewhat\\nobscure “partitive plural” marked by the ending -li):\\nr´\\namainen elvi¨\\ne = “on [/with] starlike wings”\\nondoliss¨\\ne morn¨\\ne = “on dark rocks”\\nOf course, the adjectives elv¨\\nea “starlike” and morna “dark” are here\\nplural (elvi¨\\ne, morn¨\\ne) to agree with the plural nouns they describe. It could\\nbe that in both instances, the case ending is not added to the adjective be-\\ncause the adjectival plural inflection and the case inflection would somehow\\n267\\n\\n\\ncollide. (In the phrase axor ilcalannar “upon gleaming bones” there is no\\ncollision even though “bones” is plural, since participles in -la apparently do\\nnot agree in number.) It is less than clear how an ending like -inen could be\\nadded to a form like elvi¨\\ne anyway: ?elvi¨\\neinen seems like an unlikely and\\nawkward form, prone to collapse into the quite obscure word **elv´\\nınen.\\nPerhaps that is why Tolkien preferred to add the case ending to the noun\\nr´\\nama instead, even though this noun is not the last word of the phrase.\\nYet the system of inflecting the “last declinable word” does seem to be\\na common phenomenon in the language. It seems that sometimes, only the\\nlast item on a list receives case endings that actually apply to all the nouns\\nthat are listed. Namna Finw¨\\ne M´\\nıriello is translated “the Statute of Finw¨\\ne\\nand M´\\nıriel” (MR:258). Not only is the conjunction ar “and” that would have\\nseparated the two names omitted, but the genitive ending -o “of” is added\\nto the last name (M´\\nıriel, M´\\nıriell-) only. The “full” construction would\\npresumably have been Namna Finw¨\\neo ar M´\\nıriello, but it was apparently\\npermissible to strip the phrase down to basics to provide the “Statute” with\\na more concise title.\\nThough we have no attested examples, the demonstratives listed above\\nwould seem to be good candidates for receiving case endings, if the word\\norder observed in the phrase vanda sina “oath this” is normal. For instance,\\nif we were to add the instrumental ending to express “by this oath”, it would\\nperhaps be best to say vanda sinanen. However, vandanen sina would\\nprobably also be permissible – and in the plural (nominative presumably\\nvandar sin¨\\ne “these oaths”), consistently adding the case ending to the noun\\nwould be the safest course: “By these oaths” would then be vandainen sin¨\\ne\\nrather than ?vandar sin¨\\neinen or sin´\\nınen or whatever.\\n17.3\\nU-stem nouns\\nApparently in the latter part of the “Common Eldarin” stage of Tolkien’s\\nsimulated evolution of his Elvish languages, two parallel changes occurred,\\naffecting what had earlier been short final -i and short final -u: they now\\nturned into -e and -o, respectively. However, since this change only occurred\\nwhere these vowels were final, they remained -i- and -u- whenever some end-\\ning or other element followed. We have already alluded to this phenomenon\\nearlier in this course; in particular, the student will remember it from the\\nvariation observed in the aorist of primary verbs: sil¨\\ne “shines”, but pl. silir\\n“shine” (because original -i did not change to -e when there was a following\\nending, like the plural marker -r in this example). Similar variation may\\nbe observed in nouns and adjectives: We have already mentioned the noun\\nl´\\nom¨\\ne “night”, which has the stem-form l´\\nomi- (SD:415) because it descends\\nfrom earlier dˆ\\nomi- (see the entry domo in Etym). We must assume that\\n(say) the locative form “at night” would be l´\\nomiss¨\\ne. The adjective carn¨\\ne\\n268\\n\\n\\n“red” descends from primitive karani (see Etym, entry kar´\\nan) and there-\\nfore has the stem-form carni-, for instance in a compound like Carnistir\\n“Red-face” (PM:353).\\nThe behaviour of these “i-stems” of course finds its parallel in the U-\\nstems, words that end in -o when this vowel is absolutely final, but preserve\\nan original -u where some element follows this vowel. Such words seem to be\\npredominantly (perhaps exclusively) nouns. One example of a U-stem noun\\nis ango “snake”: Its stem-form angu- is directly observed in the compound\\nangul´\\noc¨\\ne (simply glossed “dragon”, but actually combining the word for\\n“snake” with the word normally translated “dragon”, l´\\noc¨\\ne: see the entry\\nlok in Etym). In the Etymologies, Tolkien derived ango “snake” from older\\nangu (or angwa, which would become angw and then angu), so the final\\n-o of this word does indeed represent an older -u. Whenever the noun ango\\nis to receive endings for case or pronoun, it would apparently assume the\\nform angu-, e.g. dative angun “for a snake”, ablative angullo “from a\\nsnake” or with a pronominal ending e.g. angulya “your snake”. The genitive\\nwould presumably be anguo “of a snake”. (As we have demonstrated earlier,\\n“normal” nouns ending in -o do not have distinct genitive singular forms;\\nthe genitive ending -o simply merges with the final vowel.)\\nWhere U-stem nouns end in either -go or -co, they assume a peculiar\\nform in the nominative plural. Normally, nouns ending in -o would of course\\nhave nominative plural forms in -or. However, where -go and -co represent\\nolder -gu and -ku, it seems that adding the primitive plural ending -ˆ\\nı made\\nthe preceding u become w, so that the plurals came to end in -gwˆ\\nı or -\\nkwˆ\\nı. Probably w merged with the g or k preceding it: The combinations\\ngw, kw are evidently best taken as unitary sounds, labialized versions of g\\nand k (that is, g or k pronounced with poised lips – look up Lesson One\\nagain). In Quenya, these labialized sounds persisted, though by convention,\\nkw is spelt qu. Bottom line is, when we are told that ango “snake” has the\\nstem angu-, we can also deduce that the plural form is neither **angor\\nnor **angur, but angwi! The Etymologies confirms this; the plural form\\nangwi is explicitly mentioned in the entry angwa/angu.\\nAn example of a -qui plural is provided by the word urco “bogey”, which\\nhas the plural urqui (= urcwi). Regarding this word, Tolkien noted that\\n“as the plural form shows”, urco must be derived from either urku or uruku\\nin the primitive language (WJ:390). Thus, urco is definitely a U-stem noun,\\nits final -o representing older -u, and we would still see urcu- in compounds\\nand before most inflectional endings.\\nNOTE: The word urco “bogey” is akin to Sindarin orch, “Orc”. In WJ:390, Tolkien\\nnotes that in the lore of the Blessed Realm, the word urco “naturally seldom occurs,\\nexcept in tales of the ancient days and the March [of the Eldar from Cuivi´\\nenen], and then\\n[it] is vague in meaning, referring to anything that caused fear to the Elves, any dubious\\nshape or shadow, or prowling creature. . . It might indeed be translated ‘bogey’.” Later,\\nwhen the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, the word urco pl. urqui was primarily used\\n269\\n\\n\\nwith reference to Orcs, since the kinship (“though not precise equivalence”) of this Quenya\\nterm to Sindarin orch was recognized. In Exilic Quenya, a Sindarin-influenced form also\\nappeared: Orco, the plural of which could be either orcor or orqui. The plural form orcor\\noccurs elsewhere as well (MR:74), but if one prefers orqui, one should probably let orco\\n“Orc” function as a U-stem in all respects. For instance, if one were to coin a compound\\n“Orc-language”, it should be orculamb¨\\ne rather than orcolamb¨\\ne. In the Etymologies, far\\npredating the source reproduced in WJ:390, Tolkien also gives the relevant word (glossed\\n“goblin!”) as orco pl. orqui: stem ´\\norok. In Etym, there is no hint that this word was\\nborrowed into Quenya from another language; orco is referred to a primitive form ´\\norku.\\nTolkien’s precise ideas about the history of the Quenya word for “Orc” were apparently\\nsubject to change, but the basic idea that nouns in -co derived from primitive forms in\\n-ku should have plurals in -qui rather than -cor is seen to persist. – In accordance with\\nour policy of avoiding specific references to Tolkien’s mythos in the exercises, we will not\\nrefer to “Orcs” here, but we can use the word urco in its sense of “bogey” (it will occur\\nin the exercises appended to Lesson Eighteen).\\nWe will try to survey the words involved (excluding the earliest “Qenya”\\nmaterial). Ango “snake”, pl. angwi, seems to be our sole entirely certain\\nexample of a -gwi plural. In the Etymologies, there was also lango “throat”,\\npl. langwi (see the entry lank). The form langwi is for some reason marked\\nwith an asterisk, which would normally indicate that this form is unattested,\\nbut possibly it has another meaning here. Anyway, Tolkien decided to change\\nthe word for “throat”, turning it into lanco instead. It is entirely possible\\nthat this is also a U-stem, so that its plural should be lanqui rather than\\nlancor, though we have no explicit information to this effect.\\nOne certain U-stem is the word for “arm”, ranco (primitive form explic-\\nitly given as ranku). Just as we would expect, the plural form is ranqui;\\nsee the entry rak in Etym. A word meaning “arm” would presumably often\\nappear in its dual form to signify a natural pair of arms. We may wonder\\nwhether the dual form of ranco would be rancu (with the dual ending\\n-u, quite unrelated to the original final -u that later became -o) or ran-\\ncut (i.e., the U-stem noun ranco, rancu- with the dual ending -t). As we\\nhave argued from the attested example peu “pair of lips”, nouns denoting\\nbody-parts occurring in pairs may consistently have “fossilized” dual forms\\nin -u, since it was this ending that originally denoted a natural or logical\\npair. Once a pronominal ending is added, we may at least safely suffix -t to\\nindicate a dual form. Indeed, without this ending there would be no distinc-\\ntion between ranculya “your arm” and ranculyat “your (pair of) arms”,\\nno matter what the dual of ranco may be when the word occurs by itself:\\nBefore endings, ranco must become rancu- anyway.\\nAnother U-stem is rusco “fox”; it our source, Tolkien mentioned both the\\nstem-form ruscu- and the plural rusqui (VT41:10).\\nNot all U-stems end in -co or -go, of course. One example is the word curo\\n“a skillful device” (VT41:10, last word of gloss uncertain due to Tolkien’s\\ndifficult handwriting). Tolkien cited the stem-form curu-, and it apparently\\n270\\n\\n\\nalso occurs in Saruman’s Quenya name: Curumo (UT:401). This name\\nseems to combine the element curu- with the masculine ending -mo “that\\noften appeared in names or titles” (WJ:400). We may wonder what the\\nnominative plural of curo, curu- would be. Could it be curwi, paralleling\\nangwi as the plural of ango, angu- “snake”?\\nAnyhow, the special nominative plurals ending in -wi (spelt -ui when\\npart of -qui) would also be reflected in the genitive plural and the dative\\nplural: If the nominative plural of rusco “fox” is rusqui (= ruscwi) the\\ncorresponding dative and genitive forms can hardly be anything else than\\nrusquin (= ruscwin) and rusquion (= ruscwion), respectively. One would\\nthink that we would also see rusquiva (= ruscwiva) as the plural posses-\\nsive, and rusquinen (= ruscwinen) as the plural instrumental. There is one\\nform that can be cited against the two latter assumptions: the related ad-\\njective ruscuit¨\\ne “foxy”, mentioned in the same source that gives us rusco,\\nruscu- pl. rusqui (VT41:10). In the word ruscuit¨\\ne, which includes the ad-\\njectival ending -it¨\\ne, there is no development cui > cwi = qui; we don’t see\\n**rusquit¨\\ne. The ending -it¨\\ne may by its shape resemble the case endings\\n-iva and -inen for plural possessive and plural instrumental. So if we have\\nruscuit¨\\ne, perhaps we would – as phonologically parallel forms – also see\\nruscuiva and ruscuinen rather than rusquiva, rusquinen? We cannot\\nknow. I will not construct any exercises involving the plural form of the\\npossessive and instrumental cases.\\nIn the other cases, where the plural case endings do not include the vowel\\n-i, all one has to remember is to change the final -o of a U-stem noun to -u\\nbefore adding whatever ending is relevant. Using ango, angu- “snake” as\\nour example, we would for instance have the plural allative angunnar “to\\nsnakes” (not **angwinna or **angwinnar or whatever; cf. the singular an-\\ngunna “to a snake”). Likewise we would have the pl. ablative angullon or\\nangullor “from snakes” (sg. angullo “from a snake”), pl. locative angussen\\n“in snakes” (sg. anguss¨\\ne “in a snake”). As the corresponding dual forms,\\nwe would presumably see angunta, angulto, anguts¨\\ne = “to/from/in a\\npair of snakes”. Pronominal endings would also be added to the stem-form\\nangu-, and any further endings for number or case would then be added\\nafter the pronominal ending as described in earlier lessons: angulya “your\\nsnake”, plural angulyar (hardly **angwilyar!) “your snakes”, dual an-\\ngulyat “your pair of snakes”, dative angulyan “for your snake”, plural\\ndative angulyain (hardly **angwilyain!) “for your snakes”, etc. etc.\\nNOTE: Nonetheless, the nominative plurals in -wi (-gwi, -qui) must be seen as the most\\nstriking feature of U-stem nouns. In at least one instance, this plural formation apparently\\nspread to another noun by analogy: According to the Etymologies, entry t´\\nelek, the noun\\ntelco “leg” has the plural telqui, but this plural is said to be “analogical”. Presumably,\\nTolkien’s idea is that telco is not a “true” u-stem noun (it does not come from Primitive\\nElvish teleku or telku, but rather descends from something like telekˆ\\no, telkˆ\\no). Therefore, its\\nplural “should” have been telcor, and the actual form telqui is merely due to influence\\n271\\n\\n\\nfrom such pairs as ranco pl. ranqui or urco pl. urqui. However, telco seems to be\\nexceptional in this respect. I don’t think we should replace (say) Naucor as the plural\\nform of Nauco “Dwarf” with **Nauqui.\\n17.4\\nOrdinals\\nWe have already introduced three ordinal numbers, minya “first”, (t)atya\\n“second” and nelya “third”. All three include the frequent adjectival ending\\n-ya (occurring in the word Quenya “Elvish” itself). However, it turns out\\nthat most ordinals end in -¨\\nea, displacing the final vowel of the correspond-\\ning cardinal number. Thus we have the following correspondences between\\ncardinals and ordinals:\\ncanta “four” vs. cant¨\\nea “fourth”\\nlemp¨\\ne “five” vs. lemp¨\\nea “fifth”\\nenqu¨\\ne “six” vs. enqu¨\\nea “sixth”\\notso “seven” vs. ots¨\\nea “seventh”\\ntolto “eight” vs. tolt¨\\nea “eighth” (also told¨\\nea, presupposing toldo as a variant\\nword for “8”)\\nnert¨\\ne “nine” vs. nert¨\\nea “ninth”\\nThis table is based on an account of Eldarin numerals written by Tolkien in\\nthe late sixties, published in VT42:24–27 (also see the editorial notes on pp.\\n30–31). Tolkien indicated that the word for “fifth” had earlier been either\\nlemenya or lepenya (with the same ending as in minya etc.), but this\\n“irregular” form was later replaced by lemp¨\\nea by analogy with the simple\\ncardinal lemp¨\\ne “five”. Tolkien’s notes present varying views as to when this\\nsubstitution occurred (whether already in pre-Exilic times, or later), but it\\nis at least clear that in Frodo’s day, lemp¨\\nea would be the word to use when\\nyou need to express “fifth”.\\nEven the words for “second” and “third” could have the ending -¨\\nea in-\\nstead of -ya. The ordinal (t)atya “second” was “early replaced” by att¨\\nea,\\nwhich would be a “regular” formation compared to the cardinal atta “two”.\\nSimilarly, nelya as the word for “three” could also be replaced by neld¨\\nea,\\nmore clearly reflecting the cardinal neld¨\\ne “three” (but in this case, nothing\\nis said about neld¨\\nea wholly replacing nelya).\\nVT42:25 also lists a word for “tenth”, quain¨\\nea, but this presupposes\\nanother word for “ten” than the form cainen mentioned in the Etymologies.\\nA root kay- having to do with the number “ten” seems to have haunted\\nTolkien’s imagination for at least thirty years, so I hesitate to throw it over\\nboard just because a divergent form turns up in one late manuscript – but\\nthis is not the place to discuss what forms we should accept as “valid” or\\n“canonical”. The ordinal corresponding to the cardinal cainen could be\\neither cainenya or cain¨\\nea (but hardly ?cainen¨\\nea).\\n272\\n\\n\\nOver the next three lessons, we will work our way through the attested\\nordinals, starting with the word for “fourth” (cant¨\\nea).\\nSummary of Lesson Seventeen\\nQuenya demonstratives include sina “this”, tana “that” (one early source\\nalso has tanya), enta “that (yonder)” (apparently with emphasis on spatial\\nposition, though it may also refer to something that lies in the future) and\\nyana “that (former)” (of time used of something that lies in the past, the\\nopposite of enta). It may be assumed that the corresponding plural forms\\n(the words for “these” and “those”) end in -¨\\ne rather than -a, since these\\ndemonstratives probably behave like adjectives. Demonstratives are, or may\\nbe, placed after the noun they connect with; Cirion’s Oath has vanda sina\\nfor “this oath” (we cannot know whether the English-style word order sina\\nvanda would be equally valid, and the word order observed in Cirion’s Oath\\nis consistently employed in the exercises below). – Where there are several\\ndeclinable words in a phrase, as when a noun is followed by an attributive\\nadjective (or participle) describing it, a case ending may be added to the\\nlast word of the phrase. The noun itself, if not singular, would receive only\\nthe simplest endings for number (the endings normally associated with the\\nnominative case, like -i or -r in the plural): The case ending that follows later\\nin the phrase would still determine what case the entire phrase is. – U-stem\\nnouns originally ended in the vowel -u, which in Quenya has become -o when\\nthe word occurs without endings, but where not final, the vowel remains -\\nu-. Thus a word like ango “snake” appears as angu- in a compound (e.g.\\nangul´\\noc¨\\ne “snake-dragon”), and no doubt also before endings for pronoun\\nor case (e.g. angulya “your snake”, or allative angunna “to a snake”).\\nThe nominative plural of U-stem nouns is formed with the ending -i (rather\\nthan -r), and at least where the noun happens to end in -go or -co, the\\nfinal vowel representing an older u turns into w before the plural ending.\\nThus the nominative plural of ango, angu- is angwi, and the plural of\\nranco, rancu- is ranqui (this spelling representing rancwi). These special\\nplurals may also be reflected in the other cases that have plural case endings\\ninvolving the vowel i, certainly the genitive plural (angwion, ranquion)\\nand dative plural (angwin, ranquin). – The ordinal numbers from “fourth”\\nto “ninth” are formed by replacing the final vowel of the corresponding\\ncardinal number with -¨\\nea, e.g. cant¨\\nea “fourth” from canta “four”. Even\\nthe ordinals (t)atya “second” and nelya “third” may be replaced by att¨\\nea,\\nneld¨\\nea (cf. the cardinals atta “two”, neld¨\\ne “three”).\\n273\\n\\n\\nVocabulary\\nIn addition to learning these new words, the student should notice that the\\nnoun ranco “arm” (introduced in Lesson Three) is a U-stem: rancu-.\\ncant¨\\nea “fourth”\\ntana demonstrative “that”\\nenta demonstrative “that [yonder]”, “[the one] over there” (of time referring\\nto some future entity)\\nyana demonstrative “that” = “the former” (of time referring to some past entity)\\nsina demonstrative “this”\\nango (angu-) “snake”\\nsangwa “poison”\\nl´\\nom¨\\ne (l´\\nomi-) “night”\\npolda adjective “strong, burly” (of physical strength only; the verb pol- “can” is\\nprobably related)\\nhalla adjective “tall”\\nforya adjective “right”\\nFormen “(the) North” (cf. Formenos, the “Northern Fortress” constructed by\\nF¨\\neanor in the Blessed Realm; the final element -os is reduced from osto “fortress;\\ncity”.)\\nThis concludes our listing of the four directions N´\\numen, Hyarmen, R´\\nomen, For-\\nmen = West, South, East, North (this being their proper “Middle-earth” order). Just\\nas Hyarmen “South” is related to the adjective hyarya “left”, so Formen “North” is\\nrelated to the adjective forya “right”, since the reference-point is that of a person facing\\nWest (looking towards Valinor).\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Engw¨\\ne sina n´\\na i macil hirna Calandil Hallanen.\\nB. Ily¨\\ne lamni av´\\nanier n´\\nor¨\\ne sinallo.\\nC. Ango harnan¨\\ne forya rancurya, ar eques: “Nai ily¨\\ne angwi\\nfiruvar!”\\nD. L´\\nom¨\\ne yanass¨\\ne hirnent¨\\ne Nauco tana ambo entass¨\\ne.\\nE. I hall¨\\ne ciryar oantier Formenna; ciryar tan¨\\ne ´\\nuvar tul¨\\ne i\\nn´\\norennar Hyarmeno.\\nF. I cant¨\\nea auress¨\\ne t´\\nari yana firn¨\\ne anguo sangwanen.\\n274\\n\\n\\nG. I pold¨\\ne ranqui i nerion Formello polir mapa i ehti ohtari\\nmahtalallon.\\nH. Hr´\\nıv¨\\ne yanass¨\\ne marnent¨\\ne i cant¨\\nea coass¨\\ne mall¨\\ne tano.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. Watch that Dwarf, and don’t watch this Elf!\\nJ. A land without snakes is a good land, for many Men [Atani] have\\ndied by (instrumental) snake-poison.\\nK. During (locative) the fourth night I saw a terrifying warrior on\\nthat road, and I raised my arms (dual).\\nL. Wish that [= nai] the strong son of Calandil the Tall will come to\\nthis land, for he will protect these cities in which we (inclusive)\\ndwell!\\nM. That tower (or, yonder tower) is the fourth tower made by Elves\\nin this land.\\nN. Those books are gone [vanw¨\\ne the pl. of vanwa]; they have dis-\\nappeared from your room.\\nO. On that day you shall see your son.\\nP. On that day they came from that [/yonder] mountain and went\\nto this house.\\n275\\n\\n\\nLesson 18\\nIndependent pronouns. Impersonal verbs. U-stem verbs.\\nThe various uses of l´\\na.\\n18.1\\nIndependent pronouns\\n(inevitably entailing a discussion of certain\\nSecond Person obscurities)\\nAll the pronouns so far discussed have been endings. However, Quenya also\\nhas pronouns that appear as independent words. Some of them are em-\\nphatic; the pronoun appears as a separate word to put special emphasis on\\nit. These emphatic pronouns we will discuss in the next lesson. Here we will\\nconcentrate on the simplest independent pronominal elements.\\nWe have already cited Quenya sentences including the dative pronoun\\nnin “for me”. The dative ending -n is here appended to an independent\\nword for “I”, ni, attested by itself in the “Arctic” sentence mentioned in\\nThe Father Christmas Letters. (Though this posthumously published work\\nof Tolkien’s has nothing to do with the Arda mythos, the “Arctic” sentence\\nis transparently a form of Quenya.) The relevant part of the sentence goes\\nni v´\\nela tye, “I see you”. The verb “see” is here apparently vel- rather than\\ncen- (perhaps vel- is “see” in the sense of “meet”?), but more remarkable\\nis the fact that for the subject “I”, the independent pronoun ni is used\\ninstead of the ending -n or -ny¨\\ne. There seems to be no obvious “reason” for\\nthis deviation from the normal system. It has been suggested that since the\\nintended audience for The Father Christmas Letters was Tolkien’s young\\nchildren, he may have “simplified” the language to make it easier for them\\nto figure out which word means what. However, since the latter part of the\\n“Arctic” sentence employs a quite complex grammatical construction which\\nis certainly not the literal counterpart of the English translation provided,\\nwe should hardly think of the language as “simplified”. For “I” as subject,\\nthe ending -n(y¨\\ne) added to the verb is normally to be preferred, but the\\nindependent word ni may be a valid alternative. It may be noted that in\\none of Tolkien’s draft versions for Elendil’s Declaration, the word that ended\\n276\\n\\n\\nup as maruvan “I will remain/dwell” appears as nimaruva, Tolkien using\\nni- “I” as a prefix: SD:56. (It may be, however, that the idea of subject\\nprefixes was dropped; no post-LotR evidence of such prefixes has ever been\\npublished. If I were to use the independent pronoun ni instead of the ending\\n-n, I would let it stand as a separate word: Ni maruva.)\\nBesides ni, we have a handful of other independent pronouns attested.\\nOne such pronoun is ta, meaning “it” or “that” (see Etym, entry ta – the\\ndemonstrative tana “that” is of course related). One relatively early source\\nsuggests that it can receive case endings. The ten-word Koivien´\\neni sen-\\ntence published in Vinyar Tengwar #27 is not LotR-style Quenya in its en-\\ntirety, but the short phrase Orome tanna lende (translated “Orome came\\nthither”) may well have remained a valid wording after “Qenya” evolved\\ninto Quenya as we know it from later sources. The word tanna “thither”\\nseems to be ta “that, it” with the regular allative ending -nna attached,\\nhence “to that [place]” = “thither”.\\nIn Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, one independent pronoun occurs in the phrase imb¨\\ne met =\\n“between us”. This is a dual pronoun, referring to Galadriel and Varda, so\\nmet appropriately receives the dual ending -t (also known from nouns) to\\nindicate that two persons are concerned. Removing the dual ending leaves\\nus with me, probably covering both “we” (subject form) and “us” (object\\nform). In our example, this is an exclusive “we/us”, corresponding to the\\nending -mm¨\\ne, which is obviously closely related. The party addressed is not\\nincluded (Galadriel was singing to Frodo about herself and Varda). Me is\\nalso attested in its dative form, with the dative ending -n attached: men =\\n“for us, to us”.\\nThe ending -ly¨\\ne “you” corresponds to an independent pronoun le, which\\nwas apparently present already in early forms of Elvish (WJ:363). In Sin-\\ndarin it had been lost, but it is precisely this circumstance which allows us\\nto say with certainty that it survived in Quenya: In his notes on the Sin-\\ndarin hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Tolkien stated that the reverential 2nd\\nperson pronoun le occurring in this Grey-elven text had been borrowed from\\nQuenya (RGEO:73).\\nAt Cormallen, the crowds hailed Frodo and Sam with the words a laita\\nte, laita te, translated in Letters:308 as “bless them, bless them”. Thus we\\nhave te as an independent object pronoun “them”. (For this meaning, the\\nCormallen Praise also provides us with the already-discussed ending -t, as\\nin laituvalmet = “we shall bless them”. Presumably the pronoun te and\\nthe ending -t are related.) Whether this te can also be used as a subject\\nform (“they”) is unfortunately unclear.\\nThis te is possibly related to the word ta “that, it” discussed above: It\\nmay well be that ta early received the plural ending -i, the resulting form\\ntai being as it were the plural form of “that” – hence meaning something\\nlike “those [ones]” or indeed “them”. By this theory, the attested form te is\\nsimply the unstressed variant of tai (cf. adjectives in -a having plural forms\\n277\\n\\n\\nin -¨\\ne, simplified from older -ai). A direct attestation of a form tai eventually\\nturned up in VT42:34, and the context allows the interpretation that it may\\nliterally mean “those”; see below. Interestingly, the dative form “for them,\\nto them” is apparently attested as tien. This could very well represent older\\ntaien, which would be tai “those” + the connecting vowel -e- + the dative\\nending -n. In this position, the diphthong ai is reduced to e, and as taien\\nconsequently morphs into te’en = t¨\\neen, this rather unstable form becomes\\ntien by exactly the same mechanism that also turns (laureai >) laur¨\\nee into\\nlauri¨\\ne (the plural form of the adjective laur¨\\nea “golden”). We may assume\\nthat the allative “to(wards) them” would likewise be tienna, whereas the\\nablative “from them” would be tiello. These forms would coincide with the\\ncorresponding case forms of the noun ti¨\\ne “path”, but in context, one should\\nnormally be able to figure out what the intended meaning is.\\nAnother attested object pronoun is tye, translated “thee” or “you”. We\\nhave already quoted the phrase ni v´\\nela tye “I see you” from the “Arc-\\ntic” sentence. Other attestations come from a source that is more definitely\\nQuenya or at least “Qenya”: In LR:61, Herendil addresses his father Elendil\\nwith the words atarinya tye-mel´\\nan¨\\ne, “my father, I love thee”, and Elendil\\nanswers, a yonya iny¨\\ne tye-m´\\nela, “and I too, my son, I love thee”. There\\nare a few strange things here (like -n¨\\ne rather than -ny¨\\ne or -n being used\\nas the pronominal ending “I” in the first sentence), but it is at least clear\\nthat tye is the object pronoun “thee”, and this is probably a valid form in\\nLotR-style Quenya as well.\\nAt this point it should be noted that Quenya has (at least) two sets of\\npronouns in the second person. The object pronoun tye is not “compatible”\\nwith the ending -l(y¨\\ne) or the corresponding independent pronoun le, though\\nall of these may be translated “you” in English. We must distinguish be-\\ntween the “L” forms, represented by the ending -l(y¨\\ne) and the independent\\npronoun le, and the “T” forms, represented by the object pronoun tye and\\nalso by the verb ending -t exemplified in WJ:364 (more about the latter in\\nthe next lesson; it is not to be confused with -t = “them” as in laituvalmet\\n= “we will bless them”). All of these pronouns and endings have to do with\\nthe idea of “you, thou, thee”, but Tolkien seems to have been changing his\\nmind back and forth as to what the basic distinction between the T-forms\\nand the L-forms really consists of. Back in Lesson Eight, we quoted a pas-\\nsage that was originally meant to go into the LotR appendices, but which\\nwas not in the event included there: Tolkien stated that “all these languages\\n. . . had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and plural of\\nthe second person pronouns; but they had a marked distinction between the\\nfamiliar forms and the courteous” (PM:42–43).\\nWithin this scheme, the “L” forms would represent a polite and cour-\\nteous “you”, whereas the “T” forms signal a familiar/intimate “you” used\\nto address close friends and family members. This would agree well with\\nthe evidence: In Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, Galadriel naturally uses “L” forms when politely\\n278\\n\\n\\naddressing a relative stranger like Frodo, and in Sindarin, the Quenya bor-\\nrowing le is used as a reverential singular “thee” (as in the hymn A Elbereth\\nGilthoniel, where Varda is the party addressed). On the other hand, Herendil\\nwould obviously use a “T” form (tye) when addressing his own father. When\\nTolkien translated tye in the latter example as “thee” rather than “you”,\\nhe probably meant it to be an intimate rather than an overly solemn form\\n(though confusingly, he might also use “thou/thee” to represent a formal or\\npolite “you”; indeed this is how he rendered the “L” forms of both Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nand A Elbereth Gilthoniel).\\nWhat does not agree so well with this reconstruction is the fact that in\\nWJ:364, Tolkien seems to imply that the “L” forms represent a plural “you”,\\nwhereas the “T” forms stand for a singular “you” – sharply contrasting with\\nhis earlier statement to the effect that Elvish (just like English) fails to dis-\\ntinguish between sg. and pl. “you”. Moreover, “L” forms are unquestionably\\nused in a singular sense in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, since Tolkien translated them using the\\ndistinctly singular English pronoun “thou”. I think the only solution that\\ncomes close to incorporating all the material would be to assume that the\\n“T” forms properly denote singular “you” whereas the “L” forms properly\\ndenote plural “you” – but the latter forms are also used as a polite singular\\n“you” (so in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne). Bottom line is, one should not use the object form\\ntye for “you, thee” if one otherwise uses “L” forms like the ending -ly¨\\ne or\\nthe pronoun le: We are apparently dealing with two different kinds of “you”\\nhere, and the “T” forms are hardly interchangeable with the “L” forms.\\nBased on the object pronoun tye “you = thee” (not subject “thou”), some\\nwriters have ventured to extrapolate a First Person object form nye “me”\\n(cf. ni “I”). Apparently the form nye actually appears in Tolkien’s papers,\\nso we will adopt this nye = “me” here. It should be noted, however, that\\nany case endings are added to the simplest form of the pronoun, that is,\\nwhat functions as the subject form when it occurs by itself – in this case\\nni “I”. Case endings are not added the object form nye “me”: The dative\\nform “to me” is not **nyen, despite the English translation. As we know,\\nthe actual form is nin (ni-n = “I-for”). “For you/for thee” should likewise\\nnot be **tyen, for then we would be adding case endings to the object form\\nagain. Unfortunately, it is not clear what the subject form corresponding to\\ntye “thee” really is, so the long-suffering student must forgive yet another\\nbatch of Second Person Obscurities: Mechanical extrapolation based on the\\nattested ni/nye pair would of course land us on ?ti as the subject form\\n“thou”. However, the story is almost certainly more complicated than this.\\nThe Sindarin pronominal ending for “you” is said to be -g or -ch, indicating\\nthat these endings appeared as -k-, -kk- in earlier Elvish. In Quenya, a\\nfinal -k would turn into -t (cf. for instance filic- as the stem-form of a noun\\nmeaning “small bird”, closely reflecting the root philik; but when this noun\\nappears without any endings, its Quenya form turns into filit). If the above-\\nmentioned ending -t “thou” likewise comes from an original -k, we must\\n279\\n\\n\\nalso assume that the object pronoun tye represents earlier kye (initial ky-\\nregularly turns into ty- in Quenya, cf. for instance the entry kyel in Etym,\\nfrom which root Tolkien derived the verb tyel- “end, cease”). It is, then, this\\nkye we must start from when trying to extrapolate the corresponding subject\\nform. Its Quenya form would likely be ci (ki) or perhaps rather ce (ke): In\\nthe pronouns, the vowel i may seem to be peculiar to the 1st person (ni “I”),\\nwhereas e is more frequent (le “you”, me “we” etc.) Thus, the dative form\\n“for you, for thee” may be something like ?cen, and likewise in the other\\ncases, e.g. ablative cello “from thee”. If this is correct, what we have called\\nthe “T” forms must rather be termed the “C/T” forms, since the original k\\nmay be preserved in some Quenya forms as well (spelt c). But of course, we\\nhave now crossed over into the realm of Speculative Extrapolation. In the\\nexercises below, only the attested object form tye appears.\\nTo summarize, we have ni “I” (object form nye “me”), le “you” (plural\\nor polite singular; the object form is likely also le), tye object form “thee,\\nyou” (intimate; the subject form that could also receive case endings is\\nunfortunately uncertain, perhaps ?ce or ?ci), me “we” (exclusive; probably\\nthis can also be used as the object form “us”), te object form “them” (the\\nsubject form “they” is uncertain, but perhaps identical; in any case, it may\\nbe that this pronoun appears as tai when stressed, and before at least some\\ncase endings it assumes the form tie-). This does not add up to a complete\\npronoun table; I hope to discuss what little can be inferred about the gaps\\nin an appendix to this course.\\nAs for the functions of these pronouns, the examples cited above will\\nalready have provided the student with vital clues. These words (except the\\ndistinct object forms) can receive case endings; the dative form nin “for me,\\nto me” is particularly well attested. Presumably we can also have allative\\nninna “to(wards) me”, allative nillo “from me”, locative niss¨\\ne “in me” and\\nperhaps even instrumental ninen “by me”. It should be noted that pronouns\\nnormally receive “singular” case endings, even if the pronoun is “plural” by\\nits meaning; thus me “we” takes the singular dative ending -n, not plural -in\\neven though the word me is “plural” insofar as “we” must refer to several\\npeople. The dual ending -t can however be added to independent pronouns,\\nas indicated by the example met “[the two of] us” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne. Then any\\ncase endings would presumably also be dual: dative ment, allative menta,\\nablative melto, instrumental menten. (Another plausible dual form could\\nbe ?let = “you two”.)\\nAnother function of the independent pronouns would be to appear follow-\\ning prepositions, as in the example imb¨\\ne met “between us [two]” in Na-\\nmari¨\\ne. In English, prepositions are followed by the object form (accusative\\ncase), hence for instance “as me” rather than “as I”. If this applies to Quenya\\nas well, the equivalent would be ve nye, but we cannot be certain; perhaps\\nthe Eldar would actually say ve ni = “as I”. The attested example imb¨\\ne\\nmet “between us [two]” is of no help in this matter, since me (with or\\n280\\n\\n\\nwithout the dual ending -t) likely covers both the subject form “we” and\\nthe object form “us”. At least we can’t go wrong as long as we are dealing\\nwith me and le (and te?), since these pronouns don’t seem to have distinct\\nsubject/object forms.\\nThe function of the object forms (the attested words nye “me”, tye\\n“you/thee”, te “them” + the probable non-distinct forms me “us” and\\nle “you” just discussed) would obviously be to appear as the object of a\\nsentence. After all, pronominal objects can’t always be expressed as one of\\nthe two attested object endings -t “them” or -s “it” (though the full list\\nof object endings is likely somewhat longer). These object endings may be\\nadded to extended infinitives in -ta (caritas “to do it”) or to verbs that also\\nhas a subject ending (ut´\\nuvienyes “I have found it”), but this grammatical\\nenvironment is not always present. The independent object pronouns may\\nfor instance be used in imperative phrases, as in the attested example a\\nlaita te “bless them” already cited. Presumably such pronouns can also be\\nused following gerunds inflected for dative (e.g. ut´\\nulien cenien tye “I have\\ncome [in order] to see you”). We may also have to use independent object\\npronouns where the verb has no subject pronominal ending to which an ob-\\nject pronominal ending can be added – because the subject is expressed as a\\nseparate word. So while “we will bless them” can be packed into one word as\\nlaituvalmet, a sentence like “the people will bless them” must perhaps be\\ni li¨\\ne laituva te with a separate word for “them”. (We can’t know whether\\nit is permissible to say ?i li¨\\ne laituvat with the ending -t added to the verb\\neven though it has no subject ending; using a separate word for “them” is\\ntherefore safer as well as clearer.)\\nThe preferred word order is somewhat uncertain. Quenya may seem to\\nprefer placing independent pronouns in front of the verb. Sometimes Tolkien\\neven prefixed the object pronoun to the verb by means of a hyphen, as in the\\nexample tye-mel´\\nan¨\\ne “I love thee” cited above. (Compare French je t’aime,\\nliterally “I you love” with the object preceding the verb instead of following\\nit – though French, as well as Quenya, normally has the object following the\\nverb.) So perhaps sentences like “I have come to see thee” or “the people\\nwill bless them” should rather be ut´\\nulien tye-cenien and i li¨\\ne te-laituva,\\nrespectively? Sometimes, Tolkien even placed dative pronouns in front of\\nthe verb, as in the question occurring in the middle of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: S´\\nı man i\\nyulma nin enquantuva? = “Now who will refill the cup for me?” (notice\\nhow the Quenya word-order differs from that of the English translation).\\nWe even have one extreme example, involving the verb lumna- “lie heavy”,\\nwhere a dative pronoun is not only prefixed to the verb but the dative\\nending -n is assimilated to the initial l- of the verb itself: Mel-lumna is\\ntranslated “us-is-heavy” (LR:47), sc. “is heavy for us”; this must be the\\ndative form men “for us, to us” + the aorist form lumna “lies heavy”.\\nThe underlying, unattested form men-lumna apparently had to be altered\\nbecause men completely glued itself to the following word and came to be\\n281\\n\\n\\nperceived as part of it – and then there was suddenly a de facto cluster nl\\nwhich Quenya phonology did not permit, so it had to become l-l instead.\\nYet such extra complications are apparently avoidable, for other examples\\nindicate that independent pronouns may also follow the verb. In VT41:13 we\\nhave the sentence ´\\norenya qu´\\neta nin = “my heart is saying to me” (variant\\n´\\norenya quet¨\\ne nin, page 11). Presumably ´\\norenya nin qu´\\neta (or even\\n. . . nin-qu´\\neta) would have been equally possible, but it is apparently not\\n“necessary” to employ such a word order, or indeed to prefix object/dative\\npronouns directly to the verb.\\nAs for the “subject forms” discussed above, they may of course appear as\\nthe subject of a sentence, like ni “I” in ni v´\\nela tye “I see you”. Nonetheless,\\nhere Quenya would more frequently use pronominal endings (like v´\\nelan\\nor v´\\nelany¨\\ne in this case – assuming that the verb ?vel- “see” is valid in\\nLotR-style Quenya!) For poets trying to maintain some meter it may be\\nuseful to be able to choose between independent pronouns and pronominal\\nendings. However, the “subject forms” discussed above would most often be\\nencountered, not as grammatical subjects, but with case endings attached!\\nEven so, it is probable that pronouns like ni or le would frequently function\\nas the subject of sentences when the copula “is/are/am” is left out and\\nunderstood: Ni aran “I [am] king”, le halla “you [are] tall”, etc.\\n18.2\\nImpersonal verbs\\nHaving investigated independent dative forms like nin “for me, to me”, we\\ncan fully understand our very few attested examples of sentences involving\\nso-called impersonal verbs. In UT:396, Tolkien cites a verb ´\\nola- “to dream”,\\nadding a brief remark to the effect that this verb is “impersonal”. Precisely\\nwhat he meant by this was long obscure, but now we have at least one\\nexample that may be helpful in this regard.\\nThe sentences in question involves the primary verb or- “urge, impel,\\nmove” (elsewhere also given as an A-stem ora-). The regular aorist or¨\\ne\\n“urges, impels, moves” occurs in the sentence or¨\\ne nin caritas, translated\\n“I would like to do so” or “I feel moved to do so”. Literally it means “[it]\\nimpels for me to do it”. Notice that this sentence has no subject (though\\nin our attempted literal translation, we had to fill in the dummy-subject\\n“it” to achieve something like passable English – “it” has no real meaning\\nhere!) Quenya by its very grammatical construction indicates that the “urge”\\nperceived by the speaker impacts on him from the outside, so to speak.\\nFeeling moved to do something is not a deliberate “act” carried out by a\\nsubject; this feeling rather affects the person involved, and in Quenya this is\\nappropriately denoted by the dative case. In our attested example, a dative\\npronoun is involved, but we must assume that it could just as well be a\\nregular noun: Or¨\\ne i Eldan lelya = “[it] impels for the Elf to go” = “the\\n282\\n\\n\\nElf feels moved to go”. The verb is the first word of the sentence; normally\\nthe subject would come first, but here there simply isn’t any subject.\\nAs for the impersonal verb ´\\nola- “to dream”, we must assume that the\\nunderlying idea is the same: Dreaming is not an “act” done by a subject,\\nrather it is something that happens to you; your dreams come to you quite\\nindependent of your own will, and therefore the dreamer is best presented\\nas a person affected by his or her dreams: Hence dative for the dreamer!\\nTolkien gave us no examples involving ´\\nola-, but “the maiden dreams about\\nElves” could perhaps be rendered something like ´\\nola i venden Eldaron\\n(notice that vend¨\\ne “maiden” here appears as a dative form, indicating that\\n“the maiden” is perceived as the receiver of the dreams rather than as their\\nmaker – cf. the use of the dative to denote the recipient in connection with\\nthe verb “to give”).\\nSuch constructions, even in connection with the verb “to dream”, are not\\nunheard of in the languages of our own world. As David Kiltz wrote on the\\nElfling list (April 25, 2001): “The dative has many more functions than just\\nthat of an indirect object. It can . . . denote the ‘subjective experiencer’ as\\nin . . . German mir ist kalt ‘I’m cold’ where you [would] use a nominative\\nfor the logical subject in English but not in many other languages.” Mir ist\\nkalt means “to-me [it] is cold”; the German dative form mir corresponds to\\nQuenya nin. Given that the Quenya word for “cold” is ringa, it is entirely\\npossible that mir ist kalt can be rendered directly into Quenya as nin n´\\na\\nringa (or perhaps rather n´\\na ringa nin “[it] is cold for me”).\\nWe don’t know very many Quenya verbs that invite such constructions,\\nthough. In the entry mbaw- in the Etymologies, Tolkien mentioned that the\\n“Noldorin” verb bui “compel” is impersonal (“Noldorin” being the concep-\\ntual predecessor of the Sindarin language exemplified in LotR). The Quenya\\nverb corresponding to “Noldorin” bui is given as mauya-. If this can also\\nfunction as an impersonal verb (though it can probably occur with an ex-\\nplicit subject as well), we may have a clue as to how “I must” or “I need\\nto” would be expressed in Quenya. Perhaps “I must go” would (or at least\\ncould) be expressed as mauya nin lelya = “[it] compels for me to go”.\\nIn some cases, it may not even be necessary to complement an impersonal\\nverb with a dative noun or pronoun. Regarding a “Noldorin” form of the\\nverb corresponding to Quenya ulya- “pour”, namely oeil or eil, Tolkien\\nnoted that it was used for “it is raining” (Etym, entry ulu). Again, English\\nby grammatical necessity fills in a dummy-subject “it”, but here there is\\nobviously no real subject which actually “does” rain. Perhaps Quenya ulya,\\nor continuative uly¨\\nea, can likewise be used for “[it] is raining”: The naked\\nverb would be a full sentence in itself.\\n283\\n\\n\\n18.3\\nU-stem verbs\\nThis is an obscure sub-group of verbs; having discussed U-stem nouns in\\nthe previous lesson, we may explore U-stem verbs now. Our data being very\\nlimited, this discussion must by necessity consist mainly of speculation.\\nVerbal stems with the ending -u are not uncommon in Tolkien’s early\\n“Qenya” material, but as the decades went by, he may seem to have cut\\ndown their number. Of the well over 1,200 Quenya words mentioned in the\\nEtymologies, there is only one single U-stem verb, namely palu- “open wide,\\nspread, expand, extend” (and even this verb has an alternative form palya-\\nwith the much more common verbal ending -ya: see the entry pal). Around\\n1960, in his essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien mentioned the verb nicu- “be\\nchill, cold” with reference to weather (WJ:417). Some years later, he also\\nused a few U-stem verbs in the latest version of the Markirya poem: fif´\\nıru-\\n“slowly fade away” (elaboration of the simpler verb fir- “die, fade”), hlapu-\\n“fly or stream in the wind”, nurru- “murmur, grumble” (MC:223).\\nHow are these verbs to be inflected? Markirya as printed in MC:222 in-\\ndicates that the active participle of hlapu- is hl´\\napula, indicating that the\\nactive participle is formed by adding the normal ending -la and lengthen-\\ning the main vowel if possible (hlapu- becoming hl´\\napu-). The participle\\nof nurru- “murmur” is attested as nurrula; here the vowel could not be\\nlengthened because of the following consonant cluster (**n´\\nurrula being\\nan impossible Quenya word). The formation of the active participle is just\\nabout the only thing we can be quite sure about regarding this class of verbs\\n(and therefore also the only thing I touch on in the Translate-into-Quenya\\nexercises below).\\nThe passive participle is problematic. The normal ending -na or its longer\\nvariant -ina would presumably be applied somehow. Some have argued that\\nwe may have an attested example of the passive participle of a U-stem verb.\\nWe have earlier referred to the mysterious form tur´\\nun’ (obviously shortened\\nfrom tur´\\nuna) in Nienor’s cry: A T´\\nurin Turambar tur´\\nun’ ambartanen,\\n“[o T´\\nurin] master of doom by doom mastered” (UT:138). A primary verb\\ntur- “wield, control, govern” does occur in Tolkien’s material, but we would\\nexpect its passive participle to be turna (cf. carna “made” as the attested\\npassive participle of car- “make, do”). Could the strange form tur´\\nuna “mas-\\ntered” actually be the passive participle of a variant U-stem verb turu- “to\\nmaster”? However, is not clear why adding the ending -na to turu- would\\nproduce tur´\\nuna with a long vowel – and other indirect evidence points in\\nanother direction. As has been pointed out by some, the ending -(i)na that\\nis used to derive passive participles also turns up in other parts of speech,\\nand we have at least one example demonstrating what happens when it is\\nadded to a noun stem in -u: The adjective culuina “orange” is derived from\\na root kul, kulu “gold”. Here a diphthong ui arises when the final -u of\\nthe stem is combined with the ending -ina. Carrying this principle over to\\n284\\n\\n\\nU-stem verbs, we could argue that the passive participle of palu- “expand”\\nshould be ?paluina “expanded”. Analogy with A-stem verbs would point\\nin the same direction (cf. hastaina “marred” as the attested participle of\\nhasta- “to mar”) – but lacking attested examples, we cannot be sure.\\nThe infinitive is quite problematic. It ought to be a stem with no additions.\\nIn the previous lesson we pointed out that U-stem nouns originally ended\\nin a short -u. This original vowel is preserved unchanged whenever some\\nending follows, but in Quenya it had turned into -o when it was absolutely\\nfinal. Applying the same principle to U-stem verbs, the infinitive of palu-\\n“expand” could conceivably be ?palo. Of course, we would still see palu-\\nbefore endings, for instance if this class of verbs may also have extended\\nforms in -ta: hence ?paluta, or with an object ending ?palutas, “to expand\\nit”.\\nThe aorist is little less obscure. As we remember, primary verbs assume\\nthe ending -i, preserved as such before further endings, but turning into -¨\\ne\\nwhen final (sil¨\\ne “shines”, but pl. silir “shine”). Since the phonological shift\\nthat makes an original final short -i become -¨\\ne closely parallels the shift\\nthat turns an original final short -u into -o, we could plausibly argue that\\npalu- “expand” ought to have the aorist ?palo “expands” (identical to the\\ninfinitive), preserved as ?palu- before any ending (e.g. palur “expand” with\\na plural subject, palun or paluny¨\\ne “I expand”, palus “he/she/it expands”,\\netc. etc.) However, one piece of evidence diverges from this scenario: After\\nmentioning the U-stem verb nicu- “be chill, cold”, Tolkien also cited the\\nform niqu¨\\ne, which he translated “it is cold, it freezes” (WJ:417). Is this verb\\nniqu¨\\ne to be understood as the aorist form of nicu-? Are we to understand\\nthat just as in the case of primary verbs, the ending -i was added to the\\nU-stem as well, and that a development nicui > nicwi ensued? After the\\nchange of final short -i to -¨\\ne, this would indeed produce the attested form\\n(nicwe =) niqu¨\\ne. If so, the aorist of palu- could be ?palw¨\\ne, or with endings\\n?palwi-. However, we may wonder why U-stem verbs take the aorist ending\\n-i when A-stems do not. This would not be encouraging for our nice little\\ntheory that the ending -i is applied to primary verbs merely as a kind of\\nstop-gap to make up for the lack of any other ending (for U-stem verbs\\nobviously do have another ending – the -u itself!) Indeed it was the form\\nniqu¨\\ne I was thinking of when I warned the student back in Lesson Seven,\\n“This ‘simplified’ view is not wholly unproblematic, but it works most of\\nthe time.” We have now reached the point where it may not work anymore.\\nWhile the aorist of palu- may plausibly be assumed to be ?palw¨\\ne or\\nwith endings ?palwi-, perfectly paralleling (nicwe =) niqu¨\\ne as the aorist of\\nnicu-, we can only wonder how verbs like hlapu- or nurru- would behave\\nif they received the ending -i already in the primitive language. They could\\nhardly evolve into **nurrw¨\\ne or **hlapw¨\\ne, which would be quite impossible\\nQuenya words. Perhaps the original diphthong ui would be preserved in all\\npositions, and we would see ?nurrui and ?hlapui with no change of -i to\\n285\\n\\n\\n-¨\\ne even where the vowel is absolutely final? However, I hardly have to tell\\nthe student that we have now entered the realm of Extreme Speculation.\\nThe present tense must also be speculative, but Tolkien provided one\\nexcellent clue. It should be remembered that the present tense (e.g. s´\\nıla “is\\nshining”) actually represents a kind of “continuous” or “continuative” verbal\\nstem, derived by lengthening the stem-vowel (if possible) and adding the\\nending -a. In the very last version of the Markirya poem, Tolkien replaced\\none of the participles with what would seem to be a continuative stem:\\nAs is evident from Christopher Tolkien’s annotation in MC:222, his father\\naltered nurrula “mumbling, murmuring” to nurrua. Here, the continuative\\nstem in effect functions as a participle (still meaning “mumbling”), and the\\nrevision actually seems quite pointless, but at least Tolkien gave away that\\nthe ending -a may be added to a U-stem verb. In another context, nurrua\\ncould presumably have functioned as the present tense “is murmuring”. In\\nthis case, the stem-vowel could not be lengthened because of the following\\nconsonant cluster, but the present tense of a verb like palu- “to expand”\\nwould in all likelihood be p´\\nalua “is expanding”.\\nIn the past tense we can be reasonably certain that the regular past tense\\nending -n¨\\ne would be added. At least this was the case in Tolkien’s earliest\\n“Qenya”: The Qenya Lexicon of 1915 lists allun¨\\ne as the past tense of the\\nverb allu- “wash” (QL:30). I use this system in the exercises below (but\\nonly in the Translate-from-Quenya section, so at least I won’t seduce my\\nstudents into constructing uncertain Quenya verb forms themselves!)\\nThe perfect tense is obscure. The augment (the prefixed stem-vowel) would\\npresumably be prefixed as usual, while the vowel would – if possible – be\\nlengthened in its normal position. So the perfect tenses of palu-, nurru-\\nwould presumably commence as ap´\\nal-, unurr-. But what comes next is any-\\nbody’s guess. How can the ending -i¨\\ne that is associated with the perfect tense\\nbe added to a U-stem verb? Would the initial -i- of the ending merge with\\nthe final -u of the verbal stem to form a diphthong -ui-, so that we would see\\n?unurrui¨\\ne for “has murmured”? The perfect tense “has expanded” could\\nhardly be ?ap´\\nalui¨\\ne, for the new diphthong ui would attract the stress and\\nleave the syllable immediately before it completely unaccented. Then the\\nlong ´\\na could hardly survive, for there seems to be a phonological rule pro-\\nhibiting a long vowel in a completely unstressed syllable unless this is also\\nthe first syllable of the word – and here it is not. Would we see ?apalui¨\\ne\\nwith a short vowel, then? However, as we have argued earlier, the ending\\n-i¨\\ne that is used in the perfect tense apparently displaces the final -a when\\nadded to an A-stem verb, so it is entirely possible that it would also dis-\\nplace the final -u of a U-stem. From nurru-, palu- we would then simply see\\nthe perfect-tense forms unurri¨\\ne “has murmured”, ap´\\nali¨\\ne “has expanded”.\\n(Likely, -i¨\\ne as a gerundial or infinitival ending would likewise displace the\\nfinal -u, so that we could have ?nurri¨\\ne for “mumbling”. But “mumbling”\\nas a mere verbal noun could almost certainly be nurrul¨\\ne, though attested\\n286\\n\\n\\nexamples of the abstract ending -l¨\\ne “-ing” involve A-stems instead.)\\nIn the future tense we would presumably see the usual ending -uva. How-\\never, we can only speculate as to whether the initial -u- of the ending would\\nsimply merge with the final -u of the stem, so that the future tense of palu-\\nwould be paluva, or whether the two u’s would combine to form one long\\n´\\nu, so that we would see pal´\\nuva instead.\\n18.4\\nThe various uses of l´\\na\\nIn Lesson Nine, we introduced the negative verb um- “not do, not be” (past\\ntense ´\\num¨\\ne according to Etym., future tense ´\\nuva according to F´\\nıriel’s Song).\\nIn all examples and exercises so far, we have used this verb + infinitive\\nwhenever a sentence is to be negated. However, using the negative verb is\\nnot the only option available in this regard. Like English, Quenya does have\\na separate word for “not”, namely l´\\na (or la when unstressed). This word\\nmay also be used for “no”.\\nThe negative verb um- and the separate negation l´\\na clearly coexist in\\nthe language, since both were listed in the Etymologies (entries ugu/umu\\nvs. la). There are hardly any very specific rules for when to use one or the\\nother. If one uses the negative verb um-, it apparently takes the relevant\\nendings for tense and pronoun, while the verb it negates presumably appears\\nas an infinitive: ´\\nUmen lelya, “I didn’t [first person past tense] go [inf.]”. If\\none uses the separate negation l´\\na, the verb that is to be negated would itself\\nreceive all relevant endings, just as if no negation were present: Lenden\\n“I went” could be negated as l´\\na lenden or = “Not I went” = “I didn’t\\ngo”. (Our few examples suggest that the preferred word order is to place l´\\na\\nbefore the verb that is to be negated, though for all we know, lenden l´\\na “I\\nwent not” would also be acceptable. But one should not use an alternative\\nword-order where ambiguity can arise; see below.)\\nThis is obviously an easier way to negate a sentence than using the neg-\\native verb + infinitive; one simply starts with the non-negated sentence\\nand slips in one extra word. Indeed I introduce the word l´\\na this late in\\nthe course partly because I didn’t want to “spoil” my students with this\\neasy-to-construct negation before they had the chance to get familiar with\\nthe negative verb. In many cases, using the negative verb may seem like\\nthe more elegant method of negating sentences, and sometimes the word l´\\na\\n“not” should perhaps be avoided because a similar form also has a quite\\ndifferent function (see below). Yet in some contexts it may be best to use l´\\na\\ninstead of the negative verb. In particular, it may seem strange to construct\\nthe verb um- as a present or “continuative” form, corresponding to the En-\\nglish “is . . .-ing” construction. The form would be ´\\numa, but should “the\\nElf is not watching the Dwarf” be translated i Elda ´\\numa tir¨\\ne i Nauco? I\\nguess anything is possible, but think I would rather start with the positive\\n287\\n\\n\\nsentence i Elda t´\\nıra i Nauco and negate it by slipping in l´\\na in front of the\\nverb: I Elda l´\\na t´\\nıra i Nauco. Likewise, it may be best to use the negation\\nl´\\na in the perfect tense, especially since it is slightly uncertain what the per-\\nfect form of um- would be: ?´\\numi¨\\ne with no augment since the stem begins\\nin a vowel, or perhaps ?um´\\numi¨\\ne with the entire initial syllable repeated?\\nIn any case, “I have not come” is perhaps best expressed as l´\\na ut´\\nulien.\\nThough (um)´\\numien tul¨\\ne should be intelligible, it seems like a rather weird\\nconstruction.\\nTranslating from Quenya to English one must sometimes take care to\\nconnect the negation l´\\na with the right verb. Notice the sentence alasaila\\nn´\\na l´\\na car¨\\ne tai mo nav¨\\ne m´\\nara, translated “it is unwise not to do what\\none judges good”. (VT42:34; mo is there said to be an indefinite pronoun\\n“somebody, one”, apparently an alternative to quen. More obscure is the\\nform tai, which as we argued above may be a plural form of ta “that, it”,\\nhence “those”. If so, the sentence literally means “unwise [it] is not [to] do\\nthose [things which] one judges good”. Notice the element ala- “un-” here\\nprefixed to saila “wise”; it is of course related to the negation l´\\na.) For a\\nperson used to English word order, it might be tempting to interpret the\\nwords n´\\na l´\\na as a connected phrase “is not” and mistranslate **“it is not\\nunwise to do what one judges good”. However, if one bears in mind that l´\\na\\nconnects with the following verb, in this case the infinitive car¨\\ne “to do”,\\nthe misunderstanding can be avoided: The phrases are correctly divided as\\nalasaila n´\\na “unwise [it] is” + l´\\na car¨\\ne. . . “not to do. . . ” (etc.)\\nAs this example shows, l´\\na may be used to negate infinitives as well,\\nand another example from VT42:34 indicates that it makes no difference\\nif the infinitive is extended with the ending -ta to receive an object suffix:\\nl´\\na caritas, navin, alasaila n´\\na – literally “not to do it, I deem, unwise is”.\\nTolkien himself offered the translation “not doing this would be (I think)\\nunwise”. In one example, Tolkien even used l´\\na to negate an extended in-\\nfinitive in -ta that has no pronominal object ending attached: l´\\na carita i\\nhamil m´\\nara alasaila n´\\na, “not to do what you judge good would be [lit-\\nerally ‘is’] unwise” (VT42:33). Here the extended infinitive carita takes on\\nthe meaning of a gerund, the entire relative sentence i hamil m´\\nara “that\\n[which] you judge good” being its object. It seems, then, very likely that\\nl´\\na can also be used to negate also the more regular gerund in -i¨\\ne. We have\\nno examples, but perhaps l´\\na cari¨\\ne i hamil m´\\nara. . . would be an equally\\npossible wording.\\nAs for the unstressed variant of the negation l´\\na, namely its shorter form\\nla, our sole certain attestation of it occurs in the sentence la navin cari-\\ntalyas m´\\nara, “I don’t judge your doing it good” (VT42:33; this is a way\\nof expressing “I do not advise you to do so”). Here the main stress presum-\\nably falls on the first syllable of the verb navin “I judge”, the negation la\\nreceiving no stress. One would think, however, that an important word like\\nthe negation (totally reversing the meaning of the sentence!) would normally\\n288\\n\\n\\nreceive some stress, and in the exercises below, I have consistently used the\\nlong/accented form l´\\na.\\nThe short form la would however have one thing to recommend it, namely\\nthat it would not clash with a quite distinct word l´\\na, which is used in\\nphrases having to do with comparison (though material appearing in Tyali¨\\ne\\nTyellelli´\\neva #16 seems to indicate that this second l´\\na may also occur as\\na shorter form la). According to Bill Welden’s article Negation in Quenya\\n(VT42:32–34), Tolkien was indeed somewhat troubled by this clash, and for\\na while he actually abandoned the negation l´\\na “no, not”. However, in the\\nlast years of his life he reintroduced it, so we must live with the double\\nfunction of this word. In context, it is hardly difficult to distinguish between\\nthe two l´\\na’s.\\nAccording to a otherwise unpublished Tolkien manuscript cited by Welden\\nin his article, the formula “A (n´\\na) calima l´\\na B” can be used for “A is\\nbrighter than B” (notice that the copula n´\\na “is” may be left out and under-\\nstood). If we want a full sentence with no algebra, we may fill in A and B\\nto produce (say) Anar n´\\na calima l´\\na Isil, “[the] Sun is brighter than [the]\\nMoon”. However, this English translation differs from the actual Quenya\\nwording in these respects: Calima is the simple adjective “bright”, not the\\ncomparative form “brighter” (we are still not certain what that would look\\nlike), and l´\\na does not really mean “than”. We are told that this l´\\na is prop-\\nerly a preposition “beyond”, so the Quenya sentence actually means “the\\nSun is bright beyond the Moon”.\\nWe can certainly imagine sentences including l´\\na occurring with both its\\nmeanings: I mindon l´\\na n´\\na halla l´\\na i oron, “the tower is not taller than\\nthe mountain” (literally “. . . tall beyond the mountain”). Here the negative\\nverb would certainly be preferable, if only for stylistic reasons: I mindon\\num¨\\ne halla l´\\na i oron. It may be possible to circumvent the ambiguities.\\nWe are told that instead of l´\\na “beyond” in phrases of comparison, one\\nmay also use the preposition ep¨\\ne “before” – erroneously glossed “after” in\\nWelden’s article. Irrespective of this error, there actually is some evidence\\nsuggesting that ep¨\\ne or a similar form did mean “after” at one point of\\nTolkien’s ever-evolving linguistic scenario (apparently it was a variant of\\nthe apa introduced in Lesson Fifteen). Because of the uncertainties relating\\nto ep¨\\ne, we will let it rest in peace here, and use l´\\na despite its ambiguity.\\nSummary of Lesson Eighteen\\nIn addition to the pronominal endings discussed earlier in this course, Quen-\\nya also has various independent pronouns (see Vocabulary section below).\\nA pronoun like me “we” or “us” can receive endings for case (e.g. dative\\nmen “for us, to us”) or, where two persons are concerned, dual endings (e.g.\\nmet “[the two of] us”). – Some Quenya verbs are impersonal, requiring no\\n289\\n\\n\\nsubject, but where someone is nonetheless affected by the verbal action,\\nthis someone can be mentioned as a dative form: Ora nin = “[it] impels\\nfor me” = “I feel moved [to do something]”. – Quenya U-stem verbs, like\\nhlapu- “fly [in the wind]”, form a particularly obscure group of verbs. The\\nonly thing that is known with full certainty about such verbs is that the\\nactive participle is formed by means of the normal ending -la, combined\\nwith lengthening of the main vowel of the verb (unless it has to remain\\nshort because of a following consonant cluster; thus the participle of nurru-\\n“grumble” is simply nurrula, though the participle of hlapu- is hl´\\napula).\\nEarly material suggests that the past tense of U-stem verbs is formed by\\nadding the past tense ending -n¨\\ne, though we have no examples from the\\nmore LotR-compatible forms of Quenya. – The word l´\\na has various uses. It\\ncan be used as a negation “not” (apparently placed in front of the word,\\nusually the verb, that is to be negated). L´\\na is also a preposition “beyond”,\\nand as such it is used in phrases having to do with comparison – VT42:32\\nciting the formula “A n´\\na calima l´\\na B” for “A is brighter than B” (literally\\n“A is bright beyond B” – notice that the adjective calima “bright” appears\\nin its simplest form, with no ending corresponding to the -er of “brighter”).\\nVocabulary\\nTo cover all the attested ordinal numbers, we will introduce two at a time\\nin this and the last two lessons.\\nlemp¨\\nea “fifth”\\nenqu¨\\nea “sixth”\\nurco (urcu-) “bogey”\\nl´\\na 1) negation “not”, 2) preposition “beyond”, also used in comparison\\nni independent pronoun “I”, object form nye “me”\\nle independent pronoun “you” (plural or polite singular), probably un-\\nchanged when used as object\\ntye independent object pronoun “you”, “thee” (intimate singular)\\nme independent pronoun “we” (exclusive, cf. the ending -mm¨\\ne), probably\\nunchanged when used as object “us”\\nta independent pronoun “it” or “that”, probably unchanged when used as\\nobject; the allative tanna may be used = “thither”. This pronoun\\nmay have the plural form ?tai “those”, of which te “them” could be\\nan unstressed form (alternatively, tai may be an archaic form which\\nhad evolved into te in all positions; we will only use the attested form\\nte here). This plural pronoun assumes the form tie- before case endings\\n(or at least before the dative ending -n)\\npalu- “to expand”\\n290\\n\\n\\nor- (also ora-) “to urge, to impel” (impersonal verb; used with a dative form to\\nexpress “[someone] feels moved [to do something]”)\\n´\\nola- “to dream” (impersonal verb; the dreamer is apparently introduced as a dative\\nform)\\nExercises\\nNotice that in the exercises below, as well as in the keys, we use “you”\\nas the English equivalent of Quenya “L”-form pronouns (plural, or polite\\nsingular, “you”), whereas “thee” is used as the equivalent of the intimate\\nsingular object form tye. – As for negations, we will here practice the inde-\\npendent negation l´\\na instead of using the negative verb. – We do not here\\nuse independent subject pronouns, only the pronominal endings discussed\\nearlier.\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Ut´\\nulient¨\\ne cenien me, l´\\na cenien tye.\\nB. Nai ´\\noluva len Eldaron!\\nC. Neld¨\\ne neri lelyuvar tanna, ar i Naucor tiruvar te, an i\\nneri haryar harma i n´\\na alta l´\\na malta.\\nD. I enqu¨\\nea auress¨\\ne orn¨\\ne tien tul¨\\ne ninna.\\nE. I enqu¨\\nea aran i n´\\nor¨\\neo n´\\na saila l´\\na atarerya i lemp¨\\nea aran.\\nF.\\nPalunes coarya, c´\\narala ta i analta coa i mall¨\\neo.\\nG. Carnelyes tien; l´\\na carnelyes men.\\nH. Cennemm¨\\ne le i cilyass¨\\ne nu me, an lantanely¨\\ne mir ta.\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. My right arm is stronger than my left arm.\\nJ. Summon them to [allative] me!\\nK. The bogies are watching me, for I fear them [Quenya: “fear from\\nthem”, ablative].\\nL. We [exclusive] will not come to see thee in the night.\\nM. The boy will not dream about [genitive] bogies.\\nN. The two women said: “Your king did not want to give us [dual\\ndative] the things taken [or, “seized” – mapain¨\\ne, pl.] from us\\n[dual ablative] by his warriors.”\\nO. The man expanding his house is doing that [or, it] (in order) to\\nmake many rooms for [dative] all his things.\\n291\\n\\n\\nP. The sixth day will be [nauva] better than the fifth day, and we\\n[exclusive] will not feel moved to leave [auta]. [”Better than” =\\n“good beyond”!]\\n292\\n\\n\\nLesson 19\\nPronouns in imperative phrases. Emphatic pronouns.\\nQuestion-words: Man, mana, manen. Postpositions.\\n19.1\\nPronouns in imperative phrases\\nImperative phrases may include pronominal elements. These pronouns may\\nrefer either the subject of the imperative phrase (the party that is asked or\\nordered to do something), or to the direct or indirect object of the requested\\naction.\\nOptional subject pronouns may be slipped in to make it clear whether the\\nspeaker wants one or several persons to do something. Starting from the im-\\nperative exclamation heca! “be gone!” or “stand aside!”, Tolkien noted that\\nthis word “often” appeared in an extended form “with reduced pronominal\\naffixes of the 2nd person” (WJ:364). If a single person is the addressee of an\\nimperative, it can receive the suffix -t (doubtless related to the singular ob-\\nject pronoun tye “thee”). So whereas the imperative heca! may be directed\\nat one person or several, the extended form hecat! is explicitly marked as\\nsingular. It may be translated “get thee gone!” (Perhaps F¨\\neanor’s harsh\\ndismissal of Melkor when the latter came to Formenos, translated “get thee\\ngone from my gate” near the end of Chapter 7 of the Silmarillion, went some-\\nthing like hecat andonyallo in the original Quenya?) Tolkien further noted\\nthat in the plural, the simple imperative heca! could receive the ending -l,\\nso hecal! is an order with several addressees: “Be gone, [all of] you!” These\\nexamples also demonstrate that when he wrote this, Tolkien had come to\\nsee the distinction between the “T”-forms and the “L”-forms of the Second\\nPerson as being primarily a distinction between singular and plural “you”.\\nOf course, matters are slightly muddied by the fact that “L”-forms like the\\nending -l or -ly¨\\ne also function as a polite singular “you” (translated “thou”\\nin Nam´\\nari¨\\ne). Of course, none can say whether the ending -l could be used\\nin an imperative phrase to denote a “polite” order with a single addressee.\\nHecat! sg. and hecal! pl. are our only attested examples of this use of\\nthe endings -t and -l. The imperative heca! is perhaps not a very typical\\nimperative. As outlined in Lesson Sixteen, instead of the ending -a an inde-\\n293\\n\\n\\npendent imperative particle ´\\na (or a) is normally employed, combined with\\na following verbal stem. Attested examples include ´\\na vala! “rule!” and a\\nlaita! “praise!” If the endings -t, -l are to be slipped into such a phrase,\\nthey must probably be attached to the verbal stem, e.g. a laitat! “praise!”\\n(to one person), a laital! “praise!” (to several persons).\\nLaita- “bless, praise” is of course an A-stem. Primary verbs like car-\\n“make, do” appear with the ending -¨\\ne in such commands, as is evident from\\nthe negative imperative ´\\nava car¨\\ne! “don’t do [it]!” (WJ:371). This -¨\\ne almost\\ncertainly comes from an earlier -i, and before endings we would still see -i-,\\njust as in the aorist of these verbs. Hence probably ´\\nava carit! “don’t do\\n[it]!” (to one person), plural ´\\nava caril! “don’t do [it!]” (to several persons).\\nOr with a positive command like ´\\na tul¨\\ne! “come!”, we could likewise have ´\\na\\ntulit! if one person is asked to come, whereas ´\\na tulil! would refer to more\\nthan one: “Come ye!”\\nAn imperative phrase may also include pronominal elements referring to\\nthe direct or indirect object of the requested action. In the previous lesson we\\nreferred to various independent pronouns. Nye “me”, me “us”, le “you”,\\ntye “thee”, ta “it” and te “them” can all appear as independent words;\\nindeed our sole attestation of te “them” involves an imperative phrase where\\nthis word occurs by itself: A laita te, laita te! “bless them, bless them!”\\n(from the Cormallen Praise). However, Tolkien’s Quenya rendering of the\\nLord’s Prayer indicates that object pronouns may also appear suffixed to\\nthe imperative particle ´\\na. The principle can be illustrated by a home-made\\nexample: Consider a simple imperative phrase like ´\\na tir¨\\ne! “watch!” If we\\nwant to say “watch them”, slipping in the object pronoun te, it would be\\npossible to let it follow the verb (as in the attested example a laita te\\n“bless them”), hence ´\\na tir¨\\ne te. However, it would apparently be equally\\npermissible to let the object pronoun come before the verb, in which case it\\nglues itself to the imperative particle ´\\na. “Watch them!” could therefore be\\n´\\nat¨\\ne tir¨\\ne!\\nNOTE: Since te “them” now becomes the final syllable of a word of several syllables,\\nthe spelling conventions we have adopted require that the final -e is here spelt with a\\ndiaeresis: -¨\\ne. The same would apply to the final -e of the object pronouns nye, me, le,\\ntye if they were directly suffixed to ´\\na – e.g. ´\\nam¨\\ne tir¨\\ne “watch us”. Of course, this is just\\nan orthographic complication that has nothing to do with the structure of the language:\\nIn many texts, Tolkien does not use the diaeresis at all.\\nAlso dative pronouns (like nin “to/for me”, men “to/for us”, tien “to/for\\nthem”) can be directly suffixed to the imperative particle ´\\na; at least Tolkien’s\\nQuenya Lord’s Prayer contains an example of men being so suffixed. A\\nphrase like, say, “sing for us!” could thus be rendered ´\\namen linda!\\nWhat happens if an imperative phrase contains two pronouns, denoting\\nboth the direct and the indirect object? We have no Tolkien-made example\\nto guide us, but the imperative particle can hardly receive more than one\\npronominal suffix, and the example a laita te indicates that a pronoun does\\n294\\n\\n\\nnot necessarily have to be suffixed to the particle. So it would certainly be\\npermissible to let one of the pronouns, for either direct or indirect object,\\nremain an independent word and suffix only the other pronoun to the particle\\n´\\na. “Do it for me!” could then be either ´\\nanin car¨\\ne ta! or ´\\nata car¨\\ne nin!,\\naccording to preference. (Perhaps one could also say ´\\nanin caritas!, using\\nan extended verbal stem carita- and the suffix -s for “it”.)\\nTolkien’s translation of “do not lead us into temptation” in his Quenya\\nLord’s Prayer reveals that the negated form of the imperative particle (“do\\nnot!”) can also receive pronominal affixes. By ca. 1960, in Quendi and El-\\ndar, Tolkien used ´\\nava as the negative imperative, combining the particle ´\\na\\nwith the negation v´\\na (-va). In his earlier Lord’s Prayer rendering he used\\na slightly different word for “do not” (incorporating the negation l´\\na instead\\nof v´\\na), but there is no reason to doubt that pronouns denoting the direct\\nor indirect object can be attached to the later form ´\\nava as well. So while\\n“watch us!” could evidently be translated ´\\nam¨\\ne tir¨\\ne!, the negative command\\n“don’t watch us!” may probably be translated ´\\navam¨\\ne tir¨\\ne!\\n19.2\\nEmphatic pronouns\\nIn the previous lesson, we discussed a number of independent pronouns (also\\nmentioned in the section above). There also exist certain other pronouns\\nthat likewise appear as separate words, though they are closely related to\\nthe corresponding pronominal endings. These words function as emphatic\\npronouns.\\nConsider the final lines of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: Nai hiruvaly¨\\ne Valimar! Nai ely¨\\ne\\nhiruva! In LotR, Tolkien provided the translation “maybe thou shalt find\\nValimar! Maybe even thou shalt find it!” Of course, hiruvaly¨\\ne means “thou\\nshalt find” – “thou” being expressed by means of the pronominal ending\\n-ly¨\\ne. But then this is repeated as nai ely¨\\ne hiruva, “maybe even thou shalt\\nfind [it]”. Notice how the ending -ly¨\\ne is replaced by the independent word\\nely¨\\ne, which is obviously closely related. Ely¨\\ne means simply “thou” or “you”,\\nbut with special emphasis on this pronoun. Using such an independent form\\nis like italicizing the pronoun in English: “Maybe [none other than] thou\\nshalt find.” Tolkien used the translation “even thou”, adding an extra word,\\nto bring out the emphatic quality of the pronoun. (The shorter independent\\nword for “you, thou”, le, is apparently not emphatic.)\\nAnother independent emphatic pronoun is iny¨\\ne “I” – or, since it is em-\\nphatic, rather “I myself” or “even I”, “I and no one else”. In LR:61, Herendil\\ntells his father Elendil that he loves him, and Elendil responds in Quenya:\\nA yonya iny¨\\ne tye-m´\\nela, “and I too, my son, I love thee” (the initial a,\\napparently translated “and”, would seem to be a variant of the more usual\\nword ar – though a can also be a particle of address). Here the pronoun\\niny¨\\ne, translated “I too” by Tolkien, gives special emphasis to Elendil’s own\\n295\\n\\n\\nidentity: “I love you [just as you love me]”. Iny¨\\ne is more emphatic than the\\nshorter form ni, just like ely¨\\ne is more emphatic than le.\\nThe form iny¨\\ne is obviously related to the pronominal ending -ny¨\\ne, and\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne clearly demonstrates that ely¨\\ne corresponds to the ending -ly¨\\ne.\\n(Draft versions of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne have the pronoun ell¨\\ne and the ending -ll¨\\ne in-\\nstead. Some think this has another meaning, perhaps plural “you” instead\\nof singular “thou”, but I tend to believe that Tolkien simply revised the\\nform of the pronoun without altering the sense.) It is evident from these\\nexamples that emphatic pronouns can be derived from the corresponding\\npronominal endings by adding the ending to some vowel. But what vowel?\\nWe have an e- in ely¨\\ne “you”, but an i- in iny¨\\ne “I”. This emphatic word for\\n“I” may be exceptional in preferring i- as its initial vowel. The student may\\nremember that the ending for “my”, -nya, seems to prefer -i- as its connect-\\ning vowel where one is required (as in atarinya “my father”, LR:61). The\\nclose association of these First Person pronominal forms with the vowel i\\nseems to reflect the stem-vowel of the most basic stem ni “I”, listed in the\\nEtymologies. We may tentatively conclude that the other emphatic pronouns\\nshow the initial vowel e-, as in ely¨\\ne. This is supported by Tolkien’s Quenya\\nversion of the Lord’s Prayer, where he used emm¨\\ne as the emphatic pro-\\nnoun corresponding to the pronominal ending -mm¨\\ne for exclusive “we”. It\\noccurs in his translation of the line “and forgive us our trespasses as we for-\\ngive those who trespass against us”. Here, the pronoun is emphatic to draw\\nspecial attention to it (stressing the parallelism: “we” want God to forgive\\nus just like we in turn forgive others). It feels natural to let this pronoun\\nbe emphatic in English as well, though this is indicated merely by putting\\nextra stress on it, and the distinction is not represented in writing (unless\\none uses italics!) The Quenya system of using distinct emphatic pronouns is\\nundeniably more elegant.\\nWhile iny¨\\ne, ely¨\\ne (changed from ell¨\\ne) and emm¨\\ne are all the emphatic\\npronouns occurring in published and soon-to-be-published material, we can\\nconfidently extrapolate at least some more forms. The exclusive emphatic\\npronoun for “we”, emm¨\\ne, would obviously correspond to the inclusive vari-\\nant elm¨\\ne (just like the exclusive ending for “we”, -mm¨\\ne, corresponds to\\nthe inclusive ending -lm¨\\ne). Possibly the ending -nt¨\\ne for “they” would cor-\\nrespond to an independent word ent¨\\ne.\\nOther forms are somewhat less certain. The ending for dual inclusive “we”\\nis uncertain, but if it is -lw¨\\ne, we would expect elw¨\\ne as the independent\\nemphatic pronoun. The form ely¨\\ne can function as a singular “you”, as is\\nevident from Tolkien’s translation “even thou” in his LotR rendering of\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne. As I have suggested earlier, the “L” forms of the Second Person\\nmay seem to indicate either a polite singular “you” or a plural “you”; perhaps\\nely¨\\ne could assume the latter sense as well. The “T” forms of the Second\\nPerson, exemplified by the object pronoun tye and the ending -t that may\\nbe used in the imperative, seem to denote an intimate and usually singular\\n296\\n\\n\\n“you”, but it is uncertain what the emphatic form would be. It depends\\non how we reconstruct the longer form of the ending -t. If it is -ty¨\\ne, the\\nemphatic pronoun would most likely be ety¨\\ne. But I have also given some\\nreasons for believing that Tolkien meant -t to represent an older -k, in which\\ncase the longer variant of the ending might well be -cc¨\\ne – and then emphatic\\npronoun would probably be ecc¨\\ne.\\nThings are also rather obscure in the Third Person. It is clear that the\\nemphatic pronouns are derived from the long forms of the pronominal end-\\nings. The word iny¨\\ne “I” corresponds to the long subject ending -ny¨\\ne, not\\nits shorter (and more common) form -n; likewise, ely¨\\ne “thou” corresponds\\nto the long ending -ly¨\\ne, though this ending may also appear in the shorter\\nform -l. There are hardly any short emphatic pronouns **in, **el to go\\nwith the short endings. Our problem is that in the Third Person, the short\\nending -s is the only form attested in material Tolkien certainly intended to\\nbe LotR-compatible. We have earlier theorized that -s may correspond to\\na longer ending -ry¨\\ne (for earlier -sy¨\\ne, -zy¨\\ne); it would then have the same\\nrelationship to the ending -rya “his, her” as the ending -ly¨\\ne “you” has to\\nthe ending -lya “your”. If such an ending -ry¨\\ne exists, it could correspond\\nto an emphatic pronoun ?ery¨\\ne “(even) he/she”. But when we start extrap-\\nolating from extrapolations, the risk of losing contact with Tolkien’s actual\\nintentions obviously becomes acute.\\nWe know a few more things about the emphatic pronouns, though. They\\ncan receive case endings; in Tolkien’s Quenya rendering of the Lord’s Prayer,\\nthe emphatic pronoun emm¨\\ne “we” once occurs with the dative ending -n\\nattached: Emmen. (This also confirms that pronouns take the simplest case\\nendings, that is, the ones used with singular nouns – even if the pronoun is\\nplural by its meaning: “We” must refer to several persons, but the simplest\\ndative ending -n is used instead of the plural form -in.) As pointed out\\nin the previous lesson, the 1st person dative form nin “to me, for me” is\\nparticularly well attested, but if one wants to say “for me myself”, “for me\\n[and no one else]”, it would be better to start from the emphatic form iny¨\\ne\\nand derive the dative form inyen.\\nWe have already cited the final lines of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne, where part of one sen-\\ntence is repeated with special emphasis on the pronoun: Nai hiruvaly¨\\ne\\nValimar! Nai ely¨\\ne hiruva! From this example it appears that if a pronom-\\ninal ending is replaced by an independent pronoun, the ending is removed\\nfrom the verb (not nai ely¨\\ne hiruvaly¨\\ne with both an independent pronoun\\nand the corresponding ending still attached to the verb). Yet in the draft\\nversion, when the pronoun ely¨\\ne was still ell¨\\ne, Tolkien did use precisely that\\nsystem: Nai ell¨\\ne hiruvall¨\\ne. He apparently decided that this version was\\nsomewhat over-complete, and writers should probably avoid this system.\\nYet the verb following an emphatic pronoun should perhaps receive at\\nleast the plural ending -r if the pronoun is plural. If we want to transform\\n(say) hiruvamm¨\\ne “we shall find” into two words to put special emphasis on\\n297\\n\\n\\nthe pronoun “we”, I guess the resulting phrase would be emm¨\\ne hiruvar,\\nnot **emm¨\\ne hiruva. If the pronoun ely¨\\ne does denote both singular po-\\nlite “you/thou” as well as plural “you”, the following verb may then reveal\\nin what sense it is used. In nai ely¨\\ne hiruva! the pronoun must be singu-\\nlar (“thou”) since there is no -r attached to the verb. Perhaps nai ely¨\\ne\\nhiruvar! would also be a possible sentence, but here it would be clear that\\na plural “you” is intended. If this is so, Frodo could after all be certain that\\nGaladriel addressed Nam´\\nari¨\\ne to him alone (“thou”), not to the entire Fel-\\nlowship (“you”) – though the pronoun ely¨\\ne as such is perhaps ambiguous\\nin this regard.\\nAs pointed out above, the emphatic pronouns can receive case endings,\\nas can the shorter independent pronouns discussed in the previous lesson.\\nIt is, however, somewhat uncertain whether the endings for genitive and\\npossessive should be added to such independent pronouns. Obviously, some\\nkind of independent words for (say) “mine” or “yours” would be required\\nto have a fully functional language. The ending -lya can be used to express\\n“your”, as in parmalya “your book”, but how do we say “the book is\\nyours”? Published examples of Quenya provide no clues.\\nIt has long been theorized that not only the subject endings that may\\nbe suffixed to verbs, but also the possessive endings that may be added\\nto nouns (like -nya “my” or -lya “your”), have corresponding emphatic\\nforms. This has never been explicitly confirmed. However, given the fact\\nthat the ending -ly¨\\ne “you, thou” corresponds to an independent form ely¨\\ne\\n“you” (emphatic), it certainly seems plausible to assume that the ending -lya\\n“your” could correspond to an independent form elya “yours”. This word\\ncould then be used in a sentence like i parma n´\\na elya, “the book is yours”.\\nBut it could also be used for special emphasis, so that while parmalya\\nmeans simply “your book”, elya parma would mean “your [and no one\\nelse’s] book”.\\nIf the theory holds, other emphatic possessive pronouns would be erya\\n“his, her”, elma “our” [inclusive]” and emma “our [exclusive]” – of course\\ncorresponding to the endings -rya, -lma, -mma. The attested word elya\\nfor “your, thy” would be either a plural “your” or a polite singular “your”\\n(or “thy”); the intimate singular “your” could be something like ecca or\\netya. If the ending for dual inclusive “our” is -lwa, we could have elwa\\nas the corresponding emphatic pronoun. An even bigger “if” relates to the\\nemphatic word for “their”, since it must be extrapolated in two steps: As-\\nsuming that the ending -nt¨\\ne for “they” corresponds to an unattested ending\\n-nta “their”, we may assume that it this ending in turn corresponds to\\nan emphatic possessive pronoun enta. As for the independent form of the\\npossessive pronoun “my”, corresponding to the ending -nya, we would prob-\\nably expect the form inya (since the subject ending -ny¨\\ne corresponds to an\\nindependent form iny¨\\ne).\\nThese extrapolations are not entirely unproblematic. Some of these forms\\n298\\n\\n\\nactually occur in Tolkien’s published writings, but with quite different mean-\\nings. Inya, for instance, is mentioned in the Etymologies – but there it is\\nnot an emphatic word for “my”, it as an adjective “female”, of a quite dif-\\nferent derivation (see the entry ini). Erya, which we have suggested as an\\nemphatic word for “his” or “her” (corresponding to the ending -rya), would\\ncoincide in form with the adjective erya “single, sole” (Etym, entry ere).\\nThe student may already have noticed that enta as an emphatic word for\\n“their” would clash with the demonstrative “that, yonder” (Etym, entry en).\\nSince demonstratives may seem to follow the noun they connect with (cf.\\nUT:305: vanda sina = “this oath”), we could perhaps distinguish coa enta\\n“yonder house” from enta coa “their house”. As for our extrapolated forms\\ninya and erya coinciding with Tolkien-made adjectives of quite different\\nmeaning, what can I say? Some, no doubt, would feel that this throws con-\\nsiderable doubt on this whole business of extrapolating emphatic possessive\\npronouns to go with the attested subject pronouns. Actually I think these\\nextrapolations are about as plausible as any forms not directly attested can\\nbe. Given the fluid state of the Quenya language in general and its pronouns\\nin particular, different stages of Tolkien’s ever-changing conception are quite\\nlikely to involve coinciding word-forms of different meaning. However, in the\\nexercises below, I focus on the better-attested subject pronouns, like iny¨\\ne\\nand ely¨\\ne.\\n19.3\\nQuestion-words\\nMany English words frequently used in questions show an initial wh-: “who?”,\\n“what?”, “where?”, “which?”, “whose?”, “why?” etc. In Tolkien’s Elvish, an\\ninitial ma- has similar connotations; he referred to the “Eldarin interrog-\\native element ma, man” (PM:357). This “element” Tolkien seems to have\\nborrowed from Semitic languages; cf. for instance Hebrew ma = “what?”\\nWe have nothing like a complete list of Elvish interrogative words, but\\nsome of them do occur in published material. Best attested is the word for\\n“who”, man, which occurs in a question in the middle of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: S´\\nı man\\ni yulma nin enquantuva? “Now who will refill the cup for me?” Man =\\n“who” occurs repeatedly in the Markirya poem, e.g. in the question man\\ntiruva f´\\nana cirya[?] “Who will heed [/watch] a white ship?” (In one out\\nof five occurrences, Markirya as printed in MC:221–222 has men instead,\\nbut this must be a misreading of Tolkien’s manuscript; there seems to be no\\ngrammatical variation that could explain the variant form.) Perhaps man\\ncan receive case endings, so that we can have (say) the genitive form mano\\n= “whose?”\\nIf man is “who” (referring to people), what is the word for “what” (re-\\nferring to things)? In LR:58, Tolkien apparently lets man cover “what?” as\\nwell: Man-i¨\\ne? is translated “what is it?” This is hardly LotR-style Quenya;\\n299\\n\\n\\nthe ending -i¨\\ne = “is” was almost certainly abandoned later. F´\\nıriel’s Song\\nalso uses man in the sense of “what”: Man . . . ant´\\nava nin Il´\\nuvatar[?]\\n= “What will the Father [Il´\\nuvatar, God] give me?” Whether Tolkien at one\\npoint intended man to mean both “who” and “what”, or whether he sim-\\nply changed his mind back and forth regarding the precise meaning of man,\\ncannot be determined now. Turning to a post-LotR source, we find the ques-\\ntion mana i·coimas Eldaron[?], which is translated “what is the coimas\\n[”life-bread” = Sindarin lembas] of the Eldar?” (PM:395; a variant reading\\noccurs in PM:403). How are we to interpret this word mana, that would\\nseem to correspond to “what is” in the translation? It could be a word ma\\n“what” (which would be a direct borrowing from Hebrew!) + the copula\\nn´\\na “is”, here directly suffixed and shortened to -na. However, the form ma\\nis known to have at least two different meanings in Quenya (see the next\\nlesson), so I tend to doubt that Tolkien intended it to mean “what?” as well.\\nRather mana is simply a word for “what”, and there is no explicit copula\\n“is” in the sentence mana i·coimas[?] = “what [is] the life-bread?” It may\\nbe that mana “what” can receive case-endings. Published material provides\\nno word for “why?”, but by one suggestion we can work around this gap by\\nadding the dative ending -n to mana – the resulting form manan meaning\\nliterally “what for?”\\nBy its form, mana resembles the demonstratives sina “this”, tana “that”\\nand yana “that (yonder)”. Since vanda sina means “this oath” (UT:305,\\n317), perhaps vanda mana? would mean “what oath?” or “which oath?”\\nMana vanda? would rather mean “what [is] an oath?”, given Tolkien’s\\nexample mana i·coimas[?] = “what [is] the life-bread?”\\nThe same late document that provides this example also includes a word\\nfor “how?”, appearing as part of the question manen lamb¨\\ne Quendion\\nahyan¨\\ne[?] = “How did the language of Elves change?” (PM:395). Interest-\\ningly, this word manen “how?” seems to include the instrumental ending\\n-nen, added to the “interrogative element” ma- (PM:347). Manen could\\nmean, literally, “what by?” (it may even be a contraction of mananen\\nfor all we know). It seems highly plausible that other case endings than\\nthat of the instrumental can be added to ma-. Perhaps we can have loca-\\ntive mass¨\\ne? “where?”, ablative mallo “whence?/where from?” and manna\\n“whither/where to?”, filling further gaps in our vocabulary. However, the ex-\\nercises below only involve the attested forms man “who?”, mana “what?”\\nand manen “how?”\\n19.4\\nPostpositions\\nWe have introduced various prepositions, such as nu “under”, or “over” or\\nve “as, like”. Prepositions are so called because they are typically “posi-\\ntioned” before (pre) the word(s) they connect with. In Quenya and English\\n300\\n\\n\\nalike, one would say nu alda “under a tree” – not **alda nu “a tree un-\\nder”. (Of course, the word order may be quite garbled in poetry, as when the\\nLotR version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne has Vardo tellumar nu luini “Varda’s domes\\nunder blue” for “under Varda’s blue domes”. Here, we are rather discussing\\nthe normal, non-poetic word order.)\\nThere are also postpositions, similar in function to the prepositions, but\\ncoming after (post) the word or words they connect with. In English, the\\nword ago may be seen as a postposition, since it comes at the end of phrases\\nlike “three years ago”. Some languages would use a preposition instead,\\nexpressing this meaning something like “before three years”. Interestingly,\\na word simply glossed “ago” is mentioned in the Etymologies: Y´\\na. It is not\\nmentioned or exemplified elsewhere, and since its English gloss is all we have\\nto go on, we may assume that y´\\na is a postposition in Quenya as well. If so,\\n“three years ago” could be translated directly as neld¨\\ne loar y´\\na.\\nAt an older stage, Elvish apparently had many postpositions. Tolkien\\nstated that at the oldest stage, “prepositional” elements were normally “at-\\ntached” – apparently meaning suffixed – to noun stems (WJ:368). Many\\nof the Quenya case endings Tolkien clearly meant to represent originally\\nindependent elements that had merged into the noun they followed. For in-\\nstance, the ending -nna for allative is obviously related to the preposition\\nna or ana, likewise meaning “to, towards”. Yet Quenya had at least a few\\npostpositions that had not evolved into case endings, but still appeared as\\nindependent words. Whereas y´\\na discussed above is only attested as an iso-\\nlated word mentioned in Etym, the word pella “beyond” appears in actual\\nQuenya texts, and it does seem to be a postposition. Nam´\\nari¨\\ne has And´\\nun¨\\ne\\npella for “beyond the West”, and this is apparently not just another ex-\\nample of a poetic word order, for Tolkien did not alter this phrase in his\\nprose version of the song. (The word And´\\nun¨\\ne “West” is an alternative to\\nthe more usual word N´\\numen. And´\\nun¨\\ne may also be defined as “sunset” or\\neven “evening”.) Pella is used as a postposition in the Markirya poem as\\nwell, where it connects with a noun inflected for plural ablative: Elenillor\\npella is translated “from beyond the stars” (literally “from stars beyond”).\\nWhether pella could also be used as a preposition, just like its English\\ngloss “beyond”, is impossible to say. Another word for “beyond”, the l´\\na that\\nis also used in comparison, does seem to be a preposition (and perhaps the\\nfinal syllable of pella is meant to be related to this l´\\na). Even so, I would use\\npella as a postposition only, employing the word order observed in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne\\nand Markirya alike.\\nSummary of Lesson Nineteen\\nImperative phrases may in various ways include pronouns. If an order has\\none single addressee, the ending -t (basically meaning “thou”) may be added\\n301\\n\\n\\nto the verb of the imperative phrase; if several people are asked to do some-\\nthing, the ending -l (basically meaning “you”, plural) may be used instead.\\nPronouns denoting the direct or indirect object of the imperative may glue\\nthemselves to the imperative particle ´\\na. – The (long forms of the) pronomi-\\nnal subject endings that may be suffixed to verbs may also be used to derive\\nindependent emphatic pronouns by adding the relevant ending to e-. For in-\\nstance, the subject endings -ly¨\\ne “you, thou” and -mm¨\\ne “we” correspond to\\nthe independent emphatic pronouns ely¨\\ne “(even) thou” and emm¨\\ne “(even)\\nwe”. The emphatic word for “I”, corresponding to the ending -ny¨\\ne, however\\nshows i- rather than e- as its initial vowel: iny¨\\ne. – Quenya interrogative\\nwords apparently show an initial ma-; attested examples are man “who”,\\nmana “what” and manen “how”. – Postpositions are similar in function to\\nprepositions, but follow rather than precede the word(s) they connect with.\\nThe word pella “beyond” seems to function as a postposition; Nam´\\nari¨\\ne has\\nAnd´\\nun¨\\ne pella (not ?pella And´\\nun¨\\ne) for “beyond the West”. The word y´\\na\\nis glossed “ago” (Etym, entry YA), so perhaps it functions as a postposition\\njust like its English gloss.\\nVocabulary\\nots¨\\nea “seventh”\\ntolt¨\\nea “eighth” (In a late document Tolkien actually changed this form to told¨\\nea:\\nVT42:25, 31. Apparently he considered changing the word for “8” from tolto to\\ntoldo. We may accept toldo “8” and told¨\\nea “8th” as valid variants, but in the\\nexercises below I prefer tolt¨\\nea – to go with tolto, the form of the word “8” as\\nlisted in the Etymologies.)\\niny¨\\ne “I” (emphatic pronoun)\\nely¨\\ne “you, thou” (emphatic pronoun)\\nemm¨\\ne “we”, exclusive (emphatic pronoun)\\nelm¨\\ne “we”, inclusive (emphatic pronoun). (This form is not directly attested, but\\nsince it forms the logical counterpart of emm¨\\ne, this extrapolation from the ending\\n-lm¨\\ne seems so plausible that I will use it in the exercises below.)\\nman “who?”\\nmana “what?” (according to one interpretation of the sentence where this word occurs)\\nmanen “how?”\\npella “beyond” (postposition)\\ny´\\na “ago” (postposition like its English gloss?)\\n´\\nır¨\\ne “when”\\n302\\n\\n\\nNOTE on the word ´\\nır¨\\ne “when”: This is (almost certainly) not an interrogative word,\\ndespite its English gloss. A question like “when will you come?” can hardly be translated\\n**´\\nır¨\\ne tuluvaly¨\\ne? No Quenya word for “when?” as a genuine question-word has been\\npublished, though it may be possible to work around this gap – for instance, we could use\\na circumlocution like l´\\nu mana(ss¨\\ne)? = “(at) what time?” The word´\\nır¨\\ne is used for “when”\\nin the sense that it introduces information about when something occurs; it is attested in\\nF´\\nıriel’s Song. The relevant phrases are not quite LotR-style Quenya, but the use of ´\\nır¨\\ne\\nmay be noted all the same: Y´\\neva tyel ar i-narquelion, ir¨\\ne ilqua y´\\neva n´\\notina = “there\\nwill be an end and the Fading, when all is counted”; man . . . ant´\\nava nin Il´\\nuvatar . . .\\n´\\nır¨\\ne Anarinya queluva? = “what will the Father give me . . . when my Sun faileth?” At\\npresent we have no later attestation of such a word, and since it is highly useful, we may\\nwell adopt´\\nır¨\\ne “when” into our attempted Unified or Standard Quenya. Many post-Tolkien\\nwriters have used it already. It has been suggested that the initial ´\\nı- of ´\\nır¨\\ne is related to the\\ndefinite article i “the”, whereas the final -r¨\\ne can be equated with the word r´\\ne “[24-hour]\\nday” (the word aur¨\\ne refers to the daylight period only). If so, ´\\nır¨\\ne basically means “the\\nday” – and of course, “what will the Father give me . . . the day my Sun faileth” would still\\nmake sense. However, it may seem that the word ´\\nır¨\\ne “when” existed long before the word\\nr´\\ne “day”; the latter apparently emerged as Tolkien was writing the LotR Appendices. I\\nwouldn’t hesitate to use ´\\nır¨\\ne for “when” in general (not limiting its application to “the day\\nwhen. . . ”)\\nExercises\\nAs described above, Tolkien sometimes added extra words when translating\\nemphatic pronouns, e.g. ely¨\\ne = “even thou” (to bring out the emphatic\\nquality of the word). However, in the keys to the exercises below, as well as\\nin the “Translate into Quenya” section, we have adopted the simpler system\\nof italicizing emphatic pronouns (e.g. ely¨\\ne = you; by the way, we will use\\nthis translation rather than “thou” since the “L”-form pronouns may seem\\nto be ambiguous as to number, just like English “you”).\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Man marn¨\\ne i coass¨\\ne cainen loar y´\\na, ´\\nır¨\\ne iny¨\\ne l´\\na marn¨\\ne\\ntass¨\\ne?\\nB. Mana elm¨\\ne polir car¨\\ne?\\nC. ´\\nAta antat nin, ar ´\\navata nurtat nillo!\\nD. Man ely¨\\ne cenn¨\\ne i ots¨\\nea auress¨\\ne?\\nE. Antuvant¨\\ne ily¨\\ne i annar inyen ar l´\\na elyen!\\nF.\\nMana i neri hirner i n´\\noress¨\\ne i oronti pella?\\nG. Manen ely¨\\ne poluva orta i alta ondo ´\\nır¨\\ne iny¨\\ne ´\\num¨\\ne pol¨\\ne\\ncaritas?\\n303\\n\\n\\nH. Sellemma mar¨\\ne coa yanass¨\\ne; emm¨\\ne marir i tolt¨\\nea coass¨\\ne\\nmall¨\\ne sinass¨\\ne. ´\\nA tulil ar ´\\na cenil coamma!\\n2. Translate into Quenya:\\nI. Who has done that [ta]?\\nJ. What did you find in the seventh room when you went there [or,\\n“thither” = tanna]?\\nK. When you have come, I want to leave [auta].\\nL. Give us the wine! (an order explicitly addressed to several per-\\nsons).\\nM. Give the wine to us and not [l´\\na] to the warriors! (“Us” is ex-\\nclusive here. “To” = dative, not allative. This order is explicitly\\naddressed to emphone person only.)\\nN. The seventh warrior has come from beyond the great mountains.\\nO. Beyond [or, behind] the eighth door [or, “gate”, ando] you found\\na great treasure; we [exclusive] who came after you [apa le] did\\nnot find a thing!\\nP. How did the evil Dwarves find them seven days ago?\\n304\\n\\n\\nLesson 20\\nThe obscure verb “to be”. Ma as a possible interrogative\\nparticle. Sa introducing nominal clauses.\\nWe are now fast exhausting the reasonably certain “facts” about Quenya\\n(though as I have tried to make clear, even many of the “facts” must be\\nconsidered tentative deductions). This last regular lesson is already moving\\nfar into the twilight zone of linguistic obscurities.\\n20.1\\nThe verb “to be”\\n(including some remarks on the form ¨\\nea)\\nThe various forms of the verb “to be” have always been a problem. The\\nLotR version of Nam´\\nari¨\\ne includes the copula n´\\na “is”. A draft version of\\nthe same poem combines the copula with a plural subject, resulting in the\\nform nar “are”. In July 2001, the future-tense form nauva “will be” finally\\nturned up in Vinyar Tengwar 42 p. 34. We have mentioned and practiced\\nall of these forms before.\\nSeveral tense-forms, as well as the infinitive, are missing. To start with\\nthe infinitive, what is “to be” in Quenya? We have no other clue than the\\napparent fact the infinitive of A-stem verbs is identical to the verbal stem\\nitself, with no additions. In Etym, nˆ\\na is listed as the “stem of [the] verb ‘to\\nbe’ in Q[uenya]”. So conceivably, n´\\na may also function as an infinitive: “I\\nwant to be an Elf” = ?Merin n´\\na Elda. But of course, Tolkien may have\\nimagined something entirely different.\\nAnother question lacking a clear answer: Can n´\\na, nauva and other tense-\\nforms be combined with pronominal endings? We may have one example to\\nguide us. In the very early (some would even say first) “Qenya” poem Nar-\\nqelion, written in 1915 or 1916, Tolkien used the form n´\\nare. Since there is\\nno straightforward Tolkien-made translation of this poem, we cannot be en-\\ntirely certain what it means. Christopher Gilson, analyzing the entire poem\\nin light of the almost contemporaneous Qenya Lexicon, concluded that n´\\nare\\nmay mean “it is” (VT40:31). A 3rd person marker -re (or if you like, -r¨\\ne)\\nwas perhaps present in Tolkien’s later forms of Quenya as well, though at\\n305\\n\\n\\nthe later stages we might expect it to mean “she” rather than “it” – see Les-\\nson 15. If the regular pronominal endings can be attached to n´\\na, we would\\nexpect forms like the following:\\nn´\\nan or n´\\nany¨\\ne “I am”\\nn´\\nat “you [intimate singular] are”, perhaps also with a longer form (nacc¨\\ne\\nor n´\\naty¨\\ne???)\\nn´\\nal or n´\\naly¨\\ne “you [plural or polite singular] are”\\nn´\\nas “he/she/it is”, conceivably with a longer form ?n´\\nary¨\\ne; there may\\nalso be gender-specific forms n´\\naro “he is”, n´\\nar¨\\ne “she is” (the latter being\\nattested, sort of, in Narqelion)\\nnamm¨\\ne “we [exclusive] are”, nalm¨\\ne “we [inclusive] are”, and perhaps\\nsomething like nalw¨\\ne “we [dual inclusive] are”\\nnant¨\\ne “they are”\\nNotice that the long ´\\na of n´\\na would be shortened whenever a consonant\\ncluster follows, as when the endings -mm¨\\ne, -lm¨\\ne, -lw¨\\ne, -nt¨\\ne are attached.\\nI assume that the endings with a consonant + y (-ny¨\\ne and -ly¨\\ne, plus the\\ntwo extrapolated endings ?-ty¨\\ne and ?-ry¨\\ne) would not have the power to\\nshorten a preceding vowel. Compare the ´\\na of m´\\na “hand” remaining long\\nbefore the possessive pronominal ending -rya “her” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne: m´\\naryat\\n“her hands”, dual. (The future tense nauva “will be” would be able to\\nreceive all pronominal endings with no modifications: nauvan or nauvany¨\\ne\\n“I will be”, nauvalm¨\\ne “we will be”, etc.)\\nPerhaps the verb n´\\na can even receive two pronominal endings, for subject\\nand predicate, e.g. n´\\nanyes = “I am he”. (Compare the Tolkien-made form\\nut´\\nuvienyes = “I have found it”, the second ending denoting the object.)\\nBut of course, all of the above may be nonsense. The word n´\\na “is” and\\npronominal endings like -n “I” are attested separately, but combining them\\nto produce n´\\nan for “I am” could for all we know be just as wrong as saying\\n“I is” in English. In the case of the verb “to be”, Tolkien may very well have\\ndreamed up some wonderfully irregular forms, which only his unpublished\\nmanuscripts can ever reveal.\\nLuckily, there is a way to get around the whole problem, and that is\\nto simply use an independent pronoun and leave out the entire copula “to\\nbe”: It is understood. When translating “blessed art thou” in his Quenya\\nrendering of the Hail Mary, Tolkien simply wrote the word for “blessed”\\nimmediately followed by the pronoun ely¨\\ne “thou”. There is no copula “art”\\nin the Quenya text. So we can apparently feel free to build copula-less sen-\\ntences like iny¨\\ne Elda “I [am] an Elf”, ely¨\\ne ´\\num¨\\nea “you [are] evil” or “thou\\n[art] evil”. (If a plural “you” is intended, the adjective should probably be\\npl.: ´\\numi¨\\ne.) The shorter, less emphatic pronouns would presumably work\\njust as well: Ni Elda, le ´\\num¨\\nea, etc.\\nYet we can’t always do without the verb “to be”, and another problem has\\nto do with the past tense “was”. We have no certain attestations of it. Adding\\n306\\n\\n\\nthe normal past-tense marker -n¨\\ne to the stem nˆ\\na would of course produce\\nsomething like ?n´\\nan¨\\ne, but this awkward form seems most improbable. In all\\nlikelihood, Tolkien actually envisioned an irregular form. A form n´\\ne “was”\\nhas long been rumored to occur in Tolkien’s unpublished papers. The closest\\nwe have ever got to having this assumption confirmed would be Christopher\\nGilson’s analysis of the same very early “Qenya” poem referred to above,\\nNarqelion. In Vinyar Tengwar #40, page 12–13, we find Gilson trying to\\ndecipher what he calls an “especially enigmatic” phrase from the poem. It\\nincorporates the form n´\\ne, and Gilson argues (p. 13):\\nThe preterite [= past tense] of the verb ‘to be’ is not given in\\n[the] Q[enya] L[exicon], but this tense-form is listed for many\\nverbs, and frequently identified as such. The Qenya preterite has\\na variety of formations, but one of the familiar types is seen in\\nkanda- ‘blaze’, pret. kandane. . . It is possible that forms like\\nkanda-ne actually arose as a construction with the verb-stem\\nplus a form of the verb ‘to be’, i.e. that a meaning like ‘blazed’\\nderived syntactically as in English phrases like ‘was blazing’ or\\n‘did blaze’, with an originally tenseless form of the stem kanda-\\n‘(to) blaze, blazing’ combined with the past tense expressed in\\nthe ending -ne ‘was’. . . The present tense of the verb ‘to be’ is\\ngiven in QL as n´\\na ‘it is’ . . . and if the preterite is n´\\ne or ne, there\\nwould be a parallel with certain other verbs where the present\\nvs. preterite is marked solely by a change of -a to -e, as in panta-\\n‘open, unfold, spread’, pret. pante, or sanga- ‘pack tight’, pret.\\nsange.\\nSince it so happens that Mr. Gilson has access to virtually all of Tolkien’s\\nlinguistic papers, he must know perfectly well whether a form n´\\ne “was” oc-\\ncurs in the material or not. We may assume, then, that Gilson feels that he\\nwould be violating somebody’s copyright if he were to say loud and clear\\nthat “n´\\ne is the Qenya word for was” – and so he has to pretend that he is\\nmerely deducing this word from already published material. Remembering\\nthat Tolkien must surely have discussed the various forms of “to be” in the\\nvast amount of linguistic manuscripts that he left behind, and combining\\nGilson’s article with more recent statements made by his group to the ef-\\nfect that they would not write something they know to be wrong, we can\\napparently treat n´\\ne = “was” as an as-good-as-attested word.\\nHowever, even if such a word did exist in the early forms of “Qenya”, it\\nmay of course have been abandoned in the more LotR-compatible forms of\\nthe language that emerged decades later. It may be noted, though, that the\\npast tense ending -n¨\\ne was never abandoned – and if Gilson’s theory that\\nthere is a connection between this ending and the verb “was” does reflect\\nTolkien’s actual ideas, the word n´\\ne “was” may have survived into LotR-\\nstyle Quenya. Anyhow, writers can hardly do without a word for “was”, and\\n307\\n\\n\\ncurrently we have no better alternative than n´\\ne. Some writers have used it,\\nand based on the pair n´\\na “is” / nar “are”, people have also extrapolated a\\nform ner “were” to be used in conjunction with plural or multiple subjects.\\nIf the present tense n´\\na “is” can be combined with pronominal endings,\\nthis would presumably be true of n´\\ne as well (it would then be reduced to\\nne- with a short -e- before the endings -mm¨\\ne, -lm¨\\ne, -lw¨\\ne, -nt¨\\ne, just like\\nwe must assume that n´\\na- is shortened to na- before these endings). But\\nrather than being combined with pronominal endings, it may well be that\\nthe copula would most often simply be omitted in the past tense as well,\\nan independent pronoun being used instead of an ending: Ely¨\\ne ´\\num¨\\nea =\\npast tense “you [were] evil” or present tense “you [are] evil”, according to\\ncontext. (However, I suspect that the future-tense copula nauva “will be”\\nwould rarely be omitted like this.)\\nFive Quenya tenses are attested: Present (or continuative), aorist, past,\\nfuture and perfect. The verb “to be” may not make any distinction between\\npresent and aorist (n´\\na “is” covering both); the past tense “was” may be n´\\ne\\nas discussed above, and the future tense is attested as nauva “will be”. This\\nleaves only the perfect tense – “has been”. Normally, the perfect is formed\\nby prefixing an augment similar to the stem-vowel, lengthening the stem-\\nvowel in its normal place and adding the ending -i¨\\ne, e.g. ut´\\nuli¨\\ne “has come”\\nfrom the stem tul “come”. However, it is less than clear how the stem nˆ\\na\\ncould be fitted into this pattern. A form ?an´\\nai¨\\ne would be quite unstable;\\nthe group ´\\nai would tend to become a normal diphthong ai. Yet ?anai¨\\ne still\\ndoes not strike me as a particularly likely form, and I could recommend\\nit to really desperate writers only. Presently it is simply impossible to tell\\nhow the Eldar would say “has been” (presumably a very frequent word,\\nsince Tolkienian Elves “were ever more and more involved in the past” –\\nVT41:12!)\\nThe imperative of n´\\na is also a matter of conjecture. It is far from obvious\\nhow to say “be!” as in “be good!” I have used the form ´\\nana, combining n´\\na\\n(-na) with a prefixed variant of the imperative particle ´\\na. By its form, this\\nimperative ´\\nana “be!” would have the same relationship to n´\\na as Tolkien’s\\nword ´\\nava “don’t!” has to the simple negation v´\\na “no!” Yet ´\\nana remains an\\nextrapolation, and if we could have asked Tolkien what he actually had in\\nmind, I would have been somewhat surprised if this had been his answer. So\\nplease think of ´\\nana as a form which would fit into Tolkien’s general system,\\nbut which is not (as far as I know!) Tolkienian as such.\\nIn addition to the “N” forms of the verb “to be” (n´\\na/nar, n´\\ne, nauva) a\\nfew entirely different forms of related meaning occurs in the material. The\\npre-LotR text F´\\nıriel’s Song has ye for “is” and y´\\neva for “will be”. Instead\\nof appearing as independent words they may also be turned into endings, -i¨\\ne\\nand -i´\\neva, attested in such forms as m´\\nari¨\\ne “is good” and hostaini´\\neva “will\\nbe counted” (cf. m´\\nara “good”, hostaina “gathered, countered”). However,\\nas I pointed out in Lesson Four, Tolkien may seem to have abandoned such\\n308\\n\\n\\nforms. The ending -i¨\\ne has so many other meanings (gerundial ending as\\nin enyali¨\\ne “recalling”, abstract ending as in veri¨\\ne “boldness”, feminine\\nending as in Vali¨\\ne “female Vala”) that Tolkien may have decided that it\\nshould not be burdened with the meaning “is” as well. A few writers have\\nused the ending -i¨\\ne “is”, but my advice would be to let these formations\\nfrom F´\\nıriel’s Song rest in peace.\\nAnother verb we should consider is definitely not a word Tolkien aban-\\ndoned, for it is found in writings postdating the publication of LotR – with\\nNam´\\nari¨\\ne, incorporating the verb n´\\na “is”, in it. Thus it is clearly meant\\nto coexist with n´\\na, and probably expresses a somewhat different shade of\\nmeaning. We are talking about the verb ¨\\nea (or with a capital E, E¨\\na).\\nReaders of the Silmarillion will remember this word from Tolkien’s cre-\\nation myth. God, Eru Il´\\nuvatar, grants objective existence to the Music of the\\nAinur with this word: “I know the desire of your minds that what ye have\\nseen should verily be . . . even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore\\nI say: E¨\\na! Let these things Be!” (Ainulindal¨\\ne). Tolkien explained that E¨\\na\\nas a name of the universe is not originally a noun, but actually a verb: “The\\nElves called the World, the Universe, E¨\\na – It is” (footnote in Letters:284).\\n“This world, or Universe, [the Creator] calls E¨\\na, an Elvish word that means\\n‘It is’ or ‘Let it Be’” (MR:330).\\nSo ¨\\nea can be either the present (or aorist) tense “[it] is” or the imperative\\n“let it be!” (In the latter sense it would parallel such one-word imperatives\\nin -a as heca! “be gone!” or ela! “look!”) How does ¨\\nea “is” differ in meaning\\nfrom n´\\na? It has been suggested that one of these verbs means “is” referring\\nmerely to some particular instance, while the other refers to a permanent\\nor habitual state. In a sentence like “the man is drunk”, one word for “is”\\nwould simply indicate that “the man” is drunk right now, whereas the other\\nwould imply that he is a drunkard by habit. Parallels to such a system can\\nbe found in Spanish (a language Tolkien loved).\\nGiven the extreme scarcity of source material, nothing can be ruled out\\nat this stage, but I would put my money on another theory. It should be\\nnoted that Tolkien translated ¨\\nea not only as “is”, he also used the rendering\\n“exists” (VT39:7). This suggests that ¨\\nea has a more absolute meaning than\\nn´\\na. The verb ¨\\nea is related to the noun engw¨\\ne “thing” (see below), a “thing”\\nbeing perceived as “something that exists”. It may be that n´\\na is a mere\\ncopula used in phrases describing the state of something, introducing a noun\\n(samb¨\\ne sina n´\\na caimasan ”this room is a bedchamber”), an adjective\\n(samb¨\\ne sina n´\\na pitya ”this room is small”) or even a prepositional phrase\\n(samb¨\\ne sina n´\\na ve i samb¨\\ne yass¨\\ne hirnenyet, “this room is like the room\\nwhere I found them”). On the other hand, ¨\\nea refers to the solid, independent\\nexistence or presence of some subject, and it can perhaps be used with no\\nother additions than this subject (e.g. Eru ¨\\nea = “God exists”). Tolkien\\ninforms us that the word ¨\\neala, by its form obviously the active participle of\\n¨\\nea, was also used as a noun “being” – denoting a spirit whose natural state is\\n309\\n\\n\\nto exist without a physical body. Balrogs, for instance, were ¨\\nealar (MR:165).\\nBasically, the word only refers to “existing” ones. At the beginning of a\\nsentence, the verb ¨\\nea may possibly be used in the same sense as English\\n“there is”, to assert the existence or presence of something: E¨\\na malta i\\norontissen “[there] is gold in the mountains”, ¨\\nea n´\\ner i sambess¨\\ne “[there]\\nis a man in the room”, ¨\\near neld¨\\ne nissi i coass¨\\ne, “[there] are three women\\nin the house”.\\nHowever, all the sentences in the previous paragraph were constructed by\\nme. One of our very few Tolkien-made examples of ¨\\nea occurring in an actual\\nsentence forms part of Cirion’s Oath. E¨\\na turns up as the verb of a relative\\nsentence: i Eru i or ily¨\\ne mahalmar ¨\\nea tennoio, “the One [God] who is\\nabove all thrones forever”. Since the literal meaning could well be that Eru\\nexists in this sublime position, this does not contradict the interpretation\\nset out above. It should be noted that ¨\\nea, rather than n´\\na, is the verb to\\nuse when describing the position of something (the position being specified\\neither by a phrase including a preposition, like or ily¨\\ne mahalmar “above\\nall thrones” in the sentence above, or by a noun appearing in the locative\\ncase). Perhaps we could have sentences like i samb¨\\ne yass¨\\ne ¨\\nea i harma ¨\\nea\\nor i samb¨\\ne yass¨\\ne ¨\\nea i n´\\ner s´\\nı “the room where the treasure is, is above\\nthe room where the man is now” – referring not so much to mere states as\\nto existence, presence, position. This is the best the present grammarian can\\ndo with so few examples.\\nHow is ¨\\nea inflected? E¨\\na itself would seem to be the present or aorist form;\\nthe imperative (used by Eru in the Ainulindal¨\\ne) is identical. Perhaps ¨\\nea can\\nalso function as the infinitive. The future tense could be something like\\neuva. The perfect “has existed” seems impossible to reconstruct with even\\na shadow of confidence. As for the past tense, there are several possibilities.\\nThe regular form would of course be ¨\\nean¨\\ne, which form I might well use\\nmyself.\\nAnother possibility is suggested by material published in Vinyar Tengwar\\n#39, pp. 6–7. Tolkien discusses the sound he represented as ˜\\nn (= the ng of\\nking, a sound that in Quenya had been lost between vowels) and how it may\\nbe possible to deduce where it had occurred earlier: “The former presence\\nof intervocalic ˜\\nn, later lost in Quenya, could be detected by consideration\\nof the relations between t¨\\nea ‘indicates’ and teng¨\\ne ‘indicated’, tengwe ‘sign’,\\nand comparison with ¨\\nea ‘exists’ beside engwe ‘thing’.” Tolkien’s point is\\nthat before w, the sound ˜\\nn had been strengthened to ng, and this combi-\\nnation was not lost. The Quenya word tengw¨\\ne “sign” is explicitly said to\\nrepresent primitive te˜\\nn-wˆ\\ne (VT39:17), and we are clearly to understand that\\nengw¨\\ne “thing” likewise comes from e˜\\nn-wˆ\\ne, though Tolkien did not explic-\\nitly mention this primitive form. Thus it can be established that the original\\nroots are te˜\\nn- and e˜\\nn-, respectively, though in the verbs t¨\\nea “indicates” and\\n¨\\nea “exists” the ˜\\nn has been lost because it occurred between vowels: These\\nwords are obviously meant to descend from primitive te˜\\nnˆ\\na, e˜\\nnˆ\\na. What is\\n310\\n\\n\\ninteresting is that Tolkien also mentioned the form teng¨\\ne “indicated”. Un-\\nfortunately, this English gloss is ambiguous. Is this “indicated” as the past\\ntense of “indicate”, or “indicated” as the passive participle of the same verb?\\nThe Quenya form could be a kind of adjective of similar meaning, since many\\nQuenya adjectives end in -¨\\ne. But if teng¨\\ne “indicated” is to be understood\\nas the past tense of t¨\\nea “indicates”, we must conclude that the past tense\\nof ¨\\nea “exists” should probably be eng¨\\ne rather than ¨\\nean¨\\ne: Perhaps teng¨\\ne\\nis meant to come from te˜\\nn-nˆ\\ne – i.e. the root te˜\\nn- + the past tense marker\\n-nˆ\\ne, the combination ˜\\nnn evolving into a long or double ˜\\nn˜\\nn which was not\\nlost even between vowels, but came out as ng in Quenya. If so, a primitive\\npast tense e˜\\nn-nˆ\\ne “existed” might likewise produce Quenya eng¨\\ne.\\nThe verb ¨\\nea can presumably receive pronominal endings like any other\\nverb, e.g. ¨\\neamm¨\\ne “we exist”.\\n20.2\\nMa: An interrogative particle?\\nIn the previous lesson, we introduced the words man “who?”, mana “what?”\\nand manen “how?” They can be used to construct certain kinds of ques-\\ntions, but the commonest kind of question is not exemplified in published\\nmaterial: How do we construct the kind of question that may be answered\\nwith a simple “yes” or “no”?\\nEnglish uses various procedures to get from a simple assertion to a question\\nabout whether something is actually true. Assertions like “it is so” or “he\\nhas come” can be turned into a questions by fronting the verb: “Is it so?”,\\n“Has he come?” However, in contemporary English, this procedure only\\nworks with a few verbs. An assertion like “he wrote the book” is turned into\\na question by adding a form of the verb “to do” at the beginning of the\\nsentence and turn what used to be the finite verb into an infinitive: “Did he\\nwrite the book?”\\nObviously, the simplest way of turning an assertion (a declarative state-\\nment) into a question would be to simply slip in some kind of particle\\nthat merely signals, “This is not an assertion that something is so and so,\\nbut a question about whether it is so and so.” Many languages of our own\\nworld do employ such particles (e.g. Polish czy), and this simple and elegant\\nway of constructing yes/no questions seems to have considerable appeal to\\nlanguage-constructors as well. Esperanto has the interrogative particle chu\\n(cxu), apparently based on the Polish word, and the sentence “he wrote the\\nbook” – li skribis la libron – is turned into a question “did he write the\\nbook?” simply by adding chu at the beginning: Chu li skribis la libron?\\nBut what about Quenya? Still clinging to this example, how do we turn\\nthe declarative statement tences i parma “(s)he wrote the book” into a\\nquestion? Does Quenya have an interrogative particle we can slip in?\\nIn PM:357, quoted in the previous lesson, Tolkien refers to ma or man\\n311\\n\\n\\nas an “Eldarin interrogative element” (PM:357). Man is the Quenya word\\nfor “who”, but may the shortest possible “interrogative element” ma func-\\ntion as an interrogative particle? Some writers have made this assumption.\\nIt may be noted that one Quenya verb for “ask” is maquet- (past tense\\nmaquent¨\\ne, PM:403). Since maquet- transparently means “ma-say”, it may\\nbe suspected that in some way or another, Quenya questions often involve\\nthe element ma.\\nIt has come to my knowledge that there is a Tolkien manuscript which\\ndoes refer to ma as an interrogative particle. If Tolkien meant a particle\\nlike Polish czy or Esperanto chu, we may apparently turn a declarative\\nstatement into a yes/no question simply by slipping in a ma, most likely at\\nthe beginning of the sentence (no attested examples):\\nTences i parma “(S)he wrote the book” > Ma tences i parma? “Did\\n(s)he write the book?”\\nN´\\nıs enta n´\\na Elda “That woman is an Elf” > Ma n´\\nıs enta n´\\na Elda?\\n“Is that woman an Elf?”\\nE¨\\na malta i orontess¨\\ne “[There] is gold in the mountain” > Ma ¨\\nea malta\\ni orontess¨\\ne? “Is [there] gold in the mountain?”\\nI n´\\ner caruva coa “The man is going to build a house” > Ma i n´\\ner\\ncaruva coa? “Is the man going to build a house?”\\nConceivably ma might also be used in so-called dependent questions, with\\nthe force of English “whether”: Umin ista ma ut´\\nulies, “I don’t know\\nwhether (s)he has come.” This is speculation, however, and it must be em-\\nphasized that we have yet to see the interrogative particle ma in any actual\\nQuenya sentence written by Tolkien. The manuscript in which he refers to\\nma as an interrogative particle is apparently quite early, so this particle\\nmay well belong to some variant of “Qenya” rather than the more LotR-\\ncompatible forms of Quenya.\\nEven assuming that the system I presupposed when constructing the ex-\\namples above does indeed correspond to Tolkien’s intentions at some stage,\\nhe may very well have decided upon something else later. Indeed certain\\nfragments of post-LotR Quenya material includes a word ma of a quite dif-\\nferent meaning: it functions as an indefinite pronoun “something, a thing”\\n(VT42:34). Whether this implies that ma as an interrogative particle had\\nbeen abandoned is impossible to say (PM:357 at least confirms that ma as\\nan interrogative “element” survived into the post-LotR period). Whether\\nthe two ma’s can coexist in the same version of Quenya is a matter of taste,\\nunless it turns out that Tolkien actually addressed this question in some\\nmanuscript (and I wouldn’t hold my breath). Presently, the system sketched\\nabove is probably the best we can do when it comes to constructing yes/no\\nquestions in Quenya.\\n312\\n\\n\\n20.3\\nSa introducing nominal clauses\\nWe have introduced several words that may be translated “that”: the pro-\\nnoun ta and the demonstratives enta and tana (tanya).\\nThere is, however, another kind of “that” as well – very common in any\\nsubstantial text. We are talking about “that” as a particle introducing so-\\ncalled nominal clauses.\\nAs we know, nouns can take on various functions in a sentence. Very\\noften they appear as the subject or object of a verb, as when the noun Elda\\n“Elf” functions as the object of the verb ista- “know” in the sentence istan\\nElda “I know an Elf”. Sometimes, however, it is useful to treat an entire\\nsentence as a noun, so that it can take on noun-like functions in a sentence.\\nConsider a simple sentence like “you are here”. If we want to treat this\\nsentence as a noun and slip it into a longer sentence to function as (say) the\\nobject, English may signal the noun-like status of the words “you are here”\\nby placing the word “that” in front of them: “That you are here”. Now\\nthis entire phrase, a so-called nominal clause, can function as the object\\nof a verb: “I know that you are here”. It could also be used as the subject\\nof a sentence, as in “that you are here is good”. (But in the latter case,\\nEnglish would often prefer to slip in a meaningless dummy-subject “it” at\\nthe beginning of the sentence and place the true subject at the end: “It is\\ngood that you are here.)\\nWhat, then, is the Quenya equivalent of “that” as a particle forming such\\nnominal clauses?\\nOur sole attestation of this important particle comes from a rather obscure\\nsource. A few years ago, a person who called himself Michael Dawson made a\\nposting to the Tolkien Internet mailing list. He claimed to be quoting at two\\nremoves from an old Tolkien letter which could not be dated more precisely\\nthan “years” earlier than 1968. It was a Quenya greeting including the words\\nmerin sa haryaly¨\\ne alass¨\\ne – which is supposed to mean, literally, “I wish\\nthat you have happiness”. (The initial merin actually appeared as “meriu”\\nin Dawson’s post; lower-case n and u are often very difficult to distinguish in\\nTolkien’s handwriting. “Meriu” would be a quite meaningless form, and the\\ntranslation provided settles the matter.) As we see, the word sa is here used\\nas a particle turning the sentence haryaly¨\\ne alass¨\\ne “you have happiness”\\ninto a nominal clause, so that it can function as the object of the verb merin\\n“I want/wish”.\\nThere are several questionable points here. For one thing, not everyone\\nis convinced that the “Merin” sentence, as it is often called, is genuine at\\nall. I am told that various efforts to get in touch with this Michael Dawson\\nhave so far proved futile, and it is somewhat disturbing to notice that his\\nposting was made on April 1. On the other hand, Carl F. Hostetter (who\\nhas seen nearly all of Tolkien’s linguistic manuscripts) briefly commented on\\nthis sentence in VT41:18 and apparently recognized it as genuine, though\\n313\\n\\n\\nhe has later specified that it does not occur in any manuscript he knows\\nof. The word sa is not inherently implausible; it could mean basically “it”\\n(related to the ending -s), so that merin sa haryaly¨\\ne alass¨\\ne originally\\nor basically signifies “I wish it [, namely that] you have happiness”. But\\nof course, even if the word sa is genuine Tolkien, it is impossible to say\\nwhat stage of Q(u)enya it belongs to. Assuming that the Merin sentence is\\nactually written by Tolkien, I would say that it is probably quite early, since\\nits vocabulary corresponds so well to that of the Etymologies (of the mid-\\nthirties – notice the use of the verb harya- “have, possess”, otherwise only\\nattested in Etym). So given the ever-changing nature of Tolkien’s conception,\\nsa as a particle forming nominal clauses may well have been abandoned by\\nthe time Tolkien published LotR. Yet writers can hardly do without this\\nimportant word, and presently sa is our sole alternative.\\nAccepting sa as a word for this meaning, our example above – “I know\\nthat you are here” – could perhaps be rendered into Quenya something like\\nistan sa ¨\\nealy¨\\ne sinom¨\\ne (cf. ista- “to know”, sinom¨\\ne “in this place; here”\\n– and above we theorized that ¨\\nea rather than n´\\na is the word used for “is”\\nwhen a certain position is discussed). “That you are here is good” could\\npresumably likewise be rendered sa ¨\\nealy¨\\ne sinom¨\\ne n´\\na m´\\nara. “It is good\\nthat you are here” could correspond to something like n´\\na m´\\nara sa ¨\\nealy¨\\ne\\nsinom¨\\ne (if the verb n´\\na “is” can be fronted). In this or any other context,\\nQuenya would hardly need a dummy-subject like the “it” of the English\\nsentence, so I would not expect to see n´\\nas or whatever.\\nIn (slightly archaic) English, a “that”-clause may describe an intention;\\nhere is a Tolkienian example: “The titles that [the Vala Orom¨\\ne] bore were\\nmany and glorious; but he withheld them at that time, that the Quendi\\nshould not be afraid” (WJ:401; modern idiom would slip in a “so” before\\n“that”, but the meaning remains the same). It would be interesting to know\\nwhether a Quenya sa-clause can be used in this sense. If not, we do not\\nreally know how to express this meaning in Quenya.\\nSummary of Lesson Twenty\\nThe verb “to be” is poorly attested in Quenya. N´\\na means “is”; it has been\\nhinted that n´\\ne is the word for “was”. Possibly, n´\\na “is” can receive the\\nregular pronominal endings to express “I am, you are, he/she/it is” etc.\\n(if so, it should be shortened to na- before endings including consonant\\nclusters, and n´\\ne would likewise become short ne-). This may be a reasonable\\nassumption, but it should be emphasized that there is little or no evidence\\nto confirm that this is what Tolkien intended. It may be safer to simply\\nuse independent pronouns and leave out the copula “to be” altogether, as\\nin certain attested examples. Another verb also translated “is” is ¨\\nea, which\\nmore properly means “exists”: it would be used for “is” in contexts discussing\\n314\\n\\n\\nthe presence, existence or position of something (in the latter case ¨\\nea may\\nconnect with a prepositional phrase, as in the attested example i or ily¨\\ne\\nmahalmar ¨\\nea “[God,] who is above all thrones”). – According to certain\\npieces of evidence, Quenya (or at least some variant of “Qenya”) had an\\ninterrogative particle ma. Presumably it can be added (at the beginning?)\\nof declarative statements to turn them into yes/no questions. – According\\nto one (possibly dubious) source, the form sa can be used for “that” as a\\nparticle introducing nominal clauses (as in “I know that you are here”, “he\\nsaid that this is true”, etc.)\\nVocabulary\\nnert¨\\nea “ninth”\\nquain¨\\nea “tenth” (So according to a text on Eldarin numerals published in VT42. This\\npresupposes another word for “ten” than the form cainen occurring in the Ety-\\nmologies – perhaps quain¨\\ne, not attested by itself. Maybe cainen would correspond\\nto an ordinal “tenth” something like cainenya, and perhaps writers should use ei-\\nther cainen/cainenya or quain¨\\ne7quain¨\\nea, but to complete our list of Quenya\\nordinals 1st–10th we will use the attested form quain¨\\nea here.)\\nma, possible interrogative particle\\nsa, “that” introducing nominal clauses (according to a source of somewhat ques-\\ntionable value)\\nn´\\nom¨\\ne “place”\\nsinom¨\\ne “in this place” or simply “here” (apparently combining si- as in sina\\n“this” with -nom¨\\ne, a shortened form of n´\\nom¨\\ne “place”, hence sinom¨\\ne = “[in] this\\nplace”)\\ntenna preposition “until, as far as”\\n¨\\nea verb “is” = “exists” (past tense either ¨\\nean¨\\ne or eng¨\\ne, future tense perhaps euva)\\nnan conjunction “but”\\nn´\\ne has been hinted to be the past tense of n´\\na “is”, hence “was”\\nista- “to know” (notice irregular past tense sint¨\\ne instead of **istan¨\\ne; perhaps the\\nperfect “has known” should similarly be isinti¨\\ne)\\nlerta- “can” in the sense of “be allowed to” (English often uses “may” in this\\nsense; see note below)\\nNOTE on the Quenya verbs for “can”: As explained in a Tolkien manuscript published\\nin VT41, at least three Quenya verbs can be used to express the idea of “be able to”.\\nThe verb pol- that we have introduced earlier primarily means to be physically able to\\ndo something (cf. the adjective polda “[physically] strong”, apparently related to this\\nverb). The verb lerta- means to be allowed to do something, to be free to do something\\nbecause there is no prohibition – though in some contexts it may also be interchangeable\\n315\\n\\n\\nwith pol-. The verb ista- “to know” (pa.t. sint¨\\ne) may be combined with an infinitive to\\nexpress “can” in the sense of “know how to”, referring to intellectual ability. Thus istas\\ntec¨\\ne would mean “he can write [because he knows the letters of the alphabet]”. Polis\\ntec¨\\ne would be “he can write” in the sense of “he is physically able to write [because his\\nhands are not paralyzed or tied up or something]”. Lertas tec¨\\ne would mean “he can\\nwrite” in the sense of “he may [= is allowed to] write”.\\nExercises\\n1. Translate into English:\\nA. Ely¨\\ne Nauco, l´\\na Elda.\\nB. Cennen sa i nero ranco n´\\ne r´\\nacina.\\nC. I aran n´\\ne taura, nan i t´\\nari n´\\ne saila l´\\na i aran.\\nD. Ma sintely¨\\ne sa nu i coa ¨\\nea nurtaina harma?\\nE. Ma lertan lelya n´\\nom¨\\ne sinallo?\\nF. ´\\nAva suc¨\\ne, an ¨\\nea sangwa yulmalyass¨\\ne!\\nG. Ma euvant¨\\ne sinom¨\\ne i quain¨\\nea auress¨\\ne ´\\nır¨\\ne tuluvan?\\nH. Istamm¨\\ne sa ¨\\nea nulda samb¨\\ne coa sinass¨\\ne, nan l´\\na ih´\\nıriem-\\nmes, ar tenna hirimmes ´\\nuvamm¨\\ne ista mana ¨\\nea i sambess¨\\ne.\\n2. Translate into Quenya (for convenience using L-forms rather than\\nT-forms to translate “you”):\\nI. I was rich [several possible translations].\\nJ. The king said: “You may not go to the place whence [yallo] you\\nhave come”, but I know that I will go thither [tanna].\\nK. I can [= know how to] read, but I cannot read in the darkness.\\nL. We (incl.) know that Elves exist.\\nM. Did they dwell [mar-] here until he ninth year when the warriors\\ncame?\\nN. We (excl.) know that the men could speak the Elven-tongue\\n[Eldalamb¨\\ne], but not the Dwarf-tongue [Naucolamb¨\\ne].\\nO. The women said that you have seen the great worm [ango] that\\nis in the mountain.\\nP. On the tenth day the Sun was bright.\\n316\\n\\n\\nAppendix A\\nKeys\\nLesson One\\n1. Marking the accented vowel or diphthong:\\nA. Alcar\\nB. Alcar¨\\ne\\nC. Alcarinqua\\nD. Calima\\nE. Oronti\\nF. ´\\nUn´\\notim¨\\ne\\nG. Envinyatar\\nH. Ulund¨\\ne\\nI. E¨\\naruil¨\\ne\\nJ. Ercass¨\\ne\\nAs for Christopher Lee’s accentuation nai yarVAX¨\\nea RASSelya\\nTALTuva notto-CARinnar, the words yarvax¨\\nea and taltuva are\\ncorrectly pronounced. However, rasselya should have been accented\\nrassELya rather than RASSelya, and notto-carinnar should have\\nbeen notto-carINNar rather than notto-CARinnar. Perhaps we\\nare to assume that “Saruman” in this scene uses some special meter\\nemployed in magical invocations, discarding the normal stress rules?\\n2.\\nK. Ohtar: C (ach-Laut)\\nL. Hr´\\nav¨\\ne: D (hr originally denoting unvoiced r, later becoming nor-\\nmal r)\\nM. Nahta: C (ach-Laut)\\nN. Heru: A (English-style breath-H, though in Valinorean Quenya\\nit had been ach-Laut)\\n317\\n\\n\\nO. Neht¨\\ne: B (ich-Laut)\\nP. Mahalma: In early Exilic Quenya probably C (ach-Laut), but\\nby the Third Age it had evidently become A (breath-H).\\nQ. Hell¨\\ne: A (breath-H)\\nR. Tihtala: B (ich-Laut)\\nS. Hl´\\noc¨\\ne: D (the group hl originally denoting unvoiced l, later be-\\ncoming normal l)\\nT. H´\\nısi¨\\ne: A (breath-H)\\nLesson Two\\n1.\\nA. Horses\\nB. Either just “king”, or “a king” with an indefinite article, depend-\\ning on what English grammar demands in the context where the\\nword occurs.\\nC. The horse\\nD. The horses\\nE. Kings\\nF. One people under one king.\\nG. The king and the queen.\\nH. Maidens\\n2.\\nI. Tasari\\nJ. Eldar\\nK. I arani\\nL. Lier\\nM. I rocco nu i tasar.\\nN. Vend¨\\ne ar t´\\nari.\\nO. I t´\\nari ar i vendi.\\nP. Anar ar Isil (probably not i Anar ar i Isil, since in Quenya the words\\ndenoting these celestial bodies seem to count as proper names, requiring no\\ndefinite article)\\nLesson Three\\n1.\\nA. (Two) eyes, (natural pair of) eyes.\\nB. Two eyes (= atta hendi, referring to “two eyes” only casually related, like\\ntwo eyes of two different persons, one eye from each. The dual form hendu,\\non the other hand, refers to a natural pair of eyes.)\\n318\\n\\n\\nC. Two trees.\\nD. Two trees (= atta aldar, referring to any two trees. Aldu, on the other\\nhand, refers to some kind of closely related pair of trees, like the Two Trees\\nof Valinor in Tolkien’s mythos.)\\nE. One man and one woman.\\nF. The stones.\\nG. Floors.\\nH. Mountains.\\n2.\\nI. Atta ciryar.\\nJ. Ciryat.\\nK. Rancu (if the example peu “pair of lips” holds, the dual ending -u rather\\nthan -t is always used in the case of bodyparts occurring in pairs, even where\\nthere is no d or t in the noun)\\nL. Orontu (since oron “mountain” has the stem oront-, a t turning up in\\nthe word, the dual ending would be -u rather than -t)\\nM. Andu (ending -u rather than -t because of the d occurring in this word)\\nN. Aiwet.\\nO. Atta aiwi.\\nP. Neri ar nissi.\\nLesson Four\\n1.\\nA. A black horse.\\nB. Bright eyes (hendu = a natural pair of eyes)\\nC. Three dead men.\\nD. Beautiful birds.\\nE. A queen is a mighty woman.\\nF. The mountains are great.\\nG. Best interpreted “a king [is] mighty”, the copula being left out\\nand understood, but it could also mean “a mighty king” with\\na somewhat unusual word-order (an attributive adjective would\\nmore often come before the noun it describes: taura aran rather\\nthan aran taura).\\nH. The man and the woman are wise.\\nTheoretically at least, exercises A, C, and D could also be interpreted\\n“black [is] a horse”, “bright [are] eyes”, “beautiful [are] birds”, the\\ncopula being left out just as in Exercise G. But when the adjective\\n319\\n\\n\\ncomes immediately in front of the noun it describes, it must normally\\nbe assumed that it is used attributively and not predicatively. On the\\nother hand, when the order is noun + adjective, as in G, a copula\\n“is/are” may well be left out.\\n2.\\nI. I ninqu¨\\ne ando.\\nJ. Alta cirya.\\nK. I talan n´\\na carn¨\\ne.\\nL. Min¨\\ne mor¨\\ne sar ar neld¨\\ne ninqui sardi.\\nM. Sail¨\\ne arani nar taur¨\\ne neri.\\nN. I taura n´\\ner ar i vanya n´\\nıs nar ´\\numi¨\\ne.\\nO. Eldar nar vany¨\\ne.\\nP. Eldar nar vanya li¨\\ne. (Notice that here, the adjective agrees in number\\nwith the singular noun li¨\\ne “a people”, which it describes attributively. It does\\nnot agree with the plural noun “Elves”, as in the previous exercise.)\\n(In exercises K, M, N, O, P, the copula n´\\na/nar may be left out and\\nunderstood.)\\nLesson Five\\n1.\\nA. The woman is laughing.\\nB. The fattest Dwarf is eating.\\nC. The queen is watching the king.\\nD. The greatest mountain is mighty.\\nE. The man is summoning the most beautiful maiden.\\nF. The bird is singing.\\nG. The Dwarves are seizing the four Elves.\\nH. The mightiest king is wise.\\n2.\\nI. I n´\\nıs t´\\nıra i analta cirya.\\nJ. I an´\\numi¨\\ne neri nar firini.\\nK. I Elda m´\\nap¨\\nea i parma.\\nL. Canta neri cait¨\\near nu alda.\\nM. I assaila Elda cend¨\\nea parma (an-saila becoming assaila by assim-\\nilation)\\nN. I aran ar i t´\\nari cend¨\\near i parma.\\nO. I aiwi lind¨\\near.\\nP. I canta Naucor t´\\nırar aiw¨\\ne.\\n320\\n\\n\\nLesson Six\\n1.\\nA. The man read the book.\\nB. The Dwarves ate.\\nC. The king summoned the queen.\\nD. A woman sang.\\nE. The maidens watched the Elf.\\nF. The five horses lay (/?were lying) under the big willow.\\nG. The stars shone.\\nH. The Dwarf saw a horse.\\nAs suggested in F, it may be that it is also permissible to translate\\nQuenya past tenses using the “was/were . . . -ing” construction, e.g.\\nB) “the Dwarves were eating”, D) “a woman was singing”, F) “the\\nfive horses were lying”. However, Quenya may well have distinct verb\\nforms for this meaning. Published material provides no clues in this\\nmatter.\\n2.\\nI. Nauco hirn¨\\ne i harma.\\nJ. I Elda quent¨\\ne.\\nK. I rocco camp¨\\ne.\\nL. I aran mell¨\\ne Eldar (or . . . i Eldar with the article if the phrase “the\\nElves” is taken as referring to some particular Elves rather than the Elvish\\nrace in general)\\nM. N´\\ner tenc¨\\ne lemp¨\\ne parmar.\\nN. I t´\\nari ortan¨\\ne.\\nO. I arani haryaner alt¨\\ne harmar.\\nP. I aran ar i t´\\nari tultaner canta Eldar ar lemp¨\\ne Naucor.\\nLesson Seven\\n1.\\nA. Many Dwarves possess treasures.\\nB. The sun will rise and the birds will sing.\\nC. Six men will watch (/guard) the gate.\\nD. Every Man (= non-Elf human) will die.\\nE. All Men die.\\nF. A wise man reads many books.\\nG. Every star shines above the world.\\n321\\n\\n\\nH. The Elf seizes the Dwarf.\\nIn A, B, E, F, and G, the aorist tense is used to describe various\\n“general truths” that are more or less timeless. In H, the aorist is used\\nto describe a momentary, duration-less action.\\n2.\\nI. Ilya Elda ar ilya Atan.\\nJ. I Elda hiruva i Nauco.\\nK. I rocco cap¨\\ne or i Nauco.\\nL. I aran tur¨\\ne rimb¨\\ne ohtari ar turuva ilya Ambar.\\nM. I aran ar i t´\\nari cenduvar i parma.\\nN. I ohtar tur¨\\ne macil.\\nO. Ily¨\\ne r´\\navi matir hr´\\nav¨\\ne.\\nP. Enqu¨\\ne r´\\navi m´\\natar hr´\\nav¨\\ne.\\nIn K, the aorist describes a momentary, duration-less action. In L and\\nN, the aorist (tur¨\\ne) describes a general characteristic or “habit” of an\\nindividual: the king (always) controls many warriors, the warrior (gen-\\nerally, habitually) wields a sword. In O, the aorist describes a “general\\ntruth” about lions, contrasting with the present (continuative) tense\\nin P (m´\\natar = “are eating”), describing the ongoing activity of some\\nparticular lions instead.\\nLesson Eight\\n1.\\nA. The man has found the treasure.\\nB. The lions have eaten the flesh.\\nC. The king has summoned the queen.\\nD. The women have read the book.\\nE. The evil queen has seized the seven Dwarves.\\nF. You have written seven books.\\nG. I have spoken.\\nH. You have seen it.\\n2.\\nI. I n´\\ner ut´\\nuli¨\\ne.\\nJ. I otso Naucor am´\\natier.\\nK. I seldor ec´\\nenier r´\\na imb¨\\ne i aldar.\\nL. I enqu¨\\ne Eldar oroitier i otso Naucor.\\nM. I Nauco unurti¨\\ne harma.\\nN. Alaitien [or, alaitieny¨\\ne] i aran, an i aran el´\\neri¨\\ne ily¨\\ne m´\\noli.\\nO. Alantiel [or, alantiely¨\\ne], ar ec´\\nenienyes.\\nP. Em´\\netienyes.\\n322\\n\\n\\nLesson Nine\\n1.\\nA. [The] shining moon is rising over the world.\\nB. The jumping Dwarf fell through the floor.\\nC. I can hear a singing maiden.\\nD. One man wielding one sword will not terrify the eight mighty\\nwarriors.\\nE. A thrall seizing a mighty man is not wise.\\nF. The eight lions lying under the trees (a)rose, for the lions wanted\\nto eat the men.\\nG. A lion cannot stop eating [/cease to eat] flesh.\\nH. The terrifying warrior stopped watching [/ceased to watch] the\\npeople, for the warrior was not wise. (Another possible interpretation:\\n“stopped guarding” instead of “stopped watching”.)\\n2.\\nI. I n´\\ner roitala i Nauco n´\\na ohtar.\\nJ. I aran mern¨\\ne lelya.\\nK. I vend¨\\ne ´\\num¨\\ne verya cen¨\\ne i t´\\nari.\\nL. I l´\\nalala nissi lender mir i coa.\\nM. I tolto lelyala Naucor polir hir¨\\ne rimb¨\\ne harmar.\\nN. ´\\nUmel(y¨\\ne) laita i Elda, umil(y¨\\ne) laita i Atan, ar ´\\nuval(y¨\\ne)\\nlaita i Nauco.\\nO. Merin(y¨\\ne) lelya ter Ambar ar lerya ily¨\\ne lier.\\nP. Veryala n´\\ner lend¨\\ne ter i ando ar mir i oron.\\nThe key to Exercise K (“the maiden did not dare to see the queen”) is\\nthe only possible translation using the vocabulary I have provided to\\nfar, but I cannot say for certain that cen- “to see” can also be used in\\nthe sense “to meet”, which is how an English-speaking person would\\nnormally interpret this word used in such a context. But then “see” =\\ncen- may of course be used in its most basic sense, so that i vend¨\\ne\\n´\\num¨\\ne verya cen¨\\ne i t´\\nari may be interpreted “the maiden did not dare\\nto look at the queen”.\\nLesson Ten\\n1.\\nA. I love them deeply.\\nB. They sing beautifully, like (the) Elves.\\nC. All nine gates are watched.\\nD. They want to find it swiftly.\\n323\\n\\n\\nE. You have two books, and finally you have read them.\\nF. I have really [/truly/actually] seen an Elf.\\nG. The hidden treasure will not be found. (Possibly, the Quenya wording\\n´\\nuva hirna would suggest: ”. . . will not have been found”, referring to some\\nfuture situation.)\\nH. They did not want to do it, for seeing it was enough [/sufficed].\\n2.\\nI. Elendient¨\\ne nuldav¨\\ne ter i n´\\nor¨\\ne. (Surely you understood that “have\\ngone” was to be rendered by the perfect form of the verb lelya-, or did\\nyou start messing with lelyaina or something, desperate to bring\\nin a separate word for “gone”? No need. . . )\\nJ. I hostain¨\\ne Eldar merner cenitas.\\nK. T´\\necina lamb¨\\ne um¨\\ne ve qu´\\netina lamb¨\\ne.\\nL. Lemp¨\\ne ciryar ´\\numer farya; nert¨\\ne farner.\\nM. Anwav¨\\ne pustuvan [or, pustuvany¨\\ne] caritas.\\nN. Lintav¨\\ne hostanent¨\\ne i nert¨\\ne ruhtain¨\\ne Naucor.\\nO. Teldav¨\\ne cenuvalyet ve em´\\neriel(y¨\\ne) cenitat.\\nP. Umint¨\\ne mer¨\\ne hlaritas.\\nThe word order is certainly somewhat flexible; the adverbs in M, N,\\nand O could probably also follow the verb (e.g. hostanent¨\\ne lintav¨\\ne\\nfor “they swiftly gathered”). Cf. my own key to I. But when an object\\nor an infinitive is to follow, I find it slightly awkward to separate it\\nfrom the finite verb by inserting an adverb between them. Of course,\\nyou can always have the adverb at the end of the sentence as well.\\nLesson Eleven\\n1.\\nA. They found the dead warrior’s sword. (Genitive of former possessor.)\\nB. The stars of heaven are shining. (Genitive of location: the stars are in\\nheaven.)\\nC. I watched the woman’s eyes (dual). (Partitive genitive: the woman’s\\neyes are physically part of her.)\\nD. They shall see the King of Men and (of) all lands. (Genitive de-\\nscribing the relationship between a ruler and the ruled – people or territory.)\\nE. A house without floors is not a real house. (The preposition ´\\nu “with-\\nout” is followed by genitive, hence ´\\nu talamion in Quenya.)\\nF. The queen’s evil brothers want to rule the peoples of the world.\\n(I t´\\nario ´\\numi¨\\ne torni: genitive of family relationship. Ambaro lier: genitive\\nof location – the peoples are in the world.)\\n324\\n\\n\\nG. The horns of the animals are big. (Partitive genitive, as in Exercise B\\nabove.)\\nH. The ten lions quickly ate the flesh of the horse. (I rocco hr´\\nav¨\\ne “the\\nhorse’s flesh” – genitive of source, the flesh coming from the horse. Notice\\nthat the noun rocco “horse” is unchanged in the genitive singular, since it\\nends in -o already.)\\n2.\\nI. Menelo aiwi [or, (i) aiwi Menelo] cenuvar cainen ohtari\\nimb¨\\ne i alt¨\\ne s´\\nıri. (Menelo aiwi “the birds of heaven” – genitive of loca-\\ntion.)\\nJ. I arano m´\\nol [or, (i) m´\\nol i arano] ulyan¨\\ne limp¨\\ne mir (i) analta\\ni yulmaron [or, mir i yulmaron analta]. (I arano m´\\nol “the king’s\\nthrall” – genitive denoting the relationship between the ruler and the ruled,\\nor various relationships between people in general. Notice ulyan¨\\ne as the past\\ntense “poured” in the transitive sense. [I] analta i yulmaron or i yulmaron\\nanalta: “the biggest of the cups”, partitive genitive – the biggest cup being\\none of all the cups mentioned. Cf. Tolkien’s elenion ancalma “brightest of\\n[/among] stars”.)\\nK. I Eldo toron [or, (i) toron i Eldo] hostan¨\\ne (i) cainen parmar\\nelenion.(I Eldo toron “the Elf’s brother”: genitive of family relationship.\\nNotice that when the genitive ending -o is added to a noun like ending in -a,\\nlike Elda, it displaces this final vowel. (I) cainen parmar elenion “the ten\\nbooks about stars”: the genitive being used in the sense “about, concerning”.\\nPerhaps the word order elenion cainen parmar is also possible, but it feels\\nless natural.)\\nL. (I) alta s´\\nır¨\\ne i n´\\nor¨\\neo [or, i n´\\nor¨\\neo alta s´\\nır¨\\ne] ull¨\\ne mir cilya. ([I]\\nalta s´\\nır¨\\ne i n´\\nor¨\\neo ” the great river of the land” – genitive of location. Notice\\null¨\\ne as the past tense “poured” in the transitive sense; contrast ulyan¨\\ne in\\nExercise J above.)\\nM. N´\\ner ´\\nu anto um¨\\ne pol¨\\ne quet¨\\ne. (The preposition ´\\nu is followed by\\ngenitive, but here it the genitive ending is “invisible”, since the noun anto\\n“mouth” ends in -o already.)\\nN. Ec´\\nenien (i) analta ily¨\\ne orontion nu Menel.(Partitive genitive;\\ncf. Exercise J above.)\\nO. Merin hir¨\\ne n´\\nor¨\\ne ´\\nu alt¨\\ne lamnion ve r´\\navi. (The preposition ´\\nu is\\nfollowed by genitive; hence lamnion here.)\\nP. Cenuval(y¨\\ne) laman ´\\nu rasseto. (Genitive after ´\\nu; rasseto dual gen-\\nitive of rass¨\\ne “horn”.)\\nLesson Twelve\\n1.\\nA. Both phrases may be rendered “the wine of the Elves”. However,\\nthe genitive phrase i limp¨\\ne Eldaron implies “the wine coming\\n325\\n\\n\\nfrom the Elves”, sc. wine somehow originating with or obtained\\nfrom the Elves. On the other hand, the possessive phrase i limp¨\\ne\\nEldaiva implies “wine owned by the Elves” at the time which is\\nbeing considered, irrespective of the origin of the wine.\\nB. You have (/possess) a cup of gold.(Yulma maltava “cup of gold”:\\nthe possessive-adjectival case used in its “compositive” sense, denoting what\\nsomething is made of.)\\nC. The horse of the Elf [/the Elf’s horse] has fallen into the deep\\ngorge. (I rocco i Eldava “the Elf’s horse”: possessive case used of current\\nownership. One could argue that Tolkienian Elves seem to be so close to their\\nhorses that to them, their steeds are more like family members than posses-\\nsions, and then it would be more appropriate to use the genitive case: i rocco\\ni Eldo or i Eldo rocco. But as I said in the Introduction, the “Elves” of\\nthese exercises are not necessarily Tolkienian Elves.)\\nD. Men of peace will not be warriors. (Neri s´\\nereva “men of peace”:\\npossessive-adjectival case used of a permanent characteristic.)\\nE. Great walls of stone hid the houses of the ten richest men of the\\ncity. (Rambar ondova “walls of stone”: compositive -va. I coar i cainen\\nanaly¨\\ne neriva “the houses of the ten richest men”: possessive case used of\\ncurrent ownership. [neri] i osto “[men] of the city”: genitive of location, the\\nmen being in the city. Notice that the word osto is here inflected for genitive,\\nthough the ending -o is invisible since this noun already ends in -o. Cf. also\\nExercises L and N below.)\\nF. The house of the king’s sister [or, the king’s sister’s house] is red.\\n(In the phrase i coa i arano selerwa, the genitive i arano “the king’s” is\\ndependent on selerwa “sister’s”, which possessive form in turn points back to\\ni coa “the house”. The genitive refers to a family relationship, the possessive\\nto the current ownership of the house. I coa i selerwa i arano, “the house\\nof the sister of the king”, would be a clearer wording.)\\nG. One of the thralls has seized the sword of the king. (Min¨\\ne i m´\\nolion\\n“one of the thralls”: partitive genitive; i macil i aranwa “the sword of the\\nking”: the possessive case used of current ownership. Of course, if the thrall\\nruns away with the sword of the king, it eventually turns into i macil i arano\\ninstead, the genitive indicating former possession. If the rebellious thrall kills\\nthe king with his own sword, this action would produce the same effect im-\\nmediately, the king instantly being reduced to a former possessor: I macil\\ni aranwa enters the king’s chest, i macil i arano comes out through his\\nback.)\\nH. The maiden’s brother found all the treasures of the eleven Dwarves\\nbetween the four horns of the white mountains. (I vend¨\\neo toron\\n“the maiden’s brother”: genitive of family relationship; i harmar i minqu¨\\ne\\nNaucoiva “the treasures of the eleven Dwarves”: possessive case denoting\\n326\\n\\n\\ncurrent ownership. I canta rassi i ninqui orontion “the four horns of the\\nwhite mountains”, either partitive genitive if the horns are perceived as being\\npart of the mountains, or genitive of location if the horns are thought of as\\nbeing in the mountains.)\\n2.\\nI. S´\\nıri limpeva uller mir i nero anto [or, mir (i) anto i nero].\\n(S´\\nıri limpeva “rivers of wine”: compositive -va. I nero anto “the man’s\\nmouth”: partitive genitive, the man’s mouth being part of him. Also notice\\nuller, not ulyaner, as the intransitive past tense of ulya- “to pour”.)\\nJ. I seldoron seler [or, (i) seler i seldoron] hostan¨\\ne (i) engwi\\ni seldoiva ar lend¨\\ne mir (i) coa i t´\\nariva. (The genitive phrase\\ni seldoron seler “the boy’s sister” refers to a family relationship; the pos-\\nsessive forms seldoiva and t´\\nariva have to do with current ownership of the\\n“things” and the “house”, respectively.)\\nK. One possibility: (I) muil¨\\ne i nissiva varyan¨\\ne alta harma mal-\\ntava. (In the phrase harma maltava “treasure of gold”, the -va case is used\\nin the same sense as in Exercise B above – but “the secrecy of women” can\\nbe rendered in various ways. Using the possessive-adjectival case as suggested\\nhere, it refers to “the secrecy of the women” as a more or less permanent at-\\ntribute of theirs. But one might also use the genitive, i nission muil¨\\ne or (i)\\nmuil¨\\ne i nission, focusing rather on the women’s “secrecy” at the particular\\ntime in the past which is being related. One might even interpret it as a kind\\nof subject genitive, “the women” being the ones who are secretive and thus\\nthe subjects of the secrecy.)\\nL. One possibility: I minqu¨\\ne ohtari ´\\numer pol¨\\ne varya (i) s´\\ner¨\\ne\\ni osto [or, i osto s´\\ner¨\\ne], an alta morni¨\\ne lantan¨\\ne. (Rendering\\n“the peace of the city” as i s´\\ner¨\\ne i osto, using the genitive case, would focus\\non the “peace” of the “city” as its attribute at one specific time – the peace\\nemanating from the city, so to speak. Conceivably it could also be interpreted\\nas a genitive of location, the peace being in the city. Certainly one might\\nalso say (i) s´\\ner¨\\ne i ostova, using the possessive case, but then we are rather\\ntalking about peace as a permanent attribute of the city, and the message of\\nthis sentence is that the peace did not prove to be quite permanent after all.\\nBut a Quenya-speaking Mayor, expressing a pious wish “may the peace of the\\ncity last forever”, might well say ostova.)\\nM. One possibility: Lelyuvant¨\\ne ter n´\\nor¨\\ne alt¨\\ne aldaiva ar rimb¨\\ne\\nondoiva, an merint¨\\ne cen¨\\ne (i) osto i taura ohtarwa. (N´\\nor¨\\ne\\nalt¨\\ne aldaiva ar rimb¨\\ne ondoiva “a land of great trees and [of] many rocks”:\\nthe possessive-adjectival case describing characteristic features of the “land”.\\n(I) osto i taura ohtarwa is the most natural translation of “the city of the\\nmighty warrior” if we imagine him to be still alive, somehow “owning” the\\ncity where he dwells. But of course we may also be talking about a long-dead\\nwarrior who has brought fame to the city where he once lived, and then it\\n327\\n\\n\\nwould be more natural to use the genitive case, denoting a former possessor:\\n(i) osto i taura ohtaro or i taura ohtaro osto. This wording might also\\nbe appropriate if the “warrior” happens to have founded the city in question,\\nsince the genitive case may denote an originator – living or dead.)\\nN. One possibility: Ramba muil´\\neva varyan¨\\ne (i) nurtaina malta\\ni osto [or, i osto nurtaina malta], ar ´\\numen hiritas. (Ramba\\nmuil´\\neva “a wall of secrecy”: the -va case is used in its compositive sense,\\nthe metaphorical wall being “made of” secrecy. Notice the lengthening of the\\nfinal vowel in muil¨\\ne “secrecy” when the ending -va is added, as seems to be\\ncharacteristic of words with ui in their second-to-last syllable; cf. the attested\\nexample huin´\\neva “of gloom”. – If we translate “the hidden gold of the city”\\nusing a genitive as suggested here – (i) nurtaina malta i osto – it would\\nprobably be a genitive of location: the “hidden gold” is in the “city”. But if\\nwe take the word “city” as referring primarily to the people of the city, we\\nmight rather use the possessive case of current ownership: i nurtaina malta\\ni ostova.)\\nO. (I) n´\\nor¨\\ne (i) Eldaiva n´\\na n´\\nor¨\\ne rimb¨\\ne vany¨\\ne engw´\\nıva; n´\\nor¨\\ne\\n´\\nu Eldaron n´\\na n´\\nor¨\\ne morni´\\neva, an i Atani i n´\\nor¨\\neo [or, i\\nn´\\nor¨\\neo Atani] umir hlar¨\\ne (i) alya lamb¨\\ne (i) Eldaiva. (Possibly\\nEldaiva should here receive the article i in both of its occurrences, since the\\nreference may not be to “Elves” as a race, but rather to “the” particular\\nElves living in a particular country. Anyhow, these possessive forms refer\\nto current ownership of the land [n´\\nor¨\\ne] and the language [lamb¨\\ne]. In the\\nphrases n´\\nor¨\\ne rimb¨\\ne vany¨\\ne engw´\\nıva “a land of many beautiful things” and\\nn´\\nor¨\\ne morni´\\neva “land of darkness”, the possessive-adjectival case describes\\ncharacteristic features of the “land”; cf. Exercise M above. Notice the long\\nvowels of engw´\\nıva and morni´\\neva. The former represents earlier engweiva\\n[engw¨\\ne + -iva], the diphthong ei later becoming long ´\\nı, whereas in morni´\\neva\\nthe final -¨\\ne of morni¨\\ne “darkness” is lengthened because the word ends in two\\nshort syllables. – In the phrase ´\\nu Eldaron “without Elves”, the preposition\\n´\\nu regularly governs the genitive case. – In accordance with Tolkien’s usage in\\none late source, one might also use the genitive in the phrase “language of\\nthe Elves”, hence Eldaron instead of Eldaiva, but this would contradict what\\nTolkien wrote elsewhere.)\\nP. I arano sello hostal¨\\ne parmaiva Eldaron. (I arano sello “the\\nking’s sister’s”: the first genitive refers to a family relationship, but sello\\nhostal¨\\ne “sister’s gathering” is an example of subject genitive: the king’s sis-\\nter is the subject carrying out the “gathering”. Parmaiva “of books”: the\\npossessive-adjectival case here takes on the function of object genitive, the\\n“books” being the objects of the “gathering”. Eldaron “of Elves” or “about\\nElves”: the genitive case is used in its most abstract sense of “about” or “con-\\ncerning”, as in the attested example Quenta Silmarillion = “the Story of\\nthe Silmarils”.)\\n328\\n\\n\\nLesson Thirteen\\n1.\\nA. The man gave the woman a gift.\\nB. The sun gives light to the world.\\nC. We (inclusive) will find the treasure, and we (inclusive) will give\\nit to the twelve Dwarves.\\nD. Eating flesh makes one fat, and we (inclusive) don’t want fat\\nbodies, for fat bodies are not beautiful.\\nE. We (exclusive) went into the city (in order) to find the wise\\nwomen, for we (exclusive) wanted to see them.\\nF. A man having good ideas is wise and will give [or, bring] peace\\nand joy to the city.\\nG. We (exclusive) have summoned them (in order) to speak of/about\\nmany things.\\nH. Drinking wine isn’t good for one’s body.\\n2.\\nI. Quen ´\\nan¨\\ne i ohtaren alta macil. (Notice the helping vowel -e- intrud-\\ning between ohtar and the ending -n, to avoid the impossible form **ohtarn.)\\nJ. Cari¨\\ne coa i seldoin n´\\na m´\\nara noa. (Here the gerund cari¨\\ne “making”\\ntakes both a direct and an indirect object – coa and i seldoin, respectively.)\\nK. Mahtalm¨\\ne s´\\neren; mahti¨\\ne um¨\\ne anta i lien alass¨\\ne, an ec´\\neni-\\nelm¨\\ne i cala.\\nL. Queti¨\\ne i Eldalamb¨\\ne n´\\na alta alass¨\\ne Atanin. (Possibly alta alass¨\\ne\\nis not a perfect translation of “great joy”, since the adjective alta primarily\\nmeans “great = big” with reference to physical size – but we have no word for\\n“great” in a less concrete sense.)\\nM. (I) ohtari i atta n´\\norion [or, i atta n´\\norion ohtari] mahtuvar i\\nlient, ar lelyuvamm¨\\ne ter alta morni¨\\ne hirien cala.(Alternative-\\nly “the two lands”, not just “the [twin] peoples”, might also be expressed as a\\ndual form here: i n´\\noret, genitive i n´\\noreto, instead of i atta n´\\norion.)\\nN. I neri arw¨\\ne i m´\\nara limp¨\\neo merner yulmar sucien i limp¨\\ne,\\nar i arano m´\\noli ´\\naner i nerin rasta yulmar maltava.(Notice\\ngenitive following arwa [here pl. arw¨\\ne], hence limp¨\\neo.)\\nO. Merimm¨\\ne lelya mir i osto lerien ily¨\\ne Atani ar antien (i)\\nmalta i aranwa i m´\\nolin. (Notice that while the phrase “we want to\\ngo” certainly expresses a purpose, “go” should here be rendered as a simple\\ninfinitive lelya, not as a gerund in dative, since **merimm¨\\ne lelien = “we\\nwant [in order] to go” would make no sense. On the other hand, the “in order”\\ntest reveals that the verbs lerya- “to free” and anta- “to give” should appear\\nas gerunds in dative, sc. lerien and antien: “We want to go into the city\\n[in order] to free all Men and [in order] to give the gold of the king to the\\nthralls.”)\\n329\\n\\n\\nP. (I) rambar i osto [or, i osto rambar] nar alt¨\\ne; ac´\\narielmet\\nvarien i li¨\\ne. (Varien: dative gerund of varya- “to protect”.)\\n(In these keys we do not list all the possible variations in word order,\\nlike saying ac´\\narielmet i li¨\\ne varien instead of ac´\\narielmet varien i\\nli¨\\ne.)\\nLesson Fourteen\\n1.\\nA. We (inclusive) will go from the tower to the house. (Alternative\\ninterpretation: “out of the tower”, “into the house”.)\\nB. All Elves have passed [/disappeared] from the world.\\nC. The Dwarves have come from [or, out of] the mountains; they\\nhave gone to [or, into] the houses and are drinking our (incl.)\\nwine.\\nD. The evil warriors will seize the gold of our (incl.) people [in order]\\nto send our (incl.) treasures to a remote land.\\nE. The woman went away from my house and went to the river.\\nF. The first ship will come from the West.\\nG. One fears the lions [Quenya: ”. . . feels fear from the lions”], for\\nthey have eaten the king of our (exclusive) people, and they will\\nnot go away from our (exclusive) land [or simply: ”. . . will not\\nleave our land”.] (Since r´\\na “lion” has the stem-form r´\\nav-, and **r´\\navllon\\nis not a possible word, the plural ablative would presumably require a connect-\\ning vowel, which is -i- in the case of plural words: Hence we used r´\\navillon\\nas the pl. ablative of r´\\na. Also notice liemmo as the genitive of liemma “our\\npeople”.)\\nH. Nessim¨\\ne said [or, says] to Calandil: “My son has disappeared from\\nmy room!”\\n2.\\nI. Equ¨\\ne Calandil Nessimenna: “Yondolya elendi¨\\ne [or, oanti¨\\ne]\\net i coallo, an ily¨\\ne i seldor lender [or, oanter = “went away”]\\ni ambonna.” (The word et may be omitted, since the simple ablative i\\ncoallo can express “out of the house” by itself – but without et, the ablative\\nmight just as well be interpreted “[away] from the house”.)\\nJ. Menello Anar ant¨\\nea cala Ambarelman [dative!], ar i mor-\\nni¨\\ne av´\\nani¨\\ne. (Perhaps Menelello with a connecting vowel -e- would also\\nbe a valid ablative form of Menel. Notice that “to our world” should in this\\ncontext be a dative rather than an allative form; cf. Exercise B in Lesson\\nThirteen above. But perhaps allative Ambarelmanna would also be possible,\\nthe meaning being: “the Sun is giving [out] light [which is going] to our world”.\\nThe dative and allative cases are closely related; the lay-out of the Plotz letter\\n330\\n\\n\\nsuggests that the dative in -n may have originated as a shorter variant of the\\nallative in -nna.)\\nK. Equ¨\\ne Calandil i ´\\num¨\\nea aranna: “Ementiel(y¨\\ne) ohtarilyar i\\nmindonna hirien yondonyar. M´\\nolinya varyuva i seldor, ar\\n´\\nuvant¨\\ne vanw¨\\ne!”(Alternative allative forms of aran, mindon might be\\naranenna, mindonenna. Notice how the ending -nya always prefers -i- as\\nits connecting vowel where one is required, hence “my thrall” = m´\\nolinya. On\\nthe other hand, ohtarilyar “your warriors” shows -i-only because the word\\nis plural, cf. also m´\\nolimmar “our thralls” in Exercise N below. According to\\nthe system we have tried to make out, the singular forms would be ohtarelya\\n“your warrior”, m´\\nolemma “our thrall”. – Possibly “my sons” could also be\\nexpressed as a contracted form yonyar [instead of yondonyar], but yonya\\n“my son” [LR:61] may primarily be used as a form of address.)\\nL. I n´\\ner arwa i ciryaron mern¨\\ne auta, ar ily¨\\ne i ciryar oanter\\nN´\\numenna.\\nM. Lendemm¨\\ne sambenta, ar i n´\\ner i ambollon [or, ambollor]\\n´\\nan¨\\ne yondolyan [dative!] alta macil, qu´\\netala: “I macil tul¨\\ne\\nhaira n´\\norello, (et) anhaira N´\\numello.”\\nN. Ily¨\\ne aldar firner ar v´\\naner n´\\norelmallo, ar equ¨\\ne Calandil\\nar Nessim¨\\ne: “Mentuvamm¨\\ne m´\\nolimmar hirien n´\\nor¨\\ne arwa\\nrimb¨\\ne aldaron.” (Notice that the verb equ¨\\ne does not receive the ending\\n-r even where it has multiple subjects.)\\nO. I vend¨\\ne quent¨\\ne i lamnenna: “Rucin(y¨\\ne) alt¨\\ne rasselyalto.”\\n(Since vend¨\\ne is a common noun and not a proper name, the special verb equ¨\\ne\\nshould not be used here. As for the “fear” = “feel fear from” construction, cf.\\nExercise G above. An alternative allative form of laman “animal” might be\\nlamanna as a contraction of laman-nna [instead of involving the stem-form\\nlamn-, necessitating the addition of a connecting vowel before -nna can be\\nadded].)\\nP. Lenden(y¨\\ne) sambelmanna hostien engwenyar, an mer-\\nnen(y¨\\ne) anta torninyan minya parmanya; i parma caitan¨\\ne\\ni talamenna. (“My brother”: we go for torninya [here with the dative\\nending -n], formed from toron, torn- “brother” with the connecting vowel -i-\\nthat is preferred by the ending -nya “my”. Perhaps toronya, for toron-nya,\\nwould also be possible [dative toronyan]. Talamenna as the allative of ta-\\nlan “floor” takes into account the stem-form talam-, but perhaps talanna\\nfor talan-nna would also be an acceptable form.)\\nAdditional exercises:\\n3.\\na) From our (incl.) houses\\nb) For my body\\n331\\n\\n\\nc) For our (incl.) bodies\\nd) Our (incl.) tongues (nominative)\\ne) To your land\\nf) Our (excl.) things (nominative)\\ng) From your king\\nh) Of my thrall\\ni) Of my thralls\\nj) To our (incl.) cities\\nk) Of our (dual incl.) people [= “of the people of the two of us”]\\nl) Of your son\\nm) Our (excl.) two-room apartment (nominative) (Translating dual forms\\nof samb¨\\ne “room” as “two-room apartment”!)\\nn) For my two-room apartment\\no) Of your two-room apartment\\np) To our (incl.) two-room apartment\\nq) From your two-room apartment\\nr) Of my people\\ns) Of our (incl.) sons\\nt) For your queen\\nu) Of our (excl.) peoples\\nv) Of my men\\nw) Of my man\\nx) For my boys\\ny) From our (excl.) [two sister] ships (dual)\\nz) Of our (dual incl.) son [= “of the son of the two of us”]\\n4.\\na) Ambolyannar\\nb) S´\\neremman\\nc) Parmalyat\\nd) Mindonelyanna / mindonilyannar (Notice how -e- functions as a\\nconnecting vowel in the singular, whereas -i- is used in the plural.)\\ne) T´\\narimmava\\nf) Sellinyaiva\\ng) Sellinyallo (Notice how the ending -nya “my” prefers -i- as its connecting\\nvowel even in the singular, as here following seler, sell- “sister”. Cf. also\\nexercises M, N, U, Y below.)\\n332\\n\\n\\nh) Annalmaron\\ni) Maltalmo\\nj) Alasselman\\nk) Limpelyo\\nl) Ambarelyallo\\nm) Anarinyo\\nn) Aranyan (for aran-nya-n; alternatively araninyan with a connecting\\nvowel inserted)\\no) Yondommava\\np) Yulmammaron\\nq) Aiwelyant\\nr) Rambammanta\\ns) Rambalmalto\\nt) N´\\norelyallon [alternatively, n´\\norelyallor]\\nu) Sellinyato(we assume that the ending -nya “my” prefers -i- as its con-\\nnecting vowel in dual forms as well)\\nv) Harmammaron\\nw) Roccolmannar\\nx) Coalvo\\ny) Torninyan (or perhaps toronyan for toron-nya-n, irrespective of torn-\\nas the normal stem-form of toron “brother”)\\nz) Aldammannar\\nLesson Fifteen\\n1.\\nA. (S)he [or, it] will come on the second day.\\nB. In the winter[,] many birds go away to dwell in [the] South; after\\nthe winter they go away from [the] South [or, leave the South]\\nand come to our (incl.) land.\\nC. His/her finding gold in the mountains gave joy to his/her people,\\nfor his/her finding it made his/her people rich.\\nD. In [the] second winter that (s)he lived in the house[,] (s)he found\\na treasure under the floor.\\nE. (S)he speaks our tongue, for (s)he dwells (/lives) in our (incl.)\\nland.\\nF. (S)he says/said: “I saw a sword in the warrior’s left hand.” (Notice\\nthe shortening of the long vowel of m´\\na before a consonant cluster: locative\\nmass¨\\ne.)\\n333\\n\\n\\nG. The man who found the treasure will hide the things which he has\\nfound in his two-room apartment (. . . if we continue to translate dual\\nforms of samb¨\\ne “room” as “two-room apartment”, that is. Notice that the\\nsecond i of the Quenya sentence is the relative pronoun “who”, not the article\\n“the”. The relative pronoun ya “which” here appears in the form yar, a plural\\nending being attached, because it refers back to the plural word “things”: We\\nassume that ya is inflected as a noun in -a. This yar should not be confused\\nwith the attested form yar “to whom”, which is not plural but has the old\\nallative ending -r [as in mir “into”] attached.)\\nH. On the hill[,] (s)he sees the couple whom (s)he has watched from\\nhis/her house, and to whom (s)he gave his/her gift. (We assume\\nthat the relative pronoun ya would appear with dual endings when referring\\nto a dual word: yat, dative yant.)\\n2.\\nI. Cennes veru i malless¨\\ne.\\nJ. Hirnen(y¨\\ne) i n´\\nıs i mar¨\\ne i coass¨\\ne imb¨\\ne i s´\\nıri, ar tirnen(y¨\\ne)\\np´\\neryat ar m´\\naryat; hyarya m´\\naryass¨\\ne cennen(y¨\\ne) parma.\\n(Notice that the second i of this sentence functions as a relative pronoun\\n“who”, not as an article. Cf. exercise G above: i n´\\ner i. . . “the man who. . . ”)\\nK. Cennen(y¨\\ne) yulmarya m´\\naryats¨\\ne, i yulma yallo ulyanes\\nlimp¨\\ne mir antorya (or, antoryanna, using a simple allative instead\\nof the preposition mir).\\nL. I marir i mindonissen yannar lely¨\\nea i n´\\ner nar ohtari. (Notice\\nthe word order: the verb immediately follows yannar “to which”, just like it\\nimmediately follows yassen “in which” in our attested example in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne.\\nBut it may well be that . . . yannar i n´\\ner lely¨\\nea would be equally possible.)\\nM. Sucitarya i limp¨\\ne ´\\num¨\\ne m´\\nara noa, an ya carnes apa suci-\\ntaryas ´\\num¨\\ne saila.(Maybe the initial sucitarya could just as well be\\nsucierya – the pronominal ending being attached to the gerund of suc- “to\\ndrink”.)\\nN. Apa oantemm¨\\ne n´\\noremmallo (i) Hyarmess¨\\ne, ec´\\neniemm¨\\ne\\nrimb¨\\ne Naucor i mallessen.\\nO. I mindoni i ambossen nar alt¨\\ne; i harya i analta mindon,\\nyallo pol¨\\ne quen cen¨\\ne i Eldan´\\nor¨\\ne, n´\\na i analya n´\\ner i ostoss¨\\ne.\\n(. . . yallo pol¨\\ne quen cen¨\\ne, literally “from which can one see”: I assume\\nthat in a phrase like pol¨\\ne cen¨\\ne “can see”, with a finite verb followed by an\\ninfinitive, it is only the finite verb that is relocated to immediately follow a\\nrelative pronoun like yallo. But we lack attested examples, of course; perhaps\\nit should be yallo pol¨\\ne cen¨\\ne quen with the subject following the entire verb\\nphrase. And for all I know, yallo quen pol¨\\ne cen¨\\ne with an “English” word\\norder may also be permissible.)\\n334\\n\\n\\nP. Li¨\\ne yo aran n´\\na saila maruva s´\\neress¨\\ne m´\\nara n´\\noress¨\\ne ya\\nmeluvant¨\\ne n´\\nurav¨\\ne. (If ya can really be inflected in the same way as a\\nnoun in -a, as suggested by the example yassen, the genitive “whose” would\\nin the singular be yo – the group -ao being simplified to -o as usual.)\\nLesson Sixteen\\n1.\\nA. (S)he has come from the East on a white horse. (Of course, the\\ninstrumental form in -nen does not really mean “on” but implies “by means\\nof” – the horse being identified as the means of travel. It is not entirely\\nobvious how rocconen is best translated in English, so the precise wording\\nof the translation is unimportant as long as the student clearly grasps the\\nmeaning of the instrumental form itself. One might well translate:\\n”. . . riding a white horse”, though no element actually meaning\\n“riding” is present.)\\nB. The man wounded the lion with a spear, and he said: “Don’t eat\\nmy son!”\\nC. We (excl.) said to the Elf: “Our (incl.) friendship is renewed by\\nyour gift!”\\nD. On the third day (s)he said to the maiden: “Do what you want!”\\n(. . . ya merily¨\\ne = “[that] which you want”.)\\nE. One cannot find a treasure hidden by Dwarves, for a Dwarf loves\\ndeeply the gold that he possesses.\\nF. The man is wounded by [the] horns (dual) of the animal; wish\\nthat he will not die! (literally: “be it that he will not die!” Possible, but\\nrather less probable interpretation: ”. . . that it will not die!” – referring to\\nthe animal! If the ending -s is to cover both “he”, “she” and “it”, one can’t\\nalways be quite certain where the sympathies of the speaker really lie. . . )\\nG. (S)he is singing with joy(/because of joy).\\nH. Go to the city and say to the mighty queen: “May you protect our\\n(incl.) land from the evil warriors!” (Nai varyuvaly¨\\ne n´\\norelma. . . =\\nliterally “be it that you will protect our land. . . ”)\\nNOTE ON EHT¨\\nE “SPEAR”: In exercise B, I used ehtenen as the instrumental\\nform of this noun. In the Etymologies, Tolkien first derived this word from ekte,\\nbut according to a note by the editor, a variant reading ekti was also introduced.\\nIf we accept this latter version, so that Quenya eht¨\\ne “spear” is to be derived from\\nprimitive Elvish ekti, the Quenya word should probably have the stem-form ehti- so\\nthat the instrumental form would be ehtinen rather than ehtenen. But the plural\\ninstrumental form should probably be eht´\\nınen (as in Exercise K below) no matter\\nwhich “etymology” we prefer, since eht´\\nınen could represent both ehti+inen (two\\nshort i’s merging into one long ´\\nı) and ehte+inen (ei regularly becoming long ´\\nı).\\n335\\n\\n\\n2.\\nI. Eques [or, quentes] i Nauconna: “ ´\\nA rac¨\\ne i yulma namba-\\nnen!”\\nJ. Ciryanen oanten(y¨\\ne) haira n´\\norenna R´\\nomess¨\\ne.\\nK. I osto n´\\na varyaina alt¨\\ne rambainen, ar ohtari i mahtar\\neht´\\nınen umir pol¨\\ne rac¨\\ne i rambar.\\nL. Equ¨\\ne Calandil harna yondoryanna: “ ´\\nAva fir¨\\ne!”(Alternatively:\\nCalandil quent¨\\ne harna yondoryanna. . . )\\nM. Nai t´\\narilya hiruva i y´\\nana airinta (i) Eldainen!\\nN. I aran ar i t´\\nari lender coanyanna ar envinyat´\\naner nilmem-\\nma alt¨\\ne annainen.\\nO. Mapas i seldo m´\\naryanten, ar eques [or, quetis]: “ ´\\nAva lelya\\ni s´\\nırenna!”\\nP. I n´\\nıs i mar¨\\ne i nelya coass¨\\ne i malless¨\\ne quent¨\\ne i Eldanna:\\n“´\\nA tir¨\\ne i neri i t´\\nular i y´\\nanallo ya cenil(y¨\\ne) i amboss¨\\ne, i\\nlelyar R´\\nomenna.”\\nLesson Seventeen\\n1.\\nA. This thing is the sword found by Calandil [the] Tall. (Calandil\\nHallanen “by C. [the] Tall”: notice how the case ending for instrumental is\\nadded to the last word of the phrase.)\\nB. All animals have disappeared from this land (n´\\nor¨\\ne sinallo = “from\\nthis land”; again notice how the case ending, here for ablative, is added to\\nthe last word – the demonstrative sina “this”. However, n´\\norello sina would\\nperhaps be equally possible.)\\nC. A snake wounded his/her right arm, and (s)he said: “Wish that\\nall snakes will [or, would] die!” (Rancurya = “his [or, her] arm”; notice\\nhow ranco “arm” appears in the form rancu- before endings, since it is a\\nU-stem. Possibly, the dual “pair of arms” would also have the form rancu,\\nbut if that form were intended here, we would also see the extra dual marker -t\\nfollowing the ending -rya. Cf. m´\\naryat = “her (pair of) hands” in Nam´\\nari¨\\ne.)\\nD. That night, they found that Dwarf on the hill over there [literally:\\non yonder hill]. (L´\\nom¨\\ne yanass¨\\ne = “in that night”, but English would sim-\\nply say “that night” in such a context. Yana may signify “that” of something\\nthat existed formerly or in the past, and since the reference is to a night in the\\npast, this word is appropriate here – if we have reconstructed Tolkien’s inten-\\ntions correctly! Cf. also hr´\\nıv¨\\ne yanass¨\\ne ”in/during that winter” in exercise H\\nbelow. Nauco tana: “that Dwarf”, the word tana “that” simply focusing on\\nindividual identity. Ambo entass¨\\ne: “on yonder hill, on the hill over there”:\\nthe word enta apparently means “that” with emphasis on spatial position.)\\n336\\n\\n\\nE. The tall ships have passed away north(wards); those ships will\\nnot come to the lands of (the) South. (Ciryar tan¨\\ne “those ships”: we\\nsurmise that tana “that” can have the plural form tan¨\\ne “those”, the demon-\\nstrative behaving like an adjective.)\\nF. On the fourth day, that queen died by [/from] the poison of a\\nsnake. (T´\\nari yana: “that queen” of a queen who is dead, yana being used\\nof something that is past – but “that queen” could probably also be t´\\nari tana,\\nmerely focusing on personal identity.)\\nG. The strong arms of the men from (the) North can seize the spears\\nfrom fighting warriors. (Ohtari mahtalallon “from fighting warriors”:\\nnotice how the word ohtari “warriors” receives only the simplest plural end-\\ning, normally associated with the nominative case, but the plural ablative end-\\ning -llon added to the participle mahtala “fighting” indicates that the whole\\nphrase is in the ablative case. – The word order mahtala ohtarillon would\\nbe equally possible: Here the ablative ending is added to the noun “warriors”,\\nsince it is now the last word of the phrase.)\\nH. That winter, they lived (/dwelt) in the fourth house of that road\\n(/street). (Hr´\\nıv¨\\ne yanass¨\\ne: locative “during/in that winter”; cf. Exercise\\nD above. Mall¨\\ne tano “of that road”, genitive of mall¨\\ne tana “that road” –\\nthe genitive ending -o displacing a final -a as usual.)\\n2.\\nI. ´\\nA tir¨\\ne Nauco tana, ar ´\\nava tir¨\\ne Elda sina! (Alternatively Nauco\\nenta = “yonder Dwarf” = “that Dwarf over there”.)\\nJ. N´\\nor¨\\ne ´\\nu angwion n´\\na m´\\nara n´\\nor¨\\ne, an rimb¨\\ne Atani if´\\nırier an-\\ngusangwanen. ( ´\\nU angwion “without snakes”: as the student hopefully\\nremembers, the preposition ´\\nu “without” governs the genitive case. Angusang-\\nwanen “by snake-poison”: notice how the U-stem noun ango “snake” appears\\nas angu- in a compound.)\\nK. I cant¨\\nea l´\\nomiss¨\\ne cennen(y¨\\ne) ruhtala ohtar mall¨\\ne tanass¨\\ne,\\nar ortanen(y¨\\ne) rancunyat. (Alternatively mall¨\\ne entass¨\\ne = “on yon-\\nder road”, “on that road [over there]”. Rancuryat “my arms” is here unmis-\\ntakably dual, because of the dual ending -t following the pronominal ending\\n-nya “my”. Compare/contrast Exercise C above.)\\nL. Nai Calandil Hallo polda yondo [or, . . . i polda yondo Ca-\\nlandil Hallo] tuluva n´\\nor¨\\ne sinanna, an varyuvas ostor sin¨\\ne\\nyassen marilm¨\\ne!(As in Exercise A above, the case ending is added to\\nthe last word of the phrase Calandil Halla “Calandil [the] Tall”, and as\\nin the attested example Elendil Vorondo “of Elendil the Faithful [Elendil\\nVoronda]”, the genitive ending displaces a final -a.)\\nM. Mindon enta n´\\na i cant¨\\nea mindon carna Eldainen n´\\nor¨\\ne\\nsinass¨\\ne.\\nN. Parmar tan¨\\ne nar vanw¨\\ne; av´\\nanient¨\\ne sambelyallo.\\n337\\n\\n\\nO. Aur¨\\ne entass¨\\ne cenuval(y¨\\ne) yondolya.(Alternatively aur¨\\ne tanass¨\\ne,\\nbut enta can refer to something that lies in the future, and as is evident from\\nthe phrase “shall see”, the reference is here to a future day.)\\nP. Aur¨\\ne yanass¨\\ne tullent¨\\ne oron entallo ar lender coa sinanna.\\n(Alternatively aur¨\\ne tanass¨\\ne again, but yana can refer to something that lies\\nin the past, and as is evident from the past tense verb “came”, the reference is\\nhere to a day in the past. – In some texts, Tolkien uses t´\\nul¨\\ne rather than tull¨\\ne\\nas the past tense “came” [LR:47, SD:246], but tull¨\\ne is attested elsewhere and\\nfits the general patterns better. Cf. some forms discussed earlier: vill¨\\ne ”flew”,\\null¨\\ne “poured”.)\\nInsofar as the system of adding case endings to the “last declinable\\nword” is not necessarily obligatory, the endings could probably be\\nadded to the relevant nouns as well, e.g. malless¨\\ne tana (or, enta)\\nrather than mall¨\\ne tanass¨\\ne (or, entass¨\\ne) for “on that road” in Exer-\\ncise K.\\nLesson Eighteen\\n1.\\nA. They have come to see us, not to see thee.\\nB. May you dream about Elves! (Wish that you will dream about\\nElves!)\\nC. Three men will go thither, and the Dwarves will watch them,\\nfor the men possess a treasure that is greater than [lit. “great\\nbeyond”] gold.\\nD. On the sixth day they felt moved to come to me. [Lit. ”. . . (it)\\nimpelled for them to come to me.”]\\nE. The sixth king of the land is wiser than [”wise beyond”] his father\\nthe fifth king.\\nF. (S)he expanded his/her house, making it [or, that] the biggest\\nhouse of the street.\\nG. You did it for them; you did not do it for us. (Alternatively, “you\\nmade it for them; you did not make it for us”: Car- covers both “do” and\\n“make”.)\\nH. We saw you in the gorge under us, for you fell into it.\\n2.\\nI. Forya rancunya n´\\na polda l´\\na hyarya rancunya.\\nJ. ´\\nA tulta te ninna!\\nK. I urqui t´\\nırar nye, an rucin(y¨\\ne) tiello.\\nL. L´\\na tuluvamm¨\\ne cenien tye i l´\\nomiss¨\\ne.\\nM. L´\\na ´\\noluva i seldon urquion.\\n338\\n\\n\\nN. I atta nissi quenter: “Aranelya l´\\na mern¨\\ne anta ment i en-\\ngwi mapain¨\\ne melto ohtariryainen.”\\nO. I n´\\ner p´\\nalula coarya c´\\nara ta carien rimb¨\\ne sambi ily¨\\ne eng-\\nweryain.\\nP. I enqu¨\\nea aur¨\\ne nauva m´\\nara l´\\na i lemp¨\\nea aur¨\\ne, ar l´\\na oruva\\nmen auta.\\nOther word-orders would apparently also be possible, such as prefixing\\nsome independent pronouns to verbs: K) nye-t´\\nırar rather than t´\\nırar\\nnye, L) tye-cenien rather than cenien tye, N) ment-anta rather\\nthan anta ment, O) ta-c´\\nara rather than c´\\nara ta, P) men-oruva\\nrather than oruva men.\\nLesson Nineteen\\n1.\\nA. Who lived [or, “dwelt”] in the house ten years ago, when I did\\nnot live in it?\\nB. What can we [inclusive] do?\\nC. Give it to me, and don’t hide it from me! (The ending -t in antat,\\nnurtat indicates that only one person is addressed.)\\nD. Who did you see on the seventh day?\\nE. They will give all the gifts to me and not to you!\\nF. What did the men find in the land beyond the mountains?\\nG. How will you be able to lift the great stone when I could not do\\nit?\\nH. Our sister lives in that (yonder) house; we live in the eighth house\\nin this street. Come and see our house! ( ´\\nA tulil ar ´\\na cenil =\\n“come and see”; the ending -l indicates that several people are\\nbeing addressed.)\\n2.\\nI. Man ac´\\nari¨\\ne ta?\\nJ. Mana ely¨\\ne hirn¨\\ne i ots¨\\nea sambess¨\\ne ´\\nır¨\\ne lendel(y¨\\ne) tanna?\\nK. ´\\nIr¨\\ne ely¨\\ne ut´\\nuli¨\\ne, iny¨\\ne mer¨\\ne auta! (If ely¨\\ne can function as a plural\\npronoun and it is interpreted as a plural “you” here, the verb should perhaps\\nalso be plural: ely¨\\ne ut´\\nulier.)\\nL. ´\\nAmen antal i limp¨\\ne!\\nM. ´\\nA antat i limp¨\\ne emmen ar l´\\na i ohtarin!\\nN. I ots¨\\nea ohtar ut´\\nuli¨\\ne i alt¨\\ne orontillon (or, -llor) pella.\\nO. I tolt¨\\nea ando pella ely¨\\ne hirn¨\\ne alta harma; emm¨\\ne i tuller\\napa le ´\\numer hir¨\\ne [or, l´\\na hirner] engw¨\\ne! (Alternatively ely¨\\ne hirner\\n339\\n\\n\\nif the pronoun is taken as plural; cf. Exercise K above. Notice that the “who”\\nof the relative sentence “we who came” is translated by means of the relative\\npronoun i: The word man denotes a different kind of “who”, used in actual\\nquestions.)\\nP. Manen i ´\\numi¨\\ne Naucor hirner te [or, te-hirner] otso auri\\ny´\\na?\\nLesson Twenty\\n1.\\nA. You [or, emphatic you] are a Dwarf, not an Elf. (Ely¨\\ne Nauco: the\\ncopula “are” is left out and understood. Perhaps n´\\naly¨\\ne Nauco would have\\nbeen a possible alternative, if n´\\na can receive pronominal endings.)\\nB. I saw that the man’s arm was broken.\\nC. The king was mighty, but the queen was wiser than the king.\\nD. Did you know that under the house [there] is a hidden treasure?\\nE. May I leave [literally, go from] this place?\\nF. Don’t drink, for [there] is poison in your cup!\\nG. Will they be here on the tenth day when I come [literally, when\\nI shall come]?\\nH. We (excl.) know that [there] is a secret room in this house, but\\nwe have not found it, and until we find it we shall not know what\\nis in the room.\\n2.\\nI. “I was rich” can be translated in several ways. The “safest” so-\\nlution would perhaps be to leave out the copula and use an in-\\ndependent pronoun (ni or iny¨\\ne) for “I”: Ni alya or iny¨\\ne alya.\\nOf course, this may just as well mean “I am rich”, since there\\nis no tense-marker. If we want to include one, we must use the\\nnot entirely well-attested form n´\\ne “was”. Assuming that it can re-\\nceive pronominal endings, “I was rich” could be rendered n´\\nen(y¨\\ne)\\nalya.\\nJ. I aran quent¨\\ne [or perhaps equ¨\\ne]: “L´\\na lertal(y¨\\ne) lelya i n´\\no-\\nmenna yallo ut´\\nuliel(y¨\\ne)”, nan istan(y¨\\ne) sa lelyuvan(y¨\\ne)\\ntanna. (Alternative translation of “you may not go”: umil(y¨\\ne) lerta lelya.)\\nK. Istan(y¨\\ne) cenda, nan l´\\na polin(y¨\\ne) cenda i morniess¨\\ne. (Al-\\nternative translation of “I cannot read”: umin(y¨\\ne) pol¨\\ne cenda. Notice the\\ndifference between ista- “can” = “know how to” and pol- “can” = “be phys-\\nically able to”: The speaker knows how to read, but is unable to read in the\\ndark.)\\nL. Istalm¨\\ne sa Eldar ¨\\near.\\nM. Ma marnent¨\\ne sinom¨\\ne tenna i nert¨\\nea loa´\\nır¨\\ne i ohtari tuller?\\n340\\n\\n\\nN. Istamm¨\\ne sa i neri sinter quet¨\\ne i Eldalamb¨\\ne, nan l´\\na i Nau-\\ncolamb¨\\ne.\\nO. I nissi quenter sa ec´\\neniel(y¨\\ne) i alta ango i ¨\\nea i orontess¨\\ne.\\nP. I quain¨\\nea auress¨\\ne Anar n´\\ne calima.\\n341\",\"difficulty\":\"easy\",\"domain\":\"Long In-context Learning\",\"length\":\"long\",\"question\":\"How to translate the following Quenya sentence into English: I Nauco uva anta ninque mama i Atanin ?\",\"sub_domain\":\"New language translation\"}","display_format":"text","language":"","answer_status":"published","assets":[],"source_url":"https://huggingface.co/datasets/zai-org/LongBench-v2","history":"initial import","indexing_mode":"noindex","subproblems":[],"grids":[]}