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Hjalmar Holm May 01, 2015 (04:02)

Another Aesop fable

I atar ar selderyat

Nér samne seldet, i min vertaina lótepandamon, ar i hye ambaltanon. Apa lú lendes seldenna i vertaina lótepandamo, ar maquentes manen mahantes immo ar manen náti illi lelenyer ases. Quentes, ”náti illi alye asenye, ar samin erya merie, i nai ulyie lungu lantuva, an i olvar alyar nénwe”. Apa lú ua anda, lendes i seldenna i evéries ambaltanon, ar váve maquentesses manen mahtanes immo; hanquentes ”Penin ú-nát, ar same erya merie, i Anar lá hautie calie calimave, an i cemnambali nai parcar.” I atar quentes, ”Cé selerlye mere rossen, ar meril súre parcan, as man atto napanuvan merienyar?

lótepandamo, ”flower-enclosed space-person”
ambaltano, ”earthen-shaped stone-person”



The Father and His Two Daughters


A MAN had two daughters, the one married to a gardener, and the
other to a tile-maker. After a time he went to the daughter who
had married the gardener, and inquired how she was and how all
things went with her. She said, "All things are prospering with
me, and I have only one wish, that there may be a heavy fall of
rain, in order that the plants may be well watered." Not long
after, he went to the daughter who had married the tilemaker, and
likewise inquired of her how she fared; she replied, "I want for
nothing, and have only one wish, that the dry weather may
continue, and the sun shine hot and bright, so that the bricks
might be dried." He said to her, "If your sister wishes for rain,
and you for dry weather, with which of the two am I to join my
wishes?'

Tamas Ferencz May 01, 2015 (14:46)

Hi Hjalmar,

- the pa.t. of lelya- is lende
- I like the concept of mahta- to be used to express how one 'carries oneself, feels', but you might consider using it in a reflexive way *mahta immo 'carry oneself' or *maxtaxe

- 'one wish only' could be erya merie 'a single wish'
- rosse is glossed 'fine rain, dew' so it's sort of an oxymoron to say lunga rosse; I suggest using ulya- 'pour' instead
- i olvar alya: please explain
- what's *vele?

to be continued

Tamas Ferencz May 01, 2015 (14:52)

'tile-maker' could be *ambaltano (I don't think it should necessarily contain reference to 'earth')
lotarwa is attested for 'garden' in EQ and it fits later phonology

Hjalmar Holm May 02, 2015 (14:10)

ve "like, as", -le adverbial suffix. *vele "likewise, similarly".
alya "prosperous, blessed", an i olvar alya nénwa "for/so the plants [be] prosperous having-water". I see now that -wa is probably more correct than -arwa as the suffix for "having water".

Tamas Ferencz May 02, 2015 (14:22)

+Hjalmar Holm thx. Can you cite me an attested example where -le is used in an adverbial sense?

Tamas Ferencz May 02, 2015 (14:27)

olvar is plural so the following adjectives should be, too;
In Ataremma we see Tolkien using na to express "(let it) be" - check it out

Paul Strack May 02, 2015 (23:49)

The suffix -le is used to form adverbs from the pronouns si, ta and ya on PE17:74, sille "like this (this-ly)", talle "like that (that-ly)" and yalle "in the same way as (which-ly)".

As near as I can tell, any of the Quenya suffixes used to form abstract nouns, -ie, -le and -ve, can also be used for adverbs. I don't think Quenya has proper adverbs, but can use such abstractions to serve that function. Thus márie "goodness" can be used as the adverb "well", both from adjective mára "good".

I am not sure when you would use one suffix over the other. Presumably it is based on what sounds best.

Tamas Ferencz May 03, 2015 (00:28)

+Paul Strack thank you, Paul, I have absolutely and totally forgotten about yalle et. al.

Björn Fromén May 03, 2015 (00:55)

However, note that talle etc. were all rejected by Tolkien ("This won't do since le is a pronominal element. It should be ve" [PE 17:74]).

Paul Strack May 03, 2015 (01:38)

+Björn Fromén Yes, but he kept oaile, which is adverbial, even though he considered changing oiale to oaive on PE 17:74, so maybe when he reversed himself on oiale, the forms talle, etc. were restored as well.

Hjalmar Holm May 03, 2015 (15:54)

alya changed to alyar. Should I use yalle instead of vele?

Paul Strack May 03, 2015 (16:08)

Actually I think you might use talle "like that" which I think is closer to "likewise". Based on the example on PE17:74, yalle seems to be used more like a preposition for comparison.

Björn Fromén May 03, 2015 (23:25)

+Paul Strack  Maybe, but I find it more likely that he retained only -ve as a proper adverbial ending and reinterpreted oiale as an abstract noun used "in instrumental and comitative sense" (like márie in namárie, PE 17:58-59). I don't think talle, sille and yalle can be construed as nouns.

Tamas Ferencz May 04, 2015 (00:16)

+Hjalmar Holm​ plural of alya is alye; and you should make the other adjective plural, too.
Actually, PE17 has vávea "similar, alike" so the adverb could be simply *váve?

Paul Strack May 04, 2015 (01:12)

+Björn Fromén I don't entirely disagree with you, but I interpret Tolkien's statements on PE17:58-59 somewhat differently.

At the beginning of the same note, Tolkien said that a "peculiarity of Quenya syntax is the use of same (or very similar) forms as both adverbs and abstract nouns derived from adjectives". My interpretation is that he meant that such abstractions, constructed using any of the various suffixes -ie, -le and -ve could also be used as adverbs. He gives -ie and -le as explicit examples in the note, with márie "well" and oiale "eternally" glossed as if they were adverbs.

When he said the "adverb[ial] use may be regarded as a use of the noun in instrumental or comitative sense (? descending from a time before noun inflection ?)", I interpret this as a description of the origin of Quenya's adstract noun = adverb syntax, since it occurred in "a time before noun inflection".

Hjalmar Holm May 04, 2015 (14:19)

+Tamas Ferencz would nenwa be nenwe in plural? And is parcar correct as "dry" for several things (bricks)?

Tamas Ferencz May 04, 2015 (14:35)

+Hjalmar Holm adjectives ending in a form their plural in e. parcar would be "dry ones", a nominalised adjective

Björn Fromén May 05, 2015 (00:29)

+Paul Strack It's indeed a problem that Tolkien somewhat confusingly used the term adverb both for a part of speech (= adverb in the strict sense) and for a syntactical function (= adverbial use of any words or phrases). However, in the context where  _talle_ , sille and yalle occur, he didn't think of -le as a suffix forming abstract nouns; on the contrary, the adverbial forms were seen as compounds with a noun  _lé_ 'way, method, manner'. But obviously this idea was soon abandoned.

Another indication that talle etc. were rejected: in the long lists of derivatives from ta 'that' and si 'this' quoted in VT 49:11-12 and 18, there is no trace of talle and sille. Instead we have tanen and sinen with similar meanings ('in that way'; 'by this means, so').       

Paul Strack May 05, 2015 (06:55)

+Björn Fromén OK, you've convinced me that Tolkien probably abandoned talle, sille and than tanen, sinen would be better choices. Those two alternates are a pretty convincing capstone to your argument.