+Hjalmar Holm Why is ce from CE stem KE somehow less suitable for 'maybe'?

Well, I have seen people have propose it only as a word for "if", and for that it is not so suitable...

+Hjalmar Holm
why?

I see now that it is indeed used more as "if" than as "may" in Q; I really should have reaad more of Q useage before posting. Sorry. But I still find the ambiguity somewhat problematic. like in "... for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to wise, and all courses may run ill..." how to translate that without the risk of accidentally saying "... advice is a dangerous gift ... if all courses run ill", which is quite a different thing. (bold text editoral).

Pí - If
http://eldamo.org/content/words/word-733142983.html

Ce/ci - May(be)
http://eldamo.org/content/words/word-2693777695.html

+Hjalmar Holm Pan antata navië raxëa ná, yando sailallo ar sailanna, ar ilyë tier saura ke caituvar — I don't see how we can misinterpret this.

+Александр Запрягаев I tried: "Gûr ant rachathren, eithro uin hael na hael, a radath pelir úledhed."

+Ekin Gören
well that ke entry you linked also lists 'if' as a gloss, so it's hardly conclusive. In PE22 we see an endless experimentation with the conditional particles, mostly in Q(u)enya unfortunately.
Why not go for the Common Eldarin ai 'supposing' as a source for S 'if'? (related to aen in KL?)

+Tamas Ferencz It does list both, yes. But ke seems more likely to be "maybe". Another entry:
http://eldamo.org/content/words/word-179650015.html

There's a great uncertainty with ae and aen. I'm unable to find a root so far.

Plus, in " i eithro en estar " (VT50) it seems more like a statement than a possibility. "that is also called"

+Ekin Gören
I don't agree. Throughout the various iterations of the Quendian and Common Eldarin Verbal Structure essay ke and its variants (qe) are translated as 'if', when they appear at the beginning of a clause. However, when they appear next to the verb or predicate (as in the alasaila sentences in LVS7), they are translated as 'may be'. So I think we are closer to the truth if we say that ké/ke/qe/kwí is a universal adverbial particle expressing uncertainty, possibility, condition (in fact Tolkien states this in at least two versions of QVS), and can mean different things. See also how it can be prefixed to lá/la.

As for ai, see pages 139, and 120 of PE22.

+Tamas Ferencz I'll check them right away. And I agree on "universal adv. pt. of uncertainty/possibility/condition".

So tolathon, cenathon ce for "I shall come, maybe I will see" and tolathon, ce cenathon for "I shall come, if i see"?

* aephen or * enben for "anyone"? And perhaps * aenad for "anything"?

+Hjalmar Holm pi cenathon, for total unambiguity, then.

Well, pi cenathon is clearly and unambiguously "if I will see", but ce cenathon is not unambiguously not the same. That's my problem.

+Tamas Ferencz The quita is quite disturbing. After many consistent uses (QVS, CE, 'Quendi and Eldar' etc.) of using ai as a marker of unreality, suddenly he extends the over-usage of ta (causative, formative, infinitive) into too-violent over-usage!

+Александр Запрягаев not violent if it's simply a causative verb?

+Tamas Ferencz It's not quíta that hurts, rather the absence of aiqui. Only a decision to make auta 'possess' can be actually worse: Tolkien cites auta 'go away' in other LVS documents! At least, we now have A. lauta nin 'I had a lot of A.' In the Tengwar part, there is arwa 'possession' — connected to harya? Is harya supposed to conjugate as sirya (harya, háre, ahárie, har(y)uva — apparently, no imp. due to meaning)?

In the Tengwar part, there is arwa 'possession' — connected to harya? Is harya supposed to conjugate as sirya (harya, háre, ahárie, har(y)uva — apparently, no imp. due to meaning)?

Well NeoQuenya writers had been using harya for 'to have sg' even back ages ago when I started dabbling with Quenya, and that was almost 15 years ago; indeed derived from 3AR from Etym, and connected to arwa, which itself is not new as I am sure you know, and can be used as a suffix or a separate word governing a genitive.

+Tamas Ferencz harya gets additional support by appearing in 'Merin' sentence, normally analyzed as late Quenya.

+Александр Запрягаев
indeed. Auta, however, we can probably consider as a temporary experiment?
Otherwise it all goes back to that eternal question of Tolkienian languages: does everything he writes down automatically obsolete everything (related to the matter in question) that comes before that? Is the state of the language(s) frozen at the point of his death the canon? Or to reverse the question: are we allowed to cherry pick elements from various stages of any language to try to come up with a more or less cohesive system?

+Tamas Ferencz The question is: in the late 60s his system became too huge to hold in memory and too unpublished to keep check on it. If Tolkien writes something anew because he forgets (and would've never done that having his former essays in front of him), should we still accept them? For me, the jottings about the participles (at yulma in PE17) are just attempts to remember what he wrote in QVS without the text at hand. Auta is definitely that. Does that mean we cannot accept them? If Tolkien makes an elaborate rule but neglects to use it in texts — is the 'text' version above the tables? I don't necessarily think so. I think we must accept Tolkien could be wrong in his less careful writings (especially late jottings) — but take everything from carefully planned essays and much-rewritten fiction texts made with consideration. Anyway, I'm preparing a treatment of Quenya participles (an update of QVS) which could be a workaround solution incorporating everything we learned about them from PE22 and before — as non-contradictory documents! (However, making the same for derived verb-imperfects seems to be all but impossible due to the variations: basically the suffix ya is used, but how exactly? Is talta > talata? Is orta > ortya when formative but ortëa causative? Anyway, that's how I'm going to use them from now on, remembering ëa available for all verbs in Tarquesta).

+Александр Запрягаев
I am looking forward to your essay - perhaps it will be the germ of a comprehensive grammar? It's time someone took up the task and wrote it, the existing ones are becoming updated fast:)

+Tamas Ferencz I've studied those by Helge Fauskanger in his Course as well as read +Måns Björkman 's one in AP4 recently — now we know what Tolkien did actually mean!

I now lean more towards retaining my useage of pôl as "may, may be" and pôl toled as "can happen, is possible", to avoid misunderstandings with ce. Pôl aeben tolatha, berin nathad "maybe just anyone will come, I need help" versus Pi aeben tolatha, berin nathad "if anyone will come, I need help". (with * ber- formed from baur, "need").

+Hjalmar Holm au > o > e is not something I see often. I was using baura- until now. Using pol- is better indeed. I wrote "a radath pelir úledhed" - "and all roads can/may go-bad."

Yes, it's just tempting to make use of New words in PE 22. Especially för "chance", where NAYA or ebe- is the mist interesting I've seen for some time. As for ledh, isn't it del- now, or did we decide to maintain it as ledh as än unverted form of CE DEL?

The diftong au is unusual in compounds. An alternative could be baur-, boerin, baur, boerir for present tense, borathon, Boratha, borathar for future. Imperfect unsure. But there is also baugla-, so I guess baura- could work as well.

+Hjalmar Holm Concerning DEL, I think I didn't get the memo on that one. We spoke about Eledh->Edhel but we have the root LED as well, so I think there's nothing wrong with using ledh-.

+Tamas Ferencz I'm a bit unsure: how should I present my studies? Either I can write a comprehensive review of all the data available — and try to explain the attested, or I should go in-universe and make a solution of how exactly should the translators treat the participles from now on. Maybe I can do both, first followed by the second.

+Александр Запрягаев
it all depends who your intended audience is

+Tamas Ferencz Well, threefold. First, the people 'round here (I guess both would fit). Second, serious Tolkien linguists (first). Third, practicing translators (second). I guess I'd need to do both :D

+Александр Запрягаев Do it! It would indeed be appreciated.

Well, since auta "go away, leave" is intransitive, whereas auta "have" is transitive, they can be easily distinguished from one another, both in conjugation and sense. So why so readily dismiss it? :)

+Leonard W.
that is an excellent point

There is another transitive auta- 'invent, originate, devise', which seems to have no synonyms and thus is less dispensable (beside harya- we have also sam-). So I would indeed be happy to dismiss auta 'have' as a temporary experiment.

+Björn Fromén And we also have MAGA beside that, why should we prefer some one of them as experiment and some not? The problem is, the proposed conjugations do not make a difference. Oante, really? We've seen that before! The second proposition in the same batch, to make an a-verb oa with past aune, deserved more consideration — but after all, we possess harya, own lauta and have heru — so even without SAM we are out of problems! (The apparent 'unsuitability' of SAM is than this and SAB 'to believe' are going to coincide in sevin in S., with exactly same forms.)