Post GFbnxejHkkF

Paul Strack Jun 27, 2015 (06:47)

I have a copy of PE22 and it is amazing. It is chock full of marvelous information about Quenya and Early Eldarin verb structures. I've only begun to skim it, but anyone interested in Tolkien's languages should definitely pick this up.

There are occasional notes on Sindarin as well. I wanted to mention one because it was a topic recently mentioned in this group: the Sindarin future tense. In some notes from around 1969 (PE22/167-8):

"S.  has no pure future tense, but used the verbal √TUL as an auxiliary of the future (unrelated to personal wish or intention)"

and

"S. lost the stem UB [basis for Q. future] and used √TUL, come, approach, for both coming in space and in time. The ‘future simple’ was expressed by using √TUL as an auxiliary, as in tolen cared ‘I am coming, drawing near to eating, I am going to eat/shall eat’"

So, that is an answer to S. future tense. It uses tol- as an auxiliary verb somewhat like English uses "will", combined with a gerund (more accurately the general infinitive according to PE17/68).

Fiona Jallings Jun 27, 2015 (06:49)

"Tolen" That suggests a Sindarin progressive tense too!!! We've long thought that there was one, but didn't know what it would be like, exactly.

Александр Запрягаев Jun 27, 2015 (08:24)

+Paul Strack +Fiona Jallings We've disscussed that with +Matt Dinse some topic ago. In short: no we have two conflicting theories; one if we start with glorifying the Tengwesta Quenderinwa 2, the 'Common Eldarin' trilogy and ordinary PE17 (ci. 1950-1962): it is having -tha with aorist for proclaiming intentions (I shall sing) and a derivative of CE -uba for claiming facts. Other if we take the final revisions (lá for 'no', revamp of Quenya 1pl. pronouns): this has -atha over stem for intentions (same for derived verbs, different for basic), nidhen + gerund for plans (I'm going to) and tolen + gerund for facts (It will happen). So, according to the fact we now normally build the language over the Tengwesta and PE17, I will personally write according to the first, 1950-ish pattern.

Matt Dinse Jun 27, 2015 (09:28)

+Fiona Jallings 
In the 1950 Sindarin paradigm we have -tha added to the aorist (matithāni) for the "immediate future" ("I am going to eat") and -ubā for the remoter future matubāni "I shall eat", with notes connecting the latter to "I intend to eat".

As Paul Strack notes, in the 1969 paradigm √UB's derivatives are said not to survive in Sindarin, with the future then expressed in 3 different ways: (a) using √TUL as an auxiliary for "'the future simple' : tolen cared 'I am coming, drawing near to eating, I am going to eat/shall eat.'" (Gilson notes that Tolkien started to write the gerund in m but accidentally still used "eat" instead of "do" for the cared forms. (b) atha suffixed to verb stem (yes, even ones with in aorist) formed "a kind of 'future', expressing the intention of the subject, closely resembling in sense and uses English will (when not mere future) [... etc] (c) a strong verb nið (forms niðin, pa.t. eniðen) "sometimes became no stronger than 'will' in E. (when that is used [to] imply the wish or intention of the subject): I will do it, I mean to do it, & so could operate sometimes almost as a future auxiliary: niðin mened, I have a mind to go, I intend to go." There is also a weak verb níða with a stronger "determination" nuance (and thus not used as a future auxiliary).

We get one full S conjugation chart (with its Q counterparts): √KJAW- "taste, select, choose": kyawini > kawin(e) > cewin. but kjawĭ > caw. future kjawathāni [>] cawathon (? cauthon). Imper[ative] cawo. past akjāwē-n (kjaunē > cawn) agauwen > agowen." The Q forms also have aorist tyave, tyavin - but we still see the S future tense in atha and not itha. There is also no mention of a progressive tense; tolen is just ... weird? My (shaky) theory was that Tolkien decided to revisit how to form the aorist of S verbs with U root-vowel, but who knows.

Presumably Tolkien changed the etymology and form of the future suffix after he abandoned √LA for pleasure/assent in the late 60s and reassigned that to √ATHA/THA.

There are of course some differences in Quenya conjugation and verb-formations between the 1950 and 1969 documents, as well. :)

Also, the 1969 has Sindarin 1st plural -of, -ab (likely exclusive, inclusive from ME and QE), not the 1957 -m, -nc (I think -m also shows up in 1959-60 Q&E).

Fiona Jallings Jun 27, 2015 (09:31)

Now I'm REALLY excited to get my copy!

Александр Запрягаев Jun 27, 2015 (10:01)

+Matt Dinse Having a single -en-conjugated verb in a totally -in-surrounding, knowing that no,verb conjugated with -en in present previously, I'll rather believe that all the copulas are supposed to conjugate this way. (Maybe, even *naen, nael, ná?) But the example of nidhin beside that is contradictory. Anyway, I believe more and more that the TQ languages and 'Ros'-languages are different enough to be considered separate and actually a '3rd' and '4th' era of Paul's classification; and my heart remains with the 3rd…
ADDITION: There are really lots of alterations introduced in 1965-1969, such as: the banishment of û; the re-establishment of as 'no' instead of 'yes'; the Great Upheaval of the Quenya 1pl. inflexions; the total rewrite of Sindarin pronouns and conjugations; the revision to the degree of incompatibility in Sindarin future tense; and even the medial cluster pronunciation claimed in the 'Rivers'. I assume, there is much further distance between the Sindarin-3 of the TQ and Sindarin-4 of the late writings than even between the Sindarin-3 and the (Etym-)Noldorin-2, where the revisions we almost completely lexical, with the augment of past tense and possibly different verbal personal and number conjugations being the only major shifts. We are now stuck with two Sindarins, friends! And these S3 and S4, as well as Q3 and Q4, are separate languages enough, only almost accidentally (just joking!) co-incident it those minor elements of grammar and vocabulary as attested in the published source! Valar, even Gilraen's ú-chebin is explained differently in them!

Hjalmar Holm Jun 27, 2015 (23:36)

"... the banishment of û..." for Q or S?

Paul Strack Jun 28, 2015 (00:08)

+Hjalmar Holm Tolkien's later notes on negations from the late 1960s, mentioned by Bill Welden in VT42, were published in full in PE22. In it, Tolkien rejected ū as the basis for general negation and restored lā as the negative element (itself rejected in the 1950s as discussed in PE17/143).

Interestingly enough, the trigger for Tolkien’s restoration of lā was the Sindarin flower name alfirin "immortal".

Hjalmar Holm Jun 28, 2015 (04:42)

But alfirin si clearly al- + firin. Is the consonant replaced in certain circumstances?

Paul Strack Jun 28, 2015 (04:50)

The new negative root was ALA or LĀ, invertable like ORO/RŌ.

Александр Запрягаев Jun 28, 2015 (09:02)

+Hjalmar Holm In Q - total banishment. In S, due to the linnod, a complicated new explanation and re-derivation. It was in VT42 alone.

Matt Dinse Jun 30, 2015 (04:39)

+Александр Запрягаев, I wouldn't say "total banishment" in Q, since we also have únótimë in Namárië.

As for "the total rewrite of Sindarin pronouns and conjugations", we already find differences between charts from 1949 and from the early 1950s given in VT50 for the 2nd person (which are both different than what we know of the 2nd person suffix in 30s Noldorin), as well as at least 4 pronoun charts from the 1950s alone each with different words for "they". Once we have more of them published (including ones from the 1960s), I would imagine that we will see even more variety, given how different even the 1950s 3rd pl. forms were.

Tolkien was always changing his languages according to evolving personal taste, in small and large ways. Other examples involve things like waffling between pronominal prefixion and suffixion (from GL to Leeds Noldorin, and on/off again throughout Q(u)enya until at least the late 40s), as well as changes in phonological paradigms (does tekma make tengwa?), case endings, and with mutations in Sindarin. Even the grammars of the 40s, late 40s, and 1950 in PE22 have (sometimes major) differences for Quenya, as far as which verb tenses existed, and how to conjugate them - though the texts were revisions of the others (and similar in layout if not always in the actual forms), with the previous version at hand. Though less is written about Noldorin and Sindarin, I would expect that he was changing his ideas just as much, even if they were only mental and not written down, or just still unpublished.

We see nasal mutation for dative an in the King's Letter, but Tolkien later decided c. 1957 (PE17:147) that it caused vocalic/soft, except am m and am b before M, B: presumably to save ammen? Another example of his changes in mutation concepts is with the 50s di ai gerir, Firn-i-Guinar, Gwerth-i-Guinar, Gyrth-i-Guinar and the 1972 Gyrth-i-Chuinar (though admittedly that one is definitely your Sindarin-3 vs. Sindarin-4). Also, there's how to mutate initial MB/ND, and mutations in compounds (affecting whether Gil-galad contains calad or ñgalad).

He tried to keep re-deriving "and" in Sindarin, but then realized he was somewhat locked in by Daur a Berhael (which is different from ar in the King's Letter a few years prior) so his options became fewer. I remember reading similar things for Quenya in PE21, where Tolkien made a grammatical statement and then said "No, I can't do this - XYZ in Galadriel's Lament clearly contradicts it".

With úchebin and únótimë, he ended up re-defining their meaning to something similar. Similar things happened with Q vanimalda (though with that one he had the advantage of not providing a translation within the text): lda was either a comparative or a 2nd person possessive suffix, until the 2nd Edition in 1965 (under unique circumstances with Ace/Ballantine) where he changed it to vanimelda, then privately changing his mind about whether that was from vani + melda, or vanima + elda, or vanima + elda. Similar is di-nguruthos, untranslated in TTT but is "in the shadow of (the fear of) death" in a 1958 letter. di was "in" in the Etymologies (VT45:37), but literally translated "beneath-death-horror" in RGEO (1967), and "in dread of Death" in a looser style on the same page. In PE17:95 (sometime pre-1965) we see him gloss di as "with" before changing it (and its etymology) to "beneath".

A better equivalent of the úchebin situation is with Im Narvi. Originally a 1st emphatic, im was later re-interpreted as a general reflexive, i.e. "Narvi himself", even though the translation in FotR has "I, Narvi".

As for your comments about Etym-Noldorin (2) and Sindarin-3 (of c. 1950), we already see a great deal of lexical difference, including contradictions (like maetha), and grammatical details like genitives causing lenition (so Aran Voria and the like, which continued into the 40s), the effects of i affection (e.g. different plurals), and infinitives like medi and ortho. The latter never appear in the 1950s and later (Noldorin, Beleriandic, Sindarin), only gerunds ending in ad/ed/od: even before Tolkien decided on the ita long-infinitive form in the 60s for Quenya. Both infinitives and gerunds show up in Q, but in Sindarin proper only the gerund is attested, even in the places where Quenya rules say the infinitive must be used. We have hints of different pronominal paradigms from the 1930s, and my opinion is that once the actual 30s Noldorin historical grammar is published in a later Parma Eldalamberon, we will see that it isn't as close to Sindarin-3 as we thought.

As for the possible naen, nael, ná, the other Sindarin sentence in PE22 is inn đa v'im, literally translated "there is an 'inn' in me", where inn is ind/inn, "some particular purpose or intention of an individual (not necessarily of great strength or in a major matter)", i.e. "I have a good mind to (do so)". This is from the last 1969 document, on √NID and the future. đa is clearly the "there is" element, though I have no clue of its derivation or word type (is it a verb?), as inn, vi, im are clearly recognizable. However, what's interesting is that this is a revision of an earlier inn no v'im. I think that no there might be the copula, the equivalent of Q and the word order difference between aire na and imperative na aire.

Maybe Tolkien decided that said form of the NA verb was inappropriate for S "there is", and used something else? Tolkien does mention the distinctions between "to be" verbs in a section on irregular verbs in the earlier pre-1969 texts (though maybe only in the c. 1948-9 one? I'll have to check) as well as how Quenya frequently uses other patterns/verbs for certain conditions instead of an actual "to be" verb, though Noldorin/Sindarin equivalents weren't mentioned. Both languages do seem to share some uses of "to be", though, including the sometimes absent copula, and predicate word order in things like Lheben teil  brann i annon and Sindar i Eldar Malariando. So perhaps Sindarin proper had more than one way of expressing "to be", and there's a more appropriate verb for "there is" than something related to ná/no ... even if we don't know what those different ways are. But at least no and đa here shed some light on the matter? I wonder if anyone can guess as to its derivation.

Александр Запрягаев Jun 30, 2015 (11:55)

+Matt Dinse Yes, I get the idea of possible future discoveries making even more Sindarin stages! But as I see Quenya and Sindarin from the available data, the period of Beleriandic/Sindarin of 1950-ca. 1962 is one of storage. New data are being added, new bases and derivatives, sometimes new rules are introduced (the variety of 'and'-like words in Quenya). But mostly Tolkien abides to his own rules — and sometimes, when the practical translation shows him the unfortunate omissions (the Christian prayers, Túrin Wrapper), he makes more — but to add (or a short-living experimentation). Consider Roman's or Thorsten's treatment of Q. (and S.) inflexional/pronominal elements of this period: slightly oscillating but normally fixed.
The crash, I suppose, was in the idea '_omentielmo_ is wrong, Frodo made a mistake!'. After that, Tolkien violently stops obeying the rules he set before — and even in narration: enter Teler Teleporno, Teler Telperimpar and Noldo Kiryatámo! The overloading of materials around the 'Shibboleth' is a re-doing, not addition, and though there are some newly created roots, but mostly we have re-interpretations of the earlier concepts. Curiously, the 'Quenya C' hints in VT47—49 point to an admirable inter-consistence of these changes, developing wildly yet reaching some kind of fixedness — so I speak of Sindarin 4.
Oh yes, Im Elrond echantel *'You've made it yourself, Elrond' is quite disturbing! Though I perfectly understand the trail of thought. Unfortunately, the more we get the more it becomes obvious that Tolkien actually was engaged to our own type of work: taking the attested forms in print and extrapolating, and no 'final' one will be out there… Element dha is very disturbing: NO Sindarin word can start with dh unless lenited (from da); this word can be connected either to [reversible] ADA 'by, beside, alongside' or with primitive allative -dā, but the connection is both times unclear, and both are explicitly 3-ish (ADA must even be obsoleted by AS of same meaning in the Notessi). Possibly, pronouns could shed some further light.

ܤܡܝ ܦܠܕܢܝܘܤ Jul 01, 2015 (13:42)

Elendilion have now updated their Facebook page (/ElendilionInformacje?fref=ts) with some short phrases from PE22, including savin Elessarno quetië naitë (which as a seemingly possible way to convey Accusative-With-Infinitive would correspond to Finnish usko-n Haltiakive-n sanoma-n tode-ksi ; the name being in genitive and the adjective in translative case).

Александр Запрягаев Jul 01, 2015 (17:51)

Cuita 'r parë 'Live and learn'! Helge wanted the verb 'to live' for ages!..And now we won't have a need to invent *nolya-, gelia for 'to learn'!

Matt Dinse Jul 01, 2015 (21:42)

+Александр Запрягаев,
I see what you mean - and Tolkien seems to have kept his 1950-ish major undertakings (TQ, Noun Structure, Verb Structure) unchanged until revisions in the late 60s and 70s.

I had thought of dha from √ADA much like vi and bo, but my discomfort with it was due to questioning whether we have two prepositions next to each other attested elsewhere.

As for pronouns shedding light, the editors mention that they plan to present the late-40s "Quenya 'Personal Pronouns' and 'Demonstratives, Relative, and Correlative Stems'" in a future PE. I would assume that they'd also include the 1969 text demonstrative pronouns and adverbs which they mention while explaining the context of the Late Notes on Verbal Structure and which other texts they were stored with.

Elendilion quoted a small, small fraction of the overwhelming amount of phrases in PE22, choosing a few from the later sources. I'm planning to list them all up before finishing the "index" proper, but that will take a bit.

As for "live", in some of the texts in PE22 Tolkien distinguishes verbs for "being alive" and "living", though I'm not sure if that survived into 1969's where cuita 'r (cuita ar) is from. I'd have to check. We already had pare for "learn" attested, but also for "arrange" and for "write" depending on the source, which is why some were still unhappy with it. I suppose that's not quite as awkward for us as Tolkien deciding "I don't have a suitable verb for 'to have' ... how about auta?" in 1969, though ...

Александр Запрягаев Jul 01, 2015 (21:59)

+Matt Dinse I checked; indeed, the 'Numbers etc.' do definitely reassign the 'beside' meaning to AS base — sina mal tenta i•sundo AD/DA lerin' anaië! And it could be free to re-use it somewhere else; Tolkien had some inclination to assign monosyllabic bases to CE pronouns… Having a proper 'there is' construction is really epic (does it ever conjugate?) By the way, did they actually mention this plan in PE22? I assumed there was no actual evidence of Pronouns, Demonstratives and Correlatives ever written and completed before. PE editors do share the future plans now? Happier times we're living in…
Wow. So, sam is unsuitable; and harya as well? Sindarin seems to make this distinction as well, with Dor Gyrth-i-Chuinar 'to be alive' on one hand and Cuio i•Pheriain anann! 'to live' on other. (And disturbingly close to 'awake' words…) But the usage of a 'transitive' form is unexpected, really. Does Tolkien discuss the -tā transitivity marker as a CE distinction? He seems to imply that in QE, but I'm unsure still.

Matt Dinse Jul 02, 2015 (03:04)

+ܤܡܝ ܦܠܕܢܝܘܤ, unfortunately the savin phrases are just the ones quoted in full in VT49 (with both having probably erroneous Elesarno), though the (unrelated to √SAB) rest of the page is given. Indeed, there's a good amount in the 1969 portion of PE22 which consists of (basically) the omitted portions of late notes quoted in VT49. "To be", ké/qui, the future (hríve ūva véna sections etc.), and so on.

+Александр Запрягаев,
Unfortunately, đa is the only form given. They do indeed say "We intend to publish these texts in a future volume of Parma Eldalamberon" (80) when mentioning the late 40s Quenya "Personal Pronouns" and "Demonstratives, Relative, and Correlative Stems", "with partial layers and multiple layers of revision." I would assume the demonstratives / adverbs from 1969 will be included as well, such as how they selected the texts relevant to Verb Structure for this issue? You're right; we find √ADA in 1965 but √ASA in 1968, according to VT49:25.

Yes, apparently Tolkien no longer liked √SAM in LVS5: even though other 1969 texts (LVS11, the √SAB and √KWI stuff) show that at this time he was using √SAN for "think, use mind; or tr[ansitive] ponder, consider (in thought)" - and therefore √SAM would be free. √SAM for "think" shows up in 1959-60 (Osanwe-kenta) and Roots in PE17.

As for harya, it only appears in the 1930s and in the Merin sentence, though harma "treasure" from the 1930s persists into LotR. I'm not sure how precisely the Merin sentence can be dated, though vanya (not auta) and sa (shows up in later 1940s, and in the 1950s in VT49:18, with as mid-50s in VT49:32) should offer some clues.

There is a large amount of discussion (some more than in others) on different verb classes in the texts from each time period, including -tā transitivity (and causative, and formative, with differing original vowel lengths), since the different classes often conjugated differently, even with homonyms (like we see with orta elsewhere, though in PE17+18 we only saw the pa.t. conjugations).

At any rate, I listed up all the phrases in PE22, and have to say that the majority of them (a dizzying amount) are in the 40s and late 40s texts, with barely any in the c. 1950, and then a bit more in 1969's (but not so much as the 40s). I suppose I'll upload the document to my Drive and post it once I change some of the formatting. Elendilion quoted (some of) the 1969 ones.

The distinction between "live" is found in the c. 1948-9 section on irregular verbs (including "to be"), where we find (on p. 125):

"(ii) √OY-, live = pass one's days. E.g. "For a long while the Elves lived in Valinor, where are they/do they live now?": andalúme Eldar oianer Valinoresse, masse oiar sí? oia (<_ōyā_) is a defective verb without an aorist; oiane is the past imperfect. The past/perfect oine can only be used in sense "lived/have lived" — sc. to the end of their days and so as a euphemism for "then died, have died."

(iii) √KOY-: koita- "live, have life" can only be used of permanent or natural habitat: as atani koitar Endoresse, "men live in Middle-earth"; niksi koitar nenesse "fishes live in water." Of plants ola "grow" is more usually employed."

However, I'm not sure if √OY here would clash with later vocabulary, and indeed some of the forms in the 40s texts would probably be updated later, as √KHAM for "sit" (√KHAD later on, as in related forms/derivations in the 1969 texts for "sit" and "throne") in (v) where we find:

"*ham-* "sit" is used often of cities, towns, houses (and also of hills that are not very high): dwellings, buildings (except high towers) are not said "to stand." [see (vii)] Tiristemindon hame Ondoresse "Minas Tirith is/stands/is situated in Gondor." hame aorist because M.T. is and was and only could be in Gondor. háma would imply that the city was once elsewhere. [more etc]"

Other live/awake forms in PE22:

Quenya Verbal System (late 1940s): koita- "live, be alive, pa.t. koine, perf. okoine" (103). (ek)koiru "come to life" (114), √OY/KOY in 125 (above).

CE Verb Structure (c. 1950): koiru "come to life" (135, also in discussion of the u verbs, as in QVS), "√KOJ: et-koiru/lu 'come to life'; √KUJ: et-kuinu 'awake, wake up' [...] "Constrast: koitā́ 'bring to life', kuitā́ 'waken, rouse'" (136).

Late Notes on Verb Structure (c. 1969): pa.t. koine (unglossed) given as example of ne suffixed to a verb ending in y (152). lakeníte kuimar "creatures that cannot/do not (by nature) see" (153, in the original paragraph deleted during composition), kuita 'r pare "live and learn" (154). "√KUY, kuita, live" with present verbal/adjectival participle kuitaila (156) with "formative" (not causative) t, one of the verb classes.

Remy Corbin Jul 02, 2015 (10:50)

I've always hoped that some day, after publishing all the Professor's notes, it would be one coherent canon without ambiguity. Now, after all you've said, I think it's rather impossible. But I'm anyways eager to learn all the strange ways of elven tongues.

Александр Запрягаев Jul 02, 2015 (12:20)

+Matt Dinse A bad example, Professor! Everyone knows that a 'Minas Tirith' used to sit in a different place, upon Tol Sirion! :D Are these ca. 1969 selections the same texts as were described in VT47—49 as 'Quenya C' and 'Rough Notes'?

Matt Dinse Jul 03, 2015 (06:46)

+Александр Запрягаев, here's excerpts from what Gilson says in the intro to Late Notes on Verb Structure:

"In 1970 Tolkien began to make revisions to the Common Eldarin Morphology, but these extended only to the first few pages of the treatment of Noun Structure. Shortly before and probably as a preliminary to this projected revision he compiled various notes on Eldarin and Quenya grammar [...] We present here fourteen of these documents [...] all seem to have been composed around 1969. [...] Tolkien left the linguistic dcoumentation of his Eldarin languages in seven box-files, and Christopher Tolkien has subsequently referred to these as 'Quenya A' through 'Quenya G' for purposes of identification. These divisions have no larger significance as such, since Tolkien left the manuscripts ordered variously by chronology or topic, depending on the circumstances. For example the 'Gnomish Lexicon', the 'Qenya Lexicon', the late 1920s English-Qenya dictionary, and The Etymologies were all placed in the box-file later designated 'Quenya E'; while on the other hand the earlier version of the Tengwesta Qenderinwa, the "Comparative Tables," the "Vowels" section of the Outline of Phonetic Development, and the "Declension of Nouns," all dating from the 1930s, were placed in box-file 'Quenya D'. Within each box-file Tolkien subdivided the materials in various ways [...]"

"Four of these subdivisions concern us here, three in box-file 'Quenya C' and one in 'Quenya B'. The first is a brown folder on which Tolkien wrote "Eldarin Linguistics," which was itself subdivided into three bundles contained within folded papers followed by loose pages divided into two sections by a piece of cardboard. Two of the folded papers contain notes on Quenya phonology, and the third contains "Sindarin dialect notes," two of which were dated in 1962. [PE17:131-5] Documents LVS1 to LVS4 were placed between these and the cardboard, and following it are multiple versions of a description of Common Eldarin initial consonants in the midst of which LVS5 and LVS6 were placed. [...]

The second subdivision is a folder with a label "Q. Linguistics in process," a date "1969," and a note listing its contents: ala - la; verbal adjs.; pronouns of person; reflex., gender." This was further divided into seven sections using pieces of cardboard, and in one case an envelope postmarked May 1968. [... 4th section has draft of reply letter to Howlett, and notes on derivation of various names ...] In the third section he placed a typescript and associated notes, presented here as LVS7. [...] The final section of the folder includes a dozen similarly narrow slips containing an assortment of rough notes, two of which are presented here. LVS8 has notes on negative (A)LA in contrast with ū 'bad, difficult', which is connected with LVS5 and LVS7. LVS9 is a note on the causative and inceptive verbs derived from adjectives, connected with the description of these derivative suffixes in LVS12.

The third subdivision is another brown folder with miscellaneous notes on "Vocabulary," describing the derivatives of bases or the etymologies of existing words and names. [...] There are eleven sheets of Allen and Unwin waste paper (notices dated "12th Jan. 1968"); a dozen narrow slips similar to those in the second folder mentioned above; three long sheets folded in half; a quarter sheet; and eight half sheets. Tolkien dated one document in the folder, a derivation of Sindarin mae 'well' from the base √MAG 'good' [...] In several of the notes in these documents the etymological points seem to arise from or lead to consideration of other features of Tolkien's conception, and this includes [LVS10,11,12]." Gilson notes that "One of the half-sheets in the folder contains the first three versions of "The Ambidexters Sentence," published in [VT49:3-27]".

As for LVS11 on √SAB, √SAN, √KWI, √KE, "the accompanying glossarial notes on the back of the half-sheet with the first three versions of the sentence and on one of the narrow slips placed next to it in the folder [...] include the following notes on [the full version of the ke/kenai etc. stuff from VT49:19-20 (though not the 1967 √ek)]."

LVS12 starts with an etymology for Gilraen, which Gilson notes is "probably earlier workings for a similar etymology of [raen] incorporated by Tolkien into The Rivers and Beacon Hills of Gondor [VT42:11-12]".

"The fourth subdivision consists of three bundles of documents and one loose sheet, folded in a newspaper dated October 9, 1969, and placed between two cardboard dividers in box-file 'Quenya B'. On the newspaper Tolkien wrote "Negatives ū, , / Fate / Will & Shall future." [...] The first of the bundles is nine sheets clipped together, comprising two documents which we present here as LVS13 and LVS14. The second bundle consists of two versions of a note on "Fate and Free Will," treated as both linguistic and philosophical concepts among the Eldar. The loose sheet and third bundle contain notes on demonstrative pronouns and adverbs." He notes that "Fate and Free Will" was presented by Carl Hostetter in Tolkien Studies 6 (albeit partially, not the full document)

Gilson notes that 2 paragraphs of LVS1 were quoted in VT49:28 (April 6, 1969), and the lower portion of the second page (LVS2) are found in VT49:28-30 ( and ea). I guess this makes LVS3 and LVS4 the other two pages in the bundle. He also notes that the back page of LVS1 also has "various words written in Tolkien's New English Alphabet" amongst the rough etymological notes on arkanwar etc. (which are given, though the NEA isn't).

With regard to LVS7, Gilson notes that "the bulk of these two paragraphs was cited by Bill Welden in "Negation in Quenya,"" VT42:33-4.

He also notes that "excerpts from [a] paragraph" in LVS14 "were cited in "Notes on Óre," ed. Carl F. Hostetter, VT 41, p.17 (n.10)."

LVS14 has the full material related to hríve ūva vēna (VT49:14). Some of the other material is also on the Jan. 1968 A&U waste paper (see above), though it doesn't appear in PE22.

I'm going to have to stop for tonight; tomorrow I can go through the later VTs and see which references are relevant. I noted what Gilson said, as well as a few additions of my own which he didn't mention (like the ūva material previously being quoted in VT49), so there could be more references to notice. But at any rate the parts of the introduction I've quoted should give you some context.

Fiona Jallings Jul 08, 2015 (02:08)

Alright, I have my copy, and I've gone through it a few times for Sindarin.
Exciting things:

A Sindarin word for "yes", finally!! "Yes I will" - Athon. (then updating the plural forms...) Atham - "Yes we will" and Athanc - "Yes we all will".

A word for "Help!" - Natha (when crying for help, we can now say, Natho!

An expression, Inn dha v'im - I think it's "[there is] a intent/will with in self"... Do we have preposition layering elsewhere? (Yes, in Ae Adar Nín - sui vi Menel so this interpretation is possible)

At first, it seems like a contradiction, seeing tolen cared and nidhin mened side-by-side. Tolen obviously isn't the expected present tense form that we are familiar with, but nidhin is. Therefore, these might be 2 different tense/aspect going on here. I think the answer is in the type of action that these two verbs represent.

Nidh- is stative. Therefore, no present continuous tense, because it already represents a continuous state. Therefore, in the present tense, it'd only have the Aorist conjugation.

Tol- is not stative. Therefore, an Aorist telin "I come" has a different meaning than a Continuous tolen "I am coming". Telin would mean that it's an action that one regularly does, or a law-like truth of the world (something that is always coming, so to speak). Tolen would be an action that's happening right now that will only happen throughout a certain amount of time.

Where does this continuous tense come from? (If I'm right about it existing.) In Quenya, you have verbroot+a+pronoun, but what if it developed slightly differently in Sindarin? What if instead, it was verbroot+pronoun+a? Then you'd have old Sindarin form tulina > tolen due to A-affection. But, for the 3rd singular, there'd be no distinction, because the vowels at the ends of the words were lost. And, A-verbs would also not show the distinction. So, tôl could mean "it comes" or "it is coming".

Atha : using it with I-verbs... we now have a contradiction. In Noldorin, it's aorist stem+tha. (page 97) But later, in Sindarin, the conjugation of caw- is given, and  we get cawathon/cauthon (page 152). I don't recall anything previously about Sindarin I-verb tha future tenses before, just our guess that it'd be -itha. So, do we discard how we've been doing it up to now, or do we take up this new form instead? I vote for this new form. It's easier to teach, and it's a later form.

Anyways, this is what I've come up with so far. What do you think?

Fiona Jallings Jul 08, 2015 (02:34)

+Александр Запрягаев  I think that gwaen probably came from gwain, since AI > AE, but I can't be sure, of course. Maybe it does mean "I'm going". But, a *naen form, if it is a continuous present tense, is unlikely because na- is a stative verb.

Matt Dinse Jul 08, 2015 (04:06)

I wouldn't call atham and athanc "updating", since those forms are from c. 1957 (PE17:46) through 1962 (PE17:132), and athof, athab from 1969. Once we get more of the charts published our Sindarin pronoun schemes may be as contradictory as the current amount of abundant Quenya paradigms.

As for atha and the like (all of this, really), we discussed this in the previous thread on the Sindarin future tense (etc.), though I've been hoping you or Xandarien or Roman (etc.) might show up to comment: https://plus.google.com/106606644275525545350/posts/JknBzqR3AQN

It looks like you're replying to a post by +Александр Запрягаев, but for some reason my browser isn't showing it. :/

Anyway, regarding atha, the forms in itha (tha attached to aorist stem) from c. 1950 are first called Noldorin, but then revised to "Sindarin" later in the early 1950s (1951-3ish, given terminology in VT50?). At any rate, it could very well be that the itha forms were valid throughout the 50s and 60s (just without any attested yet), and Tolkien only came up with atha ones after having to derive a new root for "assent" after (re)deciding √(A)LA was more suitable for negation, after having abandoned its negation concept for years and years for "yes" and pleasure/assent. So (tentatively) it's possible that we have meditha in 1950-1968ish, and suddenly madatha in 1969, though I'm not ready to commit to that without further evidence in between.

Any thoughts on unusual pa.t. eniðen, cawn, agowen?

I'm not sure I agree with the verbroot+pronoun+a idea, as I'm not (yet) familiar with something like that ever showing up in any Eldarin language. The a is part of conjugation, and it's actually (in Verb Structure and the TQ) a lengthened or fortified (for √TUL) tūlā or taulā in 40s and 50s documents (with taula rejected sometime between 1955-1965). However, tolen does immediately bring tulina to mind, though, like participial maden. Furthermore, I'm not sure how we get final en save through A affection of in, given that e suffixed to the verb stem is usually a past tense marker (and i the aorist or bare stem / infinitive).
 Also, the CE forms given might not be fully applicable to Sindarin (more to Quenya).

Fiona Jallings Jul 08, 2015 (08:33)

About the past tense: enidhen and agowen aren't unusual. We have agorech, edhíw, agramp, adhag and Old Sindarin eméné... I don't think cawn is unusual either - I think it's a past participle. It's not the only one we've come across like it. There's also gwawn, past participle of gwa-, and these are just what I'm coming up with off the top of my head. 

I'm just trying to find some way to explain tolen. That's all I could come up with.  With only one form, it's a bit premature to state that we have a brand new progressive tense. But wouldn't it be cool if... argh, the lack of data is so frustrating. I'm sorely tempted to just take this as a present-progressive and run with it. I think I'll mention it in the lesson about the present tense as a curious case to ponder and keep in mind for later. The new data on futures with atha, nidh, and tol- I'll definitely be including as a new chapter for the textbook.

Tamas Ferencz Jul 08, 2015 (12:13)

+Fiona Jallings
how did you arrive at the idea that ða is 'with'?

Tamas Ferencz Jul 08, 2015 (12:19)

+Fiona Jallings
perhaps +Christopher Gilson has an idea/insight whether this form indeed is part of a progressive tense

Fiona Jallings Jul 08, 2015 (12:20)

+Tamas Ferencz  ADA. That's one of its meanings. Looking at bo from OPO and vi from IMI, I think it fits into that pattern nicely.

Tamas Ferencz Jul 08, 2015 (12:48)

+Fiona Jallings
OK, but would not it be a blatant Anglicism to have a construct like that? with + in?

Fiona Jallings Jul 08, 2015 (12:49)

Yeah, but so is anann (for long) and na vedui (at last).

Björn Fromén Jul 08, 2015 (17:30)

+Fiona Jallings  I wouldn't call na vedui a blatant Anglicism: the exact counterpart "till sist" is a quite normal expression in my native Swedish.
EDIT: Nor is anann necessarily an Anglicism, cf. Italian "a lungo" (= "lungamente").

Matt Dinse Jul 08, 2015 (18:19)

+Fiona Jallings, I'm aware of those forms. As we discussed in the other thread, I didn't think there was anything unusual about eniðen ... until Александр Запрягаев pointed out that the underlying root is √NID, and the sundóma is therefore i ... so where does the prefixed e come from? In that case, I would have expected iniðen.

agowen isn't unexpected either; it's its relationship with cawn which has me surprised. Given that Tolkien actually gave us the underlying forms, I don't think there's any other interpretation for them besides 1st sg. pat. and 3 sg. pa.t.

agowen has 1st person suffix added to a blend of past/perfect akjāwē, like emēnē, but for some reason cawn is from kjaunē. is not a participial or adjectival suffix, but a past tense marker. Certainly cawn resembles gwawn, gwanw in PE17:148, and if the underlying form were kjaunā I would agree that it's a participle/adjective. However, kjaun*ē* doesn't cooperate too well with that theory.

I certainly agree that dha appears to be from √ADA, formed the same as bo and vi, but I'm not sure what the potential difference in meaning between adh and dha would be, unless he went back to using √ADA for the same usage (after using √ASA instead at that time). Who knows, maybe it's some sort of adverbial/pronominal "there", with "is" only implied. We see a distinction in Quenya between "thére is" and "thĕre is" (there exists) ... maybe this didn't occur in Sindarin? I don't know - just throwing out ideas and hoping one sticks.

Jenna Carpenter Jul 09, 2015 (09:54)

Only finished combing through it a couple of days ago (I always go for the vocab first for the dictionary, now started on updating my lessons).
My first thought with tolen was actually 'so is the verb Tul- after all to match the change to Tul acharn and the 1st person present tense ending for I-stem has been updated?' (scusey lack of accents). Though I did also think about it being a progressive. Until we get an answer to that I'm treating it as 'this is what it is, it has a different form for the 1st person'.

Александр Запрягаев Jul 12, 2015 (12:20)

+Fiona Jallings +Jenna Carpenter I thought that ASA and ADA for 'beside' are incompatible for they do both reflect Tolkien's ideas of how to explain 'and' being ar in Quenya while a with no apparent mutations in Sindarin. Finding ASA in contemporary VT47:31 and VT48:25 as well as aselye in Átaremma and seeing no ADA except PE17, I believe that Tolkien's position just changed. If dha is from ADA, then the root was free to reassign any necessary meaning to it. In the Etymologies, AD was even 'gate' and used to explain annon on Moria gate!

+Matt Dinse +Björn Fromén It'd be of use to classify all cases of 'in' and 'en' inflexions of primary verbs in late period. Do not forget also echanthel with -el vs. our previous belief of -echenthil*. In Tolkien's late concepts this distinction somehow keeps being followed (as I see, we have *nidhin 'intend', cewin 'choose'* vs. *tolen* 'come' and *dewin 'fail', sevin 'have'* vs. *gwaen* 'go' in PE17 — is there less progressivity in choosing and owning than in coming?) but both attested pasts, *anwen* and *echanthel*, are -en-made, so it seems there is totally no support to -in forms anywhere in the past. The logical idea could be of (im*)perfective verbal aspect, taking and interpolating the 'past' idea from the past inflexions, but it cannot explain 'come' and 'go' simultaneously; they are quite contrary in their perfectiveness (unless gwaen is for gwain — but Tolkien *never confuses ai/ae in monosyllable words (cf. 'Rivers')! I'm sure he meant explicitly gwaen, especially in the light of anwen. Maybe, transitivity one again? You can intend (to do) something, choose something, fail somebody and own something, but you never come and go something. Hence tolen cared is an abnormal form of late association and tolen would point to an intransitive verb taking an unexpected position of a copula. What do you think?

Enídhen could be an example of analogical development. E-sundóma being more frequent in verbs than I, it could lead to a reforming following the pattern.

Roman Rausch Jul 12, 2015 (16:45)

My copy of PE22 arrived some time  last week, while I was away, so I just read it yesterday. Managed to stay spoiler-free, luckily. The thread is way too long for me to go through, but just some points:

- Enidhen might be just a slip because the augment in Greek is aways e-: lambanō 'I take', elabon 'I took'. Internally, one should probably explain it by influence of the e-roots.
- Note that the earlier variant of inn ða v'im (165, note 108) is inn no v'im where no is transparently the copula, from . This doesn't mean, of course, that it is still the copula in the revised sentence.
- Athof is clearly from a short -me rather than -mme, athab probably from -kwe where up until now we only had nasalized -nkwe, -ngwe (which would have given -mp, -mb). The vowels (a vs. o) are also odd. I agree that we need to wait for further publications.

Александр Запрягаев Jul 12, 2015 (22:11)

+Fiona Jallings +Tamas Ferencz +Roman Rausch +Matt Dinse I'd just been struck by realization of the epic peculiarity: the gerunds in nídhin meded, tolen cared are not lenited! They are direct object, why are they not subject to grammatical lenition? After some pondering, I believe that was not unexpected and answers a recent question, as I recall, by +Hjalmar Holm: I suppose that Sindarin does not mutate anything which is joined to a subject with a copula and thus considered an inseparable part of a predicate. Hence participles and adjectives in predicative use, which are joined by a non-expressed 'to be', shouldn't be lenited as well.

Hjalmar Holm Jul 12, 2015 (23:05)

+Александр Запрягаев  Very interesting, and might explain som of previously thought "irregularities"? So, maybe, only "true" direct objects are lenited. So *nídhin mened na Imladris but *ni lom ab vened lung or *i dass nin vened na Mordor  "I will go to Rivendell", and "I am weary after a heavy travel". If lung is permitted to be used that way, and "my task is going to Mordor", with Mordor unlenited since meded interrupted?

Roman Rausch Jul 13, 2015 (00:11)

+Александр Запрягаев This can be already seen in King's Letter aníra tírad, aníra suilannad. The reason is simply that they're complex predicates, the gerund just completes the meaning of the verb and is not an object. You can see that the object is actually mellyn in the latter case and gets lenited: e {aníra suilannad} mhellyn în 'he {wants to greet} his friends' rather than ?e aníra {huilannad mellyn} în 'he wants {the greeting of his friends}' or something like that.

P.S.: mened

Александр Запрягаев Jul 13, 2015 (17:41)

+Matt Dinse As we know, the CE way of making a past was originally augment with the lengthening=primitive strengthening of the sundóma. But the -nē addition is also obviously of pre-split creation, found in both Quenya and Sindarin; if we suggest that strengthening and suffixation were somehow coexisting in Old Sindarin (such as first for perfect, second for imperfect), then it is fair to guess that though most verbs went to augmentation pattern, some fossilized forms could survive, such as when the alternative is non-euphonic (agauw > agaw?). Also it could be a form of primitive participle, which later got the added -ina over it, and then agow could be an (irregular) participle indeed.

Fiona Jallings Jul 15, 2015 (07:13)

I've been thinking about cawn and how it could be a past participle from kjaunē. Then it struck me... Look at these past participles:
dangen, hollen/sollen, remmen, tirnen, govannen.
dolen, thoren
gwawn

In Sindarin, there are 2 different morphemes in making a past participle, make for 3 different possible forms.
-n from ancient -nē
-en from ancient -ina

Sindarin doesn't seem to use -nē alone for the past tense, but perhaps it can for a past participle.

Александр Запрягаев Jul 17, 2015 (16:51)

+Fiona Jallings As we observe, Sindarin participles are made with a double inflexion, -n(e)-inā > -nen; the secoud corresponds to Quenya one, but the first seems to be a primitive past inflexion. The forms like tirn, cant, cenn, cawn could easily be a sort of ancient participles (though what to make of actually attested vanwa as a sort of 'ancient participle'?).
I think it is quite obvious that gwaen etc. is introduced as a way to proceed to gwanwen; gwaen is a 1sg. present form, anwen is 1sg. past (in comparison to anu which is obviously 3sg.). This anwen is definitely due to a-(g)wan-e-ne > awanen > aunen > (metath. or n-inf.) anwen, but the nature of 'n' is unclear. If it is of gwa-nē, then it is unclear why -nē suddenly gets to a past of a verb not in T, P, C; a more plausible could be to claim an extended form of root, WA(N), as BA(N) proposed at some time to explain govannen. Still, a -nē hypothesis give additional support to cawn as past form; presumably, n could intrude after vowels?
By the way, what is your opinion towards the d in gwa-bhandina? The problem with all existing explanations to mae govannen is the fact of double nn instead of **govanthen! The BAN could explain the problem but was abandoned by Tolkien; the ndina rathe points to final dh, sort of badh or madh-, from which the latter is unclear but the first is occupied by 'judge'. 'Well thou together-judged'?

Leonard W. Jul 18, 2015 (12:28)

I just want to thank you all for having such an interesting discussion in public! It's been a joy to read, but my mind is spinning with your theories and hypothesis! :)

ܤܡܝ ܦܠܕܢܝܘܤ Jul 22, 2015 (12:00)

Do we know what grammatical form tolen in tolen cared is exactly (a present tense distinct from an aorist)? And would 3 pl. be *toler ? (3 sg. = *tôl or tol- with some visible pronominal suffix?)

Александр Запрягаев Jul 22, 2015 (18:16)

+ܤܡܝ ܦܠܕܢܝܘܤ
I don't believe Tolkien suddenly introduces a separate aorist to Sindarin especially just after he wiped the 'aoristal' form from atha futures and switched ceri infinitives to cared gerunds. Also having gwaen as an evidence, which is conjugated in PE17 for quite a number of forms, I rather think the i/e oscillation is a feature of verbs themselves. If I'm right, the verbs nidh, caw, dew, -sav and car are using i while tol, gwa settle for e, which is also present in all past formations (anwen, echanthel). Though this past-tense analogy would point to a sort of 'progressiveness' or 'perfectiveness' distinction, it does not explain why 'come' and 'go' are grouped together and opposite some verbs of the same class. The presently known distribution though perfectly fits the pattern 'i for transitives/e for intransitives' and unless some new facts arrive or somebody introduces a better alternative I shall settle on that. (For Tolkien never confuses ae/ai in monosyllables and thinking gwaen is for **gwain is counterfactual.) For suddenly believing there are two presents in Sindarin after all we knew before seems too rash for me.