G+ LoME Archive
Post GP9Dw3oJpqu
Roman Rausch, Sindarin Chat, Tamas Ferencz, Fiona Jallings

Fiona Jallings Aug 16, 2013 (21:57)

I was contemplating the following snippets last night (after safely making it home, though still groggy and probably not firing on all cylinders yet)
"I-Veleglind i eithro en estar iChîn Húrin"
oft translated as "The epic that also is called The Children of Húrin"
"I Cherdir Perhael (i sennui Panthael estathar aen)"
Oft translated as  "the mayor Samwise (who ought to be called Fullwise)

So, commonalities:
Renaming things.
Relative clauses
Apparent passive voice
the verb Esta-
r on "esta"
Presence of unknown elements with similar structure: en and aen
Presence of adverbs following the relative pronoun

Differences
the renamed name is before the verb and the unknown morpheme is after the verb in one, but this is switched around in the other.
Why are aen and en different?
future tense -tha used on one... maybe it doesn't mark the future, but the irrealis?

Things that need to be looked into:
Examples of passive voice in Sindarin and Noldorin.
Examples of Relative clauses

Now I'm going to go take some anti-allergy meds and sneeze a bunch because it's Fire Season here in Montana.

Tamas Ferencz Aug 16, 2013 (23:07)

Interesting. Care to elaborate on "maybe it doesn't mark the future, but the irrealis?"?
I am still nursing my little belief that en/den/aen are a series.

Fiona Jallings Aug 17, 2013 (04:00)

Irrealis was something that my Syntax professor was big on. The future tense and hypothetical statements... anything that isn't real when the statement is made.  For example "who ought to be called Fullwise" isn't actually talking about the future, it's talking about something that ought to happen, a state that's not factual, because he isn't called Fullwise already. So, I think the tha on "esta" there is marking something that's not true right then.

Roman Rausch Aug 20, 2013 (14:53)

The ending tha is clearly future in Aragorn [...] anglennatha i Varanduiniant 'Aragorn [...] will approach the Baranduin bridge'. The particle aen then could either be a pronoun 'they' or mark modality. Comparing with Q. ai- and noticing that there are no pronouns similar to aen anywhere, the modality interpretation seems very likely.

The analysis in VT50 interprets en as a corresponding indicative marker, but I have a hard time buying that:
- The word order in estathar aen and en estar is different.
- Indicative is so common that it doesn't require any explicit marker at all. I don't know of any natural language that has one.
- We have a very similar example in Quenya: quetir en 'they still say' (PE17:167) and S. eno *'still' on the same page, so why couldn't en just mean *'still, also'? Hence eithro en estar *'otherwise also they-call'.