Post TExF3uNPbbq

Tamas Ferencz Oct 20, 2016 (15:40)

+#randomLotRparagraph

`Well, well! ' said the wizard. `The passage is blocked behind us now and there is only one way out – on the other side of the mountains. I fear from the sounds that boulders have been piled up, and the trees uprooted and thrown across the gate. I am sorry; for the trees were beautiful, and had stood so long.'
`I felt that something horrible was near from the moment that my foot first touched the water,' said Frodo. 'What was the thing, or were there many of them? '
'I do not know,' answered Gandalf, 'but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.' He did not speak aloud his thought that whatever it was that dwelt in the lake, it had seized on Frodo first among all the Company.

LR, Book II, Chapter 4 A Journey In The Dark


‘Sí, sí!’ i istar quente. ‘I lango ka me tapta sí ar erinqua ettulie ea rie – i oronti pella. I hlóni thostar ni i ondor hostienwe, ta aldali *etequerienwe ar rípienwe olla i ando. Lue nin, an i aldali ner vanime, ar ta andave tarnelye [1].’
‘*Túnenye i ma norta ara ná i lúmello yasse talinya appane i nén,’ Maura quente. ‘Ma ta engwa né, hya nótime intion[2] ner?’
‘Lá istan,’ Olórin aquente, ‘mal erya níre tulyane i ranqui. Ma lilhikkie, hya nírienwa né et i mornie neni nu i oronti. Nassi linyenwe yo saure lá i urkor oiar ambaro núre nómissen.’ Lá nyarnes tennaya i *aiqua oiane i nendesse nampe Maura minya imbi illi Otornasseo.

*etequer- v. trans. ‘turn sg out, uproot’
*tunta- v. ‘perceive, notice’ from Qenya http://eldamo.org/content/words/word-3362675263.html
*aiqua pron. ‘anything, whatever’ cf. aiquen

[1] per PE22 (don’t have the page number) the past imperfect participle was used a past perfect
[2] partitive plural of inte ‘they’ i.e. ‘several of them’
Eldamo : Early Quenya : tunta-
ᴱQ. tunta- v. “see, notice, perceive”. References ✧ QL/095.5801; QL/095.5802. Glosses. “see, notice, perceive” ✧ QL/095.5801. Variations. tunta- ✧ QL/095.5801. Inflections. tūne, past, ✧ QL/095.5802. Derivations. < ᴱ√TUN+TƎ ✧ QL/095.5701.

Tamas Ferencz Oct 21, 2016 (08:32)

+James Coish for want of a later, attested word, and after careful consideration, yes.

Björn Fromén Oct 24, 2016 (22:40)

I was wondering about the past perfect (pluperfect). As PE 22, p.104 has it, it "was made in Q, by adding to the perfect participle the past suffix -né". So karnelyane 'had made' (pp.104, 108, 109), kestanelyanen 'had asked me' (p.122). This points to *tarnelyaner as the equivalent of 'had stood (pl.)'.
However, it seems that -lya as a participle ending was discarded, once Tolkien had introduced -lya, -lye as pronominal suffixes ("*lya* clashes with -lya, thine" PE 22, p.152). It was replaced with -ila, the perfect participle then becoming káriéla (pp.152, 155). Would then the earlier rule for forming a pluperfect still apply (*káriélane 'had made', *táriélane 'had stood')?

Tamas Ferencz Oct 24, 2016 (22:58)

+Björn Fromén that was a passage that was bothering me, too. I do not have the PE with me, but isn't Tolkien saying something to the effect of "these [i.e. the three forms he mentions in the sentence] were the only forms used" which would suggest that all the elaborations about past perfect, etc, were discarded?

Björn Fromén Oct 25, 2016 (22:58)

+Tamas Ferencz Well, he says (p.155) that only three participial forms were made with the suffix -ila: aorist karila, perfect káriéla (presumably dissimilation of *káriíla < *kárieila), future karuvaila. I don't think this completely rules out the possibility of using them as components in finite forms. But periphrasis would perhaps be a safer choice: *né káriéla 'was having made' = 'had made'?

Tamas Ferencz Oct 26, 2016 (08:34)

+Björn Fromén yes, *né káriéla is then basically an updated version of my ner... tarnelye above. However attractive the idea that allows us to conjugate verbal participles like normal verbs, from that passage in LVS it looks that JRRT probably moved away from the idea.

It's almost as if his "grammatical aesthetics" followed the development of English from Old English: out go the 784 (or sg like that) possible conjugated verb-forms, in come a greatly simplified system.