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Re: Conlang T Shirt - Quenya

From:FFlores <fflores@...>
Date:Thursday, November 4, 1999, 0:46
Brook Conner <nellardo@...> wrote:

> I guess I was thinking that the usage there was as a declarative, > i.e., in the nominative case, as in English, "Here! I am going to live > here." If "sinome" is *not* being used this way by King Elessar, then > (as suggested) it is the direct object. Either "sinome" is *never > declined*, or "mar-" does not use accusative for direct object (a > lesser irregularity) or there's an error in the text (as "sinome" > should have a long vowel at the end: "sinomee").
I think we're not understanding each other here. _Sinome_ means 'here' and _maruvan_ is mar- 'to dwell' + -uva (future tense) + -n (1st person singular suffix). So it's plainly 'Here I will dwell'. _Sinome_ is not the direct object, since _maruvan_ is apparently intransitive; it's an adverb, and within the sentence it's a complement (or oblique phrase, or whatever). This unless _maruvan_ can be transitive too ('inhabit (a place)' instead of 'dwell'), but even in that case, _sinome_ would not lengthen the last vowel to mark accusative (unless we're dealing of Book Quenya!). Helge already suggested to me (see my forwarded post) this translation: Nai lambelya maruva sinome. may it be that your tongue will dwell here
> > Generally speaking, I was under the impression that languages that > decline nouns as widely as Quenya (Russian comes to mind) have very > few non-declined words, even pronouns usually have different forms for > different cases.
I don't know that much Russian, but I know it's inflecting, while Quenya is quite agglutinating, and as with many (most?) agglutinating languages, affixes are rarely compulsory. Quenya doesn't even bother to distinguish nominative from accusative; the others are non-core cases (instrumental, locative, genitive, etc.). So in fact the most important nouns (subject and object noun phrases) are non-declined.
> I see the question on "hir-" as being, can it be reflexive? E.g., > could the subject be the thing being found or the thing doing the > finding? More specifically, can it be reflexive when used in the > "wishing formula"? As in "You language, may it be found here".....
Why would that possibly be? --Pablo Flores http://draseleq.conlang.org/pablo-david/