Canon/2010/UltxaAyharyuä

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On October 1st through the 3rd of 2010, Paul Frommer and about 15 members of LN.org met at one member's private residence in CA to discuss the Na'vi language. The simplest summary of the meeting was "teach the teachers." In addition to the more formal sessions, some smaller details of the language came out in informal discussion during meals, etc.

Links

More links here for other posted discussions.

The Meeting

Saturday

Some time early during Saturday's discussion, Paul said that there will be no new infixes.

Top Seven Outstanding Questions

The top request, for the full kinship system, has to wait for Cameron's input. Another top request,

Transitivity and Infix Positions

Paul produced a list of all the known verbs with transitivity and infix positions marked.

While he likes the dot notation to indicate infix location, it's a nuisance for him to type in the program he uses to keep track of vocabulary. So, he came up with a different notation using two digits. The first digit identifies the syllable (counting from the beginning) which the first position infixes go into, and the second the syllable of the second position infixes. Some examples:

’efu 12: first position infixes in the first syllable, second position in the second syllable — a normal root verb
emza'u 23: first position infixes in the second syllable (za), second in the third syllable (’u)

"Self" and "Own"

The reflexive pronoun is sno (gen. sneyä).

Pol 'olem peyä wutsot "He prepared his (i.e., someone else's) meal."
Pol 'olem sneyä wutsot "He prepared his own meal."

Remaining open questions:

  1. Whether 1st and 2nd person pronouns can be antecedents for sno (for now, probably best avoided).
  2. Lexical derivations from the root sno.

Asking and Giving Permission

As in English (and plenty of other languages), tsun will work for both "can" and "may."

The syntax of tung "allow" will be detailed later.

Phonological Questions

  1. Unreleased stop + a vowel: in an intonation unit (that is, not before punctuation or a pause), final stops are released as you'd expect.
  2. Unstable vowel sequences: and äa are fine. When an enclitic adposition begins with the same vowel as a word ends in, write a hyphen between: zekwä-äo. Though Na'vi does not officially have long vowels, they are a natural result of certain situations like this. (On Sunday, the same practice was given for indefinite -o, so fya'o-o.)

Synonyms

  • na and pxel are identical in meaning
  • nìn will usually have a direct object, tìng nari less often; also, nìn has more the sense of "turn your attention to that right now" rather than "watch"
  • way has an "ancient" sense, where tìrol is just song in general (vocal, not instrumental music); so, the singing of traditional songs may be indicated with way si
  • hawnu and tìhawnu si have the same meaning (but of course different grammar)

Kin must take a direct object (not modal). The dative with lu tìkin is more often used for "need to":

Ayngaru lu tìkin a nume nì'ul "You need to learn more."

You can also use it impersonally, lu tìkin a... for something like "there is a need that I finish cooking by 5pm."

Proverbs

Nothing decided firmly, though we had a nice discussion of things to consider (brevity, cultural assumptions, how much we can rely on the ASG).


Afternoon Session

More things from the Outstanding Questions document were gone over, especially ones he could answer quickly. There were then a few random questions from attendees.

Sìltsan

The word sìltsan means "good of its kind, meeting its purpose" as well as morally good. Lefpom is more "pleasant, nice".

Ke

With si construction verbs, ke goes before the si (just as the prohibitive rä’ä does), pamrel ke si. However, with fteke ('< fte + ke) the ke stays with the fteke compound.

Did he confirm explicitly ke goes with adverbs? I think I was writing and not paying attention — Wm

Txo

Rather than create a new contrafactual infix, Paul is considering using a separate if... then..., parallel to txo... (tsakrr), just for those. He still needs to work out the details of tense and aspect for that.

Sä-

Is definitely not productive, and Paul doesn't expect that he'll be using it terribly often in creating vocabulary, either.

Nang

Nang is used to comment on "something already extreme." Txan is the most common such extreme word.

Again, I was scribbling. Did he explicitly say there might be other words that this could go with?

Pe-

The question affix -pe+ may be used freely with nouns. When used as a prefix with plurals pe+ + ay+ > pay+. From Sunday, the accenting from the ASG 'upe is a mistake. 'upe is correct.

Tuté

For this word only, accent can be marked with an acute (to distinguish tute "person" from tute "woman").

Alo

Accented on the first syllable.

Word Order with Slu

When there is ambiguity (especially likely when two nouns are involved, rather than a pronoun subject), the predicate of slu may be indicated with ne:

Taronyu slu ne tsamsiyu "The hunter becomes a warrior."

ìmìy and modal kan

Not how he would do this now, this combination is the only one. The pattern cannot be extended.

In the discussion it was decided kan "aim" can be used as a modal to indicate intention. The syntax is like new, that is, either kan + V‹iv› or kan futa V‹iv›.

Multiple Attributives

For two adjectives, ADJ-a N a-ADJ is available. For more than two adjectives, or if you want to place both adjectives on the same side, they must be pulled out into an attributive clause with lu:

yayo a lu lor sì hì'i "a pretty, small bird"

äng/eng

Optionally, when the negative affect infix ‹äng› occurs before the vowel i, the vowel of the infix may be raised, giving ‹eng›. Thus the early example, fìskxawngìri tsap'alute sengi oe. (Wm asked this over a beer).

Sunday

This was somewhat less formal. The focus was on simple conversation practice — someone said what had happened the day before, and someone else translated, with Paul commenting on things, usually small, but a few longer discussions took place, too.

(I was only present for part of this, so I most need help with other people's notes here.)

Morning

Gerunds vs. Fwa

After much discussion about whether or not a gerund can take an object, it was decided that using fwa was best in that situation.

Fwa yom teylut 'o' lu "Eating teylu is fun."
Tìyusom 'o' lu "eating is fun."

Most attention was spent on the possibility of using a genitive object of the gerund (tìyusom), but certain ambiguities, as well as "Na'viness," came up as objections. He might change his mind on this later, but for now stick with fwa clauses.

wrrpa

Wrrpa is both a noun and an adverb.

Ke with fra-

This came up as a comment from Paul on someone's statement:

Ke frapo ke tslolam "Not everyone understood" (a correction of just ke frapo tslolam)

Any noun or pronoun with the prenoun fra- can be individually negated with ke, with the rule that the verb must also still be negated (just as with negative adverbs, adjectives and pronouns).