User:Wm.annis/Sìpawm a horenteri

This is a public collection of questions I currently have about Na'vi grammar. Some of these have come unbidden into my mind on their own, others develop from posts on the forum.

Si-verbs

Added Dec 18, 2010

There are some peculiar questions that come up with these verbs, by virtue of their being intransitive. They take a dative "object" although calling it an object is a bit of a stretch.

Participles

During the October 2010 Workshop, the possibility of a form such as tute asrung-sawni a helped person was discussed. The problem with this is that if si-verbs are truly intransitive, it makes no sense to create passives from them. The only way to save that is by allowing ‹awn› to refer not only to direct objects but indirect objects of verbs. That, in turn, makes for some interesting — or scary — ambiguities with ditransitive verbs such as tìng or plltxe.

Attributive Phrases

The referential hierarchy in Na'vi, so far, has admitted only subjects and direct objects as permissible unresumed heads of relative clauses (More extracts from various emails, Feb 18),

NP deletion only extends as far as DOs. So for datives, you need to pronominalize.

This means a phrase like, "words I have written" would need to be aylì'u a oe tsaru pamrel soli.