--- In elfling@y..., Gildor Inglorion <elfiness@y...> wrote:
> * i need: boe anim
>
> i dont know how much "Tolkienian" it is, but it's used
> in FOTR and after all it sounds right:)

_boe_ is a modification of a word in Etymologies, _bui_. Both the form and
the meaning are based on a concatenation of guesses. The words in
Etymologies have a number of mostly regular phonological divergences from
later specimens of Sindarin; -ui is one of them. In other Sindarin examples,
the Common Eldarin vowels *au and *aa, when followed by -y- or subject to
i-affection (umlaut) become -oe-. For instance Nibin-noeg "Petty Dwarves"
where noeg is from *nauki (Unfinished Tales p. 100); and goe 'terror, great
fear' from gaayaa (The Peoples of Middle-earth p. 363). CE *au and *aa
when *not* umlauted also merge as au, or when shortened o. In the
Etymologies, however, i-affected *au and *aa become ui, e.g. gwaun, pl. guin
"geese" from *waani (root WA-N; the WA is probably onomatopoeic,
representing the honking noise of the goose, the -N is probably from a suffix
indicating an animal making a certain noise, like *khug-an- > huan 'animal
that barks'), and perhaps *karakw-an- > craban 'animal that caws or croaks').
_bui_ is said to come from *mauy- in The Etymologies. Since the root given
is MBAW, and since otherwise *m- always gives Sindarin *m-, we can
conclude that *mauy- is a mistake for *mbauy- (one of not a few mistakes in
The Etymologies). Treating -auy- like -aay- above, I conclude that the
Sindarin cognate should be _boe_.
As for what it means, this is not explicitly stated. MBAW is given the
meanings 'compel, force, subject, oppress'; among its derivatives are Qu.
maure, S. baur 'need'. _bui_ is said to be 'impersonal' (i.e. not having an
agent as its subject). What kind of impersonal verb could be related to this
root, and be sufficiently common to have its own entry? One that means 'it is
necessary (to)', 'one is compelled (to)', 'one needs (to)', 'one must'.
Morphologically, it is 'impersonal' in the sense of not having a personal
ending, and this seems to go back to Old Sindarin, since the form quoted
*m[b]auy- is just the root + a derivational suffix -y-. There's no indication
that in Sindarin there was a regular finite verb **boea- or anything like it.


David Salo