--- In elfling@y..., "elessar_nenuial" <arkinlucia@h...> wrote:

> 5th explanation by Iiipitaka, David Salo himself, who actually wrote
> the dialog.
>
> Well, he did not say much, but this:
>
> "I did not intend the structure VERB-PL...aen, as I used it, to have
> "subjunctive force"."
>
> <Then what do you mean??? Come on, are you really David Salo? Why
> don't you give us some insight on this? Why leave us hanging by just
> deny our statement?>
[snip]
> Now what Kai MacTane here is proposing (Or perhaps David Salo himself
> as well, but from his previous reply, it does not seem so, but again,
> we don't know if Iiipitaka really is David Salo) is that verb + aen
> can be a third use: indicative to express mood (subjunctive adjective).

*laughs* Okay, you got my attention. As far as the last point, I have no
doubt on that score: I am David Salo, and David Salo means me! :)

I have treated _aen_ as a place-filling pronoun taking plural verbal
agreement. You could translate it as "they" (the nameless, faceless "they")
or "people" or "folks" or "beings", but it doesn't necessarily imply an agent at
all, and therefore can be expressed just as well by a passive. There's no
modality involved. In _estathar aen_ the modality comes, I think, from the
"future" tense morphology, a "future" being in many languages - not least
English - a modal, expressing potential, probable, or desired circumstances.
It is further modified by _sennui_; a word of uncertain etymology, but clearly
showing the adjectival ending -ui, suggesting that it is an adjective turned to
adverbial use: "better, rather" or the like.
_i sennui Panthael estathar aen_: "(he) whom 'people' (aen) rather shall
(=should) call Fullwise" = who rather should be called Fullwise = who ought
to be called Fullwise.
Whether this treatment is precisely *correct* I don't know; I can say that
I
know of no evidence *against* it.
In any case, since I am responsible for _i amar prestar aen_, I can say
confidently that it is *intended* to mean "the world is being changed
(disturbed, troubled, affected)": present tense, not past, as it refers to an
ongoing situation. Literally, of course "they (the faceless 'they') are
troubling
the world. " Who 'they' are doesn't matter: could be wizards, orcs,
ringwraiths, elves, dark lords, hobbits, anybody. That's why it can be
translated as a passive: "The world is being changed/troubled". More
idiomatically, of course one would say "the world is changing"; the
construction I used points out that this is through the agency of others, not
the agency of the world itself. I could *not* have written _i amar presta_;
that would mean "the world disturbs".


I hope this helps,

David Salo