Petri Tikka wrote:

>Lala lil uminye

(Now does it make a difference whether one has _uminye_ or _uminyes_ when he
is referring to the preceding phrase? Hmm... but of course object is
apparently not even always necessary [á vala Manwe!])

>Ilquain ná nóte auríva:
>Mo nessa, mo yára, mo enwina
>
>Loar tulir lencave ar lintave:
>Sintante ar nartar ve mere Ilúvatar
>Lá valye Valar

(Copula omitted, adjective plural? Yup.)

>Ar Maiar lá ciltar
>Man nauva vinya oiale

(= Finn. _ikuisesti_)

>A Yésus, ánin anta Aire-Fea
>I cuinien ve aimo
>An ni véla tye ento
>Ya rato, a Héru, nea

_Ea_ is also fitting if more "modern" Quenya is preferred (_na_ also comes
to mind, but it doesn't have two syllables...).


Elhath


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"û bar an faeg vi rhovanion"
layt bª-dabrâ awwânâ lª-meskênê

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Is the object of the (invisible) copula lenited?

This has been buffetted around as a sub-subject a couple of times. I
really want to know everyone's views on this. My view (as you all
likely know) is that the object of the copula should be lenited
(perhaps that's just my "ideal" Sindarin concept: there is no evidence
that makes me think so). I sent a post in 'Coleridge' concerning my
view
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/elfling/message/31607).

Now again, we are discussing the same thing (in 'Lothron'). So I'm
just wondering what you all  think, and why you think it.

Adab nîn, adab lîn
Amanda

Amanda wrote:
> Is the object of the (invisible) copula lenited?
>
> I really want to know everyone's views on this.

The possibility, that the object of the (invisible) copula might be
lenited, does exist, cf. Thorsten Renk (Message 31604), though there
are different theories regarding the occurrence of _vi_ in the 'Ae
Adar'.

My view is that the matter cannot be decided on the extant evidence.
Furthermore, I think that the publication of new materials at some
future date might well show Tolkien's different conceptions at
different times.

Personally, I don't lenit words after (the invisible) "to be", for
somewhat practical reasons: Firstly, it doesn't seem wrong, secondly
almost all good (Neo)Sindarin compositions and translations I know
are written according to this habit.

In Message 31607 Amanda wrote:
>So the copula is not actually present, but the reader will
understand which word is the suject and which is the object by the
lenition.

>In _A si 'laid_  (lit. And here [were] forests), the object is
_'laid_ 'forests'.

>And in _A hi glaid_ (lit. And forests [were] here), the object is
_hi_ 'here'.

Imo, "forests" is the subject of this sentence, regardless of the
word order, and it cannot be lenited.

If I were to express emphasis, I would either write:
_A sí glaid_
or:
_A glaid sí_

(This applies also to the sentence _A taw ?haint gelair_.)

On the other hand there are sentences where subject and object seem
to be interchangeable, eg. _Gondor bar nín_ / _Bar nín Gondor_.
As mentioned above, I wouldn't lenit the object.

Erna

--- In elfling@yahoogroups.com, <ethuilbereth@g...> wrote:
> Is the object of the (invisible) copula lenited?
>
> This has been buffetted around as a sub-subject a couple of times. I
> really want to know everyone's views on this. My view (as you all
> likely know) is that the object of the copula should be lenited
> (perhaps that's just my "ideal" Sindarin concept: there is no evidence
> that makes me think so). I sent a post in 'Coleridge' concerning my
> view
> (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/elfling/message/31607).
>
> Now again, we are discussing the same thing (in 'Lothron'). So I'm
> just wondering what you all  think, and why you think it.
>
> Adab nîn, adab lîn
> Amanda


You're definitely mistaken with your view expressed here:

"In _A si 'laid_ (lit. And here [were] forests), the object is _'laid_
'forests'. And in _A hi glaid_ (lit. And forests [were] here), the
object is _hi_ 'here'.
In _A taw haint gelair_ (lit. And there [were] gardens bright) the
object is _haint_ 'gardens'. And in _A daw saint gelair_ (lit. And
gardens bright [were] there) the object is _daw_ 'there'.

So your answer depends on what you really want to say. "And here were
forests" (emph. on 'forests') is different from "And forests were
here" (emph. on 'here'). And "And there were bright gardens" (emph. on
'gardens') is different from "And bright gardens were there" (emph. on
'there'). Placement of emphasis could be debated:)"

since the subject always remains the subject whereever you will
place it in the sentence (or lenite or not)! What you are callling 'object'
(si/hi) never can be an object! It's an adverbial attribute modifying the
(virtual) predicate 'to be/to exist'. (So, from this starting point, it might
actually worth discussing whether or not the adverbial attribute be
lenited instead of the missing verb itself belonging to it.)


(There are of course other cases where subject and object can be ex-
changed - with or without the semantics of the utterance altered:
1)
Bill (is) John/John (is) Bill; Lojban: la bil. du la djan./la djan. du la bil.
with the meaning John=Bill or viceversa (=identity!)
2)
Bill (is) a man/a man (is) Bill; Lojban: la bil. nanmu/lo nanmu me la bil.
(which of course is not the same).
3)
the cat (is) white/white is the cat; Lojban: le mlatu cu blabi/lo blabi cu
me le mlatu (a white one/white ones is/are the cat) or lo blabi cu mlatu
(a white one/white ones is/are a cat).

So the question nevertheless still remains when are predicates to be
lenited in Sindarin?
- the forest is green (lenition)
- this is a (green) forest (lenition??)
- the forest is here/there (lenition of here/there as adverbial attribute
    of the implied verb 'to be' ?????)

Edhil

I just realised that I did not post my Quenya text in the requested
form. Sorry about that. I made some changes in the meantime and I
shall post only one stanza at a time. Thanks for any comments and
corrections.


Ea taurë olórenyassen,
There is a forest in my dreams,
sairina nómë seldelenyava.
magic place of my childhood.
Andavë sernë lainan vanima
Long rested a beautiful green valley
imbë ringwi mirilyala,
between glittering lakes,
tenn firnes taltala aicassenen.
until it expired by the collapsing mountain-top.

or: tenn firnes nu i taltala aicassë.
until it expired under the collapsing mountain-top.

sairina: I do not know, if this word can be used in the sense of
magic = special, wonderful.
seldelenyava = as there is the word maidenhood "wendelë", seldë +
lë ?
I wonder if using "nu" under allows to drop the instrumental case
in "aicassenen"?


Thank you in advance for your help.

Órerámar

Could somebody try and revise the Wikipedia article on Quenya? The
section on Quenya pronouns is outdated and misleading.

This is a sequence of thoughts on the subject of lenition following the
copula, in no particular order.

1. as i understand it, the copula is a form of the verb 'to be' used to
equate two things:

brannon [na] im 'i am a king'
dagnir i chui [na] i adan ennas 'the man there is a slayer of dogs'

as opposed to the substantive verb which links a noun and adjective or
adjectival phrase:

celin [na] i lais 'the leaves are green'
caran na ruith [na] i vess 'the woman's red with anger'

though of course they aren't necessarily distinct in S. but is this what
everyone means by copula?

2. people keep saying that the copula verb 'to be' can have an *object*
which should thus be lenited like normal objects of a verb. This seems
deeply odd to me. surely the verb 'to be' has a complement not an object? if
lenition is the marker of objective status, as it is in S, then the lenition
perfoms exactly the same 'marking' function as the accusative endings in
inflected languages. One of the things that S has in common with the Celtic
languages is that the phenomenon of consonant mutation clearly started as
phonetic (e.g. soft mutation is the result of contact between a [perhaps
lost] final vowel and the initial consonant of the next word) and has then
spread to take on grammatical 'marking' significance, representing
accusative-status, or marking an adjective as a qualifier to a noun. Now, in
Latin or Greek one doesn't say **'Caesar non est regem' [Caesar is not a
king [with 'king' wrongly in the accustaive case] or **Kaesaros ou basilea
estin, as the verb 'to be' has not an object, but a complement, which goes
in the nominative, like the subject. 'Caesar non est rex'. So - if lenition
forms the same role as the accusative ending in inflected languages,
'flagging up' the object-ness of a noun or noun phrase, then it clearly
should not be applied to nouns joined by the copula. In other words,
'Aragorn na brannon' [aragorn is a king] is a different *type* of phrase to
'Aragorn pent beth' [aragon said a word].

3. this obviously applies only to noun phrases. with the verb 'to be'
linking a noun and an adjective (not to be termed a copula sentence as far
as i am concerned) we have some interesting issues.

I don't have any answers but i suspect that S could use lenition and word
order to express different ideas with the same words.

eg. 'calen i cheledir' as opposed to 'i cheledir galen'. To my mind, the
former would imply a left-out form of 'to be': 'the kingfisher is green',
with the adjective unlentited. The latter would imply just a noun and
adjective phrase, 'the green kingfisher', with lenition.

apologies if this is off the point or utterly obvious. It's just my take on
the language and may represent nothing but the mangled welsh-sindarin i
sometimes speak inside my head!
regards
Mark

Bobo Williams wrote:.

> 1. as i understand it, the copula is a form of the verb 'to be' used to
> equate two things:
>
> brannon [na] im 'i am a king'
> dagnir i chui [na] i adan ennas 'the man there is a slayer of dogs'
>
> as opposed to the substantive verb which links a noun and adjective or
> adjectival phrase:
>
> celin [na] i lais 'the leaves are green'
> caran na ruith [na] i vess 'the woman's red with anger'
>
> though of course they aren't necessarily distinct in S. but is this what
> everyone means by copula?
>

I wouldn't quite agree with this definition. It seems too narrow.
AFAIK, a copula can very well link nouns (i.e. the subject of the sentence)
to adjectives (as in "the leaves are green"). Also, other verbs than "to be"
can function as copula, e.g. "become" or "seem".

See:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsACopula.htm

And the Webster's Comprehensive Dictionary (not a specifically _linguistic_
reference book, granted, but certainly not totally off the mark) has: "A
verb that merely connects the subject and the predicate of a sentence
without asserting action, particularly the verbs _be, appear, become, feel,
look, seem, smell, sound, taste_."

Hisilome

Amil ná vanya quén,
amil ume wen.
Amil malda lá er nilde,
amil ná ammelde.
Meluvalmel, ámil, oiale.

Mother is a beautiful person,
mother is not a young woman.
Mother is better than a friend mere,
mother is one most dear.
We will love you, O mother, from year to year.

Happy Mother's Day!

Petri Tikka
www.geocities.com/petristikka/elvish/

How should be sing. and pl. genetiv of words: "hroa" and "coa"?
*hró? *có?


Best regards,

M.K.

--- In elfling@yahoogroups.com, "A.W.T." <Ti@f...> wrote:


> So the question nevertheless still remains when are predicates to be
> lenited in Sindarin?
> - the forest is green (lenition)
> - this is a (green) forest (lenition??)
> - the forest is here/there (lenition of here/there as adverbial attribute
>    of the implied verb 'to be' ?????)


Thinking this over, the first example is ALSO quite questionable - sorry
for being mislead by my Siouan way of grammatical thinking ;-)

BTW, Here's something interesting on "copula" to brush up this issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula

edhil

--- beren_mablost <beren_mablost@...> wrote:
> How should be sing. and pl. genetiv of words: "hroa"
> and "coa"?
> *hró? *có?
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> M.K.

As they come from CAWA and SRAWA, I'd say *cavo and
*hravo (*covo, *hrovo?).



Thomas Ferencz

  -- love is the shadow that ripens the wine --



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--- beren_mablost <beren_mablost@...> wrote:
> How should be sing. and pl. genetiv of words: "hroa"
> and "coa"?
> *hró? *có?

it has been asked again, and if not mistaken, it was
suggested that (by etymology) they could be *hrovo
(SRAWAO) and *cavo (KAWAO)

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--- In elfling@yahoogroups.com, "Petri Tikka" <pstikka@h...> wrote:
> Amil ná vanya quén,
> amil ume wen.
> Amil malda lá er nilde,
> amil ná ammelde.
> Meluvalmel, ámil, oiale.
>

Congratulations, this is a beautiful poem (your mother must have been
very happy to be celebrated with such nice words).

Could you just tell me why it is ammelde and not ammelda?
Thanks in advance.

Órerámar

On 5/8/05, beren_mablost <beren_mablost@...> wrote:
> How should be sing. and pl. genetiv of words: "hroa" and "coa"?
> *hró? *có?
>

You may have to look back to the ulterior forms of these words for answers:

_cöa_ would have an ulterior form _*kawa_ and _hröa_ would have
_srawa_. Based on this we can posit the genitive forms _*cavo_ and
_*hravo_, respectively (pl. _*cöaron_ and _*hröaron_).

Thanks for all the answers (which show that I think in English way too
often, and with bad grammar). I think I'm starting to get it.

>2. people keep saying that the copula verb 'to be' can have an
>*object* which should thus be lenited like normal objects of a verb.
>This seems deeply odd to me. surely the verb 'to be' has a
>complement not an object?

You're right, c.f. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_%28grammar%29:
"In linguistics, the object of a transitive verb is one of its core
arguments, which generally represents the target of the verb's
action."


Laston,
Amanda

It's good that 3 persons agree :)

> You may have to look back to the ulterior forms of
> these words for answers:
>
> _cöa_ would have an ulterior form _*kawa_ and _hröa_
> would have
> _srawa_. Based on this we can posit the genitive
> forms _*cavo_ and
> _*hravo_, respectively (pl. _*cöaron_ and
> _*hröaron_).
>

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Órerámar wrote:

> Could you just tell me why it is ammelde and not ammelda?

To rhyme with _nilde_. :) Well, one could plausibly explain _ammelde_
as a nominized feminine form of _ammelda_. _Ammelda_ 'most dear' -
_ammelde_ 'most dear one'.

Petri Tikka

Hi everyone: here's a translation of a chunk of the twelth-century Abbess
Hildegard's writings. It was such a lovely day I felt urged to translate it.


Im i guil nórui edh-raw 'aer: lachon erin bairth, sílon nedin nen, lachon
ned Anor, Ithil ah elenath. Ah echuion bain na guil na ‘waew e-menel, sui
guil archennen i tinna ned ilnaid. Cuia i venel na ‘ûr galen; rimmar i nin
sui ae cuiar; ah athân galad en-Anor i Ithil bellen, ah achuia e; sílar in
elenath nedin galad ín, sui ae cuiar.

I am the fiery life of holy substance: I flame over the fields, I shine in
the waters, I shine in the sun, Moon, and the host of heaven. And I awaken
all to life, by means of the wind of heaven, like invisible life which
glimmers in everything. The heavens life by means of a green heart; the
waters flow as if they are alive; and the light of the Sun rekindles the
faded Moon, and it lives again; the stars shine in their own light, as if
they are alive.

(Translated from Hildegard of Bingen: Selected Writings, Penguin, 2001).

Grammar stuff:
athân = ad [re-] + thân, 'kindles'
achuia = ad [re-] + cuia, 'lives'
nedin = ned+ the article, on the model of 'erin' and ''ni' and 'nan' and
'ben', and taking mixed mutation.
ilnaid = david salo's reconstruction for 'everything', il [all] + pl. of nad
[thing].
archennen = 'invisible', cf 'archened' used in TTT dialogue by David Salo
for 'unseen', ar [neg prefix, cf. 'arnodiad' 'unnumbered'] + cened
'sight'..., here ar+cennen.

Cheers!
Mark

My private thought is that it is irrelevant how you call the thing
following the verb 'to be' - in my (Latin-based) grammar definition it is
not the object, but I can readily grasp what is meant by someone calling
it such. It doesn't seem to be overly significant to answer the question
of lenition, though, because Tolkien did not seem to base his lenition on
Latin grammar.

So let me try to phrase it in my own words. The idea of lenition is _not_
to mark accusative, in fact there's good evidence that lenition also marks
the dative (see 'The Sindarin case system'
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~trenk/elvish/cases.html ) and we know for sure
that in earlier conceptions it marked the genitive (we have the version
_Ennyn Dhurin aran Voria_ somewhere, Helge quotes it for example, but I
can't remember the reference at the moment). Nouns following prepositions
are frequently lenited. Adjectives following nouns are often lenited. A
verb following the subject is found lenited at one occasion. So, it seems
to me that it is outright wrong to claim that lenition would be the
equivalent of the accusative, since a) it affects other cases as well and
b) the common ground to trigger lenition seems to be two words closely
associated with each other.

I see therefore no a priori reason at all to reject the notion that a word
following 'to be' (or even preceding it) should be different from object
lenition. It clearly is a different situation in a Latin-based grammar
description, but I find it far from obvious that it would be different in
a Sindarin based grammar description which apparently is a bit different.
So regardless of how you call it - two words connected with an (unwritten)
'to be' _may_ be close enough to trigger lenition. We don't know if it
does, the actual evidence is inconclusive.


> brannon [na] im 'i am a king'
> dagnir i chui [na] i adan ennas 'the man there is a slayer of dogs'
>
> as opposed to the substantive verb which links a noun and adjective or
> adjectival phrase:
>
> celin [na] i lais 'the leaves are green'
> caran na ruith [na] i vess 'the woman's red with anger'

I decidedly don't agree with the translations. As I have argued in 'The
verb'to be' in Tolkien's Elvish languages'  (which seems to have some
bearing on the present discussion by the way...
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~trenk/elvish/to_be.html ), the word order in all
Elvish samples known to me seems to convey emphasis just the way it does
in English (plenty of evidence) - so the translation would need the 'king
am I (not servant)' 'green are the leaves'. There is absolutely no reason
to assume that non-emphasized sentences as the above translations indicate
would have this inverted order in Sindarin (or if there is, I'd like to
learn about it).

> So - if  lenition
> forms the same role as the accusative ending in inflected languages,
> 'flagging up' the object-ness of a noun or noun phrase, then it clearly
> should not be applied to nouns joined by the copula.

It plainly doesn't, see above.

> eg. 'calen i cheledir' as opposed to 'i cheledir galen'. To my mind, the
> former would imply a left-out form of 'to be': 'the kingfisher is green',
> with the adjective unlentited. The latter would imply just a noun and
> adjective phrase, 'the green kingfisher', with lenition.

As I interpret the evidence, the word order is emphasis. What lenition is
is up to anyone's guess - mine is _i cheledir galen_ 'the green
kingfisher' vs. _i cheledir calen_ 'the kingfisher is green' vs. _calen i
cheledir_ 'green is the kingfisher' (so in spite of the fact that I cannot
actually reject lenition of a word joined by 'to be' and brought arguments
for this point above, I actually don't believe that it's true. The
scientific-minded will know why, all others feel free to think me weird ;-)

* Thorsten

I have known about Hildegard but never actually read
anything of hers... she is a bit unknown to my small
part of the world... although i am not appropriate to
judge your translation, i must say it's a beautiful
piece, reminding me of voronwe's description of his
land to Turo ('in that land Narog joins Sirion...')


--- Bobo Williams <deadcandiscourse@...>
wrote:
> Hi everyone: here's a translation of a chunk of the
> twelth-century Abbess
> Hildegard's writings. It was such a lovely day I
> felt urged to translate it.
>
>
> Im i guil nórui edh-raw 'aer: lachon erin bairth,
> sílon nedin nen, lachon
> ned Anor, Ithil ah elenath. Ah echuion bain na guil
> na �waew e-menel, sui
> guil archennen i tinna ned ilnaid. Cuia i venel na
> �ûr galen; rimmar i nin
> sui ae cuiar; ah athân galad en-Anor i Ithil bellen,
> ah achuia e; sílar in
> elenath nedin galad ín, sui ae cuiar.
>
> I am the fiery life of holy substance: I flame over
> the fields, I shine in
> the waters, I shine in the sun, Moon, and the host
> of heaven. And I awaken
> all to life, by means of the wind of heaven, like
> invisible life which
> glimmers in everything. The heavens life by means of
> a green heart; the
> waters flow as if they are alive; and the light of
> the Sun rekindles the
> faded Moon, and it lives again; the stars shine in
> their own light, as if
> they are alive.
>
> (Translated from Hildegard of Bingen: Selected
> Writings, Penguin, 2001).
>
> Grammar stuff:
> athân = ad [re-] + thân, 'kindles'
> achuia = ad [re-] + cuia, 'lives'
> nedin = ned+ the article, on the model of 'erin' and
> ''ni' and 'nan' and
> 'ben', and taking mixed mutation.
> ilnaid = david salo's reconstruction for
> 'everything', il [all] + pl. of nad
> [thing].
> archennen = 'invisible', cf 'archened' used in TTT
> dialogue by David Salo
> for 'unseen', ar [neg prefix, cf. 'arnodiad'
> 'unnumbered'] + cened
> 'sight'..., here ar+cennen.

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Edhil wrote:

> So the question nevertheless still remains when are predicates to be
lenited in Sindarin?
> - the forest is green (lenition)
> - this is a (green) forest (lenition??)
> - the forest is here/there (lenition of here/there as adverbial attribute
    of the implied verb 'to be' ?????)

I would make this distinction:

_I daur calen_ "the forest (is) green"

BUT:

_I daur galen_ "the green forest"

In other words, an adjectival predicate is not lenited, but when the
adjective connects with a noun as its attribute, it should be lenited. The
latter pattern, at least, is fairly well attested (not that seeming
exceptions to this "rule" aren't attested as well!) The former pattern is
unattested, but it would be my best guess.

"The forest is here" I would translate as _i daur sí_.

- HKF

Hi Thorsten,

--- Thorsten Renk  wrote:
  So regardless of how you call it - two words
  connected with an (unwritten)
  'to be' _may_ be close enough to trigger lenition.

Well, yes - but ultimately mutations are formed on phonologicalgrounds, aren't
they? So your assumption would mean that the copula atsome time (Old Sindarin?
earlier?) did exist in the language, only itgot lost somehow later on.

Personally I like the possibility of a subtle distinction, wher the_absence_ of
lenition marks the _presence_ of an unwritten copula. Itmakes sense to me
somehow.


Shine on,


Thomas Ferencz

  -- love is the shadow that ripens the wine --

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> Well, yes - but ultimately mutations are formed on phonologicalgrounds,
> aren't they? So your assumption would mean that the copula at some time
> (Old Sindarin? earlier?) did exist in the language, only it got lost
> somehow later on.

We know that it existed at some early time because there is a CE stem and
we have the copula in Quenya from the same stem. It would seem odd to me
if the Sindarin branch of the language had started without it. We even
know from _No aer_ that the stem is (or was) to some degree productive in
Sindarin. In fact, we don't have to assume it 'got lost', it just may be
optional, it seems to be e.g. in Quenya, we don't really have that many
examples in Sindarin.

> Personally I like the possibility of a subtle distinction, wher
> the_absence_ of lenition marks the _presence_ of an unwritten copula.
> Itmakes sense to me somehow.

Methinks that is just what I keep suggesting (apparently in agreement with
a lot of other people).


* Thorsten

Hmm, I'm deeply unconvinced, but never mind.

I'd like to ask what we think about *what kind of phenomenon* mutation is. I
argue that in S as in celtic, mutation is an originally phonological feature
(like, say, the way when saying the phrase 'i live in Paris' quickly one
says something more like 'i live imm Paris', or like sandhi in Sanskrit); in
the case of lenition, the juncture of a final vowel with a following
consonant causes that consonant to soften even if the vowel later
disappears. But, like in celtic, i argue that it spreads and is
grammaticalised, so the closeness or otherwise of a word with a lost final
vowel becomes irrelevant. for example, why is the 'peth' of 'lasto beth
lammen' lenited, and not the 'calad' of 'lacho calad'? I'd say because the
former is an object so has lenition to signal its accusative status, where
as the latter is a imperative + subject, 'Flame, O light!'. Phonologically
of course the situations of the two nouns are identical. So, with great
respect, Thorsten, I disagree with your statement that 'the common ground to
trigger lenition seems to be two words closelyassociated with each other.'
Yes, originally, in the primitive language, I agree. But not *exclusively*
in the later language: that 'trigger' spreads by analogy and becomes a
grammatical marker. i also don't agree with your statement about lenition
marking the dative and genitive: the 'ennyn Dhurin' example is not a fair
example as it belongs to an earlier conception of the language, as you say.
And the lenition of the dative suggests to me that the direct and indirect
objects in S are rather closely related (as for example in 'onen i estel
Edain' with no 'na' or 'nan'. The idea of an 'accusative of respect' might
be relevant here; 'I gave the hope [with regard to] men.'
Anyway, that's a bit off point.

I would suggest that it would be extraordinary of Tolkien to have adopted
this extremely peculiar feature, mutation (which occurs ONLY in the modern,
insular Celtic languages) and then to have made it work in a totally
different way (i.e. only occurring for phonological reasons and not for
'structural' or 'grammatical' reasons AS WELL.) I say this because S strikes
me as being, on the whole, really *very* like Middle Welsh, but simplified.
eg. lenition after the article only happens to W. feminine nouns, but to all
S ones. In Middle W the object of a 3rd person imperfect singular is
lenited, but all S objects are lenited. Of course, one can't reconstruct his
thought processes, but an evening in with 'The Grammar of Early Welsh' or D
Simon Evans' 'A Grammar of Middle Welsh' is very instructive...anyway, this
Saturday I'm off to a celtic linguistics conference (hurray) so I will
corner my old Supervisor, the linguist Paul Russell, and ask him how
mutation becomes grammaticalised. It might shed some light on this thorny
and contentious subject.
all best
Mark

Greetings,

--- Bobo Williams <deadcandiscourse@...>
wrote:
> Hmm, I'm deeply unconvinced, but never mind.

About what are you unconvinced?

  i also don't agree with your
> statement about lenition
> marking the dative and genitive: the 'ennyn Dhurin'
> example is not a fair
> example as it belongs to an earlier conception of
> the language, as you say.

Quite late examples of the language (The Rivers and
Beacon-hills of Gondor)(and a host of other, also
eralier examples) show that lenition might not appear
even when we would expect it to happen on grammatical
grounds (I am referring to the lenition of adjectives
after a noun); "Sindarin" possibly never crystallized
into a fixed and coherent concept, so I think it _is_
relevant to consider earlier concepts of mutation
rules. (Or we can adopt the concept of lenition of the
genitive as a "Noldorin dialect" feature, as D. Salo
does it in Gateway).

> And the lenition of the dative suggests to me that
> the direct and indirect
> objects in S are rather closely related (as for
> example in 'onen i estel
> Edain' with no 'na' or 'nan'.

AFAIK the only possible example of lenition of an
indirect object is _suilannad mhellyn_ from KL, which
does not wholly convince me of the validity of this
rule; while suilannad can certainly be analysed as
suil+annad, it might well have become a fixed compound
and lost its "internal meaning", and thus simply
govern an accusative.


Shine on,

Thomas Ferencz

  -- love is the shadow that ripens the wine --



Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html

>
> > And the lenition of the dative suggests to me that
> > the direct and indirect
> > objects in S are rather closely related (as for
> > example in 'onen i estel
> > Edain' with no 'na' or 'nan'.
>
>AFAIK the only possible example of lenition of an
>indirect object is _suilannad mhellyn_ from KL, which
>does not wholly convince me of the validity of this
>rule; while suilannad can certainly be analysed as
>suil+annad, it might well have become a fixed compound
>and lost its "internal meaning", and thus simply
>govern an accusative.
>

Exactly! that's why I wasn't convinced by thorsten's comment about not being
able to regard lenition as an accusative marker because it can apparently
happen to the dative...which i don't remember ever seeing, as you say. so we
are in total agreement.
Mark

>
>

Here's a little poem, roughly based on 'Ode to a Girl' by Dafydd ap Edmwnd.
apologies for the acutes not curcumflexes on all the 'lin's...my mistake.


i•finnil vae, i•henchui lín
Fuinui, i•’lind lín, a pîl
e-nîf lín sui goll muindor,
lossui a morn, luitha dîr;
i•thîr sui loss e-fuin,
a flâd laug, vae a ros
sui rî e- meril, alae! Melin
i veleth vín..

the soft hair, your eyebrows
dark, your glance, and the hue
of your face like a monk's robe,
white and black, enchants men;
the face like night-snow,
and warm skin, soft and reddish
like a garland of roses, Alas!
i loved our loving...

'pil' derived from Qenya 'quile' as oft discussed on here.
'henchui' is a coinage of mine, singular *hencu with a circumflex on the
-u-, literally 'eyebow' and so eyebrow. It was the nearest i could manage.

for 'Monk' i've used 'brother' as in the original welsh ('brodyr').
'Monachus' if borrowed into S would presumably yield, er, *manach, pl.
*menaich though. But let's not go there, as the phrase is.


best wishes
mark

That's lots of stuff... Well, let's do it nice and slowly...


> AFAIK the only possible example of lenition of an
> indirect object is _suilannad mhellyn_ from KL, which
> does not wholly convince me of the validity of this
> rule; while suilannad can certainly be analysed as
> suil+annad, it might well have become a fixed compound
> and lost its "internal meaning", and thus simply
> govern an accusative.

True, but the example of non-lenition of a dative is... well, there is
none. So that 'rule' is even less convincing. Gathering all evidence,
lenition of a dative without _an_ is the _most likely_ interpretation,
that doesn't mean others cannot be found.

> So, with great respect, Thorsten, I disagree with your statement that
> 'the common ground to trigger lenition seems to be two words closely
> associated with each  other.'

Maybe you'd agree with Tolkien then? As Carl Hostetter reminded me
yesterday, Tolkien's own description is 'two words in close syntactic
relationship' (which is... pretty close to what I wrote ;-) - I didn't
remember that description by Tolkien when I answered).


> Yes, originally, in the primitive language, I agree. But not
> *exclusively*
> in the later language: that 'trigger' spreads by analogy and becomes a
> grammatical marker. i also don't agree with your statement about lenition
> marking the dative and genitive: the 'ennyn Dhurin' example is not a fair
> example as it belongs to an earlier conception of the language, as you
> say.

Then we have to agree on what sample of texts should be relevant - the
King's Letter is earlier than the Ae Adar, so maybe we should disregard it
as well?  As has been pointed out in the late 'Rivers and Beacon Hills of
Gondor' adjectives appear unlenited... well, it seems to me that you would
refer here to a 'late' concept of the language (which doesn't exist as
such). For example, please consider that _i gohenam_ (Ae adar) contains a
non-lenition after the relative pronoun whereas _Dor Gyrth i chuinar_ has
nasal mutation (Letters:417) and _Dor Firn i Guinar_ (Sil. Ch. 20)
lenition - so do you think Tolkien's ideas about what triggers lenition
and what not are really the same in all three cases?

> And the lenition of the dative suggests to me that the direct and
> indirect
> objects in S are rather closely related (as for example in 'onen i estel
> Edain' with no 'na' or 'nan'.

Well - you still have the datives marked with _an_ which are the majority.
But the _an_-less dative seems to be pretty similar to the accusative, so
it would probably make more sense to talk about an object case in Sindarin
instead, but that's just semantics I guess.

> I would suggest that it would be extraordinary of Tolkien to have adopted
> this extremely peculiar feature, mutation (which occurs ONLY in the
> modern,
> insular Celtic languages) and then to have made it work in a totally
> different way (i.e. only occurring for phonological reasons and not for
> 'structural' or 'grammatical' reasons AS WELL.)

Nobody in the discussion suggested that mutation occurs _only_ for
phonological reasons (I certainly didn't). My point is that lenition is
_not_ a substitute for an accusative case marker but rather that a noun
being in accusative case is _one particular instance_ of a 'close
syntactic relationship' (out of several others) which is capable of
triggering lenition (and we know from other cases, especially adjectives,
that the same grammatical environment does not always trigger lenition)
and that therefore it makes _no_ sense to me to argue a noun ought to
remain unlenited because it is not in accusative. Unless we have a precise
definition of what Tolkien meant with 'a close syntactic relationship' we
cannot be sure what other grammatical environments the definition includes.

> I say this because S strikes me as being, on the whole, really *very*
> like Middle Welsh, but  simplified. eg. lenition after the article only
> happens to W. feminine nouns, but to all
> S ones. In Middle W the object of a 3rd person imperfect singular is
> lenited, but all S objects are lenited.

People have played the game with Irish grammar, Welsh grammar, ... There
are striking similarities, and then there are the differences. To my
knowledge, no analogy has been borught forward that would convincingly
explain all the lenition pattern in Sindarin. I believe this is
impossible, simply because the Sindarin corpus includes texts from
different periods, and we are not looking at the same ideas being employed
in different texts, and we don't have enough texts from a given period to
deduce the lenition pattern in any way reliably.

* Thorsten

In principle, I can share your view on lenition, i.e. its phonological
origin (call it Sandhi - and there's even so-called tone-Sandhi, e.g.
in Chinese) and its further developement in the sense of grammati-
calization through a very common feature in all human languages'
grammar: analogy/parallelism.
I also share your opinion on Sindarin being designed after the Welsh
model, yet simplified in quite some respect (grammatically and pho-
nologically) by Tolkien who actually had not a real deep knowledge
of that language (not to speak of his skills to pronounce all its quite
peculiar phonetic constituents).
Since Sindarin is based on one human's brain (and not 'grown' and
developed through the use of native speakers in the course of centuries
like most natlangs have), IMHO it's idle and pointless to speculate
what this one man had thought about this issue - or maybe not. Despite
the professor's thorough and meticulous dedication executed with
utmost care and a special kind of fanatism all through his life, it's no
more than a fantastic scenery, and a scenery behind the scenery etc. etc.
having the very power of making people almost believe that all his
imaginary creation is real. IMHO, this holds even for his different
languages' grammars (some just sketches from a few strokes of his pen,
others, like - first of all - Quenya, much more elaborated, but not per-
fect in the sense of finished). There's nothing more to see behind the
rules of his Sindarin (I don't even expect essentially new features on
this respect with all his materials eventually disclosed in the future).

Edhil

--- In elfling@yahoogroups.com, "Bobo Williams" <deadcandiscourse@h...> wrote:
> Hmm, I'm deeply unconvinced, but never mind.
>
> I'd like to ask what we think about *what kind of phenomenon* mutation is. I
> argue that in S as in celtic, mutation is an originally phonological feature
> (like, say, the way when saying the phrase 'i live in Paris' quickly one
> says something more like 'i live imm Paris', or like sandhi in Sanskrit); in
> the case of lenition, the juncture of a final vowel with a following
> consonant causes that consonant to soften even if the vowel later
> disappears. But, like in celtic, i argue that it spreads and is
> grammaticalised, so the closeness or otherwise of a word with a lost final
> vowel becomes irrelevant. for example, why is the 'peth' of 'lasto beth
> lammen' lenited, and not the 'calad' of 'lacho calad'? I'd say because the
> former is an object so has lenition to signal its accusative status, where
> as the latter is a imperative + subject, 'Flame, O light!'. Phonologically
> of course the situations of the two nouns are identical. So, with great
> respect, Thorsten, I disagree with your statement that 'the common ground to
> trigger lenition seems to be two words closelyassociated with each other.'
> Yes, originally, in the primitive language, I agree. But not *exclusively*
> in the later language: that 'trigger' spreads by analogy and becomes a
> grammatical marker. i also don't agree with your statement about lenition
> marking the dative and genitive: the 'ennyn Dhurin' example is not a fair
> example as it belongs to an earlier conception of the language, as you say.
> And the lenition of the dative suggests to me that the direct and indirect
> objects in S are rather closely related (as for example in 'onen i estel
> Edain' with no 'na' or 'nan'. The idea of an 'accusative of respect' might
> be relevant here; 'I gave the hope [with regard to] men.'
> Anyway, that's a bit off point.
>
> I would suggest that it would be extraordinary of Tolkien to have adopted
> this extremely peculiar feature, mutation (which occurs ONLY in the modern,
> insular Celtic languages) and then to have made it work in a totally
> different way (i.e. only occurring for phonological reasons and not for
> 'structural' or 'grammatical' reasons AS WELL.) I say this because S strikes
> me as being, on the whole, really *very* like Middle Welsh, but simplified.
> eg. lenition after the article only happens to W. feminine nouns, but to all
> S ones. In Middle W the object of a 3rd person imperfect singular is
> lenited, but all S objects are lenited. Of course, one can't reconstruct his
> thought processes, but an evening in with 'The Grammar of Early Welsh' or D
> Simon Evans' 'A Grammar of Middle Welsh' is very instructive...anyway, this
> Saturday I'm off to a celtic linguistics conference (hurray) so I will
> corner my old Supervisor, the linguist Paul Russell, and ask him how
> mutation becomes grammaticalised. It might shed some light on this thorny
> and contentious subject.
> all best
> Mark