Old Elvish Syntax

Old Elvish Syntax Tables

(See corresponding info for proto-Elvish. Note that, for the moment, all forms are rendered directly in IPA. I intend to develop a Romanization standard to replace this.)

Old Elvish pronouns distinguish animacy and inanimacy in the third person only. They have dual number, and besides the nominative three other cases, namely accusative, dative, and a comitative/instrumental.

Pronouns

Independent forms:

Person

NOM

ACC

DAT

COM/INS

1SG

wɛl:ə*

wɛlð

wɛʁwe

wɛln

2SG

i:ma

i:mað

i:Gwe

i:man

3SGAN

dana

danið

danGwe

dan:

3SGIN

danam

damnið

daGwe

damnin

1DU

wɛlz

wɛlzið

wɛʁwe

wɛlzin

2DU

i:maz

i:mazið

i:mazGwe

i:mazin

3DUAN

danaz

danazið

danazGwe

danazin

3DUIN

danarm

danarmið

danaʁwe

danarmin

1PL

mɑl:a

mɑlð

mɑʁwe

mɑl:an

2PL

ʃeɔn

ʃeɔð

ʃeɔGwe

ʃeɔn

3PLAN

θi:l

θi:lið

θi:ʁwe

θi:lin

3PLIN

θi:lm

θi:lmið

θi:ʁwe

θi:lmin

* When the following word begins with a vowel, reduces to wɛl

Polypersonal bound forms (suffixed):

1SG: -wɛ/ə**
2SG: -i:
3SGAN: -da
3SGIN: -dam
1DU: -wɛz
2DU: -i:z
3DUAN: -daz
3DUIN: -dar
1PL: -mɑl
2PL: -ʃɔ
3PLAN: -i:l
3PLIN: -i:m

** when word final

Polypersonal bound forms are compulsory on the verb. By leaving out the subject, object, or both, one can shift the pragmatic focus as a type of noun incorporation (see below). This is in fact the pragmatically unmarked strategy, but use of independent pronouns does happen to place emphasis on any argument in the clause.

Nouns and Articles

Dual marker (rare nouns, including referring to persons): Prefix zu-

Plural marker (used on nouns only): AN (humanoid, body parts and certain spirits etc.): prenominal plural word ɛl:ə/ɛl* AN (other, eg animals, other animate nouns): prenominal plural word o:n/o:na* IN: circumfix e…(ɑ)m, from proto-Elvish (‘also … thing(s)’, meaning ‘all’).

There are however a few irregular plurals that have other forms, e.g. ɑm, ɛm (‘thing, things’, cf. created by analogy θɑm, θɛm, meaning ‘dwarf, dwarves’). Note that for small numbers of subject inanimate nouns (usually 2 or 3, sometimes more in specific contexts) it is considered literary to use the singular agreement form of the verb. This also applies to animates in diminutive, in particular contexts (little dogs, little children etc).

Definite article: j(a)-. Acts as a proclitic, either on the noun itself or on any classifier or demonstrative preceding the noun. Note the definite article does not take stress, so that the stress pattern shifts one syllable forward. Definite articles are used for ongoing topicality, referring back to an introduced topic, but not for generic reference (“the world is a big place”).

Old Elvish has frequently (especially literarily) used noun classifiers. They are obligatory when combined with numerals or quantifiers (any, all, etc.). Otherwise they are optional but literarily preferred, especially for plurals. It is sometimes in literary style possible to omit the noun and preserve the classifier, when the noun is implied or obvious. Classifiers precede the noun but come after the numeral, and are not inflected in any way. Naturally they only occur with independent nouns, not incorporated nouns. When they are combined with a definite article, the definite article (ja-) is (pro)cliticized onto the classifier.

Old Elvish also uses noun incorporation of a moderate type (in terms of the categorization developed by Marianne Mithun and others). An incorporated noun form is possible to make it a general, unspecific, instance of a frequently performed thing, etc., as distinct from a specific or referential case, or something unusual that needs specifying. Also, there are many words where the root of the verb and the noun are the same and where only subsequent morphological inflection determines which word class it falls into. In such cases, the verb form of the word may imply the noun form also (e.g. the noun morphology of ‘tie’ means ‘rope’ and therefore ‘tie’ can also imply ‘tie with rope’ without needing to specify the noun in that case). Finally, there are cases where noun incorporation into a verb changes the lexical meaning of the verb, which represents the beginning of a new phase of noun incorporation, in this stage not yet complete. This corresponds to NI classes I & II in Mithun’s classification.

Adjectives

Animate unmarked. Inanimate marker: -n

Adjectives follow nouns.

Demonstratives, numerals, etc.

Demonstratives:

The pronominal demonstrative is a deictic suffix on 3SG or noun forms. These distinguish nearness of the speaker and the hearer as follows:

Near speaker: -pha
Near hearer: -e (of unknown origin)
Distal: -ɑm
Neutral: -aʃ (of unknown origin)

The adnominal demonstrative is formed by a separate word following the noun. It lacks a neutral form:

Near speaker: japh (from ‘ja phan’, meaning ‘the here’ in | proto-Elvish)
Near hearer: imas (from ‘i:mas’, no longer functional locative of 2SG, ie ‘at you’)
Distal: jɑmpɑn (from ‘ja ɑmpɑn’, ‘the there’ in proto-Elvish)

There is a distributive suffix (meaning ‘all around, all over the place, all about’ etc. When used on a noun instead of the verb, it means ‘each’, e.g. “each of the elves carried…” etc): -um (from proto-Elvish ‘um:a’, meaning ‘around, about’)

Demonstratives and numerals precede nouns.

Numerals cannot be pluralized. They require some independent noun, possibly a placeholder noun, to be associated with. (E.g. ‘to three I gave…’ becomes ‘to three people I gave…’.)

Adpositions

Adpositions precede nouns. Most, however, appear as derivational morphology: see Derivational Morphology below.

Verbs

Stems

-i is the stem for the infinitive and imperative, participles and for passives. This was an old proto-Elvish infinitive that got reanalyzed as the stem form in certain cases and then extended by analogy.

Past stems

Note that all past forms (see above) are based on the past stem, not the nonpast stem, of the verb. These follow apophony (ablaut) patterns, based on the stressed (first) vowel, as follows:

a -> u

ɑ -> æ

æ -> o

e -> ɔ

ɛ -> o

i -> ɑ

ɪ -> ɔ

o -> e

ɔ -> ɛ

u -> i

Long vowels, however, keep their form and are unaffected by the ablaut. The ablaut ignores compounding of any kind, including noun incorporation.

Tense

Present/Future: unmarked. Hodiernal: -xar (proto-Elvish ‘ixaraθ’, ‘yesterday’) Proximate past: -par (unknown) General past: -thu (proto-Elvish verb stem ‘thul-‘, ‘get, receive’) Remote past: -qa (proto-Elvish verb stem ‘qal-‘, ‘say’; evolved from evidential to tense)

For verb stems ending on a consonant, the -i stem is also inserted in past tense.

Aspect

The perfective aspect is unmarked. Imperfective marker (follows tense): -o. Imperfective is also used for habituals. Strong completive marker (‘all the way, completely, totally’): preverbal particle tul (from past stem of tali, ‘finish’ -> tuli)

Mood

Infinitive: stem + -ar. (The -ar form comes from the postverbal particle ar, meaning ‘in order to’.)

Imperative: Declined like infinitive but with person prefixes. Imperatives can also have a softer obligation meaning, ‘should/must/ought…’, which are the only (English) meaning for non-second person forms. With a past tense stem it implies epistemic necessity/inference, (‘must have X…’)

Ability/Possibility:

  • Preverbal marker thul (derived from ‘to get’ in proto-Elvish), indicating physical ability (‘can, able to…’), situational possibility, and permission

  • Preverbal marker ælvrin, derived from ‘knowing’ in proto-Elvish, indicating mental ability (‘can, know how to…’);

  • Epistemic possibility (‘could be, might be’) is expressed with the preverbal particle nɑmjaz, derived from proto-Elvish ‘it suffices’, with a normally inflected verb.

Optative:

Auxiliary/modal verb function of inflected aumi ‘wish’ combined with infinitive acting as optative.

The simple sentence is: ‘wish.1SG.NPST go.GER.3SG.NPST’ -> “I want him to go” (I wish his going). Contrast with the optative meaning: “may he go, I hope he goes, would that he would go”: ‘wish.NPST.1SG.AN.3SG.DAT go’, with an infinitive of the verb and the object of the wish, if any, in the dative (I wish for/to him (that) to go).

Frequentative/Iterative:

A preverbal marker eɑnno, derived from proto-Elvish (‘hea ɑnno’, ‘stand/stay +’at’’ in the imperfective), combined with the infinitive of the verb and the auxiliary ‘to stand’ or ‘to lie’, depending on whether the so conjugated verb is active or stative respectively. (The auxiliary can therefore duplicate the original meaning due to reanalysis, and a finite verb being required.)

E.g. ‘stand.NPST.1SG FREQ miss.DETR.INF’ -> “I keep missing” or “I miss all the time”. A different word permitted word order is FREQ INF AUX.

Evidential:

There is one evidential marker, for direct sight of an ongoing object or situation, a main clause initial proclitic lo: derived from proto-Elvish ‘I see’ (‘wɛl:ə o:n’)

Standard Forms

Reflexive: -su(l) (from proto-Elvish ‘sulɪs’, ‘body, self’)

Participle: ‘Xing’, in the participial phrase sense of ‘while doing X’, is indicated by a gerund form given the comitative suffix (“with the Xing”). Otherwise, the imperfective serves the progressive aspect purpose (‘I am/was walking’).

Gerund form: -ar (derived from Proto-Elvish -ara participle). Combines with person and tense markers. Contrasts with infinitive form (which has neither), and is used for nominalizations, also in combination with adpositional derivation. Also an already old fashioned or literary form of the ‘should’ clause appears with a gerund, such: ‘always have.2.SG.GER’ = ‘you should always have, make sure you always have’ etc.

Passive: there are two detransitivizers, which vary by verb. The detransitivizer combined with an obligatory agent in the instrumental case creates a passive. They have evolved from a proto-form, resp. a benefactive and a malefactive. The detransitivizer in question used for the verb depends on which of the proto-forms was most commonly associated with it in proto-Elvish, e.g. ‘cut’ with a malefactive, ‘give’ or ‘help’ with a benefactive, etc. This is because in proto-Elvish these acted a kind of middle between applicatives and derivation (like in German) and therefore over time came to allow intransitive usage (eg ‘to give-for’, or ‘to cut-attheexpenseof’, no longer requiring an object). That form then morphed into an intransitive in Old Elvish. The default form is the one derived from the malefactive.

The benefactive derived form is a suffix -s:a

The malefactive derived form is a suffix -wa (cf. proto-Elvish qwar = ‘cut’, which is thought to be the remote origin of the malefactive)

Clausal:

Negation:

Proclitic on first verb, noun, adjective, demonstrative, or pronoun: emin- (from proto-Elvish ‘e min’, ‘and not-be’)

Qs:

  • Polarity enclitic on subject, with SVO word order: -ami:n (from proto-Elvish ‘or not-be’, derived from negation marker, with vowel lengthening as result of emphatic shift)

  • Interrogative enclitic on subject, with SVO word order: -ʃa (from defunct proto-Elvish verb for ‘do’)

Relative clause markers:

  • Interrogative pronoun (inflected for case and noun class): θær (pl. θæri) (‘who, what’), mainly used in independent pronominal position

  • Verbal suffix -daθ (orig. via ‘da+θær’), forming a relative form of the verb (‘the one who died…’ -> DEF.man die.PST.3.SG.REL)

  • A third form is e.g. ‘DEF.house live.GER.PST.1SG’ -> “the house where I lived”, “the house which I lived in” (lit. “the house of my past living”) for subordinate clauses involving literal or figurative locational prepositional complements (in which, against which, to which, etc, contextually to be determined). Note the order change from the usual predicate-complement structure.

Possessives:

  • Possessives are marked by the possessive enclitic -u, which attaches to the first noun of the possessed phrase, followed by the (non-obligatory) pronoun markers.

E.g. ‘I get the dog’s big white bone’ = thulwə eulnda galau ail yasi:lɑn:il (get.1SG bone.3SG snow.like big DEF.dog)

Adverbials:

There’s some adverbial/conjuncting things that serve primarily temporal and sequential purposes. These are generally clitics which can be attached to any word in the clause for relevant emphatic effect, such as:

  • ‘Then, and then, subsequently’ is the proclitic e:-

  • ‘Then, at that moment’ is the proclitic a:-

Derivational Morphology

Old Elvish has a great deal of lexically specific derivational suffixes, which precede TAM markers. These can be attached to the basic roots and by doing so interact with relevant nominal or verbal morphology, although some can be attached to either; as well as numerals and other word classes where relevant (‘to three were given rings…’).There are also some more ‘general’ derivational forms, such as locative ones.

The derivational forms can also appear as parts of predicate constructions when combined with verbal morphology, e.g. (‘shoe.inside.(NONPAST).3SG snail ‘ = the snail is inside the shoe).

Note that often it is also possible to express the same meaning nonderivationally. Generally, this will have topicalizing or emphatic effect.

Nominal morphology

  • Diminutive: -il

  • Augmentative: -ul

(Note that diminutives usually have a positive association and augmentatives a negative one. Diminutives and augmentatives can also be used on adjectives to mean ‘a little’ or ‘very’ respectively, with a possible but not obligatory contextual meaning of ‘too much’ of either.)

  • Collective or cluster, belonging together: -mɔn

  • Surface, area, room, place for doing: -tal

  • Ex-, former: i- (past root)

  • Food: -ʃal, -ʃah

  • -like, akin to: -au

  • Time: C/_# -> s (e.g. nathail ‘moon’ -> nathais ‘month’)

  • Stative nominalizer (state of being): -lɔn, -ɑn

  • Habitual or institutionalized doer or performer of some V (for persons only), or producer or effecter of some V (for objects), or creature identified primarily with some specific action (for animals, spirits etc.; alternative to imperfective habitual verb form as noun): -sul

  • Holding, containing (or holder, container): dun-

Verbal morphology

  • Intermittently, occasionally: -kwa

  • Intensifier: reduplication of root (usually first V or CV)

  • Causative: ɛs-

  • Diminutive/de-intensifier: -un or -ɔn directly after the stem, before any verbal morphology. This indicates a semantic form of the verb with reduced intensity, e.g. ‘a bit, a little’. Sometimes this has lexically specific meaning. It is not productive on all verbs. Ex.: o:n ‘see’ -> o:nɔn ‘glance at, glimpse’; ɑn: ‘stand, stay’ -> ɑn:ɔn ‘stay briefly’; ɪnd ‘sleep’ -> ɪndɔn ‘nap (verb)’

  • Together, joining two things: zu- (cf. dual on certain nouns)

  • Again (‘re-‘): ɪ+duplicate following consonant, else ɪh-

Locatives

  • At (direction of), toward, onto: -(i)ð

  • To, for, into: -Gwe

  • With (com. and ins.), using: -(i)n

  • Forward, in a straight line: -kau

  • Out, away: o-

  • On, at (static), on top of: -efe

  • Far (both adj. and adv.): -yɑm (from distal demonst. morphology)

  • Near, close (as above): -yaph

  • Around, to the back of: -ɪ