trramä vs. letrram

[Kemaweyan]

Pefya nìeyawr pilvlltxe teri upxare a fpame' trram: san upxare trramä sìk fu san upxare letrram sìk?

How correctly say about messages that were sent yesterday: "upxare trramä" or "upxare letrram"?

[roger]

The difference is between inflection (case) and derivation (deriving adjectives w le-). Case is pretty much universal - there may be some irregular words, but you can pretty much always use case with a noun. Derivation is spottier: if it's not already a word, then you're making stuff up, so I'd say letrram is out pending attestation. Two problems with trramä too: Is trram a noun? AFAIK, it's only an adverb, and so can't take case. There's also the question of whether the genitive would do the job even if it were: it would in a lot of European languages, but in Na'vi the GEN seems to have a narrower meaning; it's unclear whether it can be used for "two-winged banshee", for example.

So I'd say both are iffy. What I think we can do is use subordination: upxare a trram. If trram were a noun, we'd need an adposition there, but since it's not, AFAIK we can just use 'a'.

What do others think? Is [N a ADV] a legitimate construction?

[wm.annis]

What do others think? Is [N a ADV] a legitimate construction?

I suspect that in a longer conversation with more context that might be fine.  But without more context, my impulse was upxare a fpole' (oel) trram.

Na'vi's attributive a is quite like Mandarin 的 when that is used for attributive phrases.  的 can be used in "ADV 的 N" phrasing, but a quick dig through some documents makes it seem to me like it's not very common.  Frommer has mentioned Mandarin before in relation to Na'vi grammar, which is the only reason I bring up 的 here. 

[Plumps]

Something similar with what roger said about adverb and noun origins...

We know that tok is transitiv ... how would I treat the sentence "I am here" ? Is that
oe lu fìtseng (fìtseng = adverb)
or
oel tok tìtsengit (fìtseng = noun)

Concerning *N a ADV: I'd go for the longer version that wm.annis suggested ... I tried to think of other instances in which the adverb would be more clear through -ly ending ... but that doesn't work.

Irish uses similar patterns in terms of relative clauses with an introducing a. And AFSIK, it isn't possible there either...

[Plumps]

Seems we've (at least I ) been mistaken:

From one of roger's post from Frommer

There's
Ke zasyup lì'Ona ne kxutu a mìfa fu a wrrpa.
'The lì'Ona will not perish to the enemy within or the enemy without.'

kxutu a mìfa fu a wrrpa looks like 'N a ADV' to me, doesn't it?

[NeotrekkerZ]

We know that tok is transitiv ... how would I treat the sentence "I am here" ? Is that
oe lu fìtseng (fìtseng = adverb)
or
oel tok tìtsengit (fìtseng = noun)

I'd say the second sentence as your presence here, there, or anywhere changes the place's nature.