Corrections for the Na'vi Pocket Guide

[Mirri]

Hopefully someone can make this sticky. The corrections are piling up

The following corrections are for version 3.5:

*Page 1 gives an example with pllte', should be plltxe

*Table on Page 4 says Genitive is -eyä for consonants. This is only true for pronouns, not nouns.

*Page 6 table of adpositions is missing a few of the newly discovered ones: äo, etc.

*Page 8 is missing the formal/deferential <uy> infix.

*Derivational Change on Page 10:
First entry (le-) should be "noun to adjective"
Third entry (nì-) should be "noun/verb/adjective to adverb"

*Example on Page 10: "I apologise for this moron.".
tsapxalute should be tsap'alute.

*Example on Page 10: "It's a pleasure to be able to chat with you in Na'vi" is translated wrong.
The word prrte' should be "pleasure", pivängkxo should be "chat"


*It would be nice to have the following two rules included:
Si as auxiliary verb (canon source)

Dative + copula as physical possessive (canon source)

[Mirri]

Found another one. Page 7 says:

The first infix position (after the consonant of the penultimate syllable) is taken by infixes for tense, aspect, or mood, as well as by participle and reflexive forms, which precede tense and aspect when they co-occur.

Per the language log with Frommer's post:

First-position infixes indicate tense, aspect, or mood; there are also participial and reflexive infixes in this position, the latter being in "pre-first" position so it can co-occur with other first-position infixes.

So it's apparently only the reflexive infix that's a pre-first infix, not the participial. (notice the ; separating the two sentences)


There's also a new class of combined tense/aspects: http://forum.learnnavi.org/intermediate/another-email-from-frommer/

[kewnya txamew'itan]

pivängkxo should be "chat"

Pängkxo should be chat, you forgot to take out the <iv> infix. 

[Mirri]

pivängkxo should be "chat"

Pängkxo should be chat, you forgot to take out the <iv> infix. 

You're right. It should be chat-SJV

[AyekongAyauyä]

I've got just a general suggestion: the syllable parsing in the pronunciations really needs to be standardized. I'm seeing examples that are /CV.C.CVC/ (with the lone consonant being [ʔ]) and /VC.V.CV/, etc. Most entries seem to be okay, but it should probably stick to preferring onsets to codas throughout.

Also, it might be a good idea to deviate from the traditional apostrophes to indicate stress, since they're also used in marking the ejectives. Maybe stressed syllables should be underlined instead? (Or, alternately, care could be taken to make sure that ejective apostrophes are rounded and that stress-marking ones are not - both styles seem to be used interchangeably at the moment.)

[Mirri]

Also, there's a lot of errors in the Lexicon and it's getting to the point where it might do more harm than good. Considering the major rework our Na'vi vocabulary is getting these days, I'd recommend taking out a lot of entries in the Lexicon, or maybe get rid of it altogether and point to Taronyu's dictionary

The Na'vi Pocket Guide is still invaluable as a grammar guide and I use it all the time myself.