[Out of Date] Inflections and their Uses

[Taronyu]

Hey guys,

I wanted a better explanation for suffixes, prefixes, adpositions, infixes, all that lot, so I made another document for ya'll to peruse at your desire. It covers all of the inflections that we know about, and explains them, in what I hope is clear and simple English. I hope this helps with understanding how Na'vi verbs, nouns, and other words work.

Eywa ngahu.

Download the Inflections Guide.

[Étienne]

Downloaded and saved. Great work tsmukan!


Eywa ngahu

[Ikran]

Impressive! Eywa is really inspiring you, ma tsmukan!

[Srereu Aynantanghu]

saving. has this been added to the beginners documents sticky yet?

[Taronyu]

saving. has this been added to the beginners documents sticky yet?

Yes. Those of you who got this before this post was added, I've got a new version up with better formatting.

[Hawnu UnilTxep]

IRAYO ma tsmukan Taronyu!!

I was really confused.  You're a lifesaver.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

wow. This ought to be really helpful.

One thing that struck me however, was that because of all the text explaining exactly how it works it is a bit hard to skim to find something (say you know that there's a prefix beggining with s but you can't remember what it means but you think it might be useful) so I've made a skimmable version.

Well, actually I'd been doing it for a bit (hence the different sorting) and it happens to fulfil that role.

[Taronyu]

Useful, Kawng!

Prepositions do not attach to nouns when they go before them. They only do that if they follow the noun.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

oops, I'll edit that. Thanks.

Mine's probably a bit less useful, in general most people will either have memorised most of these or want the extra detail in yours. This is mainly a product of the fact that I find grammar and syntax easier to remember than vocabulary.

[Night Raider]

Thanks for this Taronyu and Kawng, these are very helpful.

[Taronyu]

oops, I'll edit that. Thanks.

Mine's probably a bit less useful, in general most people will either have memorised most of these or want the extra detail in yours. This is mainly a product of the fact that I find grammar and syntax easier to remember than vocabulary.

Unknown is spelled so.

Where are you getting <uy> from?

[kewnya txamew'itan]

<uy> is from the wikipedia article, uncited.

I really have made quite a mess of this haven't I? Oh well, that'll teach me to try to compete with the document king.

Irayo.

[Tìsyaw Nantangä]

Brilliant. Txan ayirayo ma tsmukan. Can't wait to print this out at the uni tomorrow pair with your dictionary. May even get them bound someday soon

[Ikabob]

Irayo.  great work... really appreciate it. and for that matter keep up the good work

[Taronyu]

<uy> is from the wikipedia article, uncited.

I really have made quite a mess of this haven't I? Oh well, that'll teach me to try to compete with the document king.

Irayo.

Ha. Not so bad of a mess, I like your document. Not sure about including <uy> though, I didn't even want to include <us>.

The document king? What an epithet. ø.ø

['Tsamsiyu]

Awesome document


But there is one thing that really screws me up with Infixes... I have no idea where to put them usually, in the document it says either Position 1,2 or 3... what are these positions? :S
I'm still currently doing my GCSEs at School... so this is pretty difficult for me but there is no way i'm giving up... so if you could enlighten me with that i'd be very grateful

Eyw
ä ngahu, ma Tsmuktu!

[kewnya txamew'itan]

ma Eledrizztt, you're at the same level education as me so don't worry, youth plays into our hands as we can learn faster.

This should help you with where to put your infixes.

For monosyllabic verbs (e.g. Tung, to allow): t<1st><2nd><3rd>ung
For disyllabic verbs (e.g. Pähem, to arrive): p<1st><2nd>äh<3rd>em
For trisyllabic (and more) verbs (e.g. Kllfriyo', to be responsible): kllfr<1st><2nd>iy<3rd>o'

1st position is for participles and reflexives.

2nd positon is for tense and aspect (perfective, imperfective and subjunctive)

3rd position is for affect, positive, negative ones (<ei> and <äng>) as well as possibly <uy> which makes it formal (this infix isn't confirmed) and an unknown infix for evidentiality.

Good luck.

<uy> is from the wikipedia article, uncited.

I really have made quite a mess of this haven't I? Oh well, that'll teach me to try to compete with the document king.

Irayo.

Ha. Not so bad of a mess, I like your document. Not sure about including <uy> though, I didn't even want to include <us>.

The document king? What an epithet. ø.ø

You've certainly earned it.

I don't know if they were added after Frommer's comment that the wikipedia article is reliable so I assumed (possibly wrongly) that it still is.

['Tsamsiyu]

Thats awesome thanks a lot

I'm going to try and play around with Infixes for a while until i've grasped it

Eywä Ngahu ma tsmukan, Irayo Kawng Mungeyu!

[Taronyu]

Edit: NINJAD.

Yeah, I tried not to explain it there, it would have bogged down the document. Or maybe I was just lazy.

There are three positions: the first for participial, which is dubious. The second is for tense/aspect/mood. The 3rd is for affect.

They always go between the first consonant of consononant cluster of a syllable and the vowel in that syllable. So:

l<1><2><3>u
t<1><2>ar<3>on.
t<1>esw<2>ot<3>ìng

And they count from the last syllable. So, the <3> always goes in the last one. The <2> always goes in the penultimate one (second to last). And <1> should go in the antepenult.

A bit confusing, maybe.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

everything I've seen suggests that the 1st is also on the penultimate syllable, just before the 2nd position. The wikipedia article specifically says this and the pocket guide suggests it by only talking about two infix positions (of course it doesn't mention participles because they get complicated).

If you have new info though, I will correct my documents.