Kawkrr, krr slayu nga Na'viyä hapxì!

[omängum fra'uti]

But that's about written word, not spoken language, as far as I know.  Languages can still have the concept of zero without actually having a number for zero.  (For example, "none" isn't the number zero, but it's conceptually the same.  It's a perfectly sensible answer when someone asks you for a count.)

[roger]

But that's about written word, not spoken language, as far as I know.  Languages can still have the concept of zero without actually having a number for zero.  (For example, "none" isn't the number zero, but it's conceptually the same.  It's a perfectly sensible answer when someone asks you for a count.)

Well, "none" is "not (even) one". Yes, I think everyone has to have that concept. "How much food is there? None." But it's not a positive concept the way "zero" is. And our words "zero" and "cypher" are names for the digit 0. No written numerals, no zero. "None, nothing, no-one" are simply negating the existence of s.t. "Zero" reifies nothingness. How can it be nothing if it's something? So ... the concept of "none", sure. The concept of "zero" as distinct from "none", not so sure.

Actually, I take that back: "How much food is there?" "There isn't food." (tìyom ke lu.) We don't need a concept of "none". But isn't that basically what ke'u is? We might also have ?kaw'u, possibly.

[omängum fra'uti]

Well anyway that's a bit derailed of this thread topic, so probably should stop it there and get back on topic.

I wish someone more linguistically inclined would pipe up and suggest what word/concept there is for that sort of word I'm suggesting "krr" would be.  I'm trying to wrap my head around what exactly it is doing, and having something to look up on wikipedia would immensely help.

[roger]

It seems to be some kind of "adverb" maybe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverb#Adverbs_as_a_.22catch-all.22_category) as well as a subordinating conjunction ("subjunction").

[omängum fra'uti]

Yes, got to love the term adverb.  It conveniently tells you almost nothing about what the word does. :/

You could be right about the subordinating conjunction, tsakrr does seem to be used that way, both in Frommer's letter and in the movie dialog.  In Frommer's letter though "krr" on its own appears with the help of "a".  This makes sense because the time is being attributed to when he gets a response.  (Would tsakrr have worked there?  I'm inclined to think no; the two cases of tsakrr follow a verb inflected for tense, but a krr follows a verb inflected for aspect.)  There's nothing to attribute to the "krr" in this line though, which is why the "a" might be absent.

However what I'm thinking is more what is the more specific term beyond the helpful "adverb" for a word contributing temporal context to a clause like that.  And really exactly what it IS doing to the clause.

Edit: My wikipedia skills quickly sleuthed out the term "Temporal adjunct" once I actually started looking.  (Hey look I added a temporal adjunct onto that sentence! )

With that in mind, I don't think krr/tsakrr is acting in a subordinate manner at all.  The use of krr is accompanied by the attributive for subordination, while it seems like the clauses with tsakrr aren't subordinate at all, it just acts as an adjunct to indicate that clause is about the contextually understood time.  Actually, I think I'm starting to understand some other things a little better here thanks to that little tidbit.

[Skxawng]

When we broke it down in skype, the general consensus was that the second krr was one of two things:

- the 'kaw' that should go before it was covered by her breath.

- the krr means more 'ever'  so the translated phrase would be "Never! Ever!"

[omängum fra'uti]

And I think both are wrong now, as I explained.

[suomichris]

I take it all back!  There isn't any trilling happening in the word in question; I'm thinking it's a "ke" again now...

Actually, I kind of take that back, too.  There is clearly either a diphthong or two vowels here.  "ke'a" or maybe "ke'u"...

[Skxawng]

And I think both are wrong now, as I explained.

heh, am at work, didn't read everything 

[omängum fra'uti]

I take it all back!  There isn't any trilling happening in the word in question; I'm thinking it's a "ke" again now...

Actually, I kind of take that back, too.  There is clearly either a diphthong or two vowels here.  "ke'a" or maybe "ke'u"...

I'm not budging on the trill, I can literally see it.  There are 3 "pulses" of a trill in .1 seconds.  This is easy to see if you grab the audio from one of the many behind the scenes bits that features the clip of that scene (Typically side by side with the reference footage of Zoe.)

Here's an annotated snapshot of the waveform in question.  The trilling is quite clearly visible there.

[suomichris]

I'm not budging on the trill, I can literally see it.  There are 3 "pulses" of a trill in .1 seconds.  This is easy to see if you grab the audio from one of the many behind the scenes bits that features the clip of that scene (Typically side by side with the reference footage of Zoe.)

Here's an annotated snapshot of the waveform in question.  The trilling is quite clearly visible there.

Ah, okay, I can see how you thought that... But that isn't a trill--ready for a crash-course in phonetics?  (I should note at the outset that, because of the music in the background while Neytiri is talking, this is less clear than it ought to be.)

So, let's first take a look at what a trill looks like when Frommer says it; Frommer_trill is an image of the spectrum of "tolel a krr" from the message he sent us.  Two things that are important to note here.  First, the top part (the wave form), which is what you were looking at, looks very similar.  But, the second thing we note is the the bottom portion (the spectrogram; see Saldana_trill) is very different.  We should see the dark bands that go left to right in the spectrogram (vowel formants) break up in Neytiri's speech just like Frommer's; but we don't. We should also see... Ah, hell, with the noise in the background, I don't think I can really prove to you that there isn't a trill there.  But, I will tell you what I think is happening: her voice is becoming "creaky," meaning that her vocal folds are vibrating irregularly, because of the emotion in her voice. It ends up looking a bit like a trill, but it isn't...

Now, I'm not sure that this accomplishes anything.  Saldana's trills kind of suck, so the fact that she isn't making a trill here might not mean that it she isn't trying to produce a trill; but, there isn't a trill in here :p

[omängum fra'uti]

There is a lot of background noise for sure, but if you look at the dark line that is quite prominent (I'm assuming dark = what indicates higher power at that frequency in that program based on the silent part being very light) I DO see it breaking up.  It's even about the same width as the trills in Frommers (Assuming you're viewing those at a similar lscale).

I may not be an expert in phonetics, but I do understand the mathematics behind how those two displays relate.  (It's a discrete Fourier transformation from time domain to frequency domain.)  The waveform is mathematically transformed to get the power at each level of frequency, then the result is plotted in the lower graph.

Skipping any more of the boring mathematical details, the trill still does look distinct in the waveform display (IMO more so when there isn't a lot of background noise) because the lack of power at those frequencies charted in the spectrogram corresponds to a decrease in the amplitude of the waveform.  (Amplitude = power.)  What I am saying looks like a trill is very obviously visible as 3 pulses on the waveform, the same way you can see 3 black pulses on the spectrogram.  This is in visible contrast to the sound following I am saying is an "L" where it also looks pulsy like that, but if you follow the waveform, you'll see that it's not pulsing in that it's changing amplitude, rather it's got a low frequency signal overlayed over it which is causing the higher frequency lines in the waveform to bob up and down while not themselves changing amplitude.  If you plotted the spectrogram of that short pit, you wouldn't see the black line at her vocal frequency breaking up, rather you'd see an additional black line plotted at a much lower frequency.

So I still hold that is a trill.  A short one, but it is a trill.  If I saw any other place in the clip where her voice was pulsing in power like that, I might question that, but that is the only place.

[suomichris]

So I still hold that is a trill.  A short one, but it is a trill.  If I saw any other place in the clip where her voice was pulsing in power like that, I might question that, but that is the only place.

Well, I humbly submit the following image--what does this look like to you?

[omängum fra'uti]

Not much of anything.  There's a lot going on in there, and nothing really stands out in either the waveform or the spectogram, except for about half-2/3rd way through some crackling.  (Sharp/instant attack on the tone followed by quick decay vs both the others where it was about equal length attack and decay.  Also a VERY quick cycle there.)

There is also some pulsing about 1/5th the way in, but it's not very pronounced at all.  It MIGHT be a uvular trill (Making a guess based on what I think such a thing would sound like, but I don't know if I've actually heard one pronounced well, and certainly have never seen a waveform or spectrogram of one) but I can't be sure, as there's other stuff going on at the same point there and they also seem much quicker than your example of Frommer's alveolar trill.  (This one looks like it might be a little more zoomed in than the others?  But even if it's the same scale it's still shorter.)  Or it could just be a wavering as in vibrato (As would seem to be indicated by the fact that everything seems to be shifting frequency there more than it is changing amplitude).

[suomichris]

Not much of anything.  There's a lot going on in there, and nothing really stands out in either the waveform or the spectogram, except for about half-2/3rd way through some crackling.  (Sharp/instant attack on the tone followed by quick decay vs both the others where it was about equal length attack and decay.  Also a VERY quick cycle there.)

There is also some pulsing about 1/5th the way in, but it's not very pronounced at all.  It MIGHT be a uvular trill (Making a guess based on what I think such a thing would sound like, but I don't know if I've actually heard one pronounced well, and certainly have never seen a waveform or spectrogram of one) but I can't be sure, as there's other stuff going on at the same point there and they also seem much quicker than your example of Frommer's alveolar trill.  (This one looks like it might be a little more zoomed in than the others?  But even if it's the same scale it's still shorter.)  Or it could just be a wavering as in vibrato (As would seem to be indicated by the fact that everything seems to be shifting frequency there more than it is changing amplitude).

Pfft, well, you caught me! It's not a trill; it's creaky voice from when Neytiri tells Jake to knock it off when the seeds try to land on him.  Anyway, I'm not sure what that was to illustrate, except... Well, nothing, I guess......

As you were.

[omängum fra'uti]

It illustrates the predictableness of the fact that you were trying to bait me into saying it was a trill so you could use it in your argument.  However if you gave me a series to look at and say if they were a trill or not, without saying how many were and were not, I still wouldn't have labelled that one a trill.

That said, I still hold there IS a trill and it is "krr".  To me, it makes the most sense grammatically, semantically, and matches what I hear and see.

[suomichris]

It illustrates the predictableness of the fact that you were trying to bait me into saying it was a trill so you could use it in your argument.  However if you gave me a series to look at and say if they were a trill or not, without saying how many were and were not, I still wouldn't have labelled that one a trill.

That said, I still hold there IS a trill and it is "krr".  To me, it makes the most sense grammatically, semantically, and matches what I hear and see.

Yeah, it was bad methodology, I just couldn't be bothered to go through and find a bunch of examples; I just happened to see that example, and thought I would see what you thought of it.

The biggest problem I have with "krr" here (despite not hearing a trill :p) is that, as far as I know, we dont have any examples of just "krr;" it always has something before it, whether it be tsa-, a, etc.  Do we have other examples of /krr/ used like this?

[omängum fra'uti]

Tìeyngit oel tolel a krr, ayngaru payeng

Answer I recieve (attr) time to you tell

It's the only example, but syntactically it seems to be doing the same thing I suggest, establishing a temporal context for the action to happen.

[suomichris]

Tìeyngit oel tolel a krr, ayngaru payeng

Answer I recieve (attr) time to you tell

It's the only example, but syntactically it seems to be doing the same thing I suggest, establishing a temporal context for the action to happen.

Right, but it's "a krr."  If there is going to be such a thing here, I don't see how it can just be "krr."  Also, from Frommer's punctuation in the email, I assume that the "a krr" goes with the preceding clause, which doesn't really work with this other case...

[omängum fra'uti]

Right, but we have seen nothing used with the attributive yet which can not be used without.

And every other use of the attributive I've seen is for adjectives (Where he would show it attached) or subordination.  So either this is a new type of use for the attributive, or "krr ayngaru payeng" is a subordinate clause, even if punctuation phrases it differently.  (It occurs to me however that he may have just been punctuating it to match the English for easier analysis?)