Stacking numbers

Started by Blue Elf, January 10, 2016, 02:22:40 PM

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Blue Elf

I don't know what title to give to my question, but I'm sure you get what I mean. We can say something like:

Today I wrote first two poems in this year. -> I wrote poems for first time this year and finished two of them.
First five apple just ripened. -> First apples (note plural) got ripen and they are five altogether.
I bought eight croissants, first four were ok, but second four were stale.

That's what I call number stacking. Can we translate these sentences into Na'vi without rewording? I'm not aware of any such official example. Maybe question for Paul.

Oe pamrel sìmi 'awvea mewayur fìzìsìtä (?)
'Awvea fkxen amrr tsawl slolu set (?)
Oe lu skxawng skxakep. Slä oe nerume mi.
"Oe tasyätxaw ulte koren za'u oehu" (Limonádový Joe)


Tìtstewan

It's looks valid for me. The basic pattern is ordinal + noun + number.

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`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

I agree with Tìtstewan that your pattern seems valid. There certainly isn't anything I can think of that would make this kind of construct invalid or illegal. The only interesting thing is, and it is pretty academic is, you are indicating two different kinds of numbering in the same phrase.

Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Wllìm

I'm not sure if this is allowed, and until we have an official example, I personally like to be careful...

A problem I see here is the free word order. In English the first five poems and the five first poems have a very different meaning. The former means "there is a sequence of poems, and select the five poems that come first in the sequence"; the latter means "there are five sequences of poems, select the first poems of all of them". Now how are we going to distinguish between those in Na'vi? Because in Na'vi we can put adjectives before and after the noun freely, we can't use the order of the adjectives... or maybe we can, but in that case I'd like to know the exact rule of how this works :P

Tìtstewan

Hmm... I see.
There are three possibilities:
- context could fix it
- this could be a case word order could play a role (at least for placing ordinal and numerals)
- or we need something new

I'll search around, maybe there is something.

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Tanri

It seems to me that in this moment only the plural prefixes are safe - two (me+) , three (pxe+) and generic plural (ay+).
In their case, there is no ambiguity what number is "closer" to the noun.

Pamrelsiyul amip layonu 'awvea mefukit sneyä. - New writer will release his/her first two books.
Zìsìkrr awew zìya'u, ayrìk a'awve zerup ne kllte. - Winter will come soon, the first leaves are falling to the ground.
Tätxawyu akì'ong.

Blue Elf

Quote from: Tanri on January 11, 2016, 12:58:25 PM
It seems to me that in this moment only the plural prefixes are safe - two (me+) , three (pxe+) and generic plural (ay+).
In their case, there is no ambiguity what number is "closer" to the noun.

Pamrelsiyul amip layonu 'awvea mefukit sneyä. - New writer will release his/her first two books.
Zìsìkrr awew zìya'u, ayrìk a'awve zerup ne kllte. - Winter will come soon, the first leaves are falling to the ground.
Tam. I was thinking the same way - good to see I'm not alone.
Oe lu skxawng skxakep. Slä oe nerume mi.
"Oe tasyätxaw ulte koren za'u oehu" (Limonádový Joe)