These Things

[NeotrekkerZ]

Ok, I've been thinking about the following and confusing myself:

We have

fìketuwong 'this alien'
fayhetuwong 'these aliens'
tsaketuwong 'that alien'
tsayhetuwong 'those aliens'

But not *fìhetuwong, *tsahetuwong. (The nice thing about short plurals is that they save you a syllable; here that doesn't happen, so there's no raison d'être for the short forms with demonstratives.)

AND

Right. With the pronouns, the order of elements is ay+tsa+'u rather than the expected tsa+ay+'u, etc.

So I was thinking about "these things" and remembered that Frommer once said that there was no short form for 'u.  But if I remember correctly that seemed to be when the word was by itself.  So is it fayayu or just fayu?  Do we even know for certain?

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Frommer was indeed just talking about 'u on its own.

Also, if you look at your second quote, with pronouns the ay+ goes before the tsa/fì so the plurals are (ay)sa'u and ayfì'u.

[omängum fra'uti]

As far as I know we don't have ayfì'u attested like we do (ay)sa'u, but my feeling is it would indeed be correct.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

As far as I know we don't have ayfì'u attested like we do (ay)sa'u, but my feeling is it would indeed be correct.

I too don't think it's attested, but it would be covered by Neo's second quote.

Ma neo, those are ta karyu pawl ko?

[roger]

"Tsa'u" is a fixed pronoun, and the plural is "aysa'u" (or "sa'u"). That doesn't mean that "fì'u" is a fixed pronoun; the plural could simply be "fay'u". Given that it's shorter, that might even be more likely.

Question for Paul!

[kewnya txamew'itan]

"Tsa'u" is a fixed pronoun, and the plural is "aysa'u" (or "sa'u"). That doesn't mean that "fì'u" is a fixed pronoun; the plural could simply be "fay'u". Given that it's shorter, that might even be more likely.

Question for Paul!

fì'u is/was used more commonly than tsa'u though, it's just that most of its uses have contracted (fwa, futa, furia) so I think it would be even more probably that fì'u was treated as a pronoun in its own right.

I'm not sure how accurate the dictionary is on this either, but it lists it as a pronoun, in which case you'd expect it to be covered by karyu pawl's email about fì/tsa pronouns.

[NeotrekkerZ]

Frommer was indeed just talking about 'u on its own.

It seems to me then that given this, the most likely candidates are either fayu or ayfì'u depending on how universal the rule for pronouns is.  Personally, I lean toward fayu because it has fewer syllables, but I usually guess incorrectly when it's 50/50 in Na'vi. 

And yes, those quotes were from K. Pawl.

[Kì'eyawn]

This is a bit tangential (ngaytxoa), but i must say i've gotten confused by the impersonal pronoun...thing lately.  At first we had fì'u and all its cousins, which was cool; but then we got tsa'u/tsaw, and then i started using that for "it" when before i would've used fì'u...and now i'm just plain confused about when to use which.

[NeotrekkerZ]

I think there is no 100% clear cut answer which may be right in any given situation.  It's the difference between how you use "this (thing)" and "that (thing)" in your sentences.  

Personally the only distinction I make with the two is proximity.  If there are two objects near me, the one closer to me I would describe with "this" and the one farther away with "that" which I believe is at least one of the distinctions an English dictionary makes between the two, but then again Na'vi might not behave this way.

If I'm saying "it" though, I always use tsaw/tsa'u.

[roger]

I think he meant the syntactic distinction.

From what I've seen, tsa'u is used for inanimate "it", whereas fì'u is used for subordinate "that". That is, when you say things like "I hope that you can make it", you use fì'u, and when "did you see it?", you use tsa'u. I don't know how rigid that distinction is--another question for Paul. Of course, you can also use them for "this (over here)" and "that (over there)".

[omängum fra'uti]

If I said "Did you see this?" and I was holding the thing I'm asking about, I'd use fì'u.  If I was referring to, say, something that just happened, I'd use tsa'u.  In many cases, "it" is something not proximate, hence why tsa'u would be used.

That's my thinking at least, not endorsed by Frommer.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Frommer was indeed just talking about 'u on its own.

It seems to me then that given this, the most likely candidates are either fayu or ayfì'u depending on how universal the rule for pronouns is.  Personally, I lean toward fayu because it has fewer syllables, but I usually guess incorrectly when it's 50/50 in Na'vi. 

And yes, those quotes were from K. Pawl.

I've no idea what it could ever have been other than fayu or ayfì'u though, also tsayu is fewer syllables than aysa'u but that is still the way it is.

If I said "Did you see this?" and I was holding the thing I'm asking about, I'd use fì'u.  If I was referring to, say, something that just happened, I'd use tsa'u.  In many cases, "it" is something not proximate, hence why tsa'u would be used.

That's my thinking at least, not endorsed by Frommer.

That's what I've been doing to.

[Kì'eyawn]

Ma roger is right, ma smuk; i get the "this/that" distinction well enough; it's in translating English "it" that i get confused.  For example:

"Tsu'tey says the Skypeople will make war against us, but i hope it doesn't happen."
Tsu'tey plltxe san Sawtute tsam sìyi awngawä sìk, slä sìlpey oe tsnì fì'u ke liven.

"I hear a gunship, but i can't see it."
Oel kunsìpit stawm, slä ke tsun tsive'a tsat.

My instincts tell me these two examples are right; but my instincts seldom can be trusted.

Edit: Spaces.  Kind of important.

[roger]

I think those are right too. The reason, I speculate, is that the first is "I hope this thing--you know, the one I just mentioned--doesn't happen". We use the proximal because the "it" is a proximate phrase. That is, in Na'vi you say "I hope this doesn't happen" instead of "I hope that doesn't happen". It's just possible that if you had been discussing two things, or if you and your interlocutor had both mentioned one thing, you could use "I hope tsat" for the more distal one (the one mentioned first, or by the other person). That is, you might be able to say "I hope fut doesn't happen but tsat does", and people would follow which is which. But I'm just speculating.

For the other, you can't see the gunship, so it is presumably distant, and therefore covered by the distal pronoun.

[NeotrekkerZ]

This is hard to describe, but I guess I view your sentences with the same sort of "distance" point of view, just more figurative in your examples:

"Tsu'tey says the Skypeople will make war against us, but I hope this (thing that I just said) doesn't happen."

"I hear a gunship, but I can't see it (that thing, wherever it is)."

That said, I don't think anyone would have trouble if you substituted tsaw for fì'u in your first example.  In fact, if I didn't have your translation and saw just the Na'vi, I would probably translate it as "but I hope this doesn't happen."  I think its subjective to the speaker really.

[wm.annis]

The question we should probably add to the Combined Questions list is, in nice grammaticalese, what does Na'vi use for sentence anaphora.

Anaphora is basically pronouns — when you take a concrete phrase and decide to use a pronoun for it in subsequent discourse.  "Sentence anaphora" is when you make a statement about another statement.  English uses "it" most of the time, but other things — "this, that" — are possible.  Ancient Greek is tricky, and has distinct backward (something just said) and forward (something about to be said) anaphora, including discourse anaphora.

[Kì'eyawn]

Hmm...  Well, i'm glad you both think i did it right, ma mesmuk, but i admit i wasn't thinking about anything to do with proximal/distal stuff when i came up with those.  Because we learned fairly early on to use fì'u and its cousins as a stand-in for another clause in a sentence, i've sort of adopted it for any "it" that refers to something that requires an entire phrase to explain, whereas i've been using tsa'u/tsaw as an "it" that refers to a fairly specific, discrete "thing":  So... let me see i can come up with a good example.

I destroyed a gunship.  It was huge. — "It" refers to the gunship.  I would use tsaw here.
I destroyed a gunship.  It was difficult.  — "It" refers to the whole "me-destroying-a-gunship" thing.  I would use fì'u here.

Pefya fpìl aynga teri mesìkenong, ma smuk?

[NeotrekkerZ]

For your first example, I too would use tsaw/tsa'u.

In your second example though, I think the best choice would be fìkem, followed by fì'u, then tsaw/tsa'u.  And if you changed "it" to "that," I would go with tsakem, then tsa'u/tsaw.

Even though that's what I would do, if someone else chose to use any of those words and said the meaning was "it," I don't think I'd contest their usage at all.  Without further rules from K. Pawl, I think it's just too close to worry about.

I hereby second wm.annis' combined questions suggestion for this issue.

[roger]

Yes, def. a question for Paul.

I dunno if "tsa'u" would be gramm. for the latter, of if only "tsakem" could be used.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Yes, def. a question for Paul.

I dunno if "tsa'u" would be gramm. for the latter, of if only "tsakem" could be used.

Possibly tsa'u would refer to the sentence, as if it were difficult to say (the same way fì'u can refer to phrases rather than the content in them which would be fìkem) whilst tsakem would refer to the action described by it.