<iv>

[Ikran]

Don't forget <iv> is also used for imperatives:

'Ivong Na'vi!

Or am I wrong here?

[Kiliyä]

Wrong?  Who really knows?

But I'd say that's more of the traditional use of the subjunctive, more a "may the force be with you" kind of thing.  It does have an imperative ring to it though, but the true imperative would more be, "Na'vi, Bloom!"

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Don't forget <iv> is also used for imperatives:

'Ivong Na'vi!

Or am I wrong here?

It isn't used in imperatives but is used in wishes. Imperatives are almost certainly (this has been discussed a lot and we have yet to find a counter-example) left unmarked.

Wishes on the other hand do use the subjunctive.

The correct imperative would just be " 'ong Na'vi "

[Erimeyz]

I agree.  Or at least, somewhere.  It'd be nice here, but anywhere would be good so long as it's one place.

Right now we have a giant charlie-foxtrot of authority.  I know people are getting real email from Frommer — I got one myself, where he kindly explained his decisions in the orthography for ejectives.  But right now any bozo could come through claiming Word from On High, and so long as they aren't a complete linguistic idiot, we'd have no way to know for sure.  The Wikipedia article is similarly unsourced for all sorts of important things.

Hear, hear.

It would also open a much more efficient way to discover the secrets of the language. I mean, it happened already a few times to me, that I stumbled over some problem and tried to find a solution. Often this included a lot of hours, checking all the corpus we (= the community!) have, thinking about it, searching for phenomena of such kind in human languages and so on. Then, someone starts a thread here about this problem (or I do it myself) and so other people get involved in the discussion about it ... we spend hours and days on it, just to find someday a post by someone stating something like "What your are discussing about isn't really a problem ... it's clear, because Frommer used it so and so in an email to me". Errr ... Wouldn't it be much better, if we all had access to more or less all information Dr Frommer gave about the language? It surely would help us to save time and to avoid useless discussions about things, that are already clear - at least to a few guys.

Just my two cents.

I've started a new thread which I hope may address some of these concerns.  See here.

  - Eri

[Tìsyaw Nantangä]

That's how I've been handling want, can, and must: via a simple, shorter structure, where the subject in the main clause is considered intransitive, and there's no overt subject in the subordinate clause if they're identical:

Oe new kivä. 'I want to go.'
Oe tsun kivä. 'I can go.'
Oe zene kivä. 'I must go.'
(Different word orders are possible in all of these, of course: Zene oe kivä, etc.)

So in these cases, the -iv- form of the verb functions somewhat like an infinitive. (But never like a gerund!)

You can also use the longer form:

Oel new futa (oe) kivä.

But that's less common.

This be awesome. Been looking for this info for a while now.