Combining our efforts

[omängum fra'uti]

Here is what I see so far...  I'm leaving a few off here, explanation to follow.

General
1. Is this correct: po kä a tseng(ne) ke tsìme'a oel I didn't see where s/he was going.(answered)

2. From your examples Na'vi seems to use double negatives as a negative.  Is is required that the subject agree with the verb in negativity, or is it merely used as an extra emphasis?  How does this work with equative statements (IE I am not your friend - does lu get the negative, 'eylan ngayä, either, or both?  Does oe enter into the negation at all?)

3. Are the third person pronouns specifically for animate objects, or can they be used as "it" to refer to inanimate objects?

4. Are multiple vocatives clustered (ma smukan sì smuke) or not (ma smukan sì ma smuke)?(answered)

5. Does the vocative always come before the noun and all modifiers including adjectives and genitives, or is it just before the head noun?  Is it always a particle or can it ever be used as a suffix/enclitic?(answered)

6. Can sì be ommitted (smukan, smuke sì eylan) or must it always be given (smukan sì smuke sì eylan)?

7. In toruk makto it seems like it should be maktoyu.  Aside from "James Cameron Said So" is there a reason it is not?(answered)

8. What are the evidential forms?

9. How are adjectives that begin or end with "a" such as apxa dealt with when the attributive is used?  Do other vowels need any special treatment with the attributive?(answered)

10. In general, do any affixes cause the stress in a word to shift, or is the fem. tuté purely due to the contraction of two "e" vowels?

11. In English we use the present perfect to indicate experience (among many other things), as in, "I have eaten jellyfish."  Mandarin uses the particle guo (过).  What's the correct way to do this in Na'vi?

Adpositions
1. Regarding adpositions.  When they follow, they are written attached to the word.  Can we assume this means they are enclitic, and have no stress accent of their own?  Is the accent obliterated in two syllable adpostions, as in eyktanmungwrr?(answered)

2. The adposition mì is "in."  What is "into"?  Is there some systematic way to create adpositions of location, destination and source from what we have now?  Mìso and neto are maybe hints (although adverbial hints).

3. How do we get adverbial adpositions?  For example, "I go in."

Vocabulary
1. Does the word atan mean light as in "adj. luminous", "adj. not heavy" or "n. illumination"? (answered)

2. Words for concepts like someone, something, somewhere, someway, sometime/somewhen.
A suggestion from one of our community members, based on calquing horribly with a mutant hybrid of Greek and Mandarin would be...
lu hrr a sanhìt nìn oel.  There are times (when) I look at the stars.
lu fayu a oeru prrte' lu  There are these (things) which are a pleasure to me.

3. Words for concepts like anyone, anything, anywhere, etc...  "It is something that anyone can create." or "You can bring anything you want."

4. Desired vocabulary:
Dark/darkness
End
Remember/memory
Colors besides blue & yellow
Funny (As in humorous, not strange)
Joke
Various emotions (Happy, sad, etc)
Pain/suffering or related words

Does that sound like a fair summary?  Did I word everyone's questions appropriately?  (Suomichris I'm not sure how to word your tsa- and fì- bit...  It sounds more like just off handed thoughts rather than actual questions.)  Wm., do you think it would be a good idea to include what it is about that sentence you're asking is correct?  (I think I know the answer, but not sure I know the right words to describe it.)

These are comments on things I did not include in this list.  I'm not opposed to including them if we feel it's important, but I think these are questions that we already have answers for, or have a fairly firm foundation for believing our answer is correct.

Eight, I left out the part about glottal stops & the attributive because it should not make a difference.  The glottal stop is just a consonant sound.

Na'vi names: That may be more of a Cameron question than a Frommer question, I'm not sure how many names Frommer actually created.  That said, I don't know about others on the forum, but I wasn't aiming for the name of a Na'vi, I was just aiming for something in Na'vi to identify me.

Maweya tsmukan: It is my belief there is no "phenomenon" there to be explained.  "Maweya" has nearly identical pronunciation to "Ma oeyä" which fits perfectly in with other things we've seen.

Rules for placing vocative: It seems pretty consistent, when you're talking to someone, you use "ma" when you name them by something aside from a personal pronoun.  Included a question just to clarify the assumptions I was making based on observations.

[roger]

Maweya tsmukan: It is my belief there is no "phenomenon" there to be explained.  "Maweya" has nearly identical pronunciation to "Ma oeyä" which fits perfectly in with other things we've seen.

Rules for placing vocative: It seems pretty consistent, when you're talking to someone, you use "ma" when you name them by something aside from a personal pronoun.

The phenomenon with "maweyä" is that the stress shifts with inflection. That's the question to ask: does the stress shift in any other word other that those derived from ''oe''? In general, do any affixes cause stress to shift, or is fem. tuté due to the contraction of the two e vowels? (This might be partially answered with the a-adjectives.) Is there a generalization for which word gets stress in a compound?

For the vocative, we've only seen it as a prep / particle, but that doesn't mean it can't occur as a suffix / enclitic. It might be worth asking (though a minor point, not important.)

Frommer has been working on a good illustration of the evidential. That wasn't s.t. he wanted to answer offhand, and which he'd probably want a dedicated email for. But I'd certainly be happy if he were to answer it here.

[omängum fra'uti]

Have a ref for the "maweya" stress shift?  I must have missed that one.

[roger]

Have a ref for the "maweya" stress shift?  I must have missed that one.

It's in the dictionary thread. There are like 8 lines of evidence.

[Doolio]

about vocative, i didn't mean in sense when it is used, but more like where should i put the vocative particle "physicaly" when i have something that affects the noun. in the frommer's example "ma oeyä smukan" we see that the vocative particle doesn't go directly in front of a noun (oeyä ma smukan). i mean, is there a general rule to this, how to cope with multiple adjectives/possessions etc.
as for "you use "ma" when you name them by something aside from a personal pronoun.", i don't know. i mean, when you use personal pronouns, you don't actually address the listener by that pronoun - "i love you" is practically the same as "i love her", or something. "i love you, john" demands "john" to be in vocative, but not "you" (which is in accusative). i don't know what to think of the actual direct addressing by the pronoun - "hey, you!" for example.

[Eight]

Eight, I left out the part about glottal stops & the attributive because it should not make a difference.  The glottal stop is just a consonant sound.

Oh that's fine - you're quite right. My post came out the way it did from working on the Firefox dictionary where I'm seeing entries like aalaksì, aapxa, a'awve etc. and wasn't really sure what to make of it all, but didn't spend an overly long time thinking about it to be honest.

[wm.annis]

Wm., do you think it would be a good idea to include what it is about that sentence you're asking is correct?

I think he'd grok where the question was coming from.  I'm hoping for more fun with phrases adverbialized with the help of a, with a sneaky question about how to distinguish the relatives where, whither, whence.

[Erimeyz]

Let me voice a contrarian view... or perhaps a complementarian view.

I think everyone should be emailing Frommer directly.  If you have a question you really wish he would answer, you should ask him yourself.  It's your question, after all... of all the things we don't know, and of all the people who want to know things, your question is the one you care most about, and you are the one who cares most about it.  You'll do the best job asking it, and Frommer's answer (should he give one) will mean the most when directed back to you, replying to your words in your email.

There's no reason for the Learn Na'vi Community to collect questions and have them sent in one batch by the designated Speaker to Frommer and then reposted (appropriately redacted, of course) to the hungry masses.  If you have an itch, scratch it!  Eywa gave you hands, use them!  Use all five fingers even, you crazy demons you.

I think we can combine our efforts, however, and I think it's important to do so.  But I suggest a different method.  Before you ask your question:

1) Make sure we don't have an answer yet!  Ask it on the forum... like, say, in this very thread... and see if anyone can shed some light that you may have otherwise missed.

2) Let everyone know you want to know!  Add your question to the list of open questions on the wiki.

3) When you get a reply, share it with the group!  Post relevant excerpts on a new forum thread so we can all discuss it.  If you're so inclined, add it to the canon page on the wiki.  If not, no big deal, someone will do it for you sooner or later after you post to the forum.

There's room for both approaches, which is why I say this is a "complementarian" view.  I think discussing questions in a thread like this is a good thing, and if someone wants to bundle them all up and ask them all at once, well, okay.  But I'd hate for anyone to think that that's the only way we can approach Karyu Pawl.  I'm confident that he's quite capable of managing his own email inbox (even with as busy as it's gotten lately), and I suspect that he'd be delighted to hear from each and every one of his students, individually.

  - Eri

[wm.annis]

There's no reason for the Learn Na'vi Community to collect questions and have them sent in one batch by the designated Speaker to Frommer and then reposted (appropriately redacted, of course) to the hungry masses. 

Um.

Or, you know... we could ask him.  In interviews he has used the word "swamped" to describe his inbox.

[Erimeyz]

There's no reason for the Learn Na'vi Community to collect questions and have them sent in one batch by the designated Speaker to Frommer and then reposted (appropriately redacted, of course) to the hungry masses.

Um.

Or, you know... we could ask him.  In interviews he has used the word "swamped" to describe his inbox.

True.

Recently, though, he seems to be a lot more responsive then he used to be, no?  I suspect that indicates not just an increased ability to maintain correspondence, but also an outright enthusiasm for doing so.  But you're right, we could ask him.  So consider this my submission for the group questionnaire: "Do you like getting email from individual Na'vi students asking questions, or would you prefer to get them from a group all at once, like this?"

 - Eri

[kewnya txamew'itan]

It's a shame I sent an email to him about an hour before this thread went up.

Oh well, it had about fourteen questions in it, any more and he would have been swamped by my email alone. 

As for contributions I've remembered one that I forgot to put in my email which was "what is the equivalent phrase of "you're welcome"?"

Oh yeah, and the word for some so that we can say things like someone (probably tute or 'awpo), something, somewhere, someway, sometime/somewhen.

[wm.annis]

Oh yeah, and the word for some so that we can say things like someone (probably tute or 'awpo), something, somewhere, someway, sometime/somewhen.

I made a crazy suggestion for that over here.  It's not inherently implausible, so perhaps Frommer can bless or curse it as he sees fit.

Another one.  In English we use the present perfect to indicate experience (among many other things), as in, "I have eaten jellyfish."  Mandarin uses the particle guo (过).  What's the correct way to do this in Na'vi?

[omängum fra'uti]

Have a ref for the "maweya" stress shift?  I must have missed that one.

It's in the dictionary thread. There are like 8 lines of evidence.

I was asking for a reference not evidence.  Evidence implies I'm asking you to prove something, which I'm not.  I'm just asking for a reference...  However pointing to such a long thread doesn't really help as a reference, can you be more specific and point out a post about it?

[omängum fra'uti]

Doolio, I'm still not seeing how what you're asking about vocatives isn't already exemplified by canon material.  "ma" has always come in front of the full noun phrase describing who is being addressed in the written examples we have.  And it has always been given when the person being addressed is described.  Furthermore it has never been used on pronouns (IE never "ma nga" or "ma fìtute").  The only thing which could be unclear about it is if you need to repeat it for every member of a group of people you are addressing and naming off, and if it can come as a suffix like an adposition as roger asked.  It's possible that could be drawing conclusions from something that is just common use and not a rule, but it has been pretty consistent.  I guess it wouldn't hurt to summarize those assumptions and ask if it is correct.

Tìkawngä mungeyu, nothing wrong with that.  Just be sure to let us know if you asked any of the questions here so it can be crossed off.

One thing I noticed as I was compiling a list was that it was a long list...  I think asking Frommer how he wants such questions (Small groups from multiple people, small groups from one person, or all at once) would be prudent.  Having a huge list doesn't really save much time for him over simply just coordinating on not asking the same question, and it carries the additional burden that he may feel like he needs to answer all the questions at once.

Edit: Updated the list with additional questions/clarifications.

[roger]

-yu vs. -tu

[omängum fra'uti]

I thought -yu vs -tu was resolved now in the art vocab thread?  Unless you're wanting to know why captive is an exception...

[roger]

I thought -yu vs -tu was resolved now in the art vocab thread?  Unless you're wanting to know why captive is an exception...

Sorry, I hadn't seen F's answer.

[Alìm Tsamsiyu]

Have a ref for the "maweya" stress shift?  I must have missed that one.

It's in the dictionary thread. There are like 8 lines of evidence.

I was asking for a reference not evidence.  Evidence implies I'm asking you to prove something, which I'm not.  I'm just asking for a reference...  However pointing to such a long thread doesn't really help as a reference, can you be more specific and point out a post about it?

I'm pretty sure he's referring to a mistaken transcription of ma oeyä tsmukan when Neytìri is finishing off the viperwolf.  This has been resolved and need not be asked of awngeyä karyu.

[omängum fra'uti]

I thought -yu vs -tu was resolved now in the art vocab thread?  Unless you're wanting to know why captive is an exception...

Sorry, I hadn't seen F's answer.

No worries, it was a pretty recent post.

But it does leave tsamsiyu (Why not tsamtu) and spe'etu (It shuld be obvious why this isn't spe'eyu) as irregularities.  Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I'm pretty sure he's referring to a mistaken transcription of ma oeyä tsmukan when Neytìri is finishing off the viperwolf.  This has been resolved and need not be asked of awngeyä karyu.

That was my reading as well, which I'd already addressed in my comments, but I did try looking for a "mawey" stress shift and found no comments about such a thing.

[NeotrekkerZ]

As long as we're asking about atan, how about dark and darkness.  And along the same lines, how about all the colors?  Maybe even sunrise/sunset?

As you can tell I'm in a very visual mindset right now