Ke... kaw'it.

Started by Prrton, April 06, 2010, 02:29:53 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Prrton

For the phrase:

I have many friends. There are some who are in the USA and are young students, and also some others who are in all other territories of the world who are not young at all.

K. Pawl gave this in Na'vi:

Quote from: Paul Frommer:Oeru lu eylan apxay. Lu suteo a tok Yu.E.Seyti ulte lu 'ewana aynumeyu, ulte kop suteo alahe a tok frakllpxìltut kifkeyä ulte ke lu 'ewan kaw'it.

[ke . . . kaw'it: 'not . . . at all']

(Note, by the way, that the stress in {kaw'it} is on the second syllable: kaw'IT.)


The main reason I'm posting this is to show the new way to say "NO.... AT ALL" but here is a way to contrast LU with TOK and see the accusative impact of TOK on the PLACE that TOK references. Note that in simple sentences the subject of TOK («sute.o») would also take the ergative case («-l»), but here all of the grammar related to TOK is happening in clauses, so the role of «sute.o» in the bigger picture of the sentence (OUTSIDE of the clauses) drives the case marking.

to-me THERE ARE (LU) friends (short plural of 'eylan) many. THERE ARE (LU) some-people (short plural of tute+o (indefinite marker) who ARE-IN/OCCUPY (TOK) the USA-ACC and ARE (LU) young learners, and also some-people others who ARE-IN/OCCUPY (TOK) all-territories-ACC of-the-world and NOT ARE (LU)[/color] young AT ALL.

The second example for which he particularly liked the feeling of the idiomatic translation is:

  POAN pak!? KE lu po tsamsiyu kaw'IT!

  HIM!? There's not a warrior's bone in his whole body!

So it can be used to add emphasis with any phrases that uses KE+LU to form a negatively framed description of something/someone. It could also be used with an adjective of negative meaning to say something very NICE.

NeotrekkerZ

Any news on whether it can modify other verbs?

EX:  Oe ke tul kaw'it  I don't run at all
Rìk oe lu hufwemì, nìn fya'ot a oe tswayon!

Tirea Aean

well imo, "ke.....kaw'it" LITERALLY means "not.......,not-one-bit"

I would expect that we could use this construction the same we do in English, since its meaning is pretty much exactly the same as our "not one bit"

but of course, "not one bit" DOES very well seem to much better fit "noun ke lu adj kaw'it" and "noun ke lu noun kaw'it" constructions than "noun ke verb kaw'it"

It just seemed to me that ke and kaw'it are adverbs, so maybe they could work on all verbs?:

He walks. (sraight and simple.)

He walks not. (how does he walk? NOT. he doesn't walk.)

He walks not one bit. (how does he walk? not one bit. he definately does not walk.)

this is what an adverb does, and I have a hunch that ke kaw'it should work on all verbs.

but seeing as how many places Na'vi is different from English, I have no solid ground to stand on here.

Kì'eyawn

So far, a lot of these negations he's given us remind me of French.

Ke...kawtu => ne...personne
Ke...ke'u => ne...rien

And now this one seems to be like ne...pas du tout—the original negation (ne...pas) with some emphasis thrown on (du tout)

Srak?
eo Eywa oe 'ia

Fra'uri tìyawnur oe täpivìng nìwotx...

Tirea Aean

oui/sran. I agree. it does seem to be that way.

Plumps

Quote from: tigermind on April 06, 2010, 08:03:59 AM
Ke...kawtu => ne...personne
Ke...ke'u => ne...rien

I've seen ke ... kawkrr but those two never. Do you have canon phrases or can give me a link to a message from Frommer in which he mentions those? irayo :)
oel tsole'a san ke ... kawkrr sìk slä mefoti kawkrr. oeru nga tsun wivìntxu 'upxaret Karyu Pawlä krr a pol serar tsayut? irayo

Tirea Aean

#6
I like how you post in 'Ìnglìsì and then translate for the Na'vi. :D

EDIT: It is SO FRESH, the email hasnt even made it to the wiki canon yet...XD

Ftiafpi

Woohoo, I'm finally understanding why things work the way they work. This is really helpful.

I too like the phrase as well, I'll have to try to remember that one.

Kì'eyawn

#8
Quote from: Plumps83 on April 06, 2010, 09:21:46 AM
Quote from: tigermind on April 06, 2010, 08:03:59 AM
Ke...kawtu => ne...personne
Ke...ke'u => ne...rien

I've seen ke ... kawkrr but those two never. Do you have canon phrases or can give me a link to a message from Frommer in which he mentions those? irayo :)
oel tsole'a san ke ... kawkrr sìk slä mefoti kawkrr. oeru nga tsun wivìntxu 'upxaret Karyu Pawlä krr a pol serar tsayut? irayo


Hmm... let me do a little digging, ma 'eylan, and i'll see what i can find.

Edit:  Okay, straight from Karyu Pawl, we have

Ke lu kawtu a nulnivew oe pohu tireapivängkxo äo Utral Aymokriyä.
There's nobody I'd rather commune with under the Tree of Voices.
From here

And,

Poltxe oe, san zene ke uniltìranyu ke'u ziva'u fìtseng.
I have said, 'No avatar may come here.'
eo Eywa oe 'ia

Fra'uri tìyawnur oe täpivìng nìwotx...

Tirea Aean

Quote from: tigermind on April 06, 2010, 12:11:01 PM
Quote from: Plumps83 on April 06, 2010, 09:21:46 AM
Quote from: tigermind on April 06, 2010, 08:03:59 AM
Ke...kawtu => ne...personne
Ke...ke'u => ne...rien

I've seen ke ... kawkrr but those two never. Do you have canon phrases or can give me a link to a message from Frommer in which he mentions those? irayo :)
oel tsole'a san ke ... kawkrr sìk slä mefoti kawkrr. oeru nga tsun wivìntxu 'upxaret Karyu Pawlä krr a pol serar tsayut? irayo


Hmm... let me do a little digging, ma 'eylan, and i'll see what i can find.

Edit:  Okay, straight from Karyu Pawl, we have

Ke lu kawtu a nulnivew oe pohu tireapivängkxo äo Utral Aymokriyä.
There's nobody I'd rather commune with under the Tree of Voices.
From here

And,

Poltxe oe, san zene ke uniltìranyu ke'u ziva'u fìtseng.
I have said, 'No avatar may come here.'


now THAT is interesting. :D (we NEED a Na'vi word for interesting!!!)

Plumps

ngaru tìyawr - irayo, ma tigermind!
I totally forgot about Eytukan's line from the movie ... although I had a look at the movie lines in the wiki just yesterday *skxawng* ;)
Thanks again. So, you're right - there is a pattern there. Good to know.

ma tirea aean,
YES, we do! :)

Prrton

Quote from: NeotrekkerZ on April 06, 2010, 02:41:43 AM
Any news on whether it can modify other verbs?

EX:  Oe ke tul kaw'it  I don't run at all

I haven't asked specifically, but it seems perfectly viable. I'm personally willing to use it with "action verbs" like this.

Tirea Aean

I would. it doesnt seem to be breaking any rule that I know of.

NeotrekkerZ

Yeah, I thought it would work too.  The message just seemed so focused on lu/tok, I thought it prudent to at least ask.
Rìk oe lu hufwemì, nìn fya'ot a oe tswayon!

wm.annis

Most interesting to me is frakllpxìltut.  This is the first confirmation I've seen that fra- is a productive prefix, one of several I'm starting to call pre-nouns (not pronouns).

roger

Quote from: wm.annis on April 06, 2010, 04:40:27 PM
Most interesting to me is frakllpxìltut.  This is the first confirmation I've seen that fra- is a productive prefix, one of several I'm starting to call pre-nouns (not pronouns).

I think that was a word Prrton made up which Paul accepted, wasn't it?

Prrton

Quote from: roger on April 06, 2010, 06:22:31 PM
Quote from: wm.annis on April 06, 2010, 04:40:27 PM
Most interesting to me is frakllpxìltut.  This is the first confirmation I've seen that fra- is a productive prefix, one of several I'm starting to call pre-nouns (not pronouns).

I think that was a word Prrton made up which Paul accepted, wasn't it?

I guess so. That's a fair way to describe it. I swear that I didn't do it sneakretively. I didn't even think about it.

Hmmm...

Now that I do think about it, it seems that I have a strong sense of «kllpxìltu» being classified as/conceptually tied to «tseng(e)», so that probably explains why I did it in the first place and *possibly* why it didn't throw a flag for him? I tried sticking it on several other nouns in my head and experienced a bit of dissonance. «Frasyuve» doesn't seem OK to me, for example...

Someone who can speak "linguistics" should ask him.

wm.annis

Quote from: Prrton on April 06, 2010, 11:09:46 PMI tried sticking it on several other nouns in my head and experienced a bit of dissonance. «Frasyuve» doesn't seem OK to me, for example...

Well, fra- with mass nouns seems a bit odd outside certain sorts of statements ("all hair"?).  But I see nothing objectionable about, say, nìn fraskxomit ko or 'i'a fravur.

QuoteSomeone who can speak "linguistics" should ask him.

Already in queue as part of my reference grammar project.  But I can add a few of these to the II-combined set.

Kì'eyawn

I've been thinking that fra- means "every", rather than "all"--at least partly because the nouns it attaches to are in the singular, although this might just be my English bias showing up. 
eo Eywa oe 'ia

Fra'uri tìyawnur oe täpivìng nìwotx...

Prrton

Quote from: wm.annis on April 07, 2010, 07:42:41 AM
Quote from: Prrton on April 06, 2010, 11:09:46 PMI tried sticking it on several other nouns in my head and experienced a bit of dissonance. «Frasyuve» doesn't seem OK to me, for example...

Well, fra- with mass nouns seems a bit odd outside certain sorts of statements ("all hair"?).  But I see nothing objectionable about, say, nìn fraskxomit ko or 'i'a fravur.

QuoteSomeone who can speak "linguistics" should ask him.

Already in queue as part of my reference grammar project.  But I can add a few of these to the II-combined set.

   &

Quote from: tigermind on April 07, 2010, 12:20:42 PM
I've been thinking that fra- means "every", rather than "all"--at least partly because the nouns it attaches to are in the singular, although this might just be my English bias showing up. 

Oh. Yes, of course. If something (countable) can be «PXAY» it can also be «FRA-»...? Makes sense. Very compatible with "every" too.

Now here's something to think about...

In English, "moss" (singular) is a collective noun that references "all moss". Moss is not countable unless you add a "grouping" word to it like "patch." (e.g. "There are 3 patches of moss on the stone wall beside my house.") There are roughly 12,000 known species of moss. Whenever one uses the plural "3 mosses" the meaning automatically becomes "3 [species/kinds] of moss".

Three patches of moss could contain only one moss or 17 mosses.

I'm curious if any other languages do this and if there are any other good examples even in English!? "Food" comes to mind. That's probably why I got such a cognitive dissonance when I added FRA- to SYUVE.

Anybody know?

What do «pxefay, mesyuve & frrwll» mean in Na'vi?

AND, now that I'm on a roll...

Pardon the technical term, but to DE-COUNT-ABL-IFY (generalize) countable nouns in English and talk about them collectively, we add "THẼ" sometimes with a funny overemphasized pronunciation (noted here by the funny diacritic.) "THẼ HOUSE stands at the core of mainstream American aspirations." That means essentially that "all houses" (generically referred to as ONE) in America stand...

  - THẼ GUN is a huge bone of contention.

Japanese (which has *almost* no plurals to speak of to start with) basically topicalizes the noun and if the sense of the English THẼ is very strong it also gets "to yū no" in front of the topicalizing "wa" which in the case of THẼ GUN would work out to be something à la "as for that which is said 'gun'".

(And as we might in English if we were not being to snooty about it,) Spanish would just use the plural, ¿no?

It seems to me in Na'vi that -ìRI/-RI would come into play, but since Na'vi DOES have plurals and DOESN'T have a definite (or hyper-definite???... hmm... I'm beginning to smell THẼ FRA-...) article, I wonder what would happen (if anything) to the rest of it.

«Kelkuri frapor tsranten nìtxan» leaves me a bit confused and questioning... but not completely lost...