Clefted "a" (poetic syntax)

Started by wm.annis, December 04, 2012, 05:42:55 PM

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wm.annis

I was looking at one of the songs on Pandorapedia, and I noticed a funny structure in the Tree Song,

    Utralä aNawm
    ayrina' lu ayoeng,
    a peyä tìtxur mì hinam
    awngeyä

What we have here is apparently attributive a cleft from (fancy-pants linguistics talk for "separated from") the noun it goes with, utral.  I asked Paul about this and he said,

Quote from: Karyu PawlOf course relative clauses that are separated from their heads are common in English: "I met a guy yesterday who came from Zimbabwe." But since "a" in Na'vi is so closely tied to its noun, I wouldn't want to make this a general option . . . except in poetry. :-)

Tirea Aean

Quote from: wm.annis on December 04, 2012, 05:42:55 PM
I was looking at one of the songs on Pandorapedia, and I noticed a funny structure in the Tree Song,

    Utralä aNawm
    ayrina' lu ayoeng,
    a peyä tìtxur mì hinam
    awngeyä

What we have here is apparently attributive a cleft from (fancy-pants linguistics talk for "separated from") the noun it goes with, utral.  I asked Paul about this and he said,

Quote from: Karyu PawlOf course relative clauses that are separated from their heads are common in English: "I met a guy yesterday who came from Zimbabwe." But since "a" in Na'vi is so closely tied to its noun, I wouldn't want to make this a general option . . . except in poetry. :-)

Oh! WOW! When I saw that, in order to avoid a mental breakdown, I parsed it as thus:

Utralä anawm ayrina' lu ayoeng <-{a peyä tìtxur mì hinam awngeyä}

The great tree's seeds are we, in whose legs is her strength.

wm.annis

Quote from: Tirea Aean on December 04, 2012, 05:46:32 PMOh! WOW! When I saw that, in order to avoid a mental breakdown, I parsed it as thus:

That was my impulse, too.  This note was K Pawl correcting me. :)

Tirea Aean

Quote from: wm.annis on December 04, 2012, 05:50:33 PM
Quote from: Tirea Aean on December 04, 2012, 05:46:32 PMOh! WOW! When I saw that, in order to avoid a mental breakdown, I parsed it as thus:

That was my impulse, too.  This note was K Pawl correcting me. :)

Holy crud.


Thanks for this update! :D Now I totally owe some poets an apology :O

Blue Elf

Good to know this, thanks. I thought this information was known before, but when checked Horen, I found it was related to genitive.
Oe lu skxawng skxakep. Slä oe nerume mi.
"Oe tasyätxaw ulte koren za'u oehu" (Limonádový Joe)


Tanri

Good find, ma wm.annis. :)
This is worthy of notice, indeed.
Interesting - the presence of the pronoun peyä helps to decipher entire meaning, because it points back to utral, without ambiguity.
Tätxawyu akì'ong.

Tirea Aean

Quote from: Tanri on December 05, 2012, 05:34:54 AM
Good find, ma wm.annis. :)
This is worthy of notice, indeed.
Interesting - the presence of the pronoun peyä helps to decipher entire meaning, because it points back to utral, without ambiguity.

And I even thought that genitive was not supposed to be too crazy far from its noun

eejmensenikbenhet

I've sung this little tune so many times (also the complete song, not just the part from the movie) and it had me thinking every time: how can peyä refer to ayoeng? I thought I was just missing some information concerning grammar.
Thanks a lot for asking and sharing this!