Correlatives table reconstruction

Started by Mech, January 05, 2010, 11:04:24 AM

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Mech

Hi there to all :)

As I was skimming through a Na'vi vocab trying to get a glimpse of its structure, I noticed that some words are similar in some common elements. I isolated them and found out that they are composed by two alternating elements

Esperanto works like this and that's how the words "who, why, never, anywhere, then, for no reason" etc are formed. In Esperanto grammar these words are called "Correlatives". I don't know if this term is used for other languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_correlatives_%28Esperanto%29#Table_of_correlatives

With Esperanto in mind, I decided to fit those na'vi words on a 2d table and it did make some sense

The form of the table also allowed me to speculate ("reconstruct" as a linguist would say) some forms that were not found in the wordlist but did possibly exist in Na'vi.

The result can be seen here

http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Na%27vi_Language#Correlatives

I marked the "possible" words with an asterisk. Of course the "possible" forms don't necessarily exist. They could be wrong or just non-existent! I also left some fields blank because, even if I could reconstruct them, they would make no sense. For example *"fraken" would be the word for "no action" but i don't see how this word could be useful in a dialogue. But of course it's possible that it could exist in Na'vi.

I saw this website and I found no mention on these words or how the table can be used as a mnemonic. So I thought sharing this idea with you and discuss the nature of those words.

Looking forward for your comments and ideas :D

Nume fpi sänume

Wow, that's impressive. One of our local linguistic buffs should be along at some point today to check this out. A very interesting find to say the least.

Mech


omängum fra'uti

Those can be shoved onto pretty much any word, really.

Fìskxawng - this moron
Fayatokirina' - Those seeds of the great tree
Peikran - which ikran
Tsaketuwong - that alien

etc.  Much easier than having to throw in extra words for the same effect like English does.
Ftxey lu nga tokx ftxey lu nga tirea? Lu oe tìkeftxo.
Listen to my Na'vi Lessons podcast!