Taronyu's Grammar

Started by Taronyu, December 30, 2009, 03:22:59 PM

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Taronyu

Kaltxì nìmun, ma aysmuk!

I have decided to start my Grammar. This was the end-goal in mind for my initial Dictionary: an all-inclusive document for Na'vi, with every single bit of useful or Frommerian information I can find. This is going to take me a long time to make, but hopefully, we'll all benefit from it. I will be gathering sources not only from the Wiki and the Pocket Guide, but also around the forum. If you guys want to help, that would be superb. Please let me know anything I should include, hopefully as I go along, and not all at once. I am going to post it in here each time I finish a subsection, with appropriate edits.

I've already done a small amount: please have a look, tell me what you think!  

Irayo.

Aylì'uyä letoläftxua renu: A Na'vi Grammar

Currently done:
1. Introduction   
2. Orthography   
3. Phonetics   
4. Phonology   
4.1. Vowels   
4.2. Consonants   
4.3.   Consonants in Syllables   
4.4.   Sound Patterns of Na'vi (Including Lenition)
4.5.   Prosodic Structures

Coda

#1
Nitxan siltsan tisngä'i, ma tsmuktu.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to mix together the dictionary and grammar in the same document, though.  I know I like to have two separate documents open at once so I can, for instance, independently look up verb conjugation and the verb's definition without having to hunt back and forth between two points in the same document.

Personally the one thing I'm looking for more than anything else is a compilation of rules about word order, especially with regards to compound sentences and dependent clauses.  Especially dependent clauses - I'm still not quite sure how to construct those, yet.  Free word order can be nice and all, but it gets a little confusing once the sentence structures get more complex.  That said, I'm not sure we even have a canon method for constructing those yet, so I might be getting ahead of myself.

Alìm Tsamsiyu

Sorry to butt in, I'm just confused about "tisngä'i".  Can't find it anywhere, what does it mean??

Apart from that, I suppose we could just open two of the same document and switch back and for with that, making sure one stays on the grammar part and the other stays on the dictionary.  Although, separate documents would make things better, if a little more difficult to keep in up-to-date agreement.

I definitely think it's a good idea to get an updated compilation of all the grammar, because I've been pulling my hair out lately trying to find some of these obscure grammar rules and how they work the way they do.  Having them all in one place will make things much less frustrating.
Oeyä ayswizawri tswayon alìm ulte takuk nìngay.
My arrows fly far and strike true.

OfPandora

Taronyu, your work is invaluable.

^_^
"Why do you get so excited before you sleep?"

"Because it is only in such state that I have access to Pandora."

Taronyu

I am going to have an extra dictionary document. I know how nice it is to search, I do that myself all of the time. But, there's no reason I can't copy the dictionary into the Grammar.

Alìm, that is from tì-sngä'i. The 'i' there is wrong. It means, beginning.  Tì- is a nouner.

I'll be getting to word order. Already looking forward to it.

Irayo.

Nuruhuine

Ma Taronyu, oel ngati kameie.

Oel ninli'u siyi ngeyä ayli'uyäkllpxiltufrakafyawintxut (ugh!), ulte ngaru oeyä tifpil fmawn sami.
Oeri txo fpil futa kekangaya li'u livu, oe ngaru fmawn sami ha.
Nilaw, ngeyä ayli'uyäkllpxiltufrakafyawintxul fraporu txanut karyu sami

Irayo, ma tsmukan.
kiyevame.

-Nuru.


PS: I had to think of something for "dictionary" and "read", so here is what I came up with:
ninli'u si = look word do
ayli'uyäkllpxiltufrakafyawintxu = guide across the land of all words ("a bit" streched, but heh...)
There's also "many words" = txanu.

Prrntxe

These are some notes I made while going through Taronyu's dictionary. I originally posted some of this in that thread, but since my notes are more about actual grammar than the dictionary, I thought I should bring the discussion here.

Quotefìfya: [fIfja] pn. this, this way, like this
We've been calling this a pronoun for a while, but I wonder if we should be treating it as an adverbial. (In fact, the whole table of demonstratives on the Wikipedia page reminds me of the table of correlatives in Esperanto). I didn't find an example of it in the corpus.

We've also been calling fìtsenge a pronoun, but it doesn't behave like one (entirely). Take this example from the corpus:

Fayvrrtep fìtsenge lu kxanì.
These demons are forbidden here.


f(ì)-ay+vrrtep f(ì)-tseng(e) lu kxanì
thispluraldemonthisplacebeforbidden

Notice that fìtsenge doesn't need any adposition. Of course, it's common across languages for terms of time and space to straddle lexical classes; compare "We're hunting today" and "Today is a good day to hunt".
Oeri Loräkx lu. Fpi ayutral plltxe oe.

Taronyu

Prrntxe, I've thought about that a fair bit, too. I'll add that to a relevant section, when I get to one. The problem is that frommer didn't give us parts of speech: anything we have is conjecture, and that's often wrong, I think. Perhaps we should define them as correlatives?

NEWS: Neosis666 is the koolest kat on the blok. He's given me FTP access, which means that I can now host the document on a secure link, instead of having it change every five minutes. I've added that link to the first post. I don't think the pdf right now is good, though, as I think I've added but not edited or reworked the phonology section.

Irayo, ma neosis666.

Taronyu

Taronyu

So, I've been updating it somewhat steadily, and I am now done with the phonology section. Hope you guys enjoy it, tell me if there is anything wrong. There's a few cases of rules that only I seem to have noted.

Baron

This document is over my head mostly.  Maybe when it moves onto some of the other aspects I'll understand more of it, it is just a lot of the phonology part is a little too esoteric for me.  I hope when you guys get settled on the complex parts you don't forget a sort of "for dummies" study guide for linguistic noobs like me.  Don't get me wrong everything out there is super helpful, but like you said a lot of the information was scattered and fractured if not contradictory to something else. 

Irayo for all the effort, I wish I was more skilled to participate with you guys.  Just want you to know there people lurking about who appreciate all these projects even if we can't understand it all.

Eight

All your docs are invaluable - so I'm very much looking forward to further updates of the grammar.

Feel free to spend as long as you want discussing the topical marker - seems to be something beginners (especially me) are struggling with.

Taronyu

Quote from: Baron on January 10, 2010, 11:22:15 PM
This document is over my head mostly.  Maybe when it moves onto some of the other aspects I'll understand more of it, it is just a lot of the phonology part is a little too esoteric for me.  I hope when you guys get settled on the complex parts you don't forget a sort of "for dummies" study guide for linguistic noobs like me.  Don't get me wrong everything out there is super helpful, but like you said a lot of the information was scattered and fractured if not contradictory to something else. 

Irayo for all the effort, I wish I was more skilled to participate with you guys.  Just want you to know there people lurking about who appreciate all these projects even if we can't understand it all.

Thanks. I am planning on making a second version, when this is satisfactory. That version will explain terms for the beginner. I didn't want to start from the bottom up, however: I'm making sure that I know the language well before I try to explain it to others. From a complete version of this grammar I will be making a much simpler one. If you don't like being scared, I would certainly suggest waiting. :)

ruseya atan txonyä

#12
That is a great idea, Taronyu. I like it.

Quote from: Baron on January 10, 2010, 11:22:15 PM
This document is over my head mostly.
That's exactly what was going to my head when i got to the sound patterns-part. Simplification would be greatly appreciated. There's a lot of people here whose native language isn't English, and it's even harder to understand when you have to type every other word into a dictionary and still not understand the explanation it gives you in your native tounge.  ::)

Some things I noted (and I could be completely off, as I'm more of a math than a language person. :) ):
    On your list of letters in use in the orthography section, did you maybe forget the apostrophe? As far as I know, it's treated like a letter in Na'vi and therefore should probably appear in that list as well. I get that the diphtongs and ejectives and pseudovowels are just combinations of these letters, but the apostrophe is not.

    "The use of ä, ì, and –x to represent their sounds is peculiar to Na'vi."
    The use of ä is pretty common in German, too. And as far as I got my pronunciation of Na'vi halfway correct, the German ä represents the same sound as the Na'vi ä.

    I've found a really great ipa-chart with sound examples. Maybe you want to link it. Hearing the sounds is (at least for me) much more enlightening than reading with which part of your mouth you should pronounce them.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/index.html


Irayo! I'm really looking forward to the simplified version.[/list]

Kiliyä

Irayo, ma Taronyu.  Nìmun lor ngeyä fkeu lu.  I'm really looking forward to further information on the syntax and ideas on derivation.
Peu sa'nokyä ayoengyä?  Pefya ayoeng poeru kìte'e sayi?
Pefya ayoengìl poeti hayawnu, na poel ayoengit hawnu?

What of our mother?  How shall we serve her?  How shall we protect her as she protects us?

Taronyu

Thank you ruseya. I have fixed those errors, and added a link. I will be making a simpler version, in time.

Thank you as well, Kiliyä. I've found a few syntax things, but not much. I think I fixed the lu + dative problem, for one...

Kiliyä

What was the answer to the problem?  Or should I download yet another version of the Grammar? lol
Peu sa'nokyä ayoengyä?  Pefya ayoeng poeru kìte'e sayi?
Pefya ayoengìl poeti hayawnu, na poel ayoengit hawnu?

What of our mother?  How shall we serve her?  How shall we protect her as she protects us?

Taronyu

Quote from: Kiliyä on January 13, 2010, 02:48:33 PM
What was the answer to the problem?  Or should I download yet another version of the Grammar? lol

I'll get to it eventually. :P

Taronyu

Right. I've added what I think is a very important section. I have yet to go through the document and change everything in order to show it, however, but this will be done.

Please refer to Page 3: the Sourcing section. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

http://content.learnnavi.org/taronyu/NaviGrammar.pdf

suomichris

Very nice work!  A couple of thoughts:

In the phonetics section, we (linguists) don't usually modify the IPA chart to describe the phonemes of a language, because you end up with lots of unused columns and rows.  Also, the table misses some things, like ejectives and the affricate [ts].  If you'd like, I can cook up a table as an example (or for inclusion if you want to just stick it in the doc) that is more along the lines of what you would find in a language description.

I'll also take a look at the phonotactics/phonology section shortly.  It looks at first go that it might be able to be simplified a bit, but my Na'vi isn't really good enough to comment on that....

Cheers!

Erimeyz