tì-nouns and si

[eanayo]

Kaltxì, ma oeyä eylan!

Probably a stupid question, but I would be grateful if you could shed some light on this for me:

There are a couple of nouns with the tì-prefix, which have corresponding verbs, e.g.
tì-fyawìntxu (guidance), from fyawìntxu (guide)
tì-hawnu (protection) from hawnu (protect) etc.

Fair enough.

Now, there's tì-kangkem (work [n], apparently without an attested verb version). Intuitively, I'd say if I wanted work [v], I'd just drop the ti- and be done. However, Karyu Pawl used tìkangkem si for to work.
Question: Why? What am I missing? Is there a difference between [noun] si and [verb]? If so, what is (for example) the difference between tìhawnu si and hawnu?

If that question has come up already, I'd be also happy to follow any pointers to the corresponding threads

Irayo!

[Erimeyz]

Now, there's tì-kangkem (work [n], apparently without an attested verb version). Intuitively, I'd say if I wanted work [v], I'd just drop the ti- and be done. However, Karyu Pawl used tìkangkem si for to work.

Excellent observation.

Question: Why? What am I missing?

Why?  We don't know.  What are you missing?  Same thing we're all missing - more examples, and more detailed explanations.  Alas.  All in good time, no doubt, all in good time.

Is there a difference between [noun] si and [verb]? If so, what is (for example) the difference between tìhawnu si and hawnu?

We don't have a lot of attested uses of X si.  All the ones we have could be idiomatic.  We don't yet know whether si can be applied to any old noun, and we don't have a clear rule on how to derive the correct meaning from the construction.  An example I gave elsewhere: is txum si administer poison or injest poison?  Or is it nonsense?  We don't know.  Yet.

So for your specific example: I'd have to say that we don't know what tihawnu si means, and you should probably avoid using it for now, especially since you can use hawnu instead.  On the other hand, if you want to say something like txewk si club make/do to mean "hit someone with a club" or possibly "swing a club at someone", that would be okay... as long as you understood that it was speculative usage, and that we might eventually learn that it was flat-out wrong, and you'd want to use it around the intermediate learners and not around beginners so as not to confuse them, and you might have to explain what you meant by it anyway since it's not defined in the dictionary and has at least two not unreasonable interpretations.

  - Eri

[Erimeyz]

Also, not everything that begins with tì is necessarily a noun derived from a verb.  Tìran is the verb walk, and tìyawn is the noun love derived (irregularly) from the adjective yawne beloved.  So the verb work may be tìkangkem si instead of kangkem just because kangkem may not be a word.

But we don't know.

Yet.

  - Eri

[Unil Akawng]

So for your specific example: I'd have to say that we don't know what tihawnu si means, and you should probably avoid using it for now, especially since you can use hawnu instead. 

Well, in the movie, dying Eytukan clearly says "Tìhawnu si Omatikayaru" (not "Hawnu Omatikayati", as I would expect) to Neytiri, which, according to the subtitles, means "Protect the people".

[Erimeyz]

So for your specific example: I'd have to say that we don't know what tihawnu si means, and you should probably avoid using it for now, especially since you can use hawnu instead. 

Well, in the movie, dying Eytukan clearly says "Tìhawnu si Omatikayaru" (not "Hawnu Omatikayati", as I would expect) to Neytiri, which, according to the subtitles, means "Protect the people".

Oh.  Okay then, we do know what tihawnu si means.

Maybe we can get Taronyu to add it to his dictionary.

  - Eri

[eanayo]

Thank you very much for your replies.

Good to see that there wasn't anything blatantly obvious I was missing.

Also, good point that tìkangkem may not necessarily be tì-verb. There was a discussion somewhere that kangkem could be derived from kan and kem, so yeah...

Nothing more we can do than wait until Karyu Pawl and/or Fox bless us with official material

Irayo!