Elvish
lesson eleven : verbs I
Pelio tailech, Erestor, anîron buio chen! (Spread your legs, Erestor; I want to serve you.)
To quote an Ad Council campaign, "Verbs. It's what you do."
Whether you're running, jumping, or standing still, you've got verbs going on. And as you progress in learning Sindarin, you're going to eventually want to express something beyond simple endearments or phrases. And for that, you're gonna need verbs.
In Sindarin, there are four distinct classes of verbs, each with their own rules of conjugation. In this lesson, we're going to discuss the derived verbs, also known as the A-stem verbs. They are called the A-stem verbs because the stem of the verb always ends in A. (Hello, Department of Redundancy Department, hello?) However, not every verb that ends in A is an A-stem verb (some are mixed-conjugation or irregular). The list of those, though, is short, and we'll go into them in a couple of lessons.
infinitive and imperative forms
Let's start with two easily confused forms, the infinitive and imperative. The infinitive is the "to" form of the verb, as in "to find", "to go", "to do". The imperative form is also called the command form. "Find this", "Go there", "Do that" are all uses of the imperative. Unfortunately, when it comes to A-stem verbs, this confusion increases, because the two forms are identical, and only context can distinguish them. (Luckily, this isn't too difficult). Let's look at some examples:
tiria- "watch" : tirio "to watch" or "Watch!"
lasta- "listen" : lasto "to listen" or "Listen!"
dagra- "battle" : dagro "to battle" or "Battle!"
Notice how the "a-" ending of the stem is changed to "o".
present, past, and future tenses
These are probably the most common verb forms that you will use: what you are doing, what you did, and what you will do. These are also the forms that are used most often to describe what others are doing, did, and will do.
The present tense for A-stems is easy. It is simply the verb stem on its own with nothing added:
Elrond tiria. "Elrond watches."
Erestor lasta. "Erestor listens."
Glorfindel dagra. "Glorfindel battles."
The past tense for A-stem verbs is formed by adding -nt to the base stem, as in:
Elrond tiriant. "Elrond watched."
Erestor lastant. "Erestor listened."
Glorfindel dagrant. "Glorfindel battled."
Finally, the future tense for A-stem verbs adds a -tha to the base stem:
Elrond tiriatha. "Elrond will watch."
Erestor lastatha. "Erestor will listen."
Glorfindel dagratha. "Glorfindel will battle."
pronomial endings
Okay, so that's all well and good so long as you have an explicit subject. But what happens when you want to say "I will watch" or "They listened"?
Well, if you will remember back to our discussion of pronouns, you'll recall that when showing possession with a pronoun, we had a set of endings that could be appended to the noun. Now, if you stretch plausibility just a little bit and think of the subject of a sentence "owning" the action being performed, then you'll have a good idea of where we're going with this.
Yep, that's right. You can use the same pronominal endings that you use to show possession to also give a pronominal subject for a verb. To refresh your memory, these endings are:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | -n | -m |
| 2nd F | -ch | -ch |
| 2nd R | -l | -l |
| 3rd (m/f) | -none- | -r |
| 3rd (n) | -as | -ais |
These endings can be slapped onto the end of a verb in past, present, or future tense in order to indicate the subject. There are two things to take into consideration, though.
1. In the present and future tense, the final 'a' changes to 'o' before the first person singular ending only is added.
2. In the past tense, the 'nt' changes to 'nne' before the ending is applied in all cases except third person neuter (since they already start with a vowel).
Examples:
I will watch --> tiriatha + -n --> tiriathon
They listened --> lastant + -r --> lastanner
We battle --> dagra + m --> dagram
participles and gerunds
Tolkien also mapped out some of the more advanced verb conjugations, namely, the present, past, and perfect participles, and the gerund. Let's look at these next.
The present participle is an adjective form of the verb. It can be used to modify a noun (a battling Elf) or as part of an adjectival phrase describing a verb (watching the border). The present participle is formed by replacing the final '-a' of the stem verb with '-ol'.
a battling Elf: Edhel dhagrol
watching the border: tiriol i edrain
(Note that when the present participle is being used as an adjective to modify the noun, it is subject to lenition rules. However, it does not seem to change in the plural form the way that other adjectives do.)
The past and perfect participles are also adjectival forms of the verb. They both indicate when an action has been completed. The difference is that while the present participle can be used to modify either nouns or verbs, the past participle is only used with nouns (a watched Elf), while the perfect participle is used to modify verbs (having battled).
To form the past participle, append '-nnen' to the final '-a' of the stem. Examples:
a watched Elf: Edhel diriannen
a battled enemy: coth dhagrannen
Again, since these are used as adjectives, they lenit as normal. Unlike the present participle, though, the past participle has a distinct plural form made my changing the final 'e' to 'i' and then changing all occurrences of 'a' and 'o' (that are not part of diphthongs) in the verb to 'e'. This is called an i-umlaut effect. To demonstrate:
watched Elves: Edhil diriennin
battled enemies: cyth dhegrennin
The past participle is also the only way we have of showing passive voice:
Erestor tiriannen na Elrond. "Erestor was watched by Elrond."
The perfect participle is a little more complicated. There are two ways that the perfect participle is formed, depending on the ending of the verb stem.
Verbs that end in just '-a' form their perfect participles by replacing the '-a' with '-iel' and then performing an i-umlaut throughout the verb.
having battled: degriel
having listened: lestiel
Verbs that end in '-ia' form their perfect participles by replacing the '-ia' with '-iel' and then altering the stem vowel of the primitive root according to the chart below. (Primitive roots of Sindarin words can be found using the lookup here: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/index2/ind2s.htm).
a > ó | e > í | i > í | o > ú | u > ú
watched: tíriel (from tiria -- root: TIR)
understood: hóniel (from henia -- root: KHAN)
Finally, the gerund. The gerund is a noun form of the verb. In English, it is indistinguishable from the present participle except by context. In Sindarin, though, the gerund is formed by simply adding '-d' to the stem verb.
Elrond tiriant dhagrad. "Elrond watched battling."
(As a noun, 'battling' serves as the direct object, and therefore undergoes lenition.)
conclusion
- A-stem verbs are one of four types of verbs in Sindarin.
- Imperative and infinitive tenses are formed by replacing the final '-a' with '-o'.
- The present tense is identical to the verb stem.
- The past tense is formed by adding '-nt' to the verb stem.
- The present tense is formed by adding '-tha' to the verb stem.
- Past, present, and future tenses can have pronominal endings.
- The present participle is formed by replacing the final '-a' with '-ol'.
- The past participle is formed by adding '-nnen' to the verb stem.
- The plural form of the past participle is formed by changing the final '-e-' to '-i-' and performing an i-umlaut.
- The perfect participle is formed by replacing the final '-a' or '-ia' with '-iel' and mutating the stem vowel accordingly.
- The gerund is formed by adding '-d' to the verb stem.
