Comments on the Pictorial Dictionary?

Khreestrefah · **Joined:** Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:01 pm **Posts:** 163

The fact that Minkata is not a "compound" does not mean that it is a simple word. The word shoraht 'peaceful' is not a compound of two separate words, but the idea is one degree more complex than shorah 'peace'.

The word minkata looks like it contains two or three suffixes, which makes the idea very complex, but it is not a compound in the sense that gahreesen is a compound.

Note by the way that the translation 'heavily scarred' is itself an idiom in English, since there is nothing literally "heavy" about being 'heavily scarred'. That the translation is not literal was more or less self-evident from the get-go

Shorah

EDIT: We think of "scarred" as referring primarily to healed wounds in the flesh, but it can also refer to the shaping of rock by natural forces. Compare the following lines from Shelley's poem Mount Blanc:

A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there — how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

That's an interesting comment from Rawa. It seems to be typical of gahro to precede the noun in compounds (gahrahno, gahrohev, gahrtahvo, gahrternay...). It may be that regahro tiwah, like regahro zeero, is closer to a compound than to a complex phrase such as redoyhahtee pradteegahl tor gahro b'fahsee, in which several other words fall between the noun and the adjective, which is itself modified by b'fahsee.

My theory regarding Minkata is that it ends in the superlative -ah suggested by words such as zithahth 'least', which would account for the "heavily" part of its meaning. Though, of course, it's perfectly possible that Minkata is simply based on a root that happens to have an intensive meaning.

Khreestrefah · **Joined:** Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:01 pm **Posts:** 163

Also, if we suppose that the name Minkata is derived from minkat then the further information we have about adjective formation suggests that this is derived from a noun *minka presumably 'scar'. And while minkats would be the generic adjective 'scarred' in the sense 'having one or more scars', minkat is literally "scar-ful" = 'having multiple scars'. A further intensifying would yield the sense 'having very many scars' or in English idiom "heavily scarred."

It occurs to me that this combination of adjective-forming t plus augmentative a might also be seen e.g. in *fenta 'history' as 'that which consists of many stories' < fen(ah) 'story' + t + a.

Shorah

EDIT: I agree with Talashar’s point as well about regahro tiwah that compounds like gahrohevtee could influence the structure of a simple phrase like this. They could also perhaps influence RAWA’s sense of what “flows better” since compounds beginning in gahro or gahr seem to be relatively frequent in the corpus.

But this explanation just leads to the ulterior question of why among compounds where one component is an adjective and the other is a noun they sometimes have the adjective first and sometimes have the noun first. We have discussed this before and come up with a few explanations, so in a way it is encouraging that RAWA said “there are several possible explanations.”

Khreestrefah · **Joined:** Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:01 pm **Posts:** 163

KathAveara wrote:

I've always supposed that the names Veovis and Efanis likely contain an ending -is as well, though we don't know the meanings of the personal names.

Other personal names ending in is are:

Tekis, Jadaris, A’gaeris, Haemis, Jiladis, Kahlis, Lianis, Telanis, Avonis.

The relative frequency of this ending may suggest that it has some kind of individuating sense; so that e.g. Tekis = someone who is tek. But without knowing what any of the other components mean this is hard to corroborate. Such a suffix might be connected etymologically with the proposed reciprocal is in verbs, but through an indirect contextualization.

The suffixes ij, in, id share the syntactic feature that they indicate the subject of the sentence (or a head noun modified by a participle) is the notional object of the verbal action or process. Thus rilbokenet verenij ‘we will not be mollified’ is about someone else mollifying us; and rekor oshahnin ‘the lost book’ is about that someone else having done the losing. In the case of repoytee tsoidahl ‘the glowing bulbs’ I have suggested that a reflexive id indicates that the bulbs are both subject and object of the shining involved.

The reciprocal is a sort of specialization of the plural reflexive: *votahretid “we praised ourselves” is nonspecific about the details if who praised whom – all of us are subject and object collectively; but *votahretis “we praised each other” by emphasizing the individuation of the praising (expressed in the English by each) suggests idiomatically that ‘you praised me and I praised you’ mutually.

Of the derivatives that might contain a suffix -is the one that seems most amenable to the possibility of a reciprocal or mutual interpretation is nekisahl ‘bent, twisted, or distorted’. Here the original sense of ‘twist’ may have come from the basic idea of making something like thread from “spinning,” where the threads twist around each other.

Shorah

larryf58 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 11, 2017 12:59 pm

Talashar wrote:

Based on the literal structure of the words, I would expect morokhmor to mean "maternal grandmother" and morokhpor to mean "paternal grandmother." The problem is that Atrus's Prayer uses mor'okh'mor, but it seems more likely for Atrus to be talking about Anna than about Keta's mother. So I'm not sure what's going on there.

Looking forward to leaning more about stress! To the best of my knowledge, the only previous confirmations we have of word stress (putting aside game dialog) are the words r'erem and regestoy on Cyan's old site, both of which have final stress.

Richard hasn't replied about it, but my own guess is that morokhmor and morokhpor are maternal grandmother and paternal grandmother respectively. If that's a reasonable theory, then porokhmor and porokhpor would be maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather.

I'll share what he told me about stressing words:

Quote:

Some random D'ni examples:

First Syllable: Eder DElin ELeean Uru
Second Syllable: d'NI kerATH parAHno riFOON
Third Syllable: eleeANith morokhMOR morokhPOR ri'nerEF

(note ELeean and eleeANith : adding the suffix changes the stress from first to third syllable)

If there is a general rule, I do not know what it is (other than what seems the most natural to me when sounding out a word.

And there are two unconfirmed words in his examples. Parano and elēan. I'll try to get him to tell me what they mean, but don't be surprised if he doesn't answer -- he can be pretty random about that, and I don't insist. But if I can get him to give me confirmed definitions for morokhmor/por, parano and elēan, this will have been a very good month for students of the D'ni language.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 11, 2017 1:03 pm

Talashar wrote:

Based on the literal structure of the words, I would expect morokhmor to mean "maternal grandmother" and morokhpor to mean "paternal grandmother." The problem is that Atrus's Prayer uses mor'okh'mor, but it seems more likely for Atrus to be talking about Anna than about Keta's mother. So I'm not sure what's going on there.

Looking forward to leaning more about stress! To the best of my knowledge, the only previous confirmations we have of word stress (putting aside game dialog) are the words r'erem and regestoy on Cyan's old site, both of which have final stress.

Richard hasn't replied about it, but my own guess is that morokhmor and morokhpor are maternal grandmother and paternal grandmother respectively. If that's a reasonable theory, then porokhmor and porokhpor would be maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather.

I'll share what he told me about stressing words:

Quote:

Some random D'ni examples:

First Syllable: Eder DElin ELeean Uru
Second Syllable: d'NI kerATH parAHno riFOON
Third Syllable: eleeANith morokhMOR morokhPOR ri'nerEF

(note ELeean and eleeANith : adding the suffix changes the stress from first to third syllable)

If there is a general rule, I do not know what it is (other than what seems the most natural to me when sounding out a word.)

And there are two unconfirmed words in his examples. Parano and elēan. I'll try to get him to tell me what they mean, but don't be surprised if he doesn't answer -- he can be pretty random about that, and I don't insist. But if I can get him to give me confirmed definitions for morokhmor/por, parano and elēan, this will have been a very good month for students of the D'ni language.

korovev · **Posted:** Fri Aug 11, 2017 4:35 pm

larryf58 wrote:

And there are two unconfirmed words in his examples. Parano and elēan.

As a memo for later:

1. The Pod Age map has garano vamot, tentatively translated as “eastern ocean”, so we might be looking at “sea” and “ocean”.

2. elían is attested in the Kenen Gor, though it was believed to be lían:

kenen gor xrelíaniþtí b’ken rúméij
it is time for the [divisions (?)] to be [circumvented (?)]

3. So it’s confirmed to be uru, not *úrú?

Quote:

(note ELeean and eleeANith : adding the suffix changes the stress from first to third syllable)

How is the first syllable stressed when the second is long?

larryf58 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 11, 2017 4:55 pm

korovev wrote:

3. So it’s confirmed to be uru, not *úrú?

How is the first syllable stressed when the second is long?

He spells it as uru but pronounces it as OO-roo. Chalk it up to the same convention which has D'ni pronounced D'nee; it's just one of those things.

It's just like the name Elly, but with an extra syllable. Another example would be the name Marian as opposed to Maryanne; the stress also shifts from first to third syllable in that name variation.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sat Aug 12, 2017 10:06 am

larryf58 wrote:

I'll share what he told me about stressing words:

<snip>

Interesting stuff! I'll have to compare this to Yeesha's speech some time, see what I can come up with.

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

Oops, sorry about posting in the wrong thread. Apparently it's been long enough that I forgot this one existed!

Stress can apparently fall on any syllable of a two- or three-syllable word. While I imagine it would be possible to come up with a set of rules to predict stress in these examples, these rules would almost certainly be overfitting the data. :lol:

Adding the -ith suffix to eleeahn attracts the stress to the syllable immediately before the suffix. On the other hand, the stress in re-gestoy and re-erem is on the final syllable, not adjacent to the prefix.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sat Aug 12, 2017 6:17 pm

Talashar wrote:

Oops, sorry about posting in the wrong thread. Apparently it's been long enough that I forgot this one existed!

It's really not that big a deal, but all the prior conversations are in this topic.

Quote:

Stress can apparently fall on any syllable of a two- or three-syllable word. While I imagine it would be possible to come up with a set of rules to predict stress in these examples, these rules would almost certainly be overfitting the data. :lol:

Adding the -ith suffix to eleeahn attracts the stress to the syllable immediately before the suffix. On the other hand, the stress in re-gestoy and re-erem is on the final syllable, not adjacent to the prefix.

That's something I was thinking about -- how prefixes and suffixes affect stressing. He didn't give any examples of the former, but did for the latter. So I'm left wondering if a prefix might affect the stressed syllable. Guess that's another subjective call.

In one of the interviews, Richard said, IIRC, that the way Rengin Altay pronounced D'ni in the game sound track was a thing of beauty to him. But he also said that I do a very good job pronouncing words in the cavern tours, which I take with a grain of salt.

(In case you're wondering, a tour guest recorded one of the tours and I sent it to Richard to play for his mother. She likes my various projects.)

Toki · **Posted:** Sun Aug 13, 2017 3:51 pm

dgelessus wrote:

They are great! I did not want to post in your main thread so I don't disturb the thread with random comments

Yes!! larryf58!!
I agree with that!!
I thought that I was sorry to comment there because it was too wonderful!!!!!

Toki

Khreestrefah · **Joined:** Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:01 pm **Posts:** 163

Currently I am inclined to view the word eleeahn as referring to the "Upper Class" in the D'ni social hierarchy. The word would consist of el 'high' + *lee 'part, division' + ahn. If this is a noun for this group then it would explain why we have a different individuating suffix in eleeahnith from what we have in e.g. kerahth 'brave one'.

The suffix -(e)th would be added to an adjective to indicate an individual having the attribute it describes; while -ith would be added to a collective noun to indicate an individual belonging to the group it describes.

Another inference from the Kenen Gor text may be that the those contrasted with the eleeahnithtee, namely the gonahthtee, could be the "Poor" and perhaps specifically the "Low Poor" (according to Tricia Lawson's tentative classification) who were segregated from the upper classes and never seen (or heard) by them.

Shorah

Tweek · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am **Posts:** 2633

As I've mentioned many times before D'ni language isn't my strong area I'm more of a lore guy. But I've been wondering recently if ahn might not be a shortened version of Mahn from Tomahn meaning Laki'ahn would be something akin to Laki Home or Home of Laki?

Khreestrefah · **Joined:** Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:01 pm **Posts:** 163

This would not be impossible, as a sort of "false analogy" like English chocoholic from alcoholic. The difficulty is that most D'ni would probably still have perceived the structure of tomahn as to + mahn, given a number of other words with to 'place' in them, and also some associations of mahn 'existence' such as mahnshoo 'die' (i.e. to end one's existence). So if whoever named the Age wanted to say "Laki Home" and model it after tomahn it is not clear why they would not have just named it *Lakimahn.

This is not ultimately conclusive, but if we approach the question as a matter of lore, then we should consider all of the "clues" at our disposal. One very early revelation about the D'ni language was the Crossword Puzzle. Over the years it has turned out that many of the words in the puzzle have been confirmed. And I see no reason not to view this as based on an actual D'ni document. (We know the D'ni liked puzzles and have their word deseekay for 'puzzle, enigma'; and in our own culture the crossword concept goes back to ancient times.) This is significant because one of the words in the Crossword is ahn.

This is a really short word, so everywhere that the sequence ahn occurs would not necessarily be an example of this word. Thus the adjectives tsahvahn 'eternal', oglahn 'ancient' seem like they might share a suffix -ahn but it is difficult to attribute a specific meaning to it as a separate word. Similarly leeshahn '(the) whole' and eleeahn (if it means 'upper class') could share an ending suggesting a collection that is indefinite in size but definitive in kind, but again ahn does not itself seem to be a word.

But there is another pair of words ending with this sequence of sounds, namely kooahn 'stream' and birahn (which perhaps means 'strait' or 'channel'). As these both refer to bodies of water, and the generic word for 'water' is ahno, it seems likely that in each of these we have a second element is an actual word ahn which means 'body of water'. Since the longer ahno is also used in compounds, such as gahrahno (apparently = 'ocean'), the distinction may be that ahn refers to water that has a more or less well-defined shore or shores that surround or contain it. Different such bounded bodies of water would be distinguished by added elements, as in kooahn.

So it seems like the name Laki'ahn means literally 'body of water where there are Laki' and perhaps was understood by the D'ni "sports-fans" as referring to the water-filled arena, but may have originally referred the body of water where the Kresh hunted the Laki.

Shorah

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