Adûnaic

-ân Reconstructed

suffix. participle suffix

A suffix that appears in some adjectives, and may be used to form a participle in Adûnaic, that is an adjective formed from a verb. Helge Fauskanger suggested (AL/Adûnaic) that it may be a cognate of Q. -ina, derived from Primitive Elvish ✶-nā. There are two examples: zîrân “beloved” ← zîr- “to love” and zabathân “humbled” ← ✱zabath- “to humble”. Both cases seem to be passive participles (also called “past participles” in English grammar), describing a noun that is the object of the verbal action: that which is loved, that which is humbled.

Unlike other Adûnaic adjectives, these participle forms appear after the noun they modify instead of before. See the entry on the participle for further discussion.

Element in

-ân Reconstructed

suffix. agental suffix

A suffix that is used in some examples for agental-formation: creating nouns from verbs that indicate the agent who performs the verb’s action. The clearest example is sapthân “wise man” derived (after some ancient sound modifications) from saphad- “to understand”. This formation means “✱one who understands”. Less clear examples are ✱magân “wright, ✱builder”, perhaps from a verb ✱mag- “to build”, and kathuphazgân “conquerer”, perhaps a combined of katha “all” and a verb ?phazag- “to take”, meaning “✱one who takes all”.

It is not clear how this suffix related to the similar participle suffix -ân used for form adjectives from verbs. See the entry on participle for further discussion. Andreas Moehn suggested (EotAL/TAN) that -ân as an agental formation may be related to anâ “human being”.

Derivations

  • ✶Ad. -ān “agental suffix”

Element in

Variations

  • -ān ✧ SD/429 (-ān)