áva

don't!

áva, avá (the latter stressed on the final syllable) "Don't!", negative imperative particle (compare ala, #ála). Cf. ávan "I won't" (also ván, ványë); áva carë! ("k") "don't do it!" (WJ:371)

áva

particle. don’t, negative imperative

ala

not

ala, #ála (1) imperative particle á, a combined with the negation lá, -la "not" to express a prohibition (VT43:22; see lá #1). Also with 1st person suffix -lyë (alalyë and álalyë, VT43:10, 22, VT44:8) and 1st person pl. object suffix -më (alamë and álamë, "do not [do something to] us", as in álamë tulya, "do not lead us", VT43:12, 22). In the essay Quendi and Eldar, negative imperatives are rather indicated by áva, q.v., but this form can well coexist with ala, #ála.

ala-

not

ala- (2) negative prefix "not", "un-", reduced to al- before a vowel (VT42:33, GALA, VT45:25), though the example Alcorin would suggest that al- can sometimes appear before a consonant as well. In a deleted entry in Etym, al(a)- was defined as "not" and said to be a "pure negative" (VT45:5). In alahasta, Alamanyar, alasaila, Alcorin.

auta-

verb. to go (away), depart, leave; to pass away, disappear, be lost, to go (away), depart, leave; [variant: vanya-] to pass away, disappear, be lost

A rather irregular verb whose base meaning is “go (away), depart, leave” and by extension with the senses “pass away, disappear, be lost”, derived from the invertible root √WĀ/AWA “away” (PE17/63; WJ/366). Its most notable use is in the Namárië poem where it appeared in its plural perfect form avánier “have passed” (LotR/377). The related adjective vanwa “lost, departed, vanished” appeared in the same poem. Tolkien’s desire to retain the forms avánie and vanwa likely influenced his investigation of this verb; its conceptual development is quite complex (see below).

The irregularity of this verb is due to some of its tenses being based on √AW, and others on √WĀ. Starting in the late 1950s he usually represent the base verb stem as auta- (PE17/63; PE22/164; WJ/366), such as in <strong>auta</strong> i lómë “the night is passing” from The Silmarillion (S/190). The stem form auta- was based on √AW + tă, similar to other verbs whose roots ended in y/w which usually required a formative suffix like ✶-tă (PE22/156). Such “half-strong” verbs normally had past forms with nasal-infixion before the formative suffix, in this case with primitive ✶áwa-n-tē becoming modern öante because ancient <em>awa</em> become <em>öa</em> in Quenya’s phonetic history (WJ/366-367). Tolkien posited similar perfect forms öantie or öávie (WJ/366; PE17/148; PE22/164).

In the Quendi and Eldar essay from 1959-60, Tolkien said that:

> In the more purely physical sense “went away (to another place)” the regular forms (for a -ta verb of this class) öante, öantie were used (WJ/366).

However, in this document (and others) he described another past form váne from primitive ✶wāne, derived from √WĀ rather than √AW (PE17/63; WJ/366). From this ancient past form the perfect avánie was derived, with Tolkien saying “the forms of past and perfect became progressively more closely associated in Quenya” (WJ/366). This variant of the past and perfect was associated with the adjective (originally a perfective adjective) vanwa “gone, lost, no longer to be had, vanished, departed, dead, past and over”, and from it got the meaning: “✱passed away, went away (to never return)”. It was in this sense the perfect form avánier was used in the Namárië poem.

Conceptual Development: This verb has numerous precursors in Tolkien’s earlier writings, since the original root ᴱ√AVA “go away, depart, leave” dates back to the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s (QL/33). This root had a verb form ᴱQ. avin “he departs” with past form ambe (QL/33). The early root also had an inversion ᴱ√VAHA, from which an alternate past form vâ “went” was derived (QL/99). Thus the notion that the past and present forms of this verb were from inversions of the root was quite an old idea in Tolkien’s mind.

The English-Qenya Dictionary of the 1920s had a verb form ᴱQ. vana- “pass, depart, vanish, go away” (PE15/76). This became ᴹQ. vanya- “go, depart, disappear” in The Etymologies of the 1930s under the root ᴹ√WAN “depart, go away, disappear, vanish” (Ety/WAN). This verb reappeared in the “Merin Sentence” from the mid-to-late 1950s: merin sa haryalyë alassë nó <strong>vanyalyë</strong> Ambarello “I hope that you have happiness before you pass from the world” (MS). It is thus likely the base verb was vanya- when Tolkien first composed the Namárië poem, and in the 1st edition of The Lord of the Rings the perfect form was vánier without the leading a (RC/341).

The verb form ᴹQ. auta- with the sense “to go away” first appeared in the Outline of Phonetic Development (OP1) from the 1940s, where it was a variant of ᴹQ. apsa- &lt; ᴹ✶abtā- of the same meaning, a back-formation from the past form avante &lt; ✱aba-n-tē, all based on the root ᴹ√ABA/BA “away, go away” (PE19/45). However, sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s, Tolkien revised the meaning of ᴹ√AB to “refuse, deny, say no” (Ety/AB). In the Outline of Phonology (OP2) from the early 1950s, Tolkien had a similar verbal paradigm with Q. apta &lt; ✶ab-ta vs. Q. auta as back-formation from past avante, but in that document the past was glossed “refused, denied, said nay” (PE19/90).

The derivations of auta- “go away, depart” from the root √WĀ/AWA began to appear in documents from the late 1950s and early 1960s such as Notes on Galadriel’s Song (NGS: PE17/63), Definitive Linguistic Notes (DLN: PE17/148), and Quendi and Eldar (Q&amp;E: WJ/365-366). He seem to stick with this paradigm going forward, but continue to experiment with various forms for different verb tenses. For example, in couple places Tolkien gave anwe as another (archaic) past along with oante (WJ/366; PE17/148). In another place he consider a variant verb ava- “depart, go away, disappear, be lost” with present avea, future auva, past vāne, and perfect avānie (PE17/63).

Neo-Quenya: It is pretty clear Tolkien intended the aorist form of this verb to be auta. In NGS Tolkien gave a future form autuva (PE17/63) and in Late Notes on Verb Structure (LVS) from 1969 a present form autya (PE22/164). LVS had a number of -ya or -ia present tenses for various <em>ta</em>-formative verbs, but also said something like “make Q. ea as present tense invaded other forms” in a difficult-to-read note. I take that to mean that the -ya/-ia presents regularized to -ea across many verb classes, so I would use the present tense form ✱autea “is departing” instead and assume that †autya is archaic; see the discussion of the Quenya present tense for more details.

This verb had two past paradigms: öante “went away (to another place)” vs. váne “✱pass away, went away (to never return)”, along with associated perfects öantie vs. avánie, with the last meaning “have passed away” (RGEO/58). In the aorist, present and future tenses this distinction is frequently less relevant, because the “to never return” qualifier is necessarily unknown. Where it is relevant, however, I would use a variant stem form vanya- “to pass away, disappear, be lost”, a back-formation derived from the alternate perfect avánie, inspired by the verb form in The Etymologies and the Merin Sentence (see above).

ava-

was not

ava- (4) vb with pa.t. avanë. This verb is not clearly glossed; apparently meaning refuse or prohibit(WJ:370). Cf. áva, Avamanyar. What is seems to be more or less the same verb has its principal tenses listed (with the ending -n "I") in VT49:13: aorist avan, present ávan (ávëan), future auvan for older avuvan, past avanen or auvan, perfect avávien. In one version of the paradigm, the present tense ávëan and past avanen are marked as archaic/poetic forms. One text seemingly uses the pa.t. aunë in the sense "was not", as a negative verb, but this may have been a short-lived idea of Tolkiens (the text was revised).

car-

verb. make, do, build, form

car- (1) vb. "make, do, build, form" (1st pers. aorist carin "I make, build"; the aorist is listed with all pronominal endings in VT49:16, also in pl. and dual forms carir, carit). Regarding the form carize- (PE17:128), see -s #1. Pa.t. carnë (KAR, PE17:74, 144). The infinitival aorist stem carë ("k") (by Patrick Wynne called a "general aorist infinitive" in VT49:34) occurs in ecë nin carë sa "I can do it" (VT49:34), also in áva carë "don't do it" (WJ:371) and uin carë (PE17:68); in the last example Tolkien calls carë an example of the "simplest aorist infinitive", the same source referring to carië as the "general infinitive" of the same verb. Pl. aorist carir "form" in the phrase i carir quettar ("k") "those who form words" (WJ:391, cf. VT49:16), continuative cára, future caruva (PE17:144), carita ("k"), infinitive/gerund "to do" or "doing" (VT42:33), with suffixes caritas "to do it" or "doing it", caritalya(s) "your doing (it)" in VT41:13,17, VT42:33. Past participle #carna, q.v.; VT43:15 also gives the long form carina ("k"), read perhaps *cárina. (Carima as a passive participle may be a mistake, VT43:15.) PE17:68 refers to a "simple past passive participle" of the form carinwa ("kari-nwa"). "Rare" past participle active (?) cárienwa* ("k") "having done" (PE17:68), unless this is also a kind of passive participle (the wording of the source is unclear). Some alternative forms in Fíriel's Song: past tense cárë ("káre") "made"; this may still be an alternative to the better-attested form carnë (LR:362) even in LotR-style Quenya. Cf. ohtacárë "war-made", made war (see #ohtacar-). Also cárië with various suffixes: cárier ("kárier") is translated "they made"; in LotR-style Quenya this could be seen as an augmentless perfect, hence "they have made", "they" being simply the plural ending -r. The literal meaning of cárielto* ("k") must also be "they made" (cf. -lto). Derived adjectives urcárima and urcarnë "hard to make / do", urucarin "made with difficulty" (PE17:154), saucarya "evil-doing" (PE17:68).

á

immediate time reference

a (3), also á, imperative particle. An imperative with "immediate time reference" is expressed by á in front of the verb (or "occasionally after it, sometimes before and after for emphasis"), with the verb following in "the simplest form also used for the uninflected aorist without specific time reference past or present or future" (PE17:93). Cf. a laita te, laita te! "[o] bless them, bless them!", á vala Manwë! "may Manwë order it!", literally "o rule Manwë!" (see laita, vala for reference); cf. also á carë "do[!]", á ricë "try!", á lirë "sing[!]", á menë "proceed[!]", a norë "run[!]" (PE17:92-93, notice short a in this example), á tula "come!" (VT43:14). In the last example, the verb tul- "come" receives an ending -a that probably represents the _suffixed form of the imperative particle, this apparently being an example of the imperative element occurring both "before and after" the verbal stem "for emphasis" (PE17:93)_. This ending may also appear on its own with no preceding a/á, as in the command queta "speak!" (PE17:138). Other examples of imperatives with suffixed -a include cena and tira (VT47:31, see cen-, tir-); the imperatives of these same verbs are however also attested as á tirë, á cenë (PE17:94) with the imperative particle remaining independent and the following verb appearing as an uninflected aorist stem. This aorist can be plural to indicate a 3rd person pl. subject: á ricir! "let them try!" (PE17:93). Alyë (VT43:17, VT44:9) seems to be the imperative particle a with the pronominal suffix -lyë "you, thou" suffixed to indicate the subject who is to carry out the command; attested in the phrase alyë anta "give thou" (elided aly' in VT43:11, since the next word begins in e-: aly' eterúna me, *"do thou deliver us"); presumably other pronominal suffixes could likewise be added. The particle a is also present in the negative imperatives ala, #ála or áva, q.v.

áva carë

Don’t do it

áva márië

go happily

ú

particle. not

úa

do not thou lead us

úa, with 1st person suffix úalyë, imperative particle á, a combined with the negation ú- to express a prohibition (úalyë mittanya me, *"do not thou lead us", VT43:9, 21-22). However, Tolkien apparently abandoned úa in favour of ala, alalyë, q.v. (later he also used the form áva for "don't"). Compare ua.

bâ

particle. don’t

A particle glossed “don’t” in the phrase bâ kitabdahê “Don’t touch me!”. It may be a derivative of the Elvish root ᴹ√AB “refuse, deny, say no”, as suggested by Helge Fauskanger (AL/Adûnaic). Carl Hostetter and Patrick Wynne suggested (VSH/25, AAD/13) it is an example of the optative mood mentioned by Tolkien SD/439, where “optative” is an expression of a desire or wish. If so, it expresses a negative wish. A positive wish might be expressed by the particle du.

aba-kar ā

don’t do it

aba-

prefix. not

abá

don’t

al-

prefix. not

pref. not. >> alfirin

avgaro

don’t do it

avo garo

don’t do it

al

not

al- (prefix) as in alfirin "not-mortal", immortal.

al

not

(prefix) as in alfirin &quot;not-mortal&quot;, immortal.

ava

will not

(i ava, in avar).

car

make

1. car- (i gâr, i cherir), pa.t. agor (do, build) (WJ:415), 2) echad- (i echad, in echedir) (fashion, shape), pa.t. echant (VT45:19)

law

adverb. not

said

not common

(lenited haid; no distinct pl. form) (separate, private, excluded) (VT42:20)

ú

not

(adverbial prefix) ú-, u- (followed by lenition, e.g. ú-chebin ”I do not keep”) (without). Verb

ú

not

u- (followed by lenition, e.g. ú-chebin ”