Quenya
menel acúna
the heavens bending
Changes
- Menel na-kúna → Menel akúna “the heavens bending” ✧ MC/222
Element in
- Q. Markirya “The Last Ark”
Elements
Word Gloss menel “the heavens, firmament, sky” a- “infinitive prefix” cúna- “to bend” Variations
- Menel na-kúna ✧ MC/222
- Menel akúna ✧ MC/222
The twenty-fourth line of the Markirya poem (MC/222). It consists of another subordinate clause menel acúna “heavens bending”, with the noun menel “heavens” followed by the infinitive of the verb cúna- “to bend”. The prefix a- in acúna marks the infinitive as an object of the primary verb, which is the verb “see” of the previous phrase.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> menel a-cúna = “✱heavens (object)-bending”
Conceptual Development: In the first draft, Tolkien used na- for the object-prefix, which he first retained in the second draft before changing it to a- (MC/222).