-lwa, possessive pronominal ending, 1st person pl. inclusive "our" (VT49:16), later (in exilic Quenya) used in the form #-lva, genitive -lvo in omentielvo (see -lv-).
Quenya
vin
adverb. just, just now, only just, already
vin(i)-
prefix. neo-
-lma
our
-lwa
our
-mma
our
-mma "our", 1st person dual exlusive possessive ending: *"my and one others" (VT49:16). At an earlier conceptual phase, Tolkien apparently intended the same ending to be plural inclusive "our" (VT49:55, RS:324), cf. Mélamarimma "Our Home" (q.v.) In the latter word, Tolkien slips in i as a connecting vowel before this ending; elsewhere he used e, as in Átaremma "our Father" (see atar).
-ngwa
our
-ngwa "our", 1st person dual inclusive possessive pronominal ending: *"thy and my", corresponding to the ending -ngwë for dual inclusive "we" (VT49:16)
ar ámen apsenë úcaremmar
and forgive us our trespasses
The seventh line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word is ar “and”, followed by a combination of the imperative particle á and the (dative) second person plural pronoun men “[for] us”. Next follows apsene, the aorist form of the verb apsen- “forgive”. The final word úcaremmar “our trespasses” is the first person plural exclusive possessive form of úcarë, with the usual plural suffix -r indicating the possessed noun was also plural (“trespasses” as opposed to “trespass”).
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> ar á-me-n apsenë úcare-mma-r = “✱and (imperative)-us-for forgive trespass-our-(plural)”
Conceptual Development: Earlier versions of the prayer used a different verb avatyar- for “forgive”, in what was probably a suffixed imperative form avatyara (I-IIa) or ávatyara (IIb-IV). In version I-IV, this was followed by the ablative form mello “[from] us” of the pronoun me.
Earlier versions of the prayer used a variety of words for “trespass”: lucassë (I), lucië (IIa-IIb), luhta (III-IV deleted) and rohta (III-IV). Most instances used the same possessive suffix -mma “our” as the final verion of the prayer, but version III used an independent pronoun menya, in its plural form menye to agree with the plural noun “trespasses”.
| I |IIa|IIb|III|IV|V|VI| |ar| |avatyara|ávatyara|ámen| |mello|apsene| |lucassemmar|i luciemmar|menye {luhtar >>} rohtar|{luhtammar >>} rohtammar|úcaremmar|
menya
our
menya (pl. menyë is attested) possessive pron. "our", 1st person pl. exclusive independent possessive pronoun (VT43:19, 35). Evidently derived from the dative form men "for us" by adding the adjectival ending -ya. Compare ninya, q.v.
-lma pronominal ending "our", 1st person pl. exclusive (VT49:16), also attested (with the genitive ending -o that displaces final -a) in the word omentielmo "of our meeting" (nominative omentielma, PE17:58). Tolkien emended omentielmo to omentielvo in the Second Edition of LotR, reflecting a revision of the Quenya pronominal system (cf. VT49:38, 49, Letters:447). The cluster -lm- in the endings for inclusive "we/our" was altered to -lv- (VT43:14). In the revised system, -lma should apparently signify exclusive "our".