New D'ni Words!

K'laamas · **Posted:** Sun Sep 24, 2017 1:05 am

.shorah b'shemtee biv (:

RAWA recently gave someone a D'ni translation for a tattoo, & he's letting me release the new words publicly

It's a quote from the old Cyan Website:

.reh-nezeh-tahn kehn-ehn k'tehsh-ij treh-lehnah-okh kehvo-th
roob reh-gehl-tahn kehn-ehn reh-kehso-tahn tso dovah-tee

"The reader is entertained by the journey of another,
but the writer is the changer of worlds."

Notes:

1- The word "k'tehsh" is interesting because of the apostrophe. It's not the same as " "kh' ", meaning "for"--it's " k' ", & it's just part of the word. Unusual, but it's something we've seen on occasion: "geh'dahn" (wisdom), "m'lah" (lizard), & "v'jah" (celebration). Some other words contain an apostrophe, & seem to be used to join 2 words together, but we don't know the rules for such use, & without knowing the exact etymology of "k'tehsh", we can't be certain on the meaning/purpose of the apostrophe.

2- RAWA said that "k'tehsh", meaning "entertain", is "meant to be reminiscent of" the word "k'tsee", meaning "happy" (Bonus Word!).

3- I'm not quite sure how to define/describe the base word "kehvo" in "kehvoth", but the "-th" suffix makes the word a person.

4- We already had the word "kehso" from the "Kenen Gor" note & the "Podium Speech", but never knew the correct translation until now.

5 New Words:

1- "nehzeh"--meaning "read" (verb).
2- "k'tehsh"--meaning "entertain" (verb).
3- "kehvoth"--meaning "another" (noun).
4- "kehso"--meaning "change" (verb).
5- "k'tsee"--meaning "happy" (adjective). Bonus word!

^_^

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sun Sep 24, 2017 10:56 am

I would translate kevo simply as "other", as in rerov kevo "the other person".

korovev · **Posted:** Sun Sep 24, 2017 12:17 pm

I wonder what’s the difference between kevo(th) and ahrotahn, whose literal translation was given as “other(s)”.

[Reveal] Spoiler:

And now I’m picturing Gehn singing K'xET Kenen erThEK gira'al

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

I think this is our first example of a ken + -ij passive that includes a demoted te argument. (Presumably the active equivalent of the clause would be relenahokh kevoth k'teshen renezetahn.)

The last few words got me thinking about the difference between okh and tso. (Though my thoughts below may not be original and are somewhat off-topic). In the majority of uses of X tso Y, Y seems to undergo a change of state described by X.

Quote:

rekesotahn tso dovahtee
Changer of worlds (the worlds are changed)

bahreltahn tso dovahtee
Maker of worlds (the worlds are made)

remishtahv robot tso rebishtah
The actual construction of the tunnel (the tunnel is constructed)

remahnshootahv tso erthsev
The death of an Age (the Age dies)

A definite exception is from Atrus's Prayer: b'totee rahnahl tso mahrntahvom 'to various places of your creation' where if anything, it seems to be the other way around.

X okh Y, on the other hand, is frequently used not only for cases where Y possesses an item X, but also when X describes the (unchanged) state of Y.

Quote:

reatinorokh re ter
The beauty of the tree (the tree is beautiful)

khregitsahth gah khresoygith okhmetbishtah
The safety and stability of this tunnel (the tunnel is safe and stable, at least in one possible world)

There are also instances where X describes an action caused by Y.

Quote:

trebigto iglahrno okh rekaligo
The temporary blessing of the council (the council blesses [the excavation or the excavators]).

r'ayts'day oko gahroodsh okhze [...]
The black and red retribution of her (she takes retribution [on the addressees])

I wonder if it would be possible to have a contrasting minimal pair of okh and tso, so for example of regolahntahntee tso yahvo meant those who judge Yahvo, contrasting with regolahntahnteeokh yahvo.

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

.k’laamas chevet ah’shem b’rish

I was thinking that kevo alone would express the adjectival sense of ‘another’, as in:

.kobahrelen set k’tsee b’pilel hev(tee vaht) kevo merahwah
‘It made us happy to receive another (five) word(s) from Rawa.’

The semantic distinction of ahro from kevo would be that the former just implies difference while the latter suggests additional membership in the same (implicit) group.

Shorah

KathAveara · **Posted:** Mon Sep 25, 2017 5:20 am

ahrotahntee is probably better translated as "outsiders" rather than "others", as the term is used specifically to refer to the native inhabitants of Ages other than D'ni.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:46 am

Talashar wrote:

stuff about tso and okh

This is interesting, and I want to try to answer some of the questions you raise. Disclaimer: this post is full of linguistics jargon. Don't read if you have allergies.

Let's tackle the usage of tso. Looking through the list of examples, it's striking that almost every single one involves a -tahv abstract noun or -tahn agent noun. The two exceptions are rezu tso dovah met "the end of this world" and the slightly obscure t'khoytahg zu tsoshem, both of which involve the noun zu. Setting these two examples aside for now, let's consider these two classes of deverbal noun separately.

Quote:

rekesotahn tso dovahtee "the changer of worlds"
remahrntahn gre’ahreeutahn tso dovaho[t] "the creator and protector of our world"
bahreltahn tso dovahtee "maker of worlds"

What these all have in common is that the verb as the root of the agent noun is transitive, and the complement of tso denotes the object of the verb, the agent noun by definition denoting the subject. All nice and straightforward.

Quote:

remishtahtahv robot tso rebishtah "the actual construction of the tunnel"
remishtahtahv tso sheegah bretahleeo "the construction of (a) [way] to the surface"
r’inaltahv tso donetsoet relem "the [opportunity(?)] of us producing the ink"
r’rinaltahv tso donetsoet rekortee "the [privilege(?)] of us producing the books"
remahnshootahv tso erthsev "the death of an Age"
oolintahv tso D’nee "[control] of D’ni"
totee rahnahl tso mahrntahvom "various places of your creation"

Examples 3 and 4 are obscure, due to the verbs at the root of the abstract nouns being hapax, and of the others, we see that we can have both transitive and intransitive verbs. In the Xtahv tso Y construction (i.e. all but the last, which I think still fits under this heading) we see that the complement of tso is the subject of an intransitive verb, and the object of a transitive one. The last example matches this analysis in all details except that it's Y tso Xtahv. But this inversion is motivated by the need to make totee the complement of be, which is only possible if totee is made the head of the phrase, which ultimately allows us to analyse it as underlyingly an Xtahv tso Y construction like the others.

Summing up tso, then, it is used in a set construction with deverbal nouns to introduce:

with inversion possible when the complement is needed to be the head of the phrase instead.

This leaves us with our two other examples of tso which do not fall under this construction. However, only rezu tso dovah met can really be analysed, since the other contains the hapax khoytahg, and the syntax of the whole clause isn't clear enough to indicate what the head of tso is. The key word in the phrase is zu, translated as "end", although this seems like a word that would be expressed with the abstract noun to a verb "to end". It occurs both in the two phrases under discussion here, and also in lerochay zuoy "I have [met] my end". I'm not too sure what exactly to make of this, other than suspecting that zu means something related to, yet more specific than "end". Of course, it's possible that zu is functionally equivalent to a -tahv abstract noun, making this an example of the Xtahv tso Y construction after all. It would certainly be tidy.

Skimming over the examples of okh, it's a lot more varied in semantics, which pretty much proves it to be the neutral way of translating "of". I won't attempt to work through all these usages in this post, since this one's already long enough, but maybe another post!

*Technically we can call this the absolutive argument as well, since the agent noun to an intransitive verb will never be in this construction, as its sole argument is already expressed

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

KathAveara wrote:

The last example matches this analysis in all details except that it's Y tso Xtahv. But this inversion is motivated by the need to make totee the complement of be, which is only possible if totee is made the head of the phrase, which ultimately allows us to analyse it as underlyingly an Xtahv tso Y construction like the others.

I like this analysis. In my summary of prepositions I described this example as "descriptive or partitive", mumbling and waving my hands, but it makes sense that it would have basically the same meaning as other uses of tso, only with an adjustment for syntactic reasons.

KathAveara wrote:

Summing up tso, then, it is used in a set construction with deverbal nouns to introduce:

with inversion possible when the complement is needed to be the head of the phrase instead.

Unfortunately the limited corpus makes it hard to distinguish my semantic-role description (Y as theme or patient) from your syntactic description (Y as absolutive argument). If we had something like remeestahv tso remeestahn, that would be an argument for the syntactic analysis, since remeestahn is the absolutive argument but doesn't undergo the action.

KathAveara · **Posted:** Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:29 pm

Yes, it is hard to make good generalisations from only a handful of examples, which is made annoyingly worse by some of our examples being impossible to fully analyse. Other things that would be helpful is to know if it's possible for unergative verbs to participate in this construction, e.g. rekahzeetahv tso retelook "the detour of the Surveyor's Guild"

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

KathAveara wrote:

ahrotahntee is probably better translated as "outsiders" rather than "others", as the term is used specifically to refer to the native inhabitants of Ages other than D'ni.

Both translations of ahro actually make sense if we think of it as distinguished from keso by the latter meaning 'other' within an implicit group (hence "another") vs. 'other' not within the implicit group (hence "outsider").

Shorah

KathAveara · **Posted:** Tue Sep 26, 2017 4:44 pm

Ah, ok, that makes sense. But what would that imply for the meaning of the verb ahro?

KathAveara · **Posted:** Tue Sep 26, 2017 6:17 pm

Going back to okh, I've found up to 9 distinct usages in our examples. These are:

korokh Gen

releshteeokh Gen

mor'okh'mor

reatinorokh reter

Korokh Jimah

rekor oshahnin okh pahtstee oglahn

Terokh Jerooth

birahnokh rintotee

erthlenahokh yahrtee sen

ken Aytrusokh D'ni

reví[u]teeokh [met] ví[l]ee [k]oret[e]s

telokh-beereetahntee

telokh-sheetemsootahntee

Of these, Quality and Characteristic are very similar, and are perhaps related by a similar inversion to what I posited in relation to tso; here Quality could be the base construction, with Characteristic being inverted from it. Characteristic and Subject matter are also very similar semantically, so one could be a development from the other

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

The phrase remishtahtahv tso rebishtah ‘the construction of the tunnel’ seems to correspond to an indicative clause such as mishtaheet rebishtah ‘they construct the tunnel’. Parallel to this the obscure phrase r’rinaltahv tso donetsoet rekortee tseemahen would correspond to an indicative clause:

nahvahot rinalen (roo) donetsoet rekortee tseemahen ‘our master [???]s (that) we are producing the books he needs’.

Whatever action or state of Gehn is described, the prayer thanks him for it, and probably it relates to the preceding sentence that says he gave the procedure to make the books. Perhaps the verb means ‘allow’ or ‘approve’.

In the case of the latter the full sentence would be:

.chevet nahvahot ben r’rinaltahv tso donetsoet rekortee tseemahen
'We thank our lord for the approval of us producing the books he needs.'

Shorah

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