News from the James Cameron's AVATAR fanbase

​For now, a small thought about numbers:

I liked the hierarchy [the author] mentioned in a previous email:

A: Polpxaya swizawti ngal new?
With a few possible answers in order of formality:
B (formal): Tìng oeru mrra pumti
B: Tìng pumit amrr
B: pumit amrr
B (clipped/military): mrr

That's pretty much what I would come up with myself. (Of course, you could start with the pedantic "Tìng oeru swizawti amrr," where you don't pronominalize but simply repeat the noun. I'd need to think about the circumstances where that's appropriate. Maybe if someone asked you how many arrows you want, but it turns you you need some bows as well: "Tìng oeru swizawti amrr sì tskoti atsìng kop.")

Now pum is an all-purpose pronominalizer that can be used for inanimates, animates, and even people--any repeated noun. So this is perfectly possible:

A. Polpxaya taronyu kelku si tsatsraymì?
B. Pum amevol.

However, it's more elegant to use a more specialized term when possible, one that represents the class of the object(s) under discussion. In the case of taronyu, the class is simply tute. So an alternative form of the dialog is:

A. Polpxaya taronyu kelku si tsatsraymì?
B. Tute amevol.

Some other examples of class words used in place of pum:

A. Äo tsautral lu polpxaya loreyu?
B. Lu 'ewll apukap.

A. Polpxaya ikranti ngal tse'a?
B. Pxeioangit.

A. Lu polpxaya vozampasukut [a kind of tree] a rofa tsakilvan?
B. Lu utral avolaw.

I don't know how many such class words we'd be able to come up with, but it could be interesting to think about.

I think a good candidate would be 'Ak. It's one syllable and sharp-sounding, especially with the unreleased k. I can hear myself coming out with that spontaneously if I stubbed my toe or banged my head.

Well, that definitely made me think! [The author's] insightful analysis of ’efu made me realize there’s a use of that verb that we haven’t seen yet (or at least I don’t think we have—I could be wrong about that.)

As [the author] noted, ’efu can be vtr. or vin. As said, “transitive with nouns, intransitive-copular with adjectives.” (BTW, the object noun in the transitive case doesn’t have to be completely tangible and concrete. For example, Oel ’efu ngeyä tìyawnit, ‘I feel your love.’). But we haven’t yet had “I feel that . . .” sentences, as in “I feel that she wants to go.”

The candidates are:
Oel ’efu futa po new kivä. 
Perhaps. But I agree with [the author] that this doesn’t feel quite right. The object of ‘efu here is too abstract.

*Oe ’efu fwa po new kivä.
This doesn’t work, because intransitive ’efu is always complemented by an adjective expressing a feeling. “Fwa po new kivä” is not a feeling.

???Oe ’efu tsnì po new kivä.
This would be an innovation, since to my knowledge we’ve never seen an example like this.​

Lu oeru tì’efu a po new kivä.
In other words, “I feel that” = “I have the feeling that . . .”

I’ll think about this some more, but right now I’d go with #4 as the clearest and least problematic way of saying it.​

​I'd say that's entirely possible, and even likely. It's the kind of thing that happens in language all the time. (The stress would remain on the second syllable: ko.MUM)"

Given the various stages of 'relaxation' it's likely to have gone through:

1. going to
2. going ta
3. goin' ta: ('Dropping g's' is a well-known dialectal phenomenon.)
4. goin' na: ( Part of a more general process, where -nt- under certain circumstances becomes simply n. No one in So. Cal. says 'Santa Monica.' It's always 'Sanna Monica.'
5. gonna: (The two adjacent vowels simplify to one.)
6. a: In some non-standard varieties, there's a 6th step: 'gonna' simplifies all the way down to 'a'! So you have things like 'I'm a whup you upside da head!'where 'a' is all that's left of 'going to.'

​I haven't done too much with Na'vi slang, but it'll be interesting to see what kinds of things develop naturally within the community!"