In the second article recently published on Tengwestië, Carl Hostetter gives
reasons for seeing two distinct values assigned to the grapheme LL in the
Sindarin of _The Lord of the Rings_: geminate l, phonetically [l:], and long
voiceless l, phonetically [L:]. The latter would be heard in _mallorn_ (cf.
VT42:27).

I am however rather unconvinced, and still think that externally speaking,
the value of [L:] for <ll> is a late development. I doubt very much that Tolkien
already saw things likewise when he wrote LR and its Appendices - without
absolutely convincing arguments, but with some serious presumptions.

[I don't think it takes much presumption to accept Tolkien's own account
of the orthographic choice he made at face value, unless there are very
strong reasons not to. CFH]

Firstly, it is striking that no reference to a double pronunciation of ll is
given in LR's Appendix E, or to a special pronunciation of the (important)
word _mallorn_ in particular. True, absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence, so this does not allow certitude, yet it is troubling. Although the
data in
Appendix E are quite compressed, they contain minute details (for instance
the slight palatalization of L in some contexts, or the closer or more open
nature of long E and O's in Quenya and Sindarin respectively) and mention
exceptional cases (such as the stress of _Annûn_ and _Amrûn_ in Sindarin).

[I don't find this striking or troubling at all. Tolkien likewise did not note
in
App. E that /d/ in certain phonetic environments in Sindarin words represents
_dh_; yet we know that it does, and that Tolkien chose to use /d/ nonetheless
because he found /dh/ uncouth for English readers. This precisely parallels the
decision to use /ll/ instead of /lh/ or /lth/, and could be explained by
precisely the same reasoning. Yet I don't recall anyone finding the use of /d/
for /dh/ to be troubling, or the absence of an account of this in App. E
striking. CFH]]

Secondly, it is true that other graphemes have double values in Elvish
languages, such as H in Quenya or F in Sindarin, but those cases are explained
in
Appendix E. Why would he not have done the same for LL if needed? I also doubt
that it was a way to avoid an "uncouth" spelling, since Tolkien used LH from
the very beginning, which is alien to English as well. Using the ambiguous
spelling LL while LH was at hand, and already seen elsewhere, would be quite
unfriendly to the reader, and slightly odd anyway. The analogy with the use of D
for
DH is interesting... but notice that this was revised later.

[Tolkien's explanation of finding /dh/ uncouth was specifically applied to it
use in _The Lord of the Rings_, and for the lay, English audience that would
form its readership. But Tolkien used both /dh/ and edh in his _linguistic_
writing from the very beginning. So his use of /lh/ and /lth/ in his linguistic
writing is no evidence against what Tolkien says about /ll/ and its use in
_LotR_. CFH]

Thirdly, I do not think that the comparison with English spelling is
relevant. It is well known how complex and sometimes inconsistent English
orthography
is, whereas Sindarin's romanized orthography, if admittedly not an entirely
phonological representation, comes quite close to it. The example mentioned in
the article ("It is rather as though it were regarded as contradictory to say
that English S is pronounced /s/, but then to note that the plural marker -es
is pronounced /?z/.") is plainly an instance where English favours
morphological unity at the expense of phonetic accuracy. Moreover, the
orthographic issue
is not exactly the same in a living and a constructed language. For a living
language, it is possible to depart from phonetic accuracy for other purposes
(notably morphological unity or etymological preoccupations) without too much
trouble: the competence of users will supply. For a constructed language
presented to others, it cannot be counted on, and one first needs to give a
clear
picture of pronunciation, as Tolkien claimed to try doing in LR's Appendix E:
"In
transcribing the ancient scripts I have tried to represent the original
sounds (so far as they can be determined) with fair accuracy, and as the same to
produce words and names that do not look uncouth in modern letters".

[Tolkien found the comparison with English spelling relevant, so I don't see
how your personal disagreement with his judgment can count as a relevant
argument against the veracity of Tolkien's account. You don't have to agree
with his judgment, but you do have to accept that it was, as he claims, the
basis upon which he made his decision. As for the analogy I drew with
pronunciation of _s_ vs. _-es_, that was intended to show that two linguistic
statements can be seemingly contradictory, _if_ misinterpreted, but yet remain
both true, when understood appropriately and in context. In this specific case,
the contrast is between a general statement of typical valuation of a grapheme,
_s_, and a more specific statement about its value in a particular historical
and
phonetic environment. Which is precisely the case with Tolkien's description
of the value of _ll_ in the particular historical and phonetic environment
where /-L-/ < /-lth-/ < *_-lt-_. And finally, I disagree fundamentally with
your claim regarding the difference between living languages and Tolkien's
art-languages, which were _intended_ by their creator to _appear_ to be and
behave just as actual, historical languages do. As for App. E, the very words
you quote undermine your claims: Tolkien writes of representing sounds
with _fair_ accuracy, not complete accuracy; and to _avoid_ what he judged
to be "uncouth" appearance. We know that he avoided _dh_ for this reason;
and there is no reason to think he would not avoid _lh_, which looks extremely
similar to _dh_, for precisely the same reason. CFH]

Fourthly, it is not the only discrepancy between Sindarin in LR and in VT42.
There are at least two other irreconcilable points:

- former mp, nt, ñk are said here to give mf, nþ, ñx and later the long
unvoiced nasals mh, nh, ñh in the southern dialects of Sindarin including what
Men
learnt. Yet in LR and the published S they rather seem to give mm, nn, ng. In
the appendix C of his article "Reconstructing the Sindarin verb system",
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/sverb-rec.htm, Helge Fauskanger discusses this
question - in a prescriptive approach, but it does not affect the relevance of
examples. He notes that in LR Appendix E, it is said that "Grade 6 (21-24)
should
then have represented the voiceless nasals; but since such sounds were of very
rare occurrence in the languages concerned...", which would not have been
true of Sindarin as presented in VT:42.

[Even if this really were a discrepancy with _LotR_, that has no bearing on the
specific claim Tolkien's account of _ll_ must be revisionist. But in fact I see
no
_necessary_ discrepancy. First, the examples that Helge gives are mostly from
the Noldorin of the _Etymologies_, which Tolkien was not describing in this
late essay. Second, Helge's discussion takes no account of the possibility of
analogical levelling in these forms, even though we know that analogy played
a major role in Sindarin grammar. Third, those examples Helge gives from
_The Lord of the Rings_ are only _assumed_ to have developed from the
specific combinations Tolkien is discussing here, and only _assumed_ to
belong to the specific dialects Tolkien is describing. These assumptions are
made for the sake of argument, which is fair enough -- Helge himself points
the uncertainties he is navigating with the _LotR_ forms; but you can't treat
these
assumptions as fact and then use them to "prove" that Tolkien was making a
contradictory statement. In fact, when contradictions are arrived at, it is the
_assumptions_ that must be discarded. CFH]

- the correspondence Telerin _glania-_ / Sindarin _gleina-_ shows that in
VT42 the development of a medial sequence VCiV in Sindarin is thought to be
DiphthongCV with the diphthong arising from a mutated vowel + epenthetic i. This
is
not uncommon: compare Ancient Greed _bainô / Latin _veniô_ "I come" from an
reconstructed prototype *gwmyô (gw = labiovelar), Latin _ratiône(m)_ / French
_raison_ "reason", _gloria(m)_ / _gloire_ "glory" (the oi diphthong
subsequently > oe > we > wa today). It certainly stands beyond Sindarin plural
patterns
like _aran_ "king", pl. _erain_. Yet in the Sindarin seen in LR and S it is
seen finally, and not medially; otherwise we would get things like **Gilthoenel
and not _Gilthoniel_, **peiran and not _perian_, **egleiro and not _eglerio_,
all three well_known from LR; **geneidad and not _genediad_ (King's Letter,
IX:126-9); **arnoeidad and not _arnoediad_ (where clearly oe=fronted o, not a
diphthong) in S, etc. I remember only two similar cases, probably: _Einior_
"Elder" XII:358, and _Eirien_ "Daisy" IX:129-31.

[Again, whether or not this is a real discrepancy with _LotR_is irrelevant to
the
issue of the value of _ll_. But any claim of revisionism on the basis of this
case founders utterly on the fact that the very essay in question also shows
what you seem to think is the development required in terms of Sindarin
as exhibited in _LotR_, as, for example, in S _seidia-_ < _satya-_ (VT42:20).
Since both developments are exemplified within this essay, it cannot be said
that Sindarin as Tolkien conceived of it when _LotR_ was published did not
also have this alternation, but simply by circumstance happened only to
use forms exhibiting the one but not the other. The proper scholarly response
to this situation ought to be to examine what might account for the
apparent variation of development (if indeed it is not only apparent)
within Sindarin, not to simply dismiss the phenomenon as an inconsistency
with what was previously, and wrongly, thought to be an established,
"canonical" fact about Sindarin of _LotR_. CFH]

All this inclines me to the opinion that Tolkien did change his mind about
several points of his Sindarin in writing _The Rivers and Beacon-hills of
Gondor_. It is even possible that he was beginning a throughout revision of the
language - that he never had the time to complete.

[I certainly do not dispute that Tolkien's conception of Sindarin changed
between the time that _The Lord of the Rings_ was published in 1954-55 and
the time that he wrote _The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor_ in 1969. But
a) I see no _necessary_ change in the specific cases you highlight; and b)
that is not the issue: the issue is whether his account of the two values of
_ll_ in Elvish Sindarin in _LotR_ represents a revision, as David Salo claims
and Helge suggests. I see no reason whatsoever to think it is, as Tolkien's
specific statements regarding _ll_ are not in any way contradicted by the
actual evidence in _The Lord of the Rings_. CFH]

In the post n°551, December 8th, Carl Hostetter also observed:

> While on the subject of long voiceless resonants, and more generally on the
dialectal variations Tolkien describes in the passage quoted in my
_Tengwestië_ article, I would like to point out that these developments and
dialectal
variations are clearly modelled on very similar themes in Welsh and Welsh
dialectal variances.

Certainly. I notice that by the changes I alluded to above, Sindarin
evolution as seen in VT:42 seems to parallel Welsh's even more closely.
Currently I
have with me only notes from _Language and History in Early Britain_ by Kenneth
Jackson, Edinburgh University Press, 1953, especially his chronology of
phonetic changes in the three Brittonic languages (Welsh, Cornish, Breton) till
the
twelfth century, pp. 694 and following. Some are interesting with regard to
the discussion:
- the several waves of i-affection have differences between Welsh on the one
hand, Cornish and Breton on the other hand
- in Welsh mp, nt, nc > mh, nh, ngh medially (in Modern Welsh the h has
disappeared in non-initial unstressed syllables), whereas Cornish and Breton
preserve the stops
- in Welsh specifically, lt > ll.

Bertrand Bellet


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