Please forgive this off-topic post, but I wanted to let every US member
know that Amazon.com has a page set up by which you can very easily
make a donation to the American Red Cross in support of disaster relief
in the wake of the horrific earthquake and resulting tsunami near
Sumatra. Already the death toll has risen to more than 60,000, and will
certainly rise as tens of thousands are still missing. And the epidemic
of diseases that inevitable follow disasters of this nature have
already begun. Please give what you can to help care for the victims of
this terrible tragedy.

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/PX3BEL97U9A4I/103
-8181649-3440617

(Note: if you are not a US member, but still have an account with
Amazon.com in the US, you should still be able to give through this
site. Otherwise, you may be able to give through an Amazon store in
your own country, or nearby.)

Carl

Patrick Wynne and I are pleased to announce the publication of a new
article in _Tengwestië_, the online journal of the Elvish Linguistic
Fellowship (<http://www.elvish.org/Tengwestie/>):

"Musings on _Limlight_"

by Helios De Rosario Martínez and
Javier Lorenzo Merino

_Limlight_ is the name of a river that marks the northern border of
Rohan, a tributary of the Anduin. We are told by Tolkien that this
name is a Common-Speech or Rohan adaptation of some Elvish - probably
Sindarin - name, but additional information about that original name
is scanty and very inconstant. Nevertheless, some common traces can be
discerned in the various notes that Tolkien wrote about this matter: a
possible semantical connection of the river-name with the brightness
and swiftness of running water, and an attempt of finding an Elvish
name for which an adaptation to the form _Limlight_ was plausible. A
possible relation of this river-name and the name of the river
Skirfare in Yorkshire is also studied.


--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter   Aelfwine@...   http://www.elvish.org

		    ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
			        Ars longa, vita brevis.
	         The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take such
      a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

Carl F.Hostetter announced:

> "Musings on _Limlight_"
>
> by Helios De Rosario Martínez and
> Javier Lorenzo Merino

     It was a pleasure to read this article.

     At one point it states:

"_+laith_, does not occur in any other name [than
_Limlaith_], and its meaning is unknown"

     There is appended a footnote which concludes
that _-laith_ is not an element in _Lalaith_.

     Let me, as a small contribution to the
interesting subject, note that an element _-laith_
seemingly occurs in _Amlaith_, the name of the
first king of Arthedain (see LR App. A).

	 Meneg suilaid,

		 Beregond

The word _loikolíkuma_ occurs, to my knowledge, only once in the
published corpus of J.R.R. Tolkien's writings [MC:222, 223]. It figures
in a poem named 'The Last Ark' (later version) line 20, contained in
the essay 'A Secret Vice'. In a note to the text Tolkien gives Q _loiko_
as 'corpse, dead body' and _líkuma_ as 'taper, candle' < _líko_ 'wax'.

As Christopher Tolkien remarks [I:248], his father introduced some
'historical or etymological punning' into his languages. More
specifically, there are (among others) often resemblances to Germanic
words or, indeed, *possible* words. Chr. Tolkien cites
S _hôr_ 'old' or the root HERE 'to rule'. However, there are some words
which evoke older stages of Germanic, especially Proto- or even
Pre-Proto-Germanic. There is, e.g. the root QUET- which evokes such
germanic forms as Goth. _qithan_, OE _cwedhan_ etc. 'say, speak', which
have the same anlaut but the elvish word has unshifted 't'. Another
example is _huan_ 'hound' [V:364f.]. While this word is given a perfect
elvish etymology, it is reminiscent of Germanic _*hund-_ and PIE nom.
_*k'wôn, gen. _*k'unós_ 'dog'. In fact, _huan_ is precisely what PIE
_k'uwôn_ (with SIEVERS variant as in Greek _kyôn_) would have yielded
in Proto-Germanic. Only that Germanic has built a new word from the
zero grade root adding a dental suffix. In fact, The Etymologies give
the Q genitive as _húnen_ thus mirroring, if you will, the PIE ablaut
situation. These resemblances are hardly there by coincidence.

Now the first element of _loikolíkuma_, _loiko_, bears a striking
resemblance to Germanic words of the same meaning: Goth. _leik_, ONo.
_lík_, OE _líc_, NHG _Leiche_ [laiç<schwa>] etc., the first three meaning not
only 'dead body, corpse' but also 'body, shape' in general. The
diphthong 'oi' recalls Gk. _loigós_ 'perdition, death' which is,
however, not normally connected with the Germanic words (cf. IEW:667,
Watkins 2000:49). Had OE or ONo. _líc/k_ as a noun survived into Modern
English times it should have acquired the pronunciation /laik/. The
latter seems to occur in the Rohirric term _Dwimmerlaik_ used by Éowyn
for one of the Ringwraiths [LRIII:136]. The first element is clearly a
modernization of OE _dwimor_ 'ghost', the second might be our 'corpse,
body, shape'. In the index to the LR it's glossed "(in Rohan) work of
necromancy, spectre" [ibid.p. 535].

The second element, _líkuma_ is, internally, derived from _líko_ wax.
However, it is perhaps noteworthy that next to OE _líchama_ and
_líchoma_ 'dead body, corpse' (i.e. _líc_ + _hama_) there is a somewhat
younger OE form _lícuma_ 'corpse'.

There certainly also is some elvish etymology for Q _loiko_. Yet, it
seems typical of Tolkien's Elvish and other languages that, while they
work perfectly in and for themselves, they contain quite a number of
allusions, puns and general resemblances with reference to the primary
world. All this is, as I see it (and I'm probably not alone there),
part of the joy of his (sub-)creation.

-David Kiltz


P.S. As for the internal derivation of Q _líko_, maybe it is to be
connected with _ilka-_ (apparently) 'to gleam' attested in the same
poem, line 36. There the reference is apparently to the colour of
(bleached) bones (axor) which resembles (white) wax, so that these two
words may derive from a root denoting (emitting the light of) this
colour, hence ILIK- or rather LIK- with the sundóma prefixed to yield
_ilka-_.


List of abbreviations (Follows the conventions for Tengwestie
<http://www.elvish.org/Tengwestie/conventions.phtml> where an
example is given):

Goth. : Gothic
Gk.  : Greek
I  : The Book of Lost Tales, Part One
IEW  : Pokorny, Julius. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch
LR  : The Lord of the Rings
MC  : The Monster and the Critics
NHG  : New High German
OE  : Old English
ONo.         : Old Norse
PIE  : Proto-Indo-European
Q  : Quenya
V  : The Lost Road
Watkins
   2000 : The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Second
		   edition.
You also find the respective entry here:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE286.html

Addendum: As for the etymology of Q _loiko_, one possibility seems to
be to derive it from LOYO- [VT45:29] 'lack, be without; miss, fail to
go', possibly denoting the 'lifeless/soulless body' or 'the part that
doesn't go thither' ?

> From: David Kiltz <derdron@...>
> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:34:06 +0100

> ...  Had OE or ONo. _líc/k_ as a noun survived into Modern English times
> it should have acquired the pronunciation /laik/.

I would just like to point out that the word does appear in Modern English in
the old compound _lychgate_ (also _lichgate_), a covered section of the gate
into a churchyard in which a bier could be rested temporarily, that is to say,
a "corpse gate".

								 Rich Alderson

[This is drifting off-topic. Keep any further discussion of this form related to
Tolkien's own usage and inventions, please. Discussion of the development of
forms in modern languages should otherwise be conducted off-list. CFH]

1) ===================

On 13.01.2005, at 20:14, Rich Alderson wrote:

> I would just like to point out that the word does appear in Modern English in
> the old compound _lychgate_ (also _lichgate_).

Thank you. Yes, I'm aware of this form but I understand, this being a compound,
the first element is pronounced /litsh/ rhyming with _switch_. Only if the noun
had survived should we see the development to /laik/ as in ModE _like_ and _to
like_.
John Cowan pointed out some more survivors of the word (also in compounds), cf.
<http://tolklang.quettar.org/messages/Vol45/45.44>. As John also indicates,
there is also _lyke-wake (lykewake < ONo. _líkavaka_) but I don't know how
current
the word _lyke_ is or if it is used independently at all.

Curiously, Rohirric _laik_ seems to represent an Old Norse precursor.

--
David Kiltz

2) ===================

Among the undead creatures described in the _Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Monster Manual_ (c.1980) was one they called a "lich"; I hadn't encountered the
word
before seeing it there, but it may still have had some currency before they
revived it,
so to speak.

--
Odysseus

3) ===================

OE/ONo. _líc/k_ also survived into modern Danish (_lig_ with silent g) and
modern
Swedish (_lik_) both meaning corpse / dead body.

Peter Edelberg

Two questions regarding the "Early Qenya Grammar" in _Parma Eldalamberon_ 14:

1) On p. 57 the compound tense _tuluvande_ is translated in English as 'is going
to
come' but labeled "fut. imperf." Should it not be "pres. fut." instead ? There
is already
a fut. imperf. _tulinwa_.

[The reading "fut. imperf." is accurate as given. Note that _tulinwa_ "will be
coming"
is formed on the present participial stem (_tulin-_) with a future ending
(_-wa_),
while _tuluvande_ "is going to come" is formed on the future participial stem
(_tuluvan(d)-_) with a present ending (_-e_). In both cases the presence of a
present
element in combination with a non-past participle "adds up to" an imperfect
sense
(and so "present" would in both cases be insufficient to the description).
Furthermore,
it is apparent that it is not simply the tense but further the order of these
elements
that fully defines and distinguishes the precise meanings of these two fut.
imperf. forms,
as seen in the English glosses. CFH]

2) On p. 55 the Qenya adverbs are arranged according to the prefixing of the
deictic
particle _en_ (_qisse_/_enqisse_ ; _tyen_/_enken_; _sallo_/_entallo_, etc.),
except for
_(en)qinta_/_qint_ "thither". Should not the first form of the pair be _qint_
and the
second _(en)qinta_?

[The text as given, including the relative positions of this pair of forms, is
accurate
in showing the table as it came to stand after Tolkien's revisions, with one
possible
exception, sc., that the form _qint_ has a (relatively) light line through the
top of it,
perhaps indicating that it was ultimately deleted (though it may instead be a
stray
mark). As for the relative ordering of the pair in question, in comparison with
the
other pairs in the table, I would note that although the first form here,
_(en)qinta_,
does show an (optional) prefix _en-_, which occurs elsewhere only as the
(invariable)
first element of each of the second terms of all other pairs in this table, it
should
also be observed that the second term, _qint_ (whether or not deleted) here
shows
the same shortening (here by loss of final vowel) that is characteristic of the
optional
short forms of the second, _en-_terms of all the other pairs: a shortening that
is
lacking in the corresponding first terms of all of those pairs. Thus it is not
at all
clear-cut that Tolkien has simply inadvertantly reversed the formal relationship
of
the two terms in the pair _(en)qinta_/_qint_ with respect to the other pairs.
CFH]

Elfiquement votre,

Edouard Kloczko

I am pleased to announce that _Vinyar Tengwar_ 47 will be published
later this month. _VT_ 47 presents the first half of "_Eldarin Hands,
Fingers & Numerals_ and Related Writings", a four-part collection of
late texts (c. 1968) by J.R.R. Tolkien, compiled and edited by Patrick
H. Wynne. Part I presents _Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals_ (HFN)
proper, an unfinished "historical-philological" essay that provides an
account of the Common Eldarin words for 'hand' and their descendants in
Quenya, Telerin, and Sindarin, followed by a brief discussion of Elvish
ambidexterity. The essay then details the Eldarin names for the fingers
(and toes), including children’s "play-names" that treat the fingers as
the members of an imaginary family: father, mother, and children; and
it concludes by showing how the finger-names were closely connected
with the development of numerical stems in Common Eldarin. Included
after HFN is a related text on the invention of the Common Eldarin
stems for _neter_ 9, _kanat_ 4, and _enek_ 6, which serves as a sort of
alternative ending for the essay. Both of these texts are supplemented
in the editorial notes by extensive citations drawn from Tolkien’s
contemporary unpublished writings. Parts II–IV (the contents of which
are described in the Introduction to HFN) will appear in _Vinyar
Tengwar_ 48.

Carl F. Hostetter

--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter   Aelfwine@...   http://www.elvish.org

		    ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
			        Ars longa, vita brevis.
	         The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take such
      a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

Due to the vastly increased demands of time required for subscription
and back-issue-order fulfillment as readership has grown past 500; and
to the reality of irregular publication dictated by its changed focus
on publishing new primary material; and in order to remove format
constraints on the size and scope of its contents, _Vinyar Tengwar_
will undergo a format change and a switch to per-issue ordering after
the publication of issue 50. New subscriptions will be accepted only
through issue 50. Those whose subscriptions currently extend past issue
50 will be refunded the pro-rated balance for all issues past 50.
Starting with issue 51, _VT_ will be produced and published through the
print-on-demand services of Lulu.com. In addition, effective
immediately, back-issue orders will no longer be accepted or filled by
the editor. Instead, back-issue collections will be published and
available for order as a series of softcover volumes through Lulu.com
<http://books.lulu.com/themes/shop/homepage.php> (in both pefect- and
spiral-bound formats), as _The Collected Vinyar Tengwar_, beginning
shortly with vol. 5a, which will contain issues 40 through 46. (As new
issues are published, they will be added to new, expanded issues of
this volume, until it is finalized as vol. 5 with the inclusion of
issue 49.) Other volumes will follow, collecting issues 1–9 (vol. 1),
10–19 (vol. 2), 20–29 (vol. 3), and 30–39 (vol. 4), in reverse order
and as they are converted to the new format and readied for
publication. Watch this page for futher announcements of availability
of these back-issue volumes. (Note that all back-issue orders currently
in hand will be honored, and will be mailed out shortly.)

I would like to acknowledge here once again the invaluable assistance of
Karyn Traphagen, who is helping with the conversion of _VT back-issues
to the new format. Please send good thoughts her way!



--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter   Aelfwine@...   http://www.elvish.org

		    ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
			        Ars longa, vita brevis.
	         The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take such
      a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

I am pleased to announce the availability of the first volume in _The
Collected Vinyar Tengwar_, vol. 5a, collecting issues 40 through 46 (@
$13.99 plus shipping). It is available in two formats, one
perfect-bound and the other coil-bound (which will lie open flat, for
ease of reference). You can order the volume in either format at:

http://www.lulu.com/ELF

Please note that as new issues of _VT_ follow, they will be added to
revised, expanded versions of vol. 5a, until it is finalized as vol. 5
with the inclusion of issue 49 upon its publication. So you may or may
not want to hold off ordering this volume now, if you would prefer to
have a single, complete, collected volume.

The next volume, vol. 4, collecting issues 30-39, will be published
(again in two different bindings) and announced here once Karyn
Traphagen and I have finished converting the issues into the new
format.


--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter   Aelfwine@...   http://www.elvish.org

		    ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
			        Ars longa, vita brevis.
	         The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take such
      a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

On further reflection, I've decided to alter the distribution of issues among
the projected 5
volumes of _The Collected Vinyar Tengwar_. The final version of each volume will
contain:

Vol. 1: Issues 1 - 10
Vol. 2: Issues 11-20
Vol. 3: Issues 21-30
Vol. 4: Issues 31-40
Vol. 5: Issues 41-50

Note the this renders the current Vol. 5a, which currently collects issues
40-46, doubly
provisional: When Vol. 4 is published, it will contain issue 40, so that issue
will be
removed from Vol. 5a (and thus from the eventual final version as Vol. 5). And
as already
announced, as issues 46-50 are published, they will be incorporated into
revised,
expanded versions of Vol. 5a, until it is completed as Vol. 5 with the
publication and
inclusion of issue 50.

I would also like to note again that each volume in the series will be offered
in both Perfect
binding (i.e., as a typical paperback book) and in Coil binding (so that it will
open and lie
flat, for easier reference work). Both formats can be purchased from the E.L.F.
Storefront at
<http://www.lulu.com/ELF/> or from the _Vinyar Tengwar_ Web Shop at <http://
www.elvish.org/VT/shop.html>.

I would like to reiterate/clarify the point that issues 47-50 will be published
and mailed by
myself, on the subscription model, just as before. So, if you have a
subscription through
issue 50, you need do nothing different. Only with the publication of issue 51
will things
switch to per-issue publication and ordering through Lulu.com (not me).

Finally, I would like to note that I've restored the list of the contents of all
issues of _Vinyar
Tengwar_ to date, also on the _Vinyar Tengwar_ Web Shop
<http://www.elvish.org/VT/
shop.html>.


Carl

_A Gateway to Sindarin_: a grammar of an Elvish language from J.R.R. Tolkien's
Lord  of the Rings / David Salo. - Salt Lake City: The University of Utah
Press, 2004.  - 24 cm: ill. cov., xvi-438 p.
Bibliogr. p. 416-435. - ISBN  0-87480-800-6


I received my copy of David Salo's book about Sindarin a bit more than a
week ago.  This was a week of holiday for me, so I was able to browse though it
quite a lot (though naturally not in every detail). I think a review  might be
of interest.

1.  Presentation of the book

It is a very nice volume, well printed on alkaline paper, with a silvery
cover illustrated in blue with an arch inspired by the one on the Moria gate. It
bears a tengwar inscription in the mode of Beleriand, reading _Annon na
Edhellen_,  i.e. of course a rendering of "A Gateway to Sindarin" in the
language
itself.

The plan is quite classical for a linguistic monograph. It begins with a
brief internal history of the language, before a description of the sounds and
the various writing systems used to transcribe it, and then a lengthy
phonological history, which reconstructs a list of all the sound changes that
occurred during the development from primitive Elvish to Sindarin. Then we have
a
morphophonology, presenting consonant mutation and vowel affection. An
analysis of the various parts of speech and their inflection follows: nouns,
adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs / prefixes / prepositions, conjunctions,
articles, interjections.  Then we have a detailed analysis of the various
processes
of word creation - derivation, composition and borrowing from other languages -
and to end this grammar a syntax. There are also copious appendices: the
extant texts analysed, a double glossary accompanied with a classification of
words by roots (attested and deduced), an index of Sindarin proper names, an
account of the Sindarin names for the Valar and Maiar, a study of the numerals,
and a list of the names for months and days. Finally, there are more
peripheral tools: a linguistic glossary, a much annotated bibliography, and an
addendum following the publication of the second part of the "Addenda and
Corrigenda to the _Etymologies_" in VT46 last July (evidently the book had been
completed before).

2.  Choice, treatment and presentation of the data

David Salo announces and justifies in a preface his options for the book. He
chose to treat together all the material from the _Etymologies_ onwards, which
includes the externally late stage of Noldorin as well as the whole of the
conceptually later Sindarin. He dates back the starting point of the stage he
studies to 1939. To explain this choice, he says "the change in name from
Noldorin to Sindarin did not coincide with a change in structure or vocabulary.
We will therefore call this language Sindarin, even though some of the words
and specimens referred to were called 'Noldorin' at the time of their
invention" (p. xiv). Taken literally, this is very questionable, and even quite
wrong. There are differences in the grammar: some plural patterns, the
infinitives in _-i_ and  _-o_ which are not attested in Sindarin, some uses of
lenition,
the genitive construction with _na_ which is more specifically Noldorin
(though not completely  given _Orod-na-Thôn in LR book III ch. 4). As for the
lexicon, comparison is not easy (as we know, we have much more Noldorin than
Sindarin because of the Etym), many a Sindarin word was already extant in
Noldorin but there are sometimes slight shifts in meaning, e.g. _iant_ "yoke" in
the
Etym (V:400) and "bridge" in the Silm. Appendix or _cû_ "arch, crescent" in
the Etym and "bow" in the Silm Appendix. It is true however that much of the
divergence lies in a series of well-established phonological differences,
which are regular enough to allow reliable revision, and to "update" Noldorin
into Sindarin if wanted (notably for composition). David Salo's statement is
much more acceptable if one understands that the two stages are in continuity,
that there is no abrupt break between the two. No doubt he wrote it in this
sense, but it is slightly misleading to newcomers I think.

This sense of continuity explains the treatment of Noldorin in the book.
David Salo chose a very internist point of view and regarded Noldorin as a
special dialect of Sindarin, possibly the one spoken by the population of
Gondolin
during the First Age. So he can reconcile contradictory facts: the specific
traits of Noldorin are just to be seen as dialectal. Since the Gondolindrim
were cut off from the other inhabitants of Beleriand, they were bound to
develop linguistic peculiarities; indeed in Tuor's story a mention is made of
their somewhat strange Sindarin (UT:44). If Noldorin and Sindarin did coexist in
our primary world, they would probably be seen as dialects of the same
language: at least on a phonetic basis, their differences would probably be
small
enough to allow them to be mutually comprehensible (they are not greater than
between BBC English and American AFAIK). So on an internal point of view this
interpretation can be sustained to reconcile our various data; as a matter of
fact it has been employed for a long time on Ardalambion's page about
Sindarin.

Nonetheless, there is a great disadvantage in this: it leads to viewing
everything through the prism of *one* interpretation, one very peculiar at
that, not sustained by Tolkien's texts. David Salo treats Sindarin like any
other ancient language, and is clearly successful; but he does not consider
another side, which is the personal dimension of Tolkien's languages, the fact
that they have an author and bear the mark of it. More generally, it can be said
that most of the external side is crushed in this approach. Only a facet of
Sindarin is therefore represented in the book. This is not a problem actually
as long as it is borne in mind, but I am afraid it could not be for beginners.
There  are other problems in this lack of consideration for the external
point of view.  It deprives the author of the possibility to explain some
discrepancies which can be understood only as different stages of external
development.
Sometimes one really gets the impression that David Salo wants to explain too
much and forces the facts into his theoretical frame. Some conclusions are
not expressed with enough caution, so the image of Sindarin the book gives is
in my opinion clearer than it really is. It is not said enough how dubious
some points are - e.g. the  liquid mutation, the status of the Noldorin
infinitives in Sindarin, what _aen_  is. In some instances things really become
strongly objectionable: for instance, since the absence of mutation cannot be
accounted for in _bo Ceven_  "on Earth" in the Sindarin Lord's Prayer, the
author boldly asserts that it is a transcription error for _* bo Geven_ because
of Tolkien's famously difficult handwriting (pp. 230-1). This is too hasty an
explanation, and not corroborated by the source (VT44), but much worse is the
fact that this "corrected" form **_bo Geven_ is quoted everywhere else in the
book! Being very severe, one cannot help thinking that if facts do not match
the theory, well, facts are wrong.

Besides, as he wishes to keep Sindarin distinct as a study subject, he
strongly  criticizes the search for analogies with primary world languages and
inspirations (p. 427). He is right to emphasize that Sindarin is not a
distortion of extant languages and has its own logic, but possibly goes too far.
Take
for instance the aforementioned _bo Ceven_: _Ceven_ is capitalised, lacks an
article, might be a proper noun. Now some of these are susceptible to resisting
mutation in some registers of Welsh; is it not possible that we have something
similar here? To be fair I must say that David Salo nonetheless uses a Greek
parallel at least once to explain the contrast _diheno / gohenam_ in the
Lord's Prayer in a very interesting manner.

The presentation is sometimes a bit annoying. For instance it is quite
difficult to  get at the first glance what is attested and what is not. True,
the
asterisk is duly used in (internal) diachronic study to mark reconstructions.
Other signs are used in the glossaries to mark deduced and altered forms, but
unfortunately they are not used in the main text, so one constantly has to
search in the glossary to know. Certainly it can be done, but quickly becomes
tedious. I understand that the author did not want to clutter his text with
stars (it necessarily contains a large amount of reconstructions) but why did
he not choose another more pleasant sign, like putting all attested instances
in bold? This bit of additional rigour would have been really helpful to the
reader. The book also lacks an index (even if the list of contents is
detailed, it cannot be used in the same way); true, this tool is very long and
tiresome to finalize.

3.  Interest of the content

Concerning the internal history, the major texts must have been published
now, so we cannot expect major surprises. Well-known elements are given again,
except that Noldorin is treated in a very special way, as I said above;
according to the general outline of the book, this is the reconstruction of a
possible history rather than a thorough analysis of the possibilities Tolkien
examined. It is based on the later scenario (after Sindarin became a native
tongue
of Beleriand and Thingol's ban was introduced), the old one from the time of
the _Etymologies_ is not a part of it.

No surprise either in the section about the sounds and the writing, it simply
summarizes our current knowledge. Tables would have been helpful for the
_tengwar_ and runes, a question of space perhaps - but as they can be found back
in
the appendices of LR, it is not a problem. The use of the IPA is welcome for
the description of the sounds, it helps much to make it clear.

The historical phonology is a very strong point of the book. We have been in
great need of a global reconstruction of how Sindarin evolved from
Primitive Quendian, and the forty pages of this chapter fulfill it very largely.
The
presentation is more or less chronological, quite abstract and synthetic. The
author uses a featural notation based on the Jakobsonian distinctive traits
of phonemes, happily completed by a paraphrase for the readers to which it
would be opaque, and accompanied with examples. An introduction discusses the
advantages and limits of the presentation. I have been especially engrossed in
that aspect of Sindarin for some time, and find this essay superb indeed. It
will be  interesting to compare it with the etymologies propounded in Didier
Willis' Sindarin Dictionary.

The morphophonology discusses consonant mutation and vowel affection, both
as diachronic and synchronic processes. The account of mutations looks
quite like the one on Ardalambion, but with more details on the historical
processes involved. Some of its conclusions are rather tentative. There are more
new elements in the presentation of the various kinds of vowel affection.
There is finally a very original section on apophony (ablaut), its importance in
Common Eldarin and its inheritance in Sindarin -  both Tolkien's and Salo's
interest in Indo-European linguistics clearly surface here.

The study of the various parts of speech is also reminiscent of Ardalambion,
but there are more details and it is intended for a readership more
familiar with grammar and linguistics. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of
reconstruction in some areas, especially the pronouns and the verbal system. The
latter
is much like the one already known from Ardalambion; it takes however the new
data of VT45 into account and treats the new forms revealed in it, notably
the past tenses formed by apophony or by the ending _-as_. Again, as there is
a fair deal of uncertainty in the domain of verbs, I would have liked to
see the actually attested forms marked in some manner.

The detailed study of word formation is a second brilliant part of the book.
Every aspect is treated: the inheritance of old Eldarin processes,
suffixion, prefixion, the various kinds of compounds with the phonological
alterations their elements undergo, in all their complexity. As far as I know
this
topic had never been treated so extensively till now, and it was much needed.
No doubt it will be very useful for the analysis of words (especially the
ones which will appear in the publications to come), and for their creation for
people who try to compose in Elvish. This part is completed by a brief
account of the lexical influences Sindarin underwent from foreign languages,
mostly
Quenya.

The syntax is small (twenty-five pages) if compared with the whole length of
the book, partly because the data are not many anyway - Tolkien himself
visibly worked much more on morphology and lexicology, following the
Neogrammarian trend of his time (though there is an noticeable inclination
towards
more syntax in later texts, especially _Quendi and Eldar_). The presentation is
traditional: a substantial part of the syntax is actually treated in the study
of the
parts of speech, which sometimes compels one to browse through to find the
information on one particular topic (the use of the articles for instance) - but
it
is also a matter of becoming familiar with the book. I would have expected a
more modern treatment, on the other hand people used to traditional grammars
will not be confused. There is a quite detailed account of noun phrases and
then a discussion of the various kinds of sentences. David Salo considers a
basic VS(O) structure for the verbal sentence with many possibilities of
topicalisation. I must say I was a bit disappointed not to find discussion of
much
debated points like the lenition in _guren bêd enni_ (VT41:11) or the famous
_i sennui Panthael estathar aen_ and its many interpretations (with
interesting possibilities to express modality or passive). On the other hand I
realise
that such points are perhaps not best placed in a book intended to stand as a
reference.

This is the end of the grammar, but there are many interesting elements in
the appendices. First we have a full analysis of the Sindarin corpus; it
interestingly includes examples found in the drafts of LR (though they are
difficult to interpret). Then we have a long Sindarin-English glossary, a
shorter
English-Sindarin back glossary, and between an etymological classification of
words by roots, naturally mostly based on the _Etymologies_ but more
compressed, and altered to fit Tolkien's later conceptions; for instance  the
roots GAL
and GIL of the Etym are replaced by ÑAL and ÑIL found in later writings
(respectively XII:347 and X:388); a number of roots are reconstructed. 
Especially
interesting is the list of Sindarin proper names that follows; it  intends to
list all names from _The Lord of the Rings_ and afterwards, with the source
and an interpretation. This is again a welcome work that will be much used.
Of the other tools I will mention the annotated bibliography, in which primary
sources are given with a summary of their linguistic interest. The author
also lists two known secondary works, namely Jim Allan's _An Introduction  to
Elvish_ and Ruth Noel's _The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth_, makes a
critique of them (not too gently) and corrects many of their errors, of which a
great deal come from their early date of publication, especially for the first.

4.  Conclusion: which kind of public?

We have then a very complete book, a detailed analysis of Sindarin which
shows a long and in-depth work. The mass of information is very impressive;
nearly all points of the grammar are treated, in a way that will sum up our
current knowledge about the language. As the reader will have guessed, my chief
reservations are with the way data are presented. The book will be of no great
help for an external study of Tolkien's creation, indeed it is not made for
this.

I believe one of David Salo's problems was his readership. Books about
Tolkien's languages are not numerous and cannot be, so he knew he would have to
accommodate various categories of readers: people who want to discover one
great constructed language of Tolkien's and await a primer; people who want to
learn Elvish and use it in fan-fiction composition, and await a normalised
version of the language; people who are already familiar with the domain and are
eager to see theories dealing with Sindarin in all its complexity. (The same
person can of course be interested in several ways, but the thought processes
are quite distinct.) He implies this at the end of the preface: "I hope [this
book] will
furnish the necessary groundwork for future investigation into Sindarin. For
those who wish to learn Sindarin, such errors as there may be should not
affect their ability to read Sindarin texts or to construct their own" (p. xv).
Often he succeeds in fulfilling these various needs; sometimes he is at risk to
frustrate all his readers together.

Quite like Ardalambion on the Web, _A Gateway to Sindarin_ presents a
personal vision of Tolkien's creation. Its point of view matches David Salo's
contributions to Elvish linguistics as we have been able to see them: internist,
reconstructionist, very concerned with clarity and consistency, much less with
explaining Tolkien's role as a language maker. These are the limits of the
book; once they are taken into account it is enjoyable. You just need to be
aware of the author's point of view and to use this resource with discernment.
Anyway, David Salo makes it clear in the preface that "this volume is not and
cannot be the last or most accurate word on Sindarin" (p. xv). It is also the
responsibility of the reader to do his part of the work and keep his critical
sense.

Under that condition, will this book succeed in becoming a reference? I
believe it has the potential to do so; no doubt it will be much used, and if you
are interested in Sindarin it certainly deserves to stand on your bookshelf.

Bertrand  Bellet

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language  has both strengthened imagination and been freed by it. Who shall
say whether the free adjective has created images bizarre and beautiful, or
the adjective been freed by strange and beautiful pictures in the mind ? -
J.R.R. Tolkien,  A Secret Vice

BertrandBellet75@... wrote:

> since the absence of mutation cannot be
> accounted for in _bo Ceven_  "on Earth" in the Sindarin Lord's Prayer, the
> author boldly asserts that it is a transcription error for _* bo Geven_
because
> of Tolkien's famously difficult handwriting (pp. 230-1). This is too hasty an
> explanation, and not corroborated by the source (VT44), but much worse is the
> fact that this "corrected" form **_bo Geven_ is quoted everywhere else in the
> book! Being very severe, one cannot help thinking that if facts do not match
> the theory, well, facts are wrong.

The preceding reminds me strongly of the normalised texts of Old Germanic
languages,
levelling out irregularities and manuscript varieties. The Parable of the men
who built
their houses on stone or sand in one AS manuscript ends ...mychel was seo (?)
ryre and
in another ...mycel was seo (?) hryre: but Sweet's AngloSaxon reader gives just
the former
variety, unless the text be one not found in any manuscript at all. A 19th C
editor of Tatian
gives a normalised text, deviating from the manuscript.


[There are a number of crucial reasons why the two cases (i.e., Old Germanic
languages
and Sindarin) are not at all analogous in this regard. For one, unlike Sindarin
texts, ancient
and medieval texts almost always come down to us in the form of later (often
_much_ later),
non-authorial copies. This process of copying and re-copying in the course of
transmission
notoriously introduces errors into a text, which can often be discovered by
_comparison_
with other copies in which any given error was _not_ introduced scribally. In
the case of
Tolkien's texts, we have a _single_ authorial scribe and (usually) only a
_single_ copy.
And where we do have multiple versions of texts, being _authorial_ versions
(unlike
ancient and medieval mss), the variations we see will (almost) always be due to
Tolkien
trying different ways of expressing a meaning, not simply Tolkien nodding and
mistranscribing his own composition. Because errors and variations in texts in
real-world
languages can often be checked against a (relative to Tolkien's languages) large
body of
data for the language and its cognates, establishing likely "norms" for the
languages at
various dates, yes, it is quite possible to normalize the likely variances from
this norm
for pedagogic purposes (though you will find, I think, that even in such cases,
the
editors of scholarly texts will scrupulously note where they have made editorial
changes,
and give the actual manscript reading in notes, and explain the basis for those
editorial
changes that are not entirely straightforward: a long-standing scholarly
practice that
David Salo typically does _not_ follow.)

For another, ancient and medieval orthography is _notoriously_ variable, again
unlike
Tolkien: in old mss. one often finds different spellings of _the exact same
word_ within
the space of a page, a paragraph, or even a sentence.  And for yet another,
ancient and
medieval spellings often reflect older pronunciations no longer current (I'm
thinking here
esp. of Celtic mss., where this is rampant because an orthographic standard was
early
developed). These are often systematic, and thus can be discerned and normalized
for
pedagogic purposes. Such historical spellings rarely occur in Tolkien's texts,
and where
they do they are also quite systematic (according to a system that Tolkien
himself explains).

But what David has done is entirely other than this. On the basis of a
(relatively) very small
amount of data, he develops a personal "theory" --  e.g., that all objects
following
prepositions that end in a vowel must show lenition, _regardless of the
grammatical
or semantic category of that object_;* and that where such objects do _not_ show
lenition,
it must be that the preposition formerly ended in a consonant -- and then
_inconsistently_
alters (or does not alter) the actual data (often enough silently, or by appeal
to a supposed
"fact" that is demonstrably false, e.g. his claim that Tolkien's Cs and Gs are
often not
distinguishable) in order to make it fit his "theory". (I put the term "theory"
in quotes
because David's conviction is not truly a theory in that it does not explain all
the data,
even by his own logic: see my discussion of this in message 761
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lambengolmor/message/761>,
in particular the latter half regarding _bo Ceven_, _vi Menel_, and _sui mín_,
all from the
same text, which David treats in three different and inconsistent ways with
respect even
to his own "theory". Worse, David flatly declares, without even an attempt at
justifying his
assertions, against even _trying_ to construct a theory that _does_ explain
_all_ the data
without alteration and without appealing to authorial error: "In any case,
there's nothing
about the word 'menel' that ought to except it from the general rule of
lenition" -- note
that David here even alters the actual spelling in the ms., _Menel_, to subtly
reinforce his
assertion against the actual data -- or, "If the mutation rules hold in this
example as
elsewhere", implying that we do in fact see these "rules" everywhere else, which
even
David in fact knows is plainly false _by his own account_, given _sui mín_ _in
the exact
same text_, _without lenition_, and which David does not even _try_ to explain
by his own
"theory" (i.e., he neither declares that _mín_ "must" be a error for *_vín_, as
he does in
the case of _bo Ceven_/**_bo Geven_, nor analyses _sui mín_ as reflecting
earlier
**_suin mín_ or the like, as he does in the case of _vi Menel_ (< he asserts
*_min menel_),
again with the subtle and silent alteration of the actual form _Menel_ in order
to obscure
what may well be the determining feature in the absence of lenition here).

* An assertion that in fact David himself can't really believe, since at the
same time he
interprets _Daur_ in _Daur a Berhael! Eglerio!_ as a lenited form of *_Taur_,
due to its being
the object of the imperative verb _Eglerio!_ (p. 225), _despite_ the fact that
it does not
occur in a _phonological_ environment that would cause lenition. That is,
contrary to what
David insists _must_ be true about _Menel_: that nothing about its form or
function could
possibly explain the absence of lenition, David interprets _Daur_ as lenited
_solely_ because
of its grammatical function, and _not_ because of its phonological environment.

So unlike with editions of ancient and medieval texts of the sorts Hans is
referring to,
what we have instead is the (nearly always) silent imposition of David Salo's
personal
construction of a version of Sindarin that in fact Tolkien himself never
conceived of, by
appeal to "theories" that very often are nothing of the sort _even by his own
account_,
in order to justify (nearly always) silently altering the actual data in order
to fit his
"theories". CFH]


However objectionable from the scientific point of view, this is not too bad
when it comes
to _teaching_ a language.


[This would be true _if_ David were in fact teaching a normative _language_ that
actually
exist(s/ed). But the language David is teaching is one _he_, not Tolkien,
constructed, a
language that in fact _never_ existed _even by his own account_, itself a fact
that he does
his best to obscure both in his book and elsewhere by flat assertions and silent
alterations.
It is as if I decided to teach German (which of course has a long textual
history and many
dialectal variations), using actual German texts from a variety of eras and
regions, but
normalizing all the texts to fit the grammatical and orthographic standards of
Modern High
German. Which so far as this goes is all fair and well (so long as I don't
pretend that I'm _not_
normalizing the texts, and explaining all variations from the NHG norm as
_errors_), because
Modern High German actually is a known entity against which variations can be
measured --
but this of course is _not_ true with Sindarin (a fact that David obscures for
his readers, as
Bertrand points out). But David does not stop there: it is _further_ as if I
also decided (and
asserted) that, e.g., because the definite article sometimes appears as _der_,
then the
definite article must _always_ be _der_, and any other forms (_die_, _das_,
etc.) "must" be
erroneous, because there "cannot possibly" be any explanation for the variance
of forms in
the actual texts, and so I can just silently "correct" them all to _der_. Would
you say then that
this was justifiable since I'm "only" trying to "teach German" (as opposed to,
it seems, being
accurate in describing even Modern High German as it actually is)? Would you
even say that I
was teaching "German" at all? Sure, the language I would have thereby
constructed would
certainly _resemble_ German, but it would in fact not _be_ German, if by German
we mean a
language that actually exists independently of my own personal construction, and
reflecting
actual usage.

After all, it is not as though David simply said: "Most objects of prepositions
that end in
vowels show lenition. In the case of _vi Menel_, it may be that _vi_ is for
underlying *_min_,
where the original consonantal ending suppresses the otherwise expected
lenition. But
such an explanation seems not to be suitable for _bo Ceven_ and _sui mín_, so it
may be
that some other phenomenon is at work. In any event, for purposes of this
treatment, I
will assume that there is a general rule of lenition in objects of prepositions
ending in
a vowel, to which these may be exceptions". No; instead, he decided that Tolkien
_must_
have made a mistake, or that we editors of Tolkien's texts must have made a
mistake
(despite the fact that anyone, even David, can see that Tolkien plainly and
clearly
wrote _bo Ceven_). I would have no objection to the former: it is accurate and
presents
the facts of the matter, without imputing incompetence to Tolkien or his
editors, and
simply humbly accepts the notorious fact of languages that prescribed rules such
as
characterize language pedagogy _typically_ have some exceptions. But David chose
instead to assert his preference for how he thinks Tolkien _should_ have made
Sindarin
behave over the facts, and to pretend that there is simply no other possible
explanation
than a mistake on Tolkien's part or that of his editors. It is this unscholarly
method (to
put it mildly) to which I and others have objected.

I also have to add that I find the  dichotomy you assume and rely on, Hans,
between _accuracy_
and _pedagogy_, to be false. Pedagogy may be excused for eschewing certain
_details_, but
_never_ for teaching demonstrable _falsehoods_. In fact, does not a _teacher_,
i.e., one
presuming to instruct others with _less_ knowledge than themselves, and thus
_far more
likely_ to be unable to detect errors and inconsistencies in the teacher's
presentation of
a matter, and thus _far more likely_ to defer to the teacher's (presumed)
_authority_ than
to an investigation of the actual facts, bear an even _greater_ responsibility
to _avoid_
misrepresenting the actual sitation of things, and to _avoid_ relying on
personal
"authority" against the evidence and scholarly consensus? CFH]


Which is precisely what Salo intended, whatever the objections some here may
feel about such a project.


[I'm not aware that _anyone_ has objected to the idea of teaching Sindarin as a
language.
What is objected to is the deliberate and silent alteration of the language
itself, as it
actually is, in order to "support" pet "theories" that in fact a) do not explain
the data; and
b) against which there are other, entirely plausible explanations that _don't_
rely on alteration
of the data, despite the fact of David's encouraging reliance among his
"students" on his
personal "authority" by asserting unsupported dismissals of any other
possibilities, solely
by personal fiat.

Finally, I quote here the epigraph of the current issue of _Vinyar Tengwar_
(provided by
Patrick Wynne):

"[Regarding grammatical 'corrections' made to the text of L.L. Zamenhof’s
Esperanto translation of the _Malnova Testamento_ by editor W.J. Downes,
under the guise of correcting "typographical errors" in the third printing of
the Bible in Esperanto:]

'Professor Downes apparently does not realize that he has started down a
road that could lead to strange adventures. Today he corrects, as something
"idiomatic" and "suspect", Zamenhof's usage of the conditional mood; so what
guarantees us simple Esperantists that in the fourth printing he won't find
Zamenhof's use of that or some other form equally worthy of condemnation:
the participles, for example, or the subordinating conjunctions, etc.? Under
the pretext of correcting 'typographical errors', we could one day receive --
perhaps from hands even less careful than his -- and always under the name
of Zamenhof, a text thoroughly unfaithful to the tradition of our Maestro,
and perhaps even of Esperanto. As the Chinese say: "A journey of a thousand
miles begins with a _single_ step".'

— Gaston Waringhien, in _Lingvo kaj Vivo_ (Rotterdam: Universala Esperanto-
Asocio, 1989; 2nd ed.)"

-- CFH]


-- Hans Georg Lundahl

Regarding my comparison of a 19th C editor of Tatian giving a normalised text,
deviating from the manuscript, with David Salo's treatment of Tolkien's Sindarin
texts in his _Gateway to Sindarin_, Carl Hostetter writes:

> There are a number of crucial reasons why the two cases (i.e., Old Germanic
languages
> and Sindarin) are not at all analogous in this regard. For one, unlike
Sindarin texts, ancient
> and medieval texts almost always come down to us in the form of later (often
_much_ later),
> non-authorial copies.

Not true of many documents, which have been similarly normalised in editing.
Where the original document is preserved, we have authorial manuscripts.


[I don't know what texts you have in mind, but to my knowledge it is certainly
_not_ the case that we have "many" authorial manuscripts of ancient and medieval
texts. Either you haven't understood what I mean by "authorial manuscript" (that
is, a manuscript written _by the author in his own hand_), or you will have to
establish your claim. CFH]


> This process of copying and re-copying in the course of transmission
> notoriously introduces errors into a text, which can often be discovered by
_comparison_
> with other copies in which any given error was _not_ introduced scribally. In
the case of
> Tolkien's texts, we have a _single_ authorial scribe and (usually) only a
_single_ copy.

In Latin, errors are the most significant sources of deviations in copies. In O
Gmc Languages, the most significant source is actually the scribes' inconsistent
adaptation to his own norm.


[Let's say that's true (though I don't know it to be, and you haven't
established it). Your attempted analogy then still presumes a "norm" that _does
not exist_ for Sindarin. The particular "norm" under discussion, sc., the
asserted "fact" that all objects of prepositions ending in vowels _must_ show
lenition, or else the preposition _must_ have ended formerly in a consonant
(that is, more generally, that lenition in objects of prepositions _must_ be
conditioned solely by (original) phonological environment, and cannot possibly
have anything to do with grammatical function or semantics) _does not exist_,
and is _contradicted_ 1) by the evidence _even_ from within the _single_
authorial text under discussion, which can be _expected_ to employ the same
"rule" in this matter throughout (even if the rule does not apply to any other
of Tolkien's Sindarin texts), and 2) _even_ by David's own account of the matter
within this text (**_bo Geven_ but _sui mín_). And do you really mean to imply
that Tolkien was no more consistent in his orthography _within a single text_
(or even across _all_ his writings) than ancient or medieval scribes working in
a context where orthography was notoriously variable? If so, I certainly do not
agree, and would ask you to at least attempt to establish your claim by
providing, for starters, even one other case where Tolkien could conceivably
have meant to indicate capital _G_ but wrote _C_. CFH]


> And where we do have multiple versions of texts, being _authorial_ versions
(unlike
> ancient and medieval mss), the variations we see will (almost) always be due
to Tolkien
> trying different ways of expressing a meaning, not simply Tolkien nodding and
> mistranscribing his own composition.]

True. But that would go for many manuscript readings from Middle Ages too.


[But my point is that the kinds of variations we see in Tolkien's authorial
manuscripts are very different from the kinds of variance in ancient and
medieval manuscripts that you are attempting to use anaologically to justify
David in his alterations. That is, although we _do_ see considerable variance of
orthography in ancient and medieval texts of the sort that you are basing your
analogical justification on, we _don't_ see much (if any) of that kind or
anything like that degree of orthographic variance in Tolkien's texts. And thus
the essential feature of your attempt at analogy does not apply to the case of
Tolkien's texts. To put it another way: if David had written about Quenya
instead, and decided to give only the last of the multiple versions of Tolkien's
translation of the _Paternoster_ as "the" text (of which the other versions are
characterized as only imperfect variants), that would be one thing. And if David
decided that all _k_s in Tolkien's Quenya texts should be normalized to _c_s in
order to correspond with an orthographic convention that Tolkien indeed
preferred at one point in his life, that would be fine. But if David decided
that since the Quenya texts in _The Lord of the Rings_ exclusively employ
imperatives of the form _a + <verb-stem>_, the forms in the _Átaremma_ using
_á<pronominal-stem> + verb-stem_ must be _errors_, and silently "corrected" them
all to employ what he regards as the only possible "correct" form, that would be
quite a different matter. Yet that is precisely what David has done in the case
of _bo Ceven_.

Further: I trust that you don't really mean for us to believe that there is no
essential difference between the nature of the centuries of ancient and medieval
manuscripts and their transmission and the editorial practices developed for
treating with the same, and the nature of Tolkien's texts and the practices one
is justified in employing with his compositions? If so, I'm afraid I will have
to demure. What's more, I must demure for precisely the reasons stated in the
next paragraph of mine that you quote below, the argument and reasoning in which
you do not acknowledge or address in any way: sc., that the _basis_ for the
methods and practices with regard to ancient and medieval mss. is _inherently_
different in nature, scope, and statistical significance than that for Tolkien's
writings in and about his invented languages. CFH]


> Because errors and variations in texts in real-world
> languages can often be checked against a (relative to Tolkien's languages)
large body of
> data for the language and its cognates, establishing likely "norms" for the
languages at
> various dates, yes, it is quite possible to normalize the likely variances
from this norm
> for pedagogic purposes (though you will find, I think, that even in such
cases, the
> editors of scholarly texts will scrupulously note where they have made
editorial changes,
> and give the actual manscript reading in notes, and explain the basis for
those editorial
> changes that are not entirely straightforward: a long-standing scholarly
practice that
> David Salo typically does _not_ follow.)

David Salo was not acting as scholarly editor, but as a grammarian taking
examples from texts.


[I beg to differ. When one presents a series of texts in a foreign language, in
"normalized" form, and provides a word-by-word semantic, etymological, and
grammatical analysis of each form, that _is_ acting as a scholarly editor. And
when one produces hundreds of pages of a book adhering to the traditional
structure of historical descriptive grammars, employing page after page of
Jakobsonian distinctive-feature notation, Sanskrit-grammarian compound
classifications, and syntactic classifications, and extensive criticism of the
errors of _previous_ efforts;* and then publishes the results with a university
press, one is at least pretending at scholarship. David does not present his
work as "Sindarin For Dummies", or the "Berlitz Sindarin Guide", or "The Elvish
Language Rainy-Day Fun Book": it is presented as a descriptive historical
grammar (as Bertrand has also pointed out), from a university press.  The book
by its very form and presentation _invites_ us to regard it as a work of
linguistic scholarship; and so to expect that it would adhere to the standards
of linguistic scholarship, including a) not altering data to fit one's theories,
b) not making knowingly false claims about one's sources in order to justify
altering the data, and c) not simply inventing forms to exemplify whole classes
of formation for which there is in fact no evidence while not indicating in any
way that one has done so, despite having claimed that one _has_ indicated where
one has done so.

* Indeed, we may ask: if we are to give David a pass for his scholarly lapses
(putting it mildly) in the name of pedagogy, as you assert, why then do you not
fault David (or anyone else, for that matter) for failing to give _The Languages
of Middle-earth_ a similar pass? After all, Ruth Noel had just as "valid" a
"theory" about Elvish as David, according to your own construction of "validity"
and "theory" and consequent practices; and she clearly just wanted to "teach"
people Elvish, and did not even pretend to be a linguistic scholar or to have
produced an historical descriptive grammar; and clearly fabricated far less
"evidence" than David did. CFH]


> For another, ancient and medieval orthography is _notoriously_ variable, again
unlike
> Tolkien: in old mss. one often finds different spellings of _the exact same
word_ within
> the space of a page, a paragraph, or even a sentence.

And in Tolkien the variation span is within decades of his real life.


[Yes, but the point is that unlike ancient and medieval mss. with their
notoriously variable orthography _even within a single page or less_, Tolkien's
orthography is _not_ noticeably or demonstrably variable within individual
texts, and not even really very variable (except in such minor variations as "q"
vs. "qu" and "c" vs. "k", basically distinctions without a phonological
difference) across _decades_ of compositions. So you've really just reinforced
my point: namely, that where one _is_ justified in regularizing orthography in
ancient and medieval texts, due to their nature, one is _not thereby
necessarily_ justified in doing so for Tolkien's texts, because they are _not_
of the same nature. So, thanks! CFH]


> And for yet another, ancient and
> medieval spellings often reflect older pronunciations no longer current (I'm
thinking here
> esp. of Celtic mss., where this is rampant because an orthographic standard
was early
> developed). These are often systematic, and thus can be discerned and
normalized for
> pedagogic purposes. Such historical spellings rarely occur in Tolkien's texts,
and where
> they do they are also quite systematic (according to a system that Tolkien
himself explains).

Salo might call the non-marking of lenition in written _bo Ceven_ a preservation
of older orthography -- supposing him to be correct in the matter.


[Sure, he _might_, but he _doesn't_. Instead, he claims that _either_ Tolkien
made a mistake in writing C; _or_ that his editor made a mistake in misreading a
C for a G: this latter being a claim that he _knows_ is false, because the
source he cites has a _facsimile_ of the text. He _further_ asserts that
Tolkien's Cs and Gs are inherently hard to distinguish, for which he offers not
a _shred_ of evidence, not a _single_ example, and which I know is also false,
having worked with Tolkien's papers for well over a decade now. So _none_ of
these claims withstands an examination of the actual, unaltered data. To
nonetheless assert these claims, and to justify it _solely_ by making other,
baseless assertions, is unscholarly (again, to put it politely). CFH]


Your argument that Salo is incorrect in his theory seems to be correct, but I
would rather withhold judgement on the matter. Whether you are or Salo is
correct about the lenition, the practise of writing according to one's theory is
not reprehensible: just as Donat may have been mistaken when calling _vocavero_
a future subjunctive, but was not reprehensible in writing according to his, if
so, mistake.


[My argument is that Salo does not actually have a theory (as it does not
explain all the available data, nor does he even attempt to do so (e.g. _sui
mín_); and as it is in fact contradicted by the available data); and I haven't
really claimed to have one myself (only suggested the possible basis for a
theory of the post-prepositional lenition patterns seen _in the Adar Nín_); so
it is not a question of competing theories. It's a question of methodology, and
fundamentally of intellectual honesty; of whether one wishes to describe
Tolkien's Sindarin as it actually is in scholarly fashion, as David's book by
its form and venue and marketing invites us to think he has done; or instead to
make Sindarin what it never was, while _pretending_ to know what Tolkien
"really" meant to write, and to simply be correcting Tolkien's "mistakes" rather
than in fact altering the data in order to accommodate a (non-)theory, while
"supporting" one's alterations by making _knowingly false_ claims. It is this
sort of intellectual dishonesty, both about what Tolkien actually created (and
how), and about David's actual methods and practices in his book (vs. his claims
for the same: e.g., his claim to have marked all unattested forms, which is
simply _not_ true, not even approximately, which can _only_ mislead the student
and hide the shaky basis of David's claims and assertions), that is
"reprehensible" (to use your term). CFH]


>> However objectionable from the scientific point of view, this is not too bad
when it comes
>> to _teaching_ a language.
>
>
> This would be true _if_ David were in fact teaching a normative _language_
that actually
> exist(s/ed). But the language David is teaching is one _he_, not Tolkien,
constructed, a
> language that in fact _never_ existed _even by his own account_, itself a fact
that he does
> his best to obscure both in his book and elsewhere by flat assertions and
silent alterations.

Full circle. When Tolkien constructed Animalic and Nevbosh, he had
collaborators. When going on to Naffarin, Qenya/Quenya (where the differences
are very great, so as to make the identification dubious), Noldorin/Sindarin
(where I suppose Salo could be right) he was alone: but now he has collaborators
in these languages as well: Salo, Fauskanger.


[Do you honestly expect anyone to equate Tolkien's knowing and willing
participation in a group language development effort in the cases of Animalic
and Nevbosh, with the unknowing and unassented alterations of his own,
self-described "private" languages by David and Helge, long after his death,
under the term "collaboration"? Would you similarly claim that if I spraypainted
Groucho-glasses and a mustache on the Mona Lisa that I have "collaborated" with
Da Vinci? If so, I must again demure. And really, I'm afraid I find it hard to
take your other claims about languages and linguistics and manuscripts seriously
when you can attempt such a Newspeakish sleight-of-hand as this: it at any rate
makes me feel that you're not taking _my_ end of the discussion seriously. CFH]


And it brings those languages so much closer to "actually existing" ones. They
too, through history, have been constructed by more than one speaker and writer.
How many constructors must a language have, by the way, to be "actually
existing"?


[I said nothing about the existence of a normative language depending on some
minimal number of constructors. What I said was that for German, for example,
such a thing does exist; but it does _not_ exist for Sindarin. If David wants to
create his own language, based on Tolkien's Sindarin, that's fine: _so long as
he does not pretend or state that he is doing otherwise_, as he very clearly
does in his book. CFH]


> it is _further_ as if I also decided (and
> asserted) that, e.g., because the definite article sometimes appears as _der_,
then the
> definite article must _always_ be _der_, and any other forms (_die_, _das_,
etc.) "must" be
> erroneous, because there "cannot possibly" be any explanation for the variance
of forms in
> the actual texts, and so I can just silently "correct" them all to _der_.
Would you say then that
> this was justifiable since I'm "only" trying to "teach German" (as opposed to,
it seems, being
> accurate in describing even Modern High German as it actually is)? Would you
even say that I
> was teaching "German" at all? Sure, the language I would have thereby
constructed would
> certainly _resemble_ German, but it would in fact not _be_ German, if by
German we mean a
> language that actually exists independently of my own personal construction,
and reflecting
> actual usage.]

The German article is so much more common than the Sindarin preposition, that
such a slight would be less excusable.


[By what measure is it "so much more common"? I'm not convinced that it is so as
a proportion of all the textual evidence for German and Sindarin. But in any
event, you again really make my point: given such a small amount of data for
Sindarin, it is difficult if not impossible to argue that just because a bare
majority of forms (arguably) exhibits some pattern, that those that do not
exhibit that pattern must be "erroneous" (as David does), or even "irregular"
(as is often asserted). And by extension, your attempt to draw an analogy
between the situation and practices with respect to ancient and medieval texts
and those of Tolkien's texts is further shown to be inapt. CFH]


Though I should not be surprised if there be a Platt dialect the levels all
articles down to de.


[I don't suppose I would be surprised either. But I stipulated Modern High
German, not some dialect of Plattdeutsch. CFH]


> It is this unscholarly method (to put it mildly) to which I and others have
objected.

As unscholarly as the appoach of editors who normalise spellings in original
documentary manuscripts - because they thought the secretary did not know the
language he was trying to write as well as the modern scholar did. Neither more,
nor less.


[I disagree, for the reasons stated above. The amount and kinds of evidence we
have for ancient and medieval mss. and languages is vastly different from what
we have for Tolkien's languages. Pretending otherwise indeed inevitably leads to
error: and why should we be surprised, after all, and why should we not comment
or even object, when false assumptions lead to false conclusions? But even if we
grant that there is no difference, for the sake of argument: so what? Do the
errors of the past forgive the errors of the present? You are again making my
point for me: for If we are to fault those (pseudo-)scholarly editors you
rightly decry for (sometimes) _wrongly_ (and thus arrogantly) presuming to know
the scribe's language better than the scribe did, then why should we not fault
and decry David Salo for wrongly (and thus arrogantly) presuming to know
Tolkien's languages better than Tolkien did? For I have no doubt that David
believes that he knows Tolkien's languages better than Tolkien did -- he has
publicly stated as much -- but the only reason he can believe that is because he
does not in fact understand Tolkien's languages _as they really are_ (again,
just like with your notorious editor and the scribe); or, at any rate, does not
want to acknowledge their _actual_ nature and status (for whatever reason). CFH]


> I also have to add that I find the dichotomy you assume and rely on, Hans,
between _accuracy_
> and _pedagogy_, to be false. Pedagogy may be excused for eschewing certain
_details_, but
> _never_ for teaching demonstrable _falsehoods_. In fact, does not a _teacher_,
i.e., one
> presuming to instruct others with _less_ knowledge than themselves, and thus
_far more
> likely_ to be unable to detect errors and inconsistencies in the teacher's
presentation of
> a matter, and thus _far more likely_ to defer to the teacher's (presumed)
_authority_ than
> to an investigation of the actual facts, bear an even _greater_ responsibility
to _avoid_
> misrepresenting the actual sitation of things, and to _avoid_ relying on
personal
> "authority" against the evidence and scholarly consensus? CFH]

Scholarly consensus have been built around far more objectionable personal
"authority" in the teeth of evidence. If David Salo is in error he is not the
first one to fall in such due to overconfidence in Jung Grammarian positions.
Not to mention Biblical scholarship.


[Perhaps; but even if so, how does the fact that the _Junggrammatiker_ sometimes
overstepped their bounds in asserting their knowledge (real or claimed) over the
ancient and medieval scribes (which is undeniably so), excuse David Salo for
overstepping his bounds in asserting his (claimed) knowledge of Tolkien's
languages over Tolkien? At least the _Junggrammatiker_ had a firm linguistic and
textual basis, derived from centuries and untold thousands of pages of written
material and scribal transmission; which is _not_ the case in the instance of
Tolkien's writings and Tolkien's languages. How does that justify David altering
and fabricating data silently, while at the same time claiming not to do so? How
does that justify David in making knowingly false claims about what Tolkien
actually wrote? And in any event, how does this address my question, which was:
_if_ we regard David as "just" a teacher, not a scholar (despite all appearances
and claims to the contrary), as you urge, ought he not as a "teacher" be held to
higher standards of _avoiding_ overstating his case or making knowingly false
claims, given that his audience is not scholars but students who necessarily
rely (and, in David's presentation, are deliberately _encouraged_ to rely) not
on the actual evidence, but utlimately on his authority?

You seem to think, Hans, that I am arguing _for_ all the practices of the
_Junggrammatiker_, even their unfounded and arrogant ones, when applied to
ancient and medieval texts, while inconsistently arguing _against_ the
employment of _any_ of them in the case of Tolkien's texts, which two cases you
believe to be precisely analogous. I am not. _Some_ of the practices of the
_Junggrammatiker_ were indeed overstepping and even outright arrogant, and are
to be criticized (as they have been, well and thoroughly). But _at least_ their
practices, objectionable and unobjectionable alike, were developed and executed
on a _much firmer and significant basis of data and systematics_ than we have,
or ever will have, for Tolkien's languages, _because_ of their actual nature.
_Instead_, what I am arguing is, in effect, that, to the extent that you fault
the _Junggrammatiker_ for their arrogant practices, then David is to be faulted
even more for his, given the _much more ethereal and subjective basis_ and _more
blatantly contrary-to-fact assumptions and assertions_ that they are based on
(and indeed the moreso _because_ David has the historical example of the
_Junggrammatiker_ to serve as a cautionary tale); and I am further arguing that
this is because the analogy you draw in _support_ of David's practices is
_inapt_, for precisely the reasons that make those arrogant practices of the
_Junggrammatiker_ that you decry even _less_ warranted if applied to Tolkien's
texts than it was when applied to ancient and medieval mss. CFH]


-- Hans Georg Lundahl

Long ago (in message #451, 04 Jun 2003), I wrote:

> Now the difference _anim_/_enni_ and the translations "for
> myself"/"(to) me" suggest an obvious (though VERY
> speculative) solution: _im_ doesn't literally mean "I", but
> "self". Remember that the two occurences of _im_ as a
> standalone word are to emphasize a name: _im Narvi_
> (LR:298) and _im Tinúviel_ (III:254).

Yesterday, I received VT 47 and enjoyed Patrick Wynne's analysis of
Tolkien's manuscripts. In the editorial note 58, he cites Tolkien's
note "Solution of _anim_", saying "_im_ does not mean 'me', but =
'self(same)' and is general reflexive; _anim_ 'to self'" (VT47:37).
This is a nice confirmation of my theory, even though Patrick goes
on to explain that it is clearly a later reinterpretation of something
that earlier was "_im_, emphatic separate nominative of 1st person
sg. I, I myself". There's no doubt it is, and it was typically Tolkien to
reinterpret things he had written and even published earlier.
However, it's also not rare that he returned to still earlier concepts
in such cases, and I hope to give some evidence that emphatic and
reflexive pronouns may have been close in early notions of Qenya
and Gnomish.

The starting point of my interpretation quoted above had been the
observation that "I", "self" and "same" are closely related, as the
analysis of words like "ego" or "identity" shows. Could that have been
the origin for the coinage of _im_? Let's examine QL, first (something
I couldn't do back in 2003). I didn't find a single pronoun, there,
but we have

IMI (1) same, alike. (PE12:42)
_inqa_ same.

The latter form is similar to one we find in Table A of "Early Qenya
Pronouns" (EQP, PE15:44) in the left column. Christopher Gilson argues
that though the abbreviation "refl." under the form _inqe_ may be
considered as a marker for those forms, it's more likely they are
"labels for the rows of forms that begin in the second column with
_ninqe_" (PE15:45). However, I don't find it conclusive that the
nominative pronouns can't have reflexive forms. What if the forms in
the first column are both, emphatic AND reflexive? In English (and
also in German) we use the reflexive "self" to emphasize a pronoun,
too. Let's look for evidence in early Elvish, by comparison of three
forms from that first column with forms in GL (my addition "emphatic?"
means that _im_, _on_, _um_ are mentioned in the same context in
PE11:53, and _on_ "he" is explicitly called emphatic in PE11:62):

EQP _inqe_
GL _im_ (emphatic?) I (PE11:53), _inco_ the same. the identical (PE11:50)

EQP _unqe_
GL _um_ (1) (emphatic?) we (PE11:74), _unc_ (1) reflexive. ourselves (PE11:74,
75)

EQP _uste_
GL _oth_ ye. also inform[al] (PE11:63), _ost_ (3) pronoun, reflexive. yourselves
(PE11:63)

We see obvious phonetic relationships, and in all cases, the forms from
the EQP are closer to the reflexive forms from the GL. Though _inco_
is not glossed as a pronoun, it is connected to reflexive pronouns by
semantics: "self" had the now obsolete meaning "same, identical" in
English, and the German cognate has that meaning even now, at least in
compounds (dasselbe, derselbe, dieselbe). Russian uses the cognates
"sebye" (dative) and "sebya" (accusative) of "self" as reflexive
pronouns. For emphasis of the nominative pronouns, Russian adds a
cognate of "same": "ya sam", "ty sam", "on sam", "my sami", "vy sami",
"oni sami". Whether the similarities to GL (especially _on_ "he") are
incidental, I leave to the reader, but Tolkien taught himself a little
Russian between 1916 and 1918 (according to Carpenter's biography,
p. 106).

I'd like to add that in my opinion the Quenya reflexive pronouns
mentioned in VT47:37 with base _im_ go back to the QL root IMI (1)
quoted above (that's obvious, but Patrick didn't mention it in his
analysis).

-- Hans

[Hans is undoubtedly correct that the very late stem _im-_ 'same'
cited in VT47:37 n. 58 can be identified with the root IMI (1) 'same,
alike' in the Qenya Lexicon, and I certainly ought to have pointed this
out in my notes. PHW]

Hello,

An error in VT46 p 27, last line.

The roots "WAWA-, WAWA-" should read "WAWA-, WAIWA-". No?

elfiquement vôtre,

Edouard Kloczko

PS: Yello for VT47! Hope to read VT48 soon. :)

[You are absolutely right: the reading should be "WAWA-, WAIWA-".
Thank you for catching the error! As for VT 48, I'm diligently working
away on it! PHW]

Thank you for VT 47. Just two little comments:

There is a typo, I think, on page 37, note 55 where the Sanskrit should
read: _daks.inâ diç-_ (or _dik_ (_diç-_)), i.e. with a _k_ instead of
_c_ in _daks.inâ_. Next comes "_< dacs.inâ_ 'right, southern'". I think
it should be _daks.ina-_ with a short last 'a' here as the word is a
normal adjective and stands together both with masc. and fem. words.
Unless, you're referring to _daks.inâ_ (old instrumental) 'on the
right, south(ward from)'.

[You are absolutely right, the Sanskrit forms in note 55 are in error.
The note should read "Cp. Sanskrit _daks.in.â-(diç-_) ‘south’ <
_daks.in.a-_  ‘right, southern’", these being the forms as given in
my source, Carl Darling Buck's _A Dictionary of Select Synonyms in
the Principal Indo-European Languages_ (p. 873). An appalling slip
on my part, for which I apologize to my readers! PHW]

On page 31 Patrick Wynne notes the resemblance between Q. _-ye_ and
Latin _que_. In addition to that it may be worth mentioning that the
origin of Q. _ar_ and S. _a_ (< root _asa_) 'beside' is reminiscent
(parallel) of Latin _et_ 'and' < PIE _eti_ 'beside' etc.

BTW, the ">" in "_ar_ (_as_) > [root]_asa_ 'beside'" p. 31 line 4 is a typo
for "<" ?

[No, ">" is the symbol used by Tolkien in the manuscript. This usage
of ">" where "<" might be expected is not uncommon in Tolkien's
manuscripts, and assuming (as we must) that Tolkien wrote what he
intended to write, then this ">" evidently means "points to" (the
existence of an earlier underlying root or form); i.e., "_ar_ (_as_),
which point to an original root _asa_ 'beside'." PHW]

David Kiltz

VT47 is indeed a fruitful and very welcome source of information about Quenya
vocabulary and grammar, and about the development of the Eldarin languages.

Among many other things, I think that it is interesting to note some details
that can be related with the poem _Namárië_.

The most remarkable, I think, is Tolkien's explanation and examples of how
nouns such as _má_ 'hand' are seldom used in the "general or complete" plural,
but rather in the singular or pair-dual (_mát_), even in general sentences
or when the subject is more than one person. One of the examples provided
is the sentence "they raised their hands", where "_hand_ was in Eldarin syntax
always singular, if each ... raised one hand, and always dual if each raised
both
hands" (VT47:6).

This example strongly recalls the sentence _Elentári ortane máryat_ 'Elentári
lifted up her two hands' (from Tolkien's "prose" arrangement of _Namárië_
in R:67), in which we accordingly see the pair-dual _máryat_, i.e., _mát_
with the 3rd sg. possessive pronoun _rya_ between the stem _má_ and the
dual marker -_t_ (being literally explained by Tolkien as _má-rya-t_
'hands-her-two', ibid.).

Another item is the Eldarin noun _sûli_, _sûr(i)_ 'wind', formed from the
stem _sû_ 'the sound of wind' (with macron over the _û_ in all cases),
extended with r_ / _l_ (VT47:35). Eld. _sûr(i)_ is seen in the Q. instrumental
_súrinen_ 'in the wind', in the first line of the _Namárie_ poem. Its undeclined
form may be expected to be *_súre_, with final Eld. -_i_ > Q. -_e_; _súre_ is
actually found in line 14 of the last version of the _Markirya_ poem (MC:222).
Analogically, Eld. _sûli_ would yield Q. *_súle_; and _súle_ is actually found
as a _tengwa_ name (previously _thúle_) in LR Appendix E, and in _Etym._,
s.v. THÛ-, though in both cases it clearly comes from an earlier form in
_th_-, not in _s_- as the words commented in VT47.

[Q. _súle/thúle_ is glossed as 'spirit' rather than 'wind', which accords
with the Etymologies, which gives Q. _súle_ 'breath' as a derivative of
THÛ- 'puff, blow' (English _spirit_ is from Latin _spirare_ 'to blow,
breathe'). The Noldorin cognate is given as _thûl_, which stands in
contrast to S. _sûl_ 'wind' in _Amon Sûl_ 'Hill of the Wind' (TC:195), which
must derive from Eld. _sûli_ cited in VT47:35 -- otherwise we should see
**_Amon Thûl_. In other words, THÛ- 'puff, blow' (whence Q. _súle/thúle_
'breath, spirit', N. _thûl_ 'breath') and SÛ- '(sound of) wind' (whence
Q. _súre_ 'wind', S. _sûl_ 'wind') appear to be two related but semantically
distinct bases. So the direct descendant of Eld. _sûli_ < _sû_ (VT47:35) in
_The Lord of the Rings_ appears to be S. _sûl_ rather than Q. _súle/thúle_.
-- PHW]

And of course, there is the usage of the particular plural in -_li_ commented
by Tolkien in VT47:6, in _i falmalinnar_ 'on the foaming waves', as Patrick
notes in VT47:18.

Helios.

If you want to attend the the First International Conference on
Tolkien's Invented Languages in Stockholm this August, it is time to
send in your registration and begin making your travel plans. If you
want to present a paper at the conference, please contact Beregond
right away.

Our web address is www.omentielva.com (note, _not_ .org as it was
originally).

Beregond's address is beregond@.... Mine is
billw@.... Let us hear from you today.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you there!

--Bill

==snip==

The First International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented
Languages (Informally "Omentielva Minya", or just "Omentielva")
August 4 to 8, 2005
University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden
Chairman: Bill Welden
Papers Coordinator: Beregond, Anders Stenström
Facility Coordinator: Professor Nils-Lennart Johannesson
Membership: US$90 through July 4, 2005
www.omentielva.com

Everyone is encouraged to prepare, bring, and deliver a paper on any
aspect of Tolkien's languages. The program will consist of listening
to and discussing the papers; as well as meeting each other, breaking
bread together, and generally enjoying each other's company.
Registration includes basic food and sleeping space (though you may
want to make additional arrangements yourself for both -- see the web
site for more information). Over thirty people have indicated an
intention to attend.

This will be the first of a series of biennial conferences. The
location of the second (2007) conference will be announced at this
first conference, and we will also vote on proposals for the site of
the third (2009). If you are interested in hosting the 2007
conference or in presenting a proposal for the 2009 conference,
please contact me right away at BillW@O....

The proceedings of these conferences will be published in a new
special series, _Arda Philology_. The volume from this first
conference will be made available to the attendees as a benefit of
membership, and (subject to availability and at a price yet to be
determined) to all other interested parties. Our intention is that it
be stimulating and insightful enough to show up on the reference
shelf of every serious scholar of Tolkien. You do not need to deliver
a paper to attend, nor do you need to attend to send a paper (we will
certainly find someone to read it for you); but we hope you do both.

There is more information (and you can sign up) at our web site:
www.omentielva.com.

Write to me at BillW@... with questions or feedback. For
information about registration or papers (*especially* if you would
like to present one) write to: Beregond@...

This is going to be an exciting event, with lots of interesting
people discussing all the interesting topics. If you think the
conversation proceeds quickly here on-line, wait till you get in a
room with thirty smart, passionate people who have been thinking
about these issues for years (some for most of their lives). I'm
really looking forward to it.

I hope we see you there!

Bill Welden
Chairman
Omentielva Minya

Patrick Wynne and I are pleased to announce the publication of a new
article in _Tengwestië_, the online journal of the Elvish Linguistic
Fellowship (<http://www.elvish.org/Tengwestie/>):

"The Noldorin Plurals in the _Etymologies_"

by Bertrand Bellet

This article list all plural forms of Noldorin nouns or adjectives
found in the _Etymologies_, sorted according to their mode of
formation: plurals by vowel affection, imparisyllabic plurals, class
plurals, and the remaining rare kinds. The inventories are presented as
tables or lists, with a discussion of the observed plural patterns and
their possible origins.


(We would like to extend our thanks to Helios De Rosario Martinez for
formatting the article for publication on _Tengwestië_.)


--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter   Aelfwine@...   http://www.elvish.org

		    ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
			        Ars longa, vita brevis.
	         The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take such
       a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

One statement of fact, and one or two of principle will have to suffice as
answer on this longish contribution.

1) Regarding my comparison of a 19th C editor of Tatian giving a normalised
text, deviating from the manuscript, with David Salo's treatment of Tolkien's
Sindarin texts in his _Gateway to Sindarin_, Carl Hostetter writes:

> There are a number of crucial reasons why the two cases (i.e., Old Germanic
languages
> and Sindarin) are not at all analogous in this regard. For one, unlike
Sindarin texts, ancient
> and medieval texts almost always come down to us in the form of later (often
_much_ later),
> non-authorial copies.

To which I responded:

> Not true of many documents, which have been similarly normalised in editing.
Where the
> original document is preserved, we have authorial manuscripts.

And Carl replied:

> I don't know what texts you have in mind, but to my knowledge it is certainly
_not_ the case
> that we have "many" authorial manuscripts of ancient and medieval texts.
Either you haven't
> understood what I mean by "authorial manuscript" (that is, a manuscript
written _by the
> author in his own hand_), or you will have to establish your claim. CFH]

In the case of ancient texts, indeed we have no authorial manuscripts of either
literary texts or documents. In the case of mediæval literary texts, we usually
have too many copies to identify an authorial manuscript. Usually that is, but
not exclusively: certain very occasional literature, which yet cannot be classed
as legal documents may exist only in one authorial manuscript. But in the case
of legal documents, it is even usual that they exist in only two manuscripts,
both of which were written by secretary or notary, and both authorised with a
signature by both parties or by the granting party. In those cases there cannot
be any "errors of transmission". When the spelling varies in those, it is
because of the intention of the original writer: whether it be the author or
just his secretary. I appreciate your disclaimer on loyalty to the
Junggrammatiker and their arrogance (though I do not quote it) but I cannot feel
that a fault committed by a whole set of scholars that were our masters in
linguistic scholarship can be a valid reason for harsh denunciations. We need
only avoid them, not make them also a cause of opprobrium.


[This is getting far afield now, but I would point out that from the fact that
we have many different manuscripts of any given text it does not follow that one
of them is the authorial text and we just can't discern which is which: it is
also entirely possible that _none_ of them is the authorial manuscript. Again,
the situation is quite different from the case of Tolkien, where _every_ text we
have is an authorial manuscript. CFH]


2) I also wrote:

> And it brings those languages so much closer to "actually existing" ones. They
too, through
> history, have been constructed by more than one speaker and writer. How many
constructors
> must a language have, by the way, to be "actually existing"?

To which Carl replied:

> I said nothing about the existence of a normative language depending on some
minimal
> number of constructors. What I said was that for German, for example, such a
thing does
> exist; but it does _not_ exist for Sindarin. If David wants to create his own
language, based
> on Tolkien's Sindarin, that's fine: _so long as he does not pretend or state
that he is doing
> otherwise_, as he very clearly does in his book. CFH]

You said that Salo had been describing a language that never existed: I took you
to mean a non-natural art-lang as such. I am sorry for the misinterpretation.
You did not mean Sindarin as such being a piece of art rather than an existing
language - have I got it right this time? - you meant Salo describing a Sindarin
that never existed in Tolkien's actual manuscripts.


[That's correct. And demonstrable from David's own presentation, in that much of
what he presents as "Sindarin" is nowhere to be found in Tolkien's own writings.
CFH]


Now, this I cannot see as a valid argument against Salo's Sindarin or
Fauskanger's Quenya existing, at least virtually, in Tolkien's intentions. The
fact seems to be, Tolkien never finally realized himself his intentions, because
Noldorin and Qenya of the _Etymologies_ were superceded by other forms of
Sindarin and Quenya, and because those were not elaborated with all that
vocabulary.


[Here we part company completely. You imagine, as apparently do Salo and
Fauskanger, that Tolkien's intention was to achieve a single, final, ideal form
of his languages, which form he was working towards all his life. Whereas
Tolkien makes it quite clear that not only is this not true, but it is in fact
_contrary_ his _actual_ intention in creating and re-creating his art-languages:
"It must be emphasized that this process of invention was/is a private
enterprise undertaken to give pleasure to myself by giving expression to my
personal linguistic 'aesthetic' or taste _and its fluctuations_" (L:380, written
in 1967, I note; emphasis added). CFH]


I take it as a valid interpretation of his intentions, that any word in
_Etymologies_: Noldorin and Qenya not changed by him would remain a valid word,
with due phonetic and grammatic changes in Sindarin and Quenya. That
interpretation is not exclusively scholarly, in the sense of not going beyond
incontrovertible evidence, it is rather artistic: but it makes sense.


[Indeed, that is a perfectly valid theoretical approach to take, _when in fact
there is no evidence to the contrary_. But what is not valid is to, on the one
hand, claim that one has marked all cases where forms have been normalized or
constructed in accordance with personal theory (setting aside the issue of
"theory" here) -- David writes that "in the appendices ... all of these new
words, constructions, and correction have been indicated by various signs",
which is not even approximately true* -- but then, on the other hand,
immediately proceed to present altered and fabricated forms _without the
promised indication_, solely in order to "support" one's "theory", even to the
point of misrepresenting Tolkien's _actual_ intentions by altering what he
actually wrote and by attributing mistakes to Tolkien and/or his editors that
are in fact nothing of the sort. Which is the issue at hand.

*To pick just one example at random, I turned to the first page of David's
glossary of "Sindarin Names" (p. 339), and instantly find an entry for
"Aecthelion", which David claims is found on "WJ:318". Note that there is no
indication that this form is altered or "corrected" in any way, and that in fact
David creates the appearance that the form is actually attested in Tolkien's
writings. But turning to the cited page, we find that what Tolkien actually
wrote, _twice_, is _Aegthelion_. Nor is this merely a typo on David's part,
since he repeats the form in his "Historical Phonology of Sindarin" (p. 55). And
I could provide many, many, many other examples of this sort of misleading
treatment of the _actual_ evidence for Sindarin, and thus of Sindarin as it
_actually_ is, and as Tolkien _actually_ intended it. CFH]


The opposite interpretation - that Noldorin and Sindarin are two different
languages the similarities of which are totally incidental, and the same for
Qenya and Quenya, I take as excluded not so much by the state of manuscript
evidence as by common sense.


[I'm not aware that anyone has claimed that the similarities between Noldorin
and Sindarin, or between Qenya and Quenya, are "totally incidental" (or indeed
merely "incidental" to _any_ degree); so this is a straw-man argument. But it is
indisputable that Noldorin and Sindarin, and Qenya and Quenya, _are_ different.
Again, it is the _silent_ removal of these differences, esp. when the reader has
been assured that such changes are _noted_, that is the issue at hand as regards
flaws in David's presentation. CFH]


And if someone extrapolates vocabulary material from Noldorin or Qenya and
intrapolates it into Sindarin and Quenya, as long as the identification is not
explicitly contradicted by Tolkien himself, I cannot see that such a procedure
is artistically or linguistically objectionable. In that sense I cannot regard
Salo and Fauskanger as vandals scribbling a moustache on Mona Lisa, but rather
as pupils completing another man's work, as the Summa Theologiæ was completed by
pupils of St Thomas Aquinas, the parts known as the Supplementum III Partis, or
as Jean de Meun completed a book left incomplete by Guillaume de Lorris, (which
Tolkien disliked both parts of, but not due to the completion being left to
another one than the original author, as Leaf by Niggle would show his feelings
on that part of the story) an allegory called Romance of the Rose. Or as for
that matter I believe Chapman similarly completed a work by another epic writer.


[Again, your portrait of the actual situation ignores a very basic fact: Salo
and Fauskanger are not "completing" Tolkien's work, which being as he states an
expression of his personal aesthetic was only his own to do, and which was in
fact completed with the demise of his aesthetic upon his death. Further, in
ignoring or dismissing as "errors" various features that Tolkien himself put
into his languages as expressions of his aesthetic (for example, the different
forms of the past-tense in Noldorin, or the precise conditions of lenition
following prepositions), Salo and Fauskanger are not "completing" Tolkien's art,
but remaking it in their own image, forcing it to conform to their own
aesthetic, and their own limited willingness to admit to Tolkien's languages all
the richness of real languages, the semblance of which it was also Tolkien's
intention to create by secondary art. CFH]


3) I wrote:

> David Salo was not acting as scholarly editor, but as a grammarian taking
examples from
> texts.

To which Carl replied:

> I beg to differ. When one presents a series of texts in a foreign language, in
"normalized"
> form, and provides a word-by-word semantic, etymological, and grammatical
analysis of
> each form, that _is_ acting as a scholarly editor. And when one produces
hundreds of
> pages of a book adhering to the traditional structure of historical
descriptive grammars,
> employing page after page of Jakobsonian distinctive-feature notation,
Sanskrit-
> grammarian compound classifications, and syntactic classifications, and
extensive criticism
> of the errors of _previous_ efforts;* and then publishes the results with a
university press,
> one is at least pretending at scholarship. David does not present his work as
"Sindarin For
> Dummies", or the "Berlitz Sindarin Guide", or "The Elvish Language Rainy-Day
Fun Book":
> it is presented as a descriptive historical grammar (as Bertrand has also
pointed out),
> from a university press.  The book by its very form and presentation _invites_
us to
> regard it as a work of linguistic scholarship;...]

Do you regard Sweet as a linguist and a scholar? I do, but his _Anglo Saxon
Reader_ - used by Tolkien as instruction book in tha language - does give us
texts in a normalised form without stating the manuscript varieties: for the
reason that the Reader is not a scholarly text edition, but a scholarly learning
aid. I am referring in particular to the text found in either Cotton manuscript
or the other main one in this form:

"Eornostlice ælc þæra þe ðas mine word gehyrð & þa wyrcþ byþ gelic þam wisan
were se hys hus ofer stan getimbrode. Þa com þær ren & mycele flod & þær bleowun
windas & ahruron on þæt hus & hit na ne feoll; soðlice hit wæs ofer stan
getimbrod. & ælc þæra the gehyrþ ðas mine word & þa ne wyrcþ se byþ gelic þam
dysigan men the timbrode hus ofer sandceosel. Þa rinde hit & þær cómon flod &
bleowon windas & ahruron on þæt hus. & Þæt hus feoll & hys hryre wæs mycel;"

Sweet deviates both from this and from the other manuscript form when quoting
this passage (Matth 7: 24-27), and he does not tell us so right there. And the
title about the book being a "gateway" to Sindarin suggests it is at least as
likely in Salo's intention to be an instructive learning aid as to be a purely
descriptive grammar.


[David Salo does not present his work as "A Sindarin Reader". Instead, in the
very first sentence of his book he claims that it is "a description of Sindarin,
one of the many invented languages of author and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien"; he
further presents it as utilizing "the tools and techniques of historical
linguistics" to present an "analysis" of Tolkien's Sindarin. And though he
claims otherwise (a claim that can only further mislead his reader), he does not
distinguish, except incidentally, _his_ version of "Sindarin" from Tolkien's own
versions. Therein lie the essential differences. CFH]



4) As for Tolkien's G's, a lot depends on whether he wrote G's with a tail (like
a minuscule g but open) or only G's with a dash (like this typed G). In the
latter case forgetting the dash by a slight is possible, though not very
probable; in the former forgetting the tail is not just not very probable, but
it is very improbable. As I have not seen his handwriting lately and do not
remember a capital G, I am not in any position to judge the matter.


[Neither is David Salo, but that does not prevent him from presenting himself as
an expert on Tolkien's handwriting and making a completely false, self-serving
claim, completely without any supporting evidence and contrary to the the actual
evidence of the facsimile, as though it were an established fact. CFH]


-- Hans Georg Lundahl

> [Neither is David Salo, but that does not prevent him from
> presenting himself as an expert on Tolkien's handwriting and making a
> completely false, self-serving claim, completely without any
> supporting evidence and contrary to the the actual evidence of the
> facsimile, as though it were an established fact. CFH]

Salo's statement as quoted by Carl, "Tolkien's handwritten capital _C_
and capital _G_ are very similar", must indeed be understood as a fact
established by somebody who knows Tolkien's handwriting. In reality,
one doesn't even have to be an expert, or to have access to original
manuscripts, to see that it's completely false. The shortest look at
the facsimile (VT44:23) shows that the C is written connected with the
following letter (e) in a way impossible for a G. That alone would be
sufficient to dismiss Salo's claim as lacking evidence.

But it's not difficult for most persons seriously interested in
Tolkien's work to have a look at lots of capital G in Tolkien's
handwriting. All one has to do is to have a look into _The War of the
Ring_, containing many facsimiles of original manuscript pages, those
in turn containing many words like "Gollum", "Gandalf", "Gondor" or
"Gate" for obvious reasons.

Hans Georg Lundahl wrote:

>As for Tolkien's G's, a lot depends on whether he wrote G's with a
>tail (like a minuscule g but open) or only G's with a dash (like this
>typed G).

Just open the book and look at the first frontispiece. The seventh
line contains a nice "Gollum" clearly showing the tail, so it's the
former case (a G like printed may be found in rare case, like on the
extremely fair copy of a map, VIII:434, but one would find it hard to
confuse that with a C).

In this case (and actually often) the G is not connected with the
following letter, and the tail ends at its lowest point. Then, the
tail may be even not connected to the rest of the letter G, as one can
see in the last paragraph of VIII:204 ("Gollum" and "Gondor").
When the capital G is connected with following letters (as it seems,
that happened in more hasty writing), the tail turns upwards again in
a characteristic loop, as one can see in the last line of VIII:90 (the
last two words are "Good luck", cf. the bottom of VII:91). That loop
is often formed more clearly than the rest of the letter, so it's not
just improbable, but downright impossible to confuse with a capital C.

Hans

David Salo: _A Gateway to Sindarin_

a discussion by Thorsten Renk


I. General remarks

Now David Salo, probably most famous for the creation of the Elvish
dialogues in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, has published his ideas on the
grammar of Sindarin. The book has very much the flavour of a review
published as a summary of long research. It aims to cover all aspects of
Sindarin, from the internal history of the language in Tolkien's
legendarium to the phonological development from the primitive Common
Eldarin forms to the Sindarin of the 3rd age, from the grammatical and
syntactical rules of the language to the way names and other compound
words are formed. In addition, it contains several appendices providing
Sindarin-English and English-Sindarin wordlists, a list of primitive
roots, an analysis of all known texts in Sindarin, and an annotated
bibliography.

The book is written in a highly technical language (at times unnecessarily
so), and although there is a glossary of linguistic terms, in order to
actually read and understand the text the reader needs more than an
elementary knowledge of grammar.

This, in combination with the scheme employed by Salo for distinguishing
between attested and reconstructed forms, leads to the greatest flaw of
the book -- its false pretense of rigor. While the technical language and
the presence of the signs ! "reconstructed form in external history",
* "reconstructed form in internal history", and # "form with regularized
spelling" suggest that the book is a serious scholarly attempt to deduce
the grammar of Tolkien's invented language by starting from Tolkien's own
writings, a closer look reveals that this is actually not quite true. The
book represents rather a grammar of Sindarin as Salo thinks it should be,
sometimes regardless of what Tolkien wrote.

Therefore, although the book is written in the style of a comprehensive
review, it lacks an important element which would be present in a
scholarly work, i.e., citations to the underlying reasoning for the grammar
given here. All we get to see is the end product, but we seldom get a
glimpse at the logical deductions leading to the forms which are
presented. This makes it very difficult to actually judge the value of a
given idea. Richard Feynman characterized scientific method with the
words: "Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be
given if you know them. [...] If you make a theory [...] and advertise it,
or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree
with it. [...] In summary, the idea is to try to give all the information
to help others to judge the value of your contribution, not just the
information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or
another" (from _"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of
a Curious Character_). Clearly, that is not the approach David Salo
has chosen.

In the following, I will try to give an overview of what I can see of
Salo's methology in dealing with Tolkien's original texts, followed by
comments on selected chapters of the book.


II. Standardizing Sindarin

David Salo tries to discuss the grammar of a fictive, "classical" Sindarin
that is supposed to be a unified description of everything Tolkien
wrote about the language.

However, the texts Salo refers to range from early sources like the
_Etymologies_ (c. 1937) to late sources like _The Shibboleth of Feanor_
(c. 1968), and for all we know Tolkien's ideas about the phonology and
the grammar of the language (and even its role in his legendarium --
initially it was "Noldorin", the language of the Exiles, before it became
"Sindarin", the language of the Grey-elves) changed considerably. Thus,
Tolkien's changing ideas clash frequently with Salo's attempt to find
"standard Sindarin".

Consequently, Salo employs a variety of strategies to deal with
"irregular" pieces in Tolkien's writing. In the following, an example for
each of them is provided:

1) Open dismissal:

On p. 390, Salo discusses the phrase _Sarch nia Hîn Húrin_ 'grave of the
children of Húrin' stating "The word _nia_ is almost certainly wrong,
though also seen in _Glaer nia Chîn Húrin_ WJ:160, 251. Perhaps for _nia_
should be read _ina_, as in the early form _Haudh-ina-Nengin_ WJ:79". No
reason is actually given why the form is "almost certainly wrong", though
it doesn't fit into the theory Salo developed earlier.

2) Silent dismissal:

On p. 108, Salo makes a distinction between _si_ 'now' and _sí_ 'here'. On
p. 212 in the discussion of Lúthien's song he stresses this distinction
again: "_si_: adverb, 'now' [...] not to be confused with the related _sí_
'here'."

However, that doesn't go too well with Sam's cry _le nallon sí
di-nguruthos!_ and the translation given by Tolkien in L:278: 'to
thee I cry now in the shadow of (the fear of) death'. In Salo's discussion
of the text, the translation reads 'I cry to you under the horror of death',
and the form _sí_ is conveniently ignored in the word-by-word analysis.

3) Dismissal on a fictional basis:

On p. 118, Salo discusses the past tense formation _car-_ > _agor_. He
acknowledges that Tolkien states that the formation is "usual in Sindarin
'strong' or primary verbs" (XI:415) but continues with the claim "but in
fact examples are much rarer than those of the nasal past. One might
expect such formations as *_udul_ 'he/she/it came', *_idir_ 'he/she/it
watched', *_egin_ 'he/she/it saw', etc., but these are not in fact found."
He conveniently fails to mention that while these three forms are indeed
unattested, his own suggestions *_toll_, *_tirn_, and *_cenn_ are not found
anywhere either.

4) Possible updates

Discussing the conjunction 'and', Salo dismisses the form _ar_ widely
found in Sindarin texts with: "Although this has not been emended in any
of the texts cited in this book, it is clear that Tolkien intended to
generally replace _ar_ with _a(h)_. The change appears to have taken place
in the early 1950s, prior to the publication of _The Lord of the Rings_."
(p. 148)

For all I know, that could be true, although Salo doesn't really provide a
compelling reason. The latest text including _ar_ is the 'Ae Adar', which
dates to "sometime during the 1950s" (VT44:21), and in late notes (1968)
Tolkien gives a Common Eldarin form _as_ and Sindarin _ah_ (VT43:30); cf.
also _Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth_ (X:303). However, it seems rather
absurd to assume that Tolkien would have gone over his early texts some
time around 1960 and changed just _ar_ into _ah_ everywhere and nothing
else.


III. "Proving" the theory

Especially in the discussion of the verbal system, Salo doesn't show a lot
of hesitation to throw out a Tolkien-made example or to emend it to a form
which goes along with his theory. Since most of the attested verbal forms
are actually Noldorin, this is not so much trying to standardize and unify
Sindarin and Noldorin, it is closer to fabricating evidence to "confirm" a
pre-existing theory. The strategies are pretty similar, though:

1) Silent "correction"

Verbs that do not conform to the expected pattern are simply emended
where needed -- this is the fate of the infinitive _garo_ (V:360, VT45:14),
which becomes ?_geri_ in the paradigm shown on p. 126; of the verb
_aphad-_ (XI:387), which is changed into **_aphada-_ (p. 128); of the past
tense _degant_ (VT45:37), which is quoted as **_dagant_ (p. 119) to
"confirm" a pattern; of the verb _dant-_ (V:354), which leads to the
invention of the verb **_danna-_ (p. 135); and a lot of other forms which
don't fit into a neat theory.

2) Silent dismissal

Sometimes forms which do not agree with the theory are left out of the
discussion. On p. 119, Salo states: "There was also a past tense suffix
that added _-s, -ss-_ to the stem. This suffix is found attached to the
_-ta_ verbs. It is also found in the composite form _-a-s, -a-ss-_ with CVC
root verbs that originally ended in the alveolar stops _t_ and _d_ [...]
However,
this past tense may have been preserved only in the Noldorin dialect of
Sindarin, as we have _teithant_ from the _-ta_ verb _teitha-_ but not
_teithas_."

Of course that seems plausible -- unless you include the past tense form
_erias_ from _eria-_ (VT46:7), which spoils not only the statement that it
is a suffix for _-ta_ verbs but also the relevance of _teithant_ (the fact
that VT46 appeared during the final preparation of the book is hardly
relevant -- _erias_ was known from [1] published on _Tengwestië_ shortly
after VT 45 appeared).

3) "Exceptional" status

Forms that do not conform to the pattern but for some reason resist
emendation are explained as "exceptions", like on p. 118 where we learn
about what Salo terms "Ablaut" past tenses: "Pasts of this form are rare
and were probably replaced by analogical formations by the period of
Classical Sindarin."

The actual distribution of nasal infixion past tenses vs. ablaut past
tenses in Noldorin is 12:4, i.e. about 25% of the attested forms show this
variant (see [1]). That is not really negligible. As for the replacement
by analogical formation, 2 of the ablaut past tenses show alternative weak
past tenses using the ending _-ant_ and 6 of the 12 nasal infixed past
tenses show _-ant/-as_ -- the ratio is therefore pretty much the same,
analogical past tenses did not specifically level ablaut past tenses but
all "strong" past tenses in the same way, be it n-infixion or ablaut.

4) Unresolved discrepancies

Occasionally a form that doesn't agree with the theory is allowed to
stand in apparent contradiction to the grammar, though no explanation is
given. For example, we find in the discussion of the preposition _athar_
that it causes liquid mutation, followed by the example _athar harthad_
'beyond hope', where we might expect to see ?_athar charthad_ according to
Salo's liquid mutation table. No discussion of this phenomenon is provided.


IV. Marking (un)attested forms

In the preface, Salo introduces the following scheme to distinguish
attested and reconstructed forms: A ! is used to mark a reconstruction, a
* is used to mark an historic form in the fictional timeline of language
development, and a # is used to mark a form with regularized spelling.

This scheme has one disadvantage which is obvious a priori -- Salo doesn't
distinguish between a historic form found in Tolkien's writings and one
reconstructed by himself: they are both listed using *. In addition, Salo
occasionally lists forms he considers doubtful also marked with the *, cf.
*_udul_ or *_idir_ on p. 118.

Forms not found in Tolkien's writings are sometimes marked with a ! in the
main grammar sections of the book, sometimes not; there is no clear
scheme. In order to learn if a complete word is deduced somewhere one can
usually refer to the Sindarin-English wordlist in the appendix where the
scheme has been carried out more thoroughly, but which inflectional forms
of a given word are actually attested and which are not is impossible to
determine from the book.

To be fair, Salo discusses outright reconstructions in text passages (so
e.g. for the pronouns or the verb 'to be'), and the pattern of the four
consonant mutations is marked very thoroughly according to what is
attested and what is deduced. Nevertheless, this rigor is lacking in many
other discussions of the grammar. Regularized spelling likewise is only
indicated in the appendix, not in the main bulk of the text. This creates
the (false) impressions that a lot of forms would be comparatively well
known.

The translations given for Sindarin expressions and names are often
different from those found in Tolkien's writings (and as such unattested).
For example, for _nad_ 'thing' (V:374) we find on p. 121 the additional
translation 'being'. However, this translation isn't actually given
anywhere by Tolkien; its purpose is evidently to provide support for
Salo's idea that the form is a gerund of the verb 'to be'.


V. Sindarin phonology development

A large portion of the first part of the book deals with the sequence of
sound changes from Common Eldarin to "classical" Sindarin across the
intermediate stages of Old Sindarin and Middle Sindarin. This is a highly
detailed analysis involving a staggering amount of work and is very
fascinating to read, although it is difficult to see the complete picture
due to the wealth of details.

The main problem here is that Salo did not introduce a scheme to make a
distinction between forms by Tolkien and by himself. Thus, while the
sequence of sound shifts may have been as Salo describes, it is very hard
to see to what degree one can rely on the tables without re-doing the
whole analysis. This is very sad, but as it is, I would hesitate to base a
serious conclusion on the tables.


VI. The grammar and syntax of Sindarin

In the discussion of Sindarin grammar and syntax, David Salo presents new
observations and interesting insights alongside forms pressed into a
framework he thinks should be correct.

I found the observation that the first noun in a genitive sequence or
adjective is often shortened (p. 93, 103) very interesting and new.
Similarly the A-affection on p. 82 (the change from e.g. near-final _i_ to
_e_ in the presence of an ending _a_ in Old Sindarin, cf. the adjective
ending _-ina_ > _-en_) is a very good explanation of a phenomenon of which
I had only noticed some particular instances. Likewise, the presentation of
the ablaut phenomenon (p. 90) is very clear and nicely done.

The presentation of the adjective employs a few unusual interpretations,
which nevertheless are possible. So is Salo's assumption that _menel-vîr
síla díriel_ should be read as 'watchful sky-jewel shines' rather than
'sky-jewel shines watchful' (p. 101), and the observation that if the
adjective precedes the noun, the noun may be lenited (p. 102) is very good
indeed. On the other hand, it is odd to see _fen hollen_ as an example for
the lack of lenition (p. 102) -- since that is the only place where the word
is attested, we don't know if it is lenited ?_sollen_ or unlenited ?_hollen_.

The discussion of the pronominal system is as expected -- since Tolkien
changed this particular aspect of his languages over and over, it is hard
to make certain statements, and this is a chapter in which Salo is very
careful and honest in the distinction between attested and reconstructed
forms.

A critical view on the presentation of the verbal system has already been
given in some detail above: The presentation suffers strongly from the
fact that Salo tries to force attested forms to conform to his ideas
rather than let the attested forms guide the development of his theory.

The discussion of the definite article includes the old idea that it may
become ?_ir_ before nouns beginning with _i-_ -- while there is a
possibility that this is so, there is _i innas lin_ 'thy will' from the Ae Adar
(VT44:21f) to show that this is not necessarily so, and Qenya _írë_ (V:72)
'when' to provide a plausible alternative translation of the (untranslated)
_Ir Ithil ammen Eruchîn _ (III:354). Salo doesn't mention this possibility.


VII. Sindarin word formation

To be frank, Salo's chapter on word formation from Common Eldarin roots
doesn't make much sense to me. On p. 158, he seems to assume that words
like _cam_ 'hand' or _gamp_ 'hook' are derived from a nasalized root (as
opposed to the derivation using a suffix described later), hence KAB >
?_kamb_ > _cam_ or GAP > ?_gamp_ > _gamp_. That idea completely neglects
the simple fact that a form in Common Eldarin is often not only relevant for
Sindarin only but also for Quenya. Therefore we should be looking for a
form which is able to yield both Sindarin _gamp_ and Quenya _ampa_ -- and
that rather suggests a derivational suffix like _-na_. It so happens that
Tolkien himself describes the derivation _gapna_ > _gampa_ > _gamp_ in
VT47:20, where we also find the Common Eldarin form of _cam_ -- it is
_kambâ_ (VT47:7), which is the result of _kab-mâ_ (VT47:12), i.e. it also
involves a derivational suffix.

The same is true for the nouns with doubled finals -- Salo derives _peth_
'word' via a doubling of the final root consonant, not via a suffix -- and
yet we find under KWET  the Common Eldarin form _kwetta_ (V:366), which
evidently employs a derivational suffix _-ta_ (and leads to Quenya
_quetta_  attested in XI:391).

A similar lack of consistency with the formation of Quenya words flaws the
whole chapter -- Salo fails to recognize that Sindarin _aegas_ 'mountain
peak' is the cognate of Quenya _aikasse_ (V:349), and the latter form
gives a good clue as to the origin of _-as_ in this case: it probably
represents a fossilized locative _aikasse_ *'on pointed place' >
'mountain-peak' and probably is not the same suffix seen in e.g. _galas_
'growth' but rather in _ennas_ 'there' (the latter form is interpreted by
Salo as fossilized locative on p. 109).

Likewise, the gerund endings are not really ?_-ad_ (from ?_-ata_) and
?_-ed_ (from ?_-ita_) as Salo claims (p. 162f), they rather represent the
same ending _-ta_ which is seen in Quenya, for A-verbs directly attached
to the stem, cf. _*lindata_ > _linnad_, for stem verbs by means of a
connecting vowel _i_ just like any present tense ending, hence _*karita_ >
*_cared _ with A-affection.

I cannot find much useful information in the word formation part, too much
of what could be learned by comparing parallel evolution of Sindarin and
Quenya from the same Common Eldarin stem has simply been neglected.

The discussion of Sindarin compound words on the other hand is a different
matter. Salo goes nicely into the different ideas behind compounding words
and provides an impressive list of examples which show the rich variety of
consonant and vowel changes which may occur according to the phonological
environment. This piece of work goes far beyond the Ardalambion statement
in [2] that "when a word is used as the second element of a compound, it
often undergoes changes similar to the effects of the soft mutation."


VIII. Discussion of attested texts

The discussion of the attested Sindarin samples is seriously flawed by
Salo's unwillingness to accept what Tolkien wrote.

First of all, translations given by Salo seldom agree with Tolkien's own
words (but there is no statement that the translations have in fact been
altered). Compare, for example, the translation of Sam's inspired cry given
by Salo:

'O Queen of the Stars, Kindler of the Stars, far-watching from heaven, I
cry to you under the horror of death! O watch over me, Ever-white Veil!'
(p. 223)

and by Tolkien (L:278):

'O Elbereth Starkindler, from heaven gazing-afar, to thee I cry now in the
shadow of (the fear of) death. O look towards me, Everwhite!'

I see no necessity not to provide Tolkien's own translations and not to
mark what is probably intended as a more literal translation as such. But
it doesn't stop here: Salo likewise shows no hesitation in altering the
actual texts he quotes. While the original of the Ae Adar (VT4:21f) has _i
innas lin_, Salo's version has a long _i innas lín_ (I agree that it
probably can be regularized, but I don't agree that it can be done without
a remark); and while the original has _bo Ceven_, Salo alters this into _bo
Geven_, stating that _bo Geven_ "is expected here" (p. 232).

It certainly doesn't make too much sense to me to discuss the attested
texts if they are altered in the process without notice to fit Salo's
theory. In an appendix designed to discuss Tolkien's attested texts, Salo
should be doing that rather than just pretending to.


IX. Annotated bibliography

If you are one of the people who wondered "Where the hell do we find all
the stuff these grammar texts refer to?", then the annotated bibliography
is for you. In fact, it is an excellent idea. David Salo describes nicely
where in Tolkien's writings what information can be found, so anyone
looking for the original references can plan his trip to the bookstore
accordingly. This is not unimportant, since there are books in which only
a few names can be found whereas from other sources a wealth of grammar
information can be extracted.

It seems a bit odd that Salo tries to provide corrigenda to the
_Etymologies_ -- while the published texts certainly contain misreadings,
VT 45 and VT 46, edited by Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick H. Wynne, provide
"Addenda and Corrigenda to the _Etymologies_" -- unlike Salo's work, their
work is based on a re-examination of the original manuscripts and not on
theoretical considerations, and therefore is bound to be much more
meaningful. While Salo contends that they still may contain mistakes,
_Vinyar Tengwar_ has a list of errata, so there is no need to make point
out of it.

The book concludes with a review of previous works about Sindarin --
Ruth S. Noel's _The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth_ and Jim Allan's
_An Introduction to Elvish_. Since both books are very outdated, the result
is predictable -- Salo points out a lot of flaws in the identification of
forms that were (at that time) rather mysterious.


X. Summary

Without question, _A Gateway to Sindarin_ is currently the best English
book available on Sindarin. However, given the fact that the only
competitors are Ruth S. Noel's _The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth_
and Jim Allan's _An Introduction to Elvish_, which are both outdated and
inaccurate simply due to a lack of published samples of Sindarin when they
were written, that in itself is not much of an achievement.

Who will profit from the book? It is not for someone seeking to learn
Sindarin and to use it for his own compositions -- it is no language
course, doesn't contain exercises, and (apart from what Tolkien has
written) no continuous texts in Sindarin that would show how the language
could be used. Teaching is not Salo's aim.

It is probably not even an easy resource for someone who is looking for an
introduction to Sindarin without the aim to learn it as a language, due to
the highly technical terms used by Salo -- one has to have more than just
a basic knowledge of linguistic terminology in order to understand some
passages.

It cannot be used as a reference for scholarly studies -- Salo's many
alterations of Tolkien's material, the lack of distinction between
Tolkien-made and Salo-made historic forms, and the inaccuracy in providing
Tolkien's own translations make this impossible -- which is a clear loss.
With a little more effort, a valuable resource could have been produced.
As it is, the only safe option (though time consuming) is to look up
things scattered in Tolkien's original writings -- lists of CE roots, names
and words are useless for scholarly purposes if they do not reproduce the
original sources faithfully.

Given all that, someone with an interest in technical studies of the
language, be it phonology or grammar, will find a lot of interesting ideas
in the book. Unfortunately, the reasoning behind these ideas is never
explained; therefore to get the most out of it one needs both a good
knowledge of the underlying sources and of other secondary literature
discussing Sindarin grammar with Tolkien's writings as starting point.

With a pricetag of $50, my counsel would be to think seriously if one
would like to have the book. For learning the grammar of Sindarin on a
technical level, it is not better than what Ardalambion or other sources
provide for free. For learning how to use the language it is not a
suitable resource (there are likewise various internet resources available
for free for that purpose), and for scholarly studies it cannot be used.

If you have read everything else about Sindarin already -- then get it, it
is interesting and brings some novel aspects.

[1] 'The Past-Tense Verb in the Noldorin of the _Etymologies_' by Carl F.
Hostetter on http://www.elvish.org/Tengwestie

[2] 'Sindarin -- the Noble Tongue' by Helge Fauskanger on
http://www.uib.no/people/hnohf/

Thorsten Renk sent his most welcome and knowledgeable discussion of
'A Gateway to Sindarin' by David Salo. Regarding your review, I've got two
questions:

1) You say David Salo's language is often over-technical. Could you
provide some examples, where you feel a term to be 'too technical' ?
Certainly, if Salo addresses a scholarly audience there is nothing
wrong with that. In my world, technical language is highly useful and
being employed because it is accurate. So, 'unnecessarily technical' in
what respect?

2) Under section V. you state

> "it is difficult to see the complete picture due to the wealth of
> details."

which sounds rather astounding to me. In fact, it seems like an
oxymoron. At least in my world an accurate historical description of a
language can only come close to a complete picture by using all the
details one can get. Indeed, earlier in your review you (quite rightly,
I think) expose David Salo's omissions or dismissals of attested forms
as giving a wrong, or incomplete picture. Or do you refer to the manner
of presentation rather than the amount of details? Indeed, it seems
like David Salo actually aims at a 'complete picture' of Sindarin, but
according to what he views as 'standard Sindarin', not attested
Tolkienian Noldorin, Sindarin etc. That is why he follows a somewhat
reductionist and/ or reinterpreting approach, much to the detriment of
his work. A 'complete' picture needs to point out the many layers,
lacunae and often patchy evidence rather than create the image of
totally homogeneous Sindarin, that probably never existed. Which leads
to my third point:

3) To me it seems David Salo's book is meant to 'teach'. To teach a
fictional, 'regularized' Sindarin and to provide a tool to create forms
not actually attested, using a -more or less- Salonian pattern.
Surely, a less technical book could have been written for the less
linguistically savvy reader but that, we agree, wasn't Mr. Salo's aim.
Rather, he wanted to present 'Sindarin' as _per Salonem_ in a
comprehensive matter. To be used, perhaps, in productions and
fabrications à la 'The Lord of the Rings, the movie'.

David Kiltz

On p. 46 of the EQG Tolkien present the long and short syllable of a
sentence but  he gives only some of the syllabic divisions, not all.

I wonder who would agree with me and divide "tárakasse Taniqetildo"
as :

        tá|rak|ass|e | Tan|iq|et|ild|o

-- "iq" is long because q is 'long' (kw).

Tolkien calls it a 'tag'. I guees he does not mean that it is a 'tag
question'... Does he mean a 'tag statement' then ? Or a 'cliché' then?
Something the Elves used to say a lot.

elfiquement vôtre,

Edouard Kloczko

[Tolkien calls this Qenya phrase a "frequent tag", and first described
it as a "frequent tag at end of Q. poem" (PE14:46, n. 34). It seems
clear that by "frequent tag" Tolkien meant 'stock phrase commonly
used in poetry to fill the meter of a line', much as we refer to
"Homeric tags". PHW]

With regard to the questions raised by David Kiltz:

> 1) You say David Salo's language is often over-technical. Could you
> provide some examples, where you feel a term to be 'too technical' ?
> Certainly, if Salo addresses a scholarly audience there is nothing
> wrong with that. In my world, technical language is highly useful and
> being employed because it is accurate. So, 'unnecessarily technical' in
> what respect?

Please let me first say that I do not object to the use of technical
language as such -- as long as it is done for precision and with proper
consideration of the audience. I use a highly technical language in my own
scientific publications (which are intended to be read by heavy-ion
physics theorists). Likewise, Vinyar Tengwar employs a technical language
and I can't find anything wrong with it -- it is written as a scholarly
publication and fulfills the criteria for scholarly work, i.e. citation of
other works, references to sources where applicable and so on.

However, in my field (physics), I would make a difference in the use of
technical terms when addressing heavy-ion theorists, physicists  or
scientists in general, acknowledging that there is a tradeoff between the
use of precise terms for precision and making other people understand what
I mean. This is a personal judgement, and my remark about Salo's use of
technical terms reflects precisely that -- my personal impression. I feel
that the intention of the book is being a 'summary' rather than an ongoing
research project, and as such I think that  technical terms are at times
overused.

To give an example from my own field (I am sorry, that is easiest for me)
-- I could say something like "Applying the 'plus' operator to the '1'
element and the '2' element leads to an equivalence relation to the '3'
element of the group with respect to this operator." While using technical
terms, the sentence actually means only '1 plus 2 is 3', and unless I am
talking about other groups defined by other operators where the
meta-language of group structure actually would be necessary, I cannot
find that there is any loss of information in the simple version.

Coming back to Salo -- this is how I feel about Chapter 17 on syntax. I
count myself among the intended audience -- although I have no formal
knowledge of linguistics, I know the grammar of several languages apart
from my mothertongue. I would be unable to make much of the chapter if I
had not read a book on X-bar syntax theory once. As far as I know, syntax
theory is a kind of meta-language for the description of language -- neat
if you want to compare two languages with very different grammar, say
Japanese and Finnish, where the Finnish terms would be inadequate to
describe Japanese grammar and vice versa, but not adding to clarity if you
discuss only one language. I would assume that people who have not read
X-bar theory are confused when Salo calls _i_ a complementizer (p.202) (a
term non-linguists are in my experience not familiar at all) whereas
Tolkien calls the Qenya relative pronoun _ya_ a relative pronoun (PE14:54,
that's admittedly Early Qenya, but I think the point that Tolkien didn't
use X-bar theory anywhere to describe the grammar of his languages is
valid).

So, to give the example of a sentence which I find unnecessarily
techincal, p. 203: "A sentence can consist of a noun phrase and a
prepositional phrase (...), in which case the sentence has a jussive
sense. These are distinct from noun-phrase sentences, as the prepositional
phrase does not form part of the noun phrase but rather functions
adverbially to the unexpressed verb 'to be'." I confess I have no idea what
'a jussive sense' is (it isn't explained in the glossary) but from the
examples given below I gather (by backwards engineering) that the actual
meaning of the paragraph is rather simple: If a noun is given as subject
of the sentence and if there is an object with a preposition, often the
imperative 'be!' is implied but not written. I fail to see how Salo aims
for clarity here, as his translations (e.g. '(let there be) fire for the
saving for us') place 'fire' as object, which doesn't seem to be implied
by the Sindarin version since there is no lenition of _gurth_ in e.g.
_gurth an glamhoth_.

It is my impression that the technical language used here is a complicated
way of expressing simple grammatical constructions.

> 2) Under section V. you state
>
>> "it is difficult to see the complete picture due to the wealth of
>> details."
>
> which sounds rather astounding to me. In fact, it seems like an
> oxymoron. At least in my world an accurate historical description of a
> language can only come close to a complete picture by using all the
> details one can get. Indeed, earlier in your review you (quite rightly,
> I think) expose David Salo's omissions or dismissals of attested forms
> as giving a wrong, or incomplete picture. Or do you refer to the manner
> of presentation rather than the amount of details?

There is a German saying 'Den Wald vor lauter Baeumen nicht sehen' (to be
unable to see the forest because of all the trees) -- that is what I had in
mind there. I am lost in the many details -- which I for sure would not
want to be left out -- I would just be glad for a guideline indicating the
patterns, the differences in flavour in the changes at the different
conceptual stages. In a nutshell, I would like to read (in addition to
the text as it is) the answer to the question, "If you were to write a
paragraph summarizing the changes from Old Sindarin to Sindarin, what
would that be?" So -- this is only a reference to the manner of
presentation.


> 3) To me it seems David Salo's book is meant to 'teach'. To teach a
> fictional, 'regularized' Sindarin and to provide a tool to create forms
> not actually attested, using a -more or less- Salonian pattern.
> Surely, a less technical book could have been written for the less
> linguistically savvy reader but that, we agree, wasn't Mr. Salo's aim.
> Rather, he wanted to present 'Sindarin' as _per Salonem_ in a
> comprehensive matter. To be used, perhaps, in productions and
> fabrications à la 'The Lord of the Rings, the movie'.

I am not quite sure about Salo's aim (we might ask him, I suppose). I am,
however, asked by very different people "Would you recommend that I read
the book?" -- so I know that non-linguistic minded people are thinking
about ordering it.

* Thorsten

Errata for VT 45/46:

I. On Page 13 in VT 46 is mentioned the stem _SIR-_:

"[for:] Q, ON _sire_ [read:] Q, ON _sîre_" (here _î_ =
an _i_ with macron in the A&C)

Instead in "The Lost Road" it reads (V:385) :

"SIR- flow (...) Q, ON _síre_"

[You are absolutely right about this error. Thank you for
catching it! -- PHW]

II. When I went through the Stems ending in _-S_ I stumbled over an
interesting detail: On VT 45 p. 7 (Stem BES-) it is proposed that Q
_verno_ (with primitive _besnô_ given in the _Etymologies_, see
V:352) should read _venno_. Contrarily I found an adjective _lorna_
'asleep' mentioned in the description of the Stem LOS- (V:370), the
primitive form of which can be reconstructed as *_losnâ_ (with *_-nâ_
as a primitive adjectival ending seen also in "*_ragnâ_" (RAG-, V:382)).
I assume in conclusion that primitive, medial _-sn-_ became _-rn-_
in Quenya, and in this light it seems to be more "logical" that _venno_
should indeed read _verno_ as transcribed by Christopher Tolkien. To
support my view I furthermore give an example excerpted from VT46
(pg. 9): "PHAS- [append:] _Q fazne, farne_ foliage".

Yet I don´t dare to dismiss _venno_ for two reasons: in this case
it could be that Tolkien changed once again his mind when he started
to construct the stems in L-, so that medial _-sn-_ earlier became
_-nn-_ and later _-rn-_ (or even _-zn-_ as above?). Secondly it is
surely very difficult to decipher the original manuscript and achieving
a solution may be impossible.

[Fortunately, the original manuscript in this instance is quite clear:
the form is without a doubt _venno_. As Christopher Tolkien noted
in his introductory comments to the _Etymologies_, "the B-stems
are distinct from all the rest in that they were written out as a very
finished and indeed beautiful manuscript" (V:343). Further confirmation
of Q. _venno_ is provided by its cognate forms in the other languages:
ON _benno_, EN _benn_ 'man'; and Ilk. _benn_ 'husband'. -- PHW]

Errata for PE 14, 15:

On the very first page of the two books, there is a mistake above the
contents. It reads: "Parma Eldlamberon" which surely should be
"Parma Eldalamberon".

[You are correct; again, thanks for catching the error. -- PHW]

Philipp Marquart

PARMA ELDALAMBERON 13
-------------------------
The ALPHABET OF RÚMIL and
EARLY NOLDORIN FRAGMENTS
by J. R. R. TOLKIEN
-------------------

This issue has two sections of
writings by J. R. R. Tolkien:
"The Alphabet of Rumil"
edited by Arden R. Smith; and
"Early Noldorin Fragments" edited
by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden,
Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne. 
Both of these have been prepared
with the guidance of Christopher
Tolkien and with the permission of
the Tolkien Estate.

  <http://www.eldalamberon.com/parma13.html>

The Rúmilian Sarati are the earliest of the Elvish writing systems
devised by Tolkien, ultimately envisioned as the historical
precursor to the Feanorian Tengwar, the Elvish script seen in
The Lord of the Rings.  "The Alphabet of Rúmil" is an edition
of Tolkien's Rúmilian writings, with examples of the script
reproduced in facsimile, including charts of the sounds
represented by the letters, and both Elvish and English
texts written in Rúmilian. 

Transcriptions of these texts and detailedcommentary on the
chronology of the documents and evolution of the conception
of the writing system are included in this edition.

"Early Noldorin Fragments" is a collection of Tolkien's word-lists
and grammatical descriptions of the Noldorin language from the
1920s.  These trace the evolution the language from its beginnings
as the Goldogrin of the "Gnomish Lexicon" to its conception
as the Exilic Noldorin that would appear in "The Etymologies".
The fragments include:

Heraldic Devices of Tol Erethrin
Goldogrin Pronominal Prefixes
Early Chart of Names
The Official Name List
The Gnomish Lexicon Slips
Early Noldorin Grammar
Noldorin Word-Lists
Noldorin Dictionary 

These writings reveal the emergence of significant conceptual
details, such the use of vowel mutation to mark Noldorin
plural nouns, and the place of Old Noldorin in the internal
history of the language.  Detailed annotations and commentary
on these conceptual developments in the documents are
included in this edition. This reprint has the corrected
pagination and the full text.

Parma Eldalamberon Issue Number 13 is currently available.

Cost: $30.00 per copy including postage and handling world-wide.

Electronic payment by PayPal is available at the following link:

<http://www.eldalamberon.com/parma13.html>

Or send check or money-order (U.S. funds only) to:

  Christopher Gilson
  10646-A Rosewood Road
  Cupertino, CA 95014
  U.S.A.

I'm happy to announce that I have been invited to the SILF, which this year is
hosted by the University of Helsinki
http://www.helsinki.fi/romaanisetkielet/congres/index_eng.htm
to talk about Quenya.

The SILF is a major event in International Linguistics and I hope to spark
there some interest in Tolkien's ConLang. It is about time. :-)

It is not open to the "public"... But the Lambendili or even the Lambengolmor
(from Sweden, Finland, or Russia...) can contact me in private. ;-)
I will stay the entire week in Helsinki to gain a better view of the "Quenya
Country". :-)

elfiquement vôtre,

Edouard Kloczko

[Congratulations, Edouard! Perhaps you can post a report here
afterwards to give us your impressions of how Quenya and
Tolkienian Linguistics were received at the conference. PHW]

--- In lambengolmor@yahoogroups.com, "laurifindil" <ejk@f...> wrote:

> I'm happy to announce that I have been invited to the SILF, which this
> year is hosted by the University of Helsinki
> http://www.helsinki.fi/romaanisetkielet/congres/index_eng.htm
> to talk about Quenya.

<snip>

> [Congratulations, Edouard! Perhaps you can post a report here
> afterwards to give us your impressions of how Quenya and
> Tolkienian Linguistics were received at the conference. PHW]

I will with pleasure.

And if I may ask for some help.

I have been looking for months for a copy of "Scholarship & Fantasy",
Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon, May 1992, Turku, Finland,
edited by K. J. Battarbee.

Anyone having the book, please contact me! Thanks.

elfiquement vôtre,

Edouard Kloczko