LESSON ELEVEN
The concept of cases. The Genitive case.

CASES
Lessons 1-10 have mainly been concerned with adjectives and verbs. As for nouns, we have only discussed how their plural and dual forms are constructed. There is, however, much more to say about the inflection of the Quenya noun. The second half of this course will predominantly be concerned with the elaborate case system of Quenya, which is indeed the most characteristic feature of the language. It is in the treatment of nouns that the grammatical structure of Quenya most clearly reflects two of Tolkien's inspirations, Finnish and Latin.
What, linguistically speaking, are cases? A noun may have many functions in a sentence. English may indicate what function a noun has by means of word order alone. In a sentence like "the man loves the woman", it is merely the word order that gives away the fact that "the man" is the subject and "the woman" is the object. The rule that very early slips into the subconscious mind of children exposed to English goes something like this: "The noun in front of the predicate verb is its subject, while the noun that comes after it is normally its object." Where word order is not enough, English may slip in clarifying prepositions in front of a noun, e.g. "to" in a sentence like "the Elf gives a gift to the Dwarf". There are languages that wouldn't need to have a "to" here; instead the noun "Dwarf" would occur in a special, inflectional form.
	Of course, Quenya also has prepositions, and the student will already have encountered several: nu "under", or "over", imbë "between", ve "as, like", mir "into" (which word, by the way, is formed from the simpler preposition mi "in"). But it is a characteristic feature of Quenya grammar that where English would often place a preposition in front of a noun, or rely on word order alone to indicate what the function of a noun is, Quenya would have a special form of the noun which by itself indicates its function. These various, specialized noun-forms are called cases. For instance, our example above – "the Elf gives a gift to the Dwarf" – would translate into Quenya something like i Elda anta anna i Naucon, where the case ending -n added to Nauco "Dwarf" corresponds to the English preposition "to". (This particular case is called the dative, to be fully discussed in Lesson Thirteen.)
	Certain prepositions may also demand that the word (noun or pronoun) following them appears inflected for some case – sometimes quite irrespective of the normal, independent function of this case. The relevant preposition is then said to "take" (or "govern") this or that case. The same phenomenon may be found in English, if one looks closely. While the case system is all but gone as far as English nouns are concerned, many English pronouns at least preserve a specific form that is used when the pronoun is the object and not the subject of a sentence. That is why "Peter saw he" is wrong; it must be "Peter saw him", with the object form of this pronoun. ("He" is the subject form instead, and therefore quite proper in a sentence like "he saw Peter".) But while the primary function of the form "him" is to function as the object of a sentence, very many prepositions also insist on being followed by this form. For instance, "from he" does not sound well; it must be "from him", though "him" is not the object of a sentence here.

The Quenya noun-forms so far discussed (whether singular, plural or dual) are examples of the nominative case. The most important grammatical function of the nominative is that this is the form a noun has when it functions as the subject of a verb. In Lesson Five, we very briefly touched on another form of the noun – the accusative case, which is the form a noun assumes when it is the object of a verb. Modern English does not preserve any distinction between nominative and accusative in nouns (though such a distinction persists in parts of the pronoun table, like nominative "he" vs. accusative "him" in our examples above). English nouns do not change their form dependent on whether the noun is the subject or the object of the sentence – and neither do nouns in Third Age Quenya. Tolkien imagined an archaic form of Quenya, "Book Quenya", that did have an accusative case distinct in form from the nominative. The noun "ship" would be cirya (pl. ciryar) if it was used as the subject of a sentence, but ciryá (pl. ciryai) if it appeared as the object: nominative vs. accusative. However, the distinct accusative disappeared from the language as spoken in Middle-earth; the forms cirya (pl. ciryar) came to be used both as subject and object. So either you can say that in Third Age Quenya, the nominative and the accusative cases have come to be identical in form, or you can say that the nominative has taken over the functions of the distinct accusative so that in effect, there is no accusative anymore. It boils down to exactly the same thing.
	But as far as we know, the accusative was the only Quenya case that was lost among the Exiles. The remaining cases, in addition to the nominative, are the genitive, the possessive, the dative, the allative, the ablative, the locative, and the instrumental. (I should add that learning the form and function of the cases is more important than learning their Latin names.) There is also a mysterious case which Tolkien listed in the Plotz Letter, but without discussing its name or use – so there is little I can say about it here.
	In Lessons 11-16, we will work our way through the list of Quenya cases, discussing their functions and how they are formed. Precisely because we have the blessed Plotz Letter, we are now on somewhat more solid ground than we usually find ourselves upon when discussing Quenya grammar. (Tolkien really should have sent Dick Plotz a list of pronouns and verb forms as well!)

THE GENITIVE
We will start our discussion of the Quenya cases with the few Quenya noun forms that actually have a direct English equivalent (sort of). Where Quenya has nine or ten noun cases, English has only two: nominative and genitive. The nominative we have already discussed: In English as in Exilic Quenya, a noun appears in the nominative when it is the subject or the object of a noun. In both languages, the nominative singular may well be considered the simplest form of the noun. There is no special ending or other inflectional element to signal that "this is a nominative form"; rather it is the absence of any such element that tells us what case the noun appears in.
	All the other cases – or in English, the one other case – do display special endings, though. The one noun case of modern English, except for the nominative, is the genitive. (Please notice the spelling; I am tired of seeing "genetive" on certain mailing lists.) In the singular, it is formed by adding the ending 's to the noun, e.g. girl's from girl. In the plural, this ending normally merges with the plural ending -s, but its theoretical presence is hinted at in writing by means of an apostrophe (girls' for **girls's...Gollum would have loved the latter form).
The grammatical function of this case ought to be familiar enough to anyone who is capable of reading this text; already in Lesson Two, we briefly touched on this "ownership form". As stated in my handy Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, the genitive case is used to indicate "source or possession". In a combination like the girl's doll, the genitive case is used to coordinate two nouns so as to indicate that the former is the owner or possessor of the latter. (This latter word which the genitive form connects with, like "doll" in our example, is sometimes said to be governed by the genitive. Conversely, the genitive form itself may be said to be "dependent on" this other word; this is Tolkien's wording in UT:317.) The English genitive does not necessarily connote "ownership" in the strictest sense, but may also be used to describe other kinds of "belonging", such as family relationships – e.g. the girl's mother. As for the genitive suggesting source, we can think of such phrases as the architect's drawings (the drawings made by the architect, not necessarily owned by him, but originating with him). The genitive noun may not even denote a sentient being, e.g. Britain's finest artists (the finest artists coming from/living in Britain). The latter example may also be termed genitive of location; Britain's finest artists are the finest artists located in Britain.
The noun a genitive form is dependent on may well be another genitive, which in turn refers to a third noun – e.g. "the queen's sister's house". In principle we can string up an infinite number of genitives ("the king's father's aunt's brother's dog's... [etc. etc.]) – though it should not come as a great shock to anyone that people who care about style and legibility normally won't push this too far.
	Somewhat like adjectives, genitives can be used both attributively and as predicates. All the examples above are examples of attributive genitives, directly teamed up with a noun which the genitive is then dependent on. A genitive would however function as a predicate in a sentence like the book is Peter's. But rather than using genitives as predicates, English often resorts to circumlocutions (like the book belongs to Peter).
	Quite often, English does not use a genitive, but instead employs a phrase involving a preposition – predominantly of, e.g. the finest artists of Britain rather than Britain's finest artists. In some contexts, "of"-constructions are actually preferred to genitives, e.g. the end of the road rather than the road's end.
	So what about Quenya? The functions of English genitives, as well as English "of"-constructions, are covered by two Quenya noun cases; we will discuss the other relevant case in the next lesson. The functions of the case normally referred to as the Quenya genitive are somewhat more limited than the functions of the English genitive. But first of all, let us discuss how the Quenya genitive is formed.
	The basic Quenya genitive ending is -o. Starting from nouns that should be well known to the student by now, we can derive genitives like arano "king's", tário "queen's", vendëo "maiden's". If the noun ends in -o already, the genitive ending normally becomes "invisible". In UT:8 we have ciryamo for "mariner's". This is our sole attestation of this noun, but there is no reason to doubt that its nominative form "mariner" is likewise ciryamo (this word is obviously derived from cirya "ship", and the masculine/personal ending -mo [WJ:400] is well attested elsewhere: hence cirya-mo = "ship-person"). A name like Ulmo could be both nominative "Ulmo" and genitive "Ulmo's"; the context must decide how the form is to be understood. (However, in the case of nouns in -o that have special stem-forms in -u, like curo, curu- "skillful device", we would probably see curuo as the genitive form.)
	Nouns ending in -a lose this vowel when the genitive ending -o is added: Since Quenya phonology does not permit the combination ao, it is simplified to o. For instance, Namárië demonstrates that the genitive "Varda's" is Vardo, not **Vardao. It follows, then, that a few otherwise distinct nouns coincide in the genitive; for instance, it would seem that anta "face" and anto "mouth" both have the genitive form anto. The context must be taken into account to determine which noun is meant.
	In the plural, the genitive ending -o is expanded to -on (as we shall see later, the plural marker -n occurs in several of the Quenya case endings). This ending -on is added to the simplest (nominative) plural form of the noun, in -r or -i. Hence an r-plural like aldar "trees" has the genitive plural aldaron "trees', of trees" – whereas an i-plural like eleni "stars" has the genitive form elenion "stars', of stars". (The normal stress rules still apply, so while eleni is accented on the first syllable, the stress must fall on -len- in the longer form elenion.) Both of these examples are attested in LotR: Namárië has rámar aldaron for "wings of trees" (a poetic circumlocution for "leaves"), and Frodo speaking in tongues in Cirith Ungol referred to Eärendil as ancalima elenion, "brightest of stars".
A prominent example of a genitive plural is the very title of the Silmarillion, formed from the nominative plural Silmarilli "Silmarils". This title makes good sense considering that it is properly only one half of a longer genitive phrase, found on the title page following the Ainulindalë and the Valaquenta: Quenta Silmarillion, "The History of the Silmarils". As is already evident, a Quenya genitive is often best rendered as an English of-construction, not as an English genitive with the ending -'s or -s':  "Stars' brightest" or "the Silmarils' History" would not be good English.
	As for dual genitive, Tolkien indicated that its ending is -to, combining the dual ending -t with the basic genitive ending -o. In the Plotz letter, Tolkien used the example ciryato, "of a couple of ships". There is one uncertainty here, not addressed in Plotz: Should the ending be -to also in the case of nouns that have dual forms in -u rather than -t? Or would the u simply replace t here, so that such nouns have dual genitives in -uo instead? Concretely: if the nominative "(the) Two Trees" is Aldu, should the genitive "of (the) Two Trees" be Alduto or Alduo? A form like Alduto would have a double dual marker, both u and t, but then attested plural genitives likewise include double plural markers (elenion, aldaron). Even so, I am not ready to rule out the possibility that genitives in -u should have genitives in -uo, e.g. i cala Alduo for "the light of (the) Two Trees". But since published material allows no certain conclusions in this matter, I have simply avoided the problem in the exercises below.

The special "stem forms" of some nouns are relevant for the formation of genitives as well. From rá (ráv-) "lion" we would have the genitive rávo "lion's"; from nís (niss-) "woman" we would have nisso "woman's". The plural forms would be rávion "lions', of lions" and nission "women's, of women" – cf. the nominative plurals rávi, nissi. I am not quite sure about the dual forms; perhaps we can have ráveto, nisseto (an -e- intruding before the ending -to so that impossible consonant clusters do not arise; see later lessons for attested examples of an extra -e- being slipped in like this).

So far the formation of the genitive; now we must return to its function. In English, the genitive very often indicates who owns what, as in "the man's house". Indeed this is the main function of the English genitive. However, the Quenya genitive case is not normally used to describe simple ownership of things. Tolkien expressly noted that properly, this case was "not [used] as a 'possessive', or adjectivally to describe qualities" (WJ:368).
	To understand its function it is often useful to bear in mind its ultimate derivation. Tolkien explained that "the source of the most used 'genitive' inflection of Quenya" was an ancient adverbial or "prepositional" element basically meaning from or from among. According to WJ:368, it originally had the form HO, or as an element added to nouns, -hô. The latter was the direct source of the Quenya case ending -o (plural -on). But according to the Etymologies, Quenya also had a regular preposition ho "from", and in WJ:368 Tolkien mentions hó- "from, off" as a verbal prefix, e.g. in hótuli- "come away" or literally "from-come".
	Even the case ending -o may occasionally express "from", the most basic meaning of the primitive element HO. In the prose Namárië, we have the line Varda...ortanë máryat Oiolossëo, "Varda...raised her hands from Oiolossë" (essentially the same in the version in LotR, but with a more complicated, "poetic" word order). The translation provided in LotR reads: "Varda...from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands" – Oiolossë "Ever-white" being a name of Taniquetil, the great mountain of the Blessed Realm where Manwë and Varda dwell.
	However, Oiolossëo is our sole example of the Quenya genitive being used with such a meaning. (For "from", Quenya regularly uses another case – the ablative, to be discussed in a later lesson.) Normally, the ending -o is seen to have acquired other, more abstract meanings. Nonetheless, one important function of the Quenya genitive still clearly reflects the idea of something coming "from" something or someone else: The Quenya genitive can be used to describe the source, origin or former possessor of something – so-called "derivative genitives" (WJ:369). Tolkien explained that róma Oromëo "Oromë's horn" refers to a horn coming from Oromë, not a horn that Oromë still has, or still had at the time that is being considered (WJ:168). Likewise, lambë Eldaron could not be used for "the language of the Eldar", for this would mean "the language coming from the Eldar"; Tolkien added that such a wording would only be valid "in a case where the whole language was adopted by another people" (WJ:368-369). In light of this, the genitive phrase Vardo tellumar "Varda's domes" in Namárië may not necessarily imply that the heavenly "domes" were somehow owned by Varda, but rather that she made them, that they originated with her.
Tolkien also listed "from among" as one of the meanings of the primitive element HO, and this meaning is discernable in Quenya examples of partitive genitive, the genitive indicating what something or someone is part of. In the phrase Eärendil Elenion Ancalima "Eärendil brightest of stars" (Letters:385), the words elenion ancalima actually imply "the brightest one among the stars": After his mythical transformation, Eärendil carrying the Silmaril is himself one of the stars, as indicated by the chapter The Mirror of Galadriel in Volume One of LotR ("Eärendil, the Evening Star, most beloved of the Elves, shone clear above...")
It seems that a partitive genitive can denote what something is part of in a wholly physical sense as well: In a phrase translated "the hands of the Powers", Fíriel's Song uses the plural genitive Valion for "of the Powers" (sc. "of the Valar" – as indicated by the Etymologies, entry BAL, Vali is a valid alternative to Valar as the plural form of Vala). The hands of the Valar, whenever they are incarnated, are physically part of the Valar themselves. 
The relationship between a place and something located in that place can also be expressed by means of the genitive case (cf. our own example "Britain's finest artists"). Namárië has Calaciryo míri for "Calacirya's jewels = the jewels of Calacirya" (Calacirya "Light-cleft" being a place in the Blessed Realm; notice that as in the case of Vardo "Varda's", the genitive ending -o swallows up the final -a). Perhaps this can also be analyzed as a partitive genitive, if something located in a place is somehow considered a part of that place. A more abstract, but perhaps basically similar construction is found in Círion's Oath: Elenna·nórëo alcar "the glory of the land of Elenna" or literally "(the) Elenna-land's glory". If we don't perceive the alcar or glory as being somehow "located" in Elenna (= Númenor), we must think of it as emanating from Elenna, so that the genitive denotes source. (See the next lesson concerning the comparable case alcar Oromëo.)
Family relationships are denoted by the genitive case. In Treebeard's Greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel occurs the genitive phrase vanimálion nostari, "parents of beautiful children" (Letters:308) or more literally "begetters of fair ones" (SD:73) – vanimáli meaning "fair ones" (genitive pl. vanimálion) and nostari meaning "begetters". One could also argue that this example shows that a noun denoting some kind of agent, and another noun denoting the one whom this agent does something to, can be coordinated by means of the genitive case (the "fair ones" were begotten by the begetters). Whatever the case, we have other examples of family relationships described by means of a genitive. In the Silmarillion Index, entry "Children of Ilúvatar", we learn that this is a translation of Híni Ilúvataro. Since Ilúvatar ("All-father") is a title of God, this example is somewhat profound. This also goes for Amillë Eruva lissëo "Mother of divine grace", a phrase occurring in Tolkien's Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto (VT44:12; this is Amillë "Mother" + Eruva "divine, of God" + lissëo, genitive of lissë "grace, sweetness"). However, the genitive case would certainly also be used in more trivial phrases like "the king's sons" (probably i arano yondor). As long as the genitive case describes parents' relationship to their offspring, we could analyze the constructions as derivative genitives, parents being the physical origin of their children. But in the example Indis i·Ciryamo "the Mariner's Wife" (UT:8), the genitive unquestionably describes a family relationship and nothing else, since the "Mariner" is not in any way the source or origin of his wife.
	Perhaps we can generalize even further and say that relationships between people can be described by the Quenya genitive case. In WJ:369, Tolkien indicated that the genitive would be used in such a phrase as Elwë, Aran Sindaron "Elwë [= Thingol], King of the Sindar [Grey-elves]". Here the relationship is that between a ruler and the ruled. The same construction could however be used with reference to the area that is ruled: "King of Lestanórë" would be Aran Lestanórëo (Lestanórë being the Quenya name of the land called Doriath in Sindarin). The genitive case may also refer to things that are ruled: In a booklet which accompanied an exhibition at the Marquette University Archives in September 1983, Catalogue of an Exhibit of the Manuscripts of JRRT, Taum Santoski presented Tolkien's Quenya translation of the title "Lord of the Rings": Heru i Million, which is heru "lord" + i "the" + what is probably the plural genitive of a noun millë "ring", not otherwise attested. In the LotR itself, the Quenya word for "ring" is given as corma instead, Frodo and Sam being hailed as Cormacolindor or Ring-bearers (this word occurring in the Cormallen Praise). For "Lord of the Rings" we might therefore have expected Heru i Cormaron, but anyhow, the phrase Heru i Million confirms that the genitive case can be used to describe the relationship between a ruler and the ruled (people, area or thing).
	One of the most abstract meanings the genitive case may take on is of = about, concerning, as in Quenta Silmarillion "the History of (= concerning) the Silmarils". Another attested example is quentalë Noldoron "the history of the Noldor" (VT39:16). It may well be that the genitive can be used in this sense also in connection with verbs like nyar- "tell, relate" or quet- "speak", e.g. nyarnen i Eldo "I told about the Elf" or i Naucor quetir altë harmaron "the Dwarves speak of great treasures". We lack attested examples, though.
Sometimes the precise meaning of a genitive is difficult to clearly define. In the famous greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines upon the hour of our meeting" or literally "...our meeting's hour", the genitive simply coordinates the nouns "meeting" and "hour" to indicate that the "meeting" took place in the "hour". In the phrase Heren Istarion "Order of Wizards" (UT:388), one may ask whether the genitive Istarion "of Wizards" implies that the order was founded by wizards, that it belongs to wizards, that it is made up of wizards, that it organizes or controls (or even is controlled by) wizards, etc. In all likelihood, several or all of these shades of meaning could be involved at the same time.
Also consider this passage from LotR, in the chapter The Houses of Healing in the third volume:

Thereupon the herb-master entered. 'Your lordship asked for kingsfoil, as the rustics name it,' he said, 'or athelas in the noble tongue, or to those who know somewhat of the Valinorean...'
	'I do so,' said Aragorn, 'and I care not whether you say now asëa aranion or kingsfoil, so long as you have some.'

So asëa aranion is the Quenya (or "Valinorean") for "kingsfoil", the herb called athelas in Sindarin. The word asëa refers to some kind of helpful or beneficial plant, but what precise meaning does the genitive plural aranion "of kings" express here? The kings didn't own or originate the kingsfoil; it was merely used by them for healing purposes. Unless this is comparable to a Calaciryo míri-construction because the kingsfoil was physically with the kings when they used it for healing ("life to the dying / In the king's hand lying!"), we must conclude that the genitive can also be used to indicate rather ill-defined states of "belonging", or mere association.
	Finally I may mention a function of the genitive that was unknown till early 2002, when I had already completed the first version of this course: It turns out that the phrase "full of [something]" is rendered as quanta "full" + a noun in the genitive case. Our attested example is somewhat profound: In his Quenya translation of the Hail Mary, first published in Tyalië Tyelelliéva #18, Tolkien rendered the phrase "full of grace" as quanta Eruanno. This seems to mean, literally, "full of God-gift" (since Eruanno is most likely the genitive form of Eruanna, cf. anna "gift"). The same construction would presumably be used in a more trivial context, so that "full of water" can be rendered quanta neno (the noun "water" being nén, nen-).
	We have no attested example of a Quenya genitive form functioning as the predicate of a sentence – but neither is there any particular reason to doubt that (say) "the ring is Sauron's" could be rendered i corma ná Saurondo. (The name Sauron probably has the stem-form Saurond-, given the derivation Tolkien indicated in Letters:380.)

Word order: In the prose version of Namárië, Tolkien placed a genitive in front of the noun it is dependent on: Aldaron rámar = literally "trees' wings", ómaryo lírinen = literally "in her voice's song", Calaciryo míri = literally "Calacirya's jewels" – cf. the interlinear translation in RGEO:66-67. (It should be noted that aldaron rámar was altered from rámar aldaron in the "poetic" version in LotR.) Above the entire "prose" version, Tolkien also placed the superscript Altariello nainië, "Altariel's (= Galadriel's) lament". Cirion's Oath displays the same word order: Nórëo alcar "the glory of the land" or literally "(the) land's glory", Elendil vorondo voronwë "the faith of Elendil the Faithful" or literally "Elendil (the) Faithful's faith" (the genitive ending being attached to the last word in the phrase Elendil voronda "Elendil [the] Faithful"; as usual, the ending displaces a final -a). In LotR we also have elenion ancalima for "stars' brightest [one]" = "the brightest [one] of [the] stars". So in normal prose, should the genitive always precede, just like the English genitive in 's? 
Not necessarily, it would seem. Most attested Quenya genitives follow the noun they are dependent on, with the same word order as an English of-construction. In the case of most of these attestations, we have no reason to suppose that the word order is particularly "poetic": Quenta Silmarillion "History of the Silmarils", Heru i Million "Lord of the Rings", lúmenn' omentielvo "on the hour of our meeting", asëa aranion "asëa [helpful plant] of kings" (kingsfoil; the two latter examples are from LotR), Híni Ilúvataro "Children of Ilúvatar" (Silmarillion Index), mannar Valion "into the hands of the Powers" (Fíriel's Song), Heren Istarion "Order of Wizards" (UT:388), Pelóri Valion "Fencing Heights of the Vali [Valar]" (MR:18), aran Sindaron "King of the Sindar" (WJ:369), Aran Lestanórëo "King of Doriath" (ibid.), i equessi Rúmilo "the sayings of Rúmil" (WJ:398), lambë Eldaron or lambë Quendion "the language of the Elves" (WJ:368/PM:395), Rithil-Anamo "Ring of Doom" (WJ:401). Where Tolkien rendered such a Quenya construction by employing an English genitive in -'s, he must of necessity reverse the original word order: Indis i·Ciryamo "The Mariner's Wife" (UT:8).
One potential misunderstanding may be mentioned here: Occasionally people are seen to be completely seduced by English of-constructions, thinking that the genitive ending -o should appear at the same place in the phrase as the English preposition of does. Therefore they end up attaching the genitive ending to the wrong word in an hopeless attempt to copy the English order of all the elements in the phrase. Ask ten people to translate "the glory of Aman" into a Quenya genitive phrase, and it is a good bet that several of them will come up with something like i alcaro Aman, which actually means "the glory's Aman" or "Aman of the glory"! What we want is either Amano alcar (think "Aman's glory") or (i) alcar Amano.

As for the word order employed when a preposition is used in conjunction with a genitive phrase, the prose Namárië provides the strange example Vardo nu luini tellumar. Tolkien translated this as "under Varda's blue domes". As we see, the Quenya wording is literally "Varda's under blue domes", the preposition following the genitive noun – a most unexpected order, especially considering that this is supposed to be normal prose. Yet the prose Namárië also has ve aldaron rámar for "like the wings of trees" (or literally "like trees' wings"). Here the word order is exactly what we would expect, namely preposition + genitive + the noun it governs (not **aldaron ve rámar or whatever!) It is almost tempting to assume that Vardo nu luini tellumar is simply an error for ?nu Vardo luini tellumar. At this stage at least, I would always use the "English-style" word-order exemplified by the phrase ve aldaron rámar. Perhaps Vardo nu luini tellumar is an example of the exceedingly esoteric syntax preferred by the Eldar, whose thoughts are not like those of Mortal Men...or perhaps it is just a typo. We must await the publication of more material.

The use of the article: A genitive determines the noun it is dependent upon, just like the definite article does: Indis i·Ciryamo does mean "the Mariner's Wife" = "the Wife of the Mariner". It cannot be interpreted "a wife of the mariner" in an indefinite or undetermined sense, even though the definite article i is missing before the noun indis "wife, bride". Same with lambë Quendion "the language of the Elves" (PM:395, emphasis added); this cannot be interpreted "a language of the Elves", for lambë is determined by the genitive Quendion. Cf. English "the Elves' language" = "the [not a] language of the Elves", even though there is no "the" before "language" in a phrase like "the Elves' language".  One must understand that while the first noun of an English of-construction may or may not be definite and accordingly receives the appropriate article (the or a), a Quenya noun connecting with a following genitive is always determined, whether or not the article i is used. The system is actually the same as in English, with one minor complication added: whereas an English genitive always precedes the noun it is dependent on, a Quenya genitive may come after this noun as well. The latter word order inevitably makes one think of English of-constructions, but they are strictly not comparable as far as grammar is concerned – even though Quenya genitive phrases are often best rendered as English of-constructions.
Where the genitive follows the noun it is dependent upon, the use of the definite article before this noun is apparently optional. The noun is definite anyway, so including the article is in a way superfluous; yet we have the examples i arani Eldaron "the kings of the Eldar" (WJ:369) and i equessi Rúmilo "the sayings of Rúmil" (WJ:398). Equessi Rúmilo, arani Eldaron without the article would have meant precisely the same thing. Conversely, the phrase indis i ciryamo "the mariner's wife" could presumably have been expanded to read i indis i ciryamo "the wife of the mariner", again without altering the meaning.
No attested example of a preceding genitive is followed by an article. But if we can choose freely between i equessi Rúmilo and just equessi Rúmilo, perhaps this principle would still apply if the genitive is moved to the beginning of the phrase? Rúmilo equessi "Rúmil's sayings" is certainly a valid wording, but what about Rúmilo i equessi? Would this be equally possible, or would it sound just as weird as "Rúmil's the sayings" in English? I, for one, would avoid this uncertain and unattested construction.

A few prepositions govern the genitive case. It is said that ú "without" is normally followed by genitive, Tolkien mentioning the example ú calo "without light" (VT39:14). This calo would seem to be the genitive form of a noun cala "light" (as in Calaquendi "Light-elves" or Calacirya "Light-cleft").

Summary of Lesson Eleven: The Quenya noun is inflected for a number of cases, special noun-forms which clarify what function a noun has in a sentence. The forms so far discussed are examples of the nominative case, used when a noun is the subject or the object of a sentence (a distinct "object" case, the accusative, had formerly occurred but fell out of use in Exilic Quenya). The Quenya genitive case has the ending -o (displacing a final -a, where such is present); the plural form is -on (added to the nominative plural), whereas dual genitives receive the ending -to (but nouns with nominative dual forms in -u would possibly have genitive duals in -uo rather than -uto). The noun governed by the genitive can come either before or after it; Rúmilo equessi and (i) equessi Rúmilo would work equally well for "Rúmil's sayings/the sayings of Rúmil". The Quenya genitive properly indicates source or origin (including former possessors), but also covers most relationships between people (like family relationships), as well as the relationship between a ruler and the ruled (people or territory). "Xo Y" or "Y Xo"  may also imply "Y of X" in the sense of Y being a physical part of X, or (if X is a plural word) Y being one of X. Thus Eärendil is said to be elenion ancalima "stars' brightest" = "the brightest one of (/among) stars". The relationship between a place and something located in that place may also be expressed by means of a genitive: Calaciryo míri "the jewels of Calacirya". A genitive can also express "of = about, concerning", as in Quenta Silmarillion "the History of the Silmarils". Furthermore, the preposition ú "without" normally takes the genitive case.

VOCABULARY

cainen "ten"
laman (lamn-) "animal" (the stem-form may also simply be laman-, but we will use lamn- here)
yulma "cup"
limpë "wine" (within Tolkien's mythos, limpë was some special drink of the Elves or of the Valar – but in the Etymologies, entry LIP, Tolkien also provided the parenthetical gloss "wine", and we will use the word in that sense here)
rassë "horn" ("especially on living animal, but also applied to mountains" – Etym., entry RAS)
toron (torn-) "brother"
Menel "the firmament, sky, heaven, the heavens" (but the Quenya word is singular. It is apparently not used in a religious sense, but refers to the physical heavens only. Cf. Meneltarma "Pillar of Heaven" as the name of the central mountain in Númenor. The word Menel is capitalized and apparently treated as a proper name, hence not requiring any article.)
ulya- "to pour" (transitive past tense ulyanë, intransitive ullë) 
sírë "river"
cilya "cleft, gorge" (also cirya, as in Calacirya "Pass of Light" or "Light-cleft", which name actually appears as Calacilya in some texts – but since cirya also means "ship", we will use cilya here)
anto "mouth" (possibly representing earlier amatô, amto; if so it likely comes from the same root as the verb mat- "to eat")
ú preposition "without" (normally followed by genitive)

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English:

A. Hirnentë i firin ohtaro macil.
B. Menelo eleni sílar.
C. Tirnen i nisso hendu.
D. Cenuvantë Aran Atanion ar ilyë nórion.
E. Coa ú talamion umë anwa coa.
F. I tário úmië torni merir turë Ambaro lier.
G. I rassi i lamnion nar altë.
H. I cainen rávi lintavë manter i rocco hrávë.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. The birds of heaven will see ten warriors between the great rivers.
J. The king's thrall poured wine into the biggest of the cups. ("Biggest, greatest" = analta. Time to repeat Lesson Five, where we discussed superlatives?)
K. The Elf's brother gathered (together) the ten books about stars.
L. The great river of the land poured into a gorge.
M. A man without a mouth cannot speak.
N. I have seen the greatest of all mountains under the sky.
O. I want to find a land without great animals like lions.
P. You will see an animal without horns (dual: a couple of horns)

LESSON TWELVE
The Possessive-Adjectival case. Verbal or Abstract nouns and how they interact with the Genitive and Possessive cases.

This lesson is mainly devoted to a case that by its function in many ways complements the genitive case. But first of all, let me say that there is no easy answer to the question of what this case should be called. Tolkien listed it in the Plotz Letter, but he did not name it. The case in -o or -on that we discussed in the previous lesson is referred to simply as the "genitive" in several sources. But in WJ:369, Tolkien refers to the forms in -o(n) as "partitive-derivative genitives", whereas the other case that we will now discuss is called a "possessive-adjectival [genitive]". On the previous page, he noted regarding the case with the ending -o(n) that "properly it was used partitively, or to describe the source or origin, not as a 'possessive'" (emphasis added). The context indicates that the other case that he went on to describe is used as a "possessive". So simply to have some suitable designation of this case, I shall adopt the word possessive as its name. (Another plausible term is "adjectival case", which is also used by some students.)

THE POSSESSIVE
By its function, this case – rather than the case in -o(n) which Tolkien normally terms the "genitive" when discussing Quenya grammar – corresponds much better to the English genitive in -'s. Even so, in certain contexts this case is also best translated using English of-constructions.
	The possessive case is formed by adding the ending -va, e.g. Eldava as the possessive form of Elda. When it is to be added to a noun that ends in a consonant, this ending probably takes the form -wa instead. The assumption that the ending -va appears in the variant form -wa after consonants is supported by this fact: The suffix -va is in origin a mere adjectival ending, found in some common adjectives as well, and in such cases it is seen to appear as -wa following a consonant – e.g. anwa "real, actual, true" or helwa "pale blue". In Primitive Elvish, the ending had the form -wâ, but in Quenya, w normally became v when intervocalic (= occurring between vowels). Cf. another common adjective displaying this ending, tereva "fine, acute", which word Tolkien noted had been terêwâ in Primitive Elvish (see Etym, entry TER, TERES). Since most Quenya nouns end in a vowel, the w of -wâ typically became intervocalic when this ending was added, and therefore it normally turned into v (e.g. Eldâ-wâ, Eldawâ becoming Eldava, just like terêwâ became tereva). But if we combine this ending with a noun ending in a consonant, e.g. atar "father" (unchanged since Primitive Elvish), atar-wâ would presumably produce Quenya atarwa, original w remaining w because it is not here intervocalic. 
	The Plotz Letter lists no dual forms of the possessive case, but I can't imagine why such forms should not exist. Even so, I won't construct any exercises involving these slightly hypothetical forms, but presumably the simple suffix -va would be used after a dual form in -u – e.g. Alduva as the possessive form of Aldu "Two Trees". The more frequent dual forms in -t would likely have possessive forms in -twa, a dual like ciryat "a couple of ships" becoming ciryatwa (accented on the second-to-last syllable because of the consonant cluster tw).
	Just like the Plotz Letter lists no dual form of the possessive case, Tolkien mentioned no plural form either – which fact led some investigators to conclude that this case has no plural at all! But other material does indicate that such a form exists (suggesting that we can also feel free to extrapolate a dual form as we tried to do above: the Plotz Letter does not necessarily include everything). In WJ:368 Tolkien indicates that the possessive has a plural form in -iva, combining the simple ending -va with the plural marker -i. In this case, this ending is used even if the possessive suffix is added to words that would normally have nominative plurals in -r, like Eldar: The plural possessive is not **Eldarva or **Eldarwa or whatever, but Eldaiva, attested in the phrase lambë Eldaiva "language of the Eldar" (WJ:369). The plural form -iva is said to be an innovation in Quenya, not a form inherited from older stages of Elvish.
When the initial vowel of the ending -iva merges with the last vowel of the noun to produce a diphthong, like ai in Elda + iva = Eldaiva, this diphthong of course receives the stress (eld-AI-va). Most nouns in -ë would at an older stage have behaved in a similar way, a diphthong ei arising; the plural possessive of lassë "leaf" may at one point have been lasseiva (for even older ?lasseiwâ, if such a form was ever in use). But the diphthong ei eventually became long í in Quenya, so perhaps the current form was lassíva – with a long í still attracting the stress. In the Plotz Letter, such a long í is observed in the plural form of another case: lassínen as the plural instrumental, to be discussed in a Lesson Sixteen. (The form lassíva is of course not confirmed by Plotz, since no plural forms of the possessive case are there discussed, but the form lassínen seems to confirm the general principle: This form is in all likelihood meant to represent older lasseinen, and then older lasseiva ought to produce Quenya lassíva.)
	It is not quite clear what would happen when the ending -iva is added to a noun already ending in -i, like tári "queen", or a noun with a stem-form in -i, like lómë (lómi-) "night" (SD:415). Possibly the two i's would merge into a long í, so that "of queens" or "of nights" is something like ?táríva, ?lómíva – whereas the singular forms "of a queen" and "of a night" must be táriva, lómiva. (The pronunciation would be markedly different: these singular forms are accented on the first syllable, the third from the end, whereas the plural forms would be accented on the second-to-last syllable because of the long vowel that suddenly turns up there – if the final -i of the noun and the first vowel of the ending -iva do indeed merge into a long í.) But it is also possible that a form like táriva has to do duty for both singular and plural, so that one must rely on the context to distinguish "of a queen" from "of queens".
	
There are a few more things to say about the formation of the possessive case (see "Various notes" below), but we will now return to its function.
	This is the case you use to describe simple possession, the typical function of the English genitive. In the previous lesson, we have described how the Quenya genitive is rather used to indicate source or origin, not simple ownership. If the Quenya genitive is used to describe the relationship between owners and the things they own, we are dealing with former rather than current ownership. Tolkien nicely explained this by contrasting the genitive and possessive cases, and we can well afford to quote him, recapitulating the function of the genitive in the process:

'Possession' was indicated by the adjectival ending -va... Thus 'Orome's horn' was róma Oroméva (if it remained in his possession)...but [the genitive phrase] róma Oromëo meant 'a horn coming from Orome', e.g. as a gift, in circumstances where the recipient, showing the gift with pride, might say 'this is Orome's horn'. If he said 'this was Orome's horn', he would say Oroméva. Similarly [the genitive phrase] lambe Eldaron would not be used for 'the language of the Eldar' (unless conceivably in a case where the whole language was adopted by another people), which is [rather] expressed...by...lambe Eldaiva. [WJ:368-369]

So the possessive case may indicate simple ownership at the time that is being considered (past or present – whereas origin, or former possession, is indicated by the genitive case). An example from the Silmarillion is Mindon Eldaliéva, the "Tower of the Eldalië [= Elf-people]", meaning simply a tower owned by the Eldalië. (Certainly they had also originated it, but they were still its owners, so a genitive would be less appropriate.) We would also have such phrases as (i) coa i Eldava "the Elf's house"/"the house of the Elf", i parmar i vendíva "the books of the maidens", i míri i Naucoiva "the jewels of the Dwarves". As for this word order, it should be observed that the noun which receives the possessive ending appears as the last word of the possessive phrase in nearly all attested instances: The noun it governs (denoting the thing that is owned) typically comes before it.
In the first version of this course, I wrote: "It may well be that one could reverse the word order and say (for instance) ?i Eldava coa with the same word order as in English: 'the Elf's house'. However, I would avoid this construction until we have it attested in Tolkien's papers." Perhaps we have it attested now. In June 2002, the phrase Amillë Eruva lissëo "Mother of divine grace" turned up in VT44:12, in Tolkien's incomplete Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto. Literally, this seems to mean "Mother of God's grace". Removing Amillë "Mother", as well as the genitive ending -o here attached to lissë "grace, sweetness", we are left with Eruva lissë for "God's (Eru's) grace". This could be a (currently unique) example of a possessive form preceding rather than following the noun it connects with. However, the opposite order seems to be much more common, and certainly lissë Eruva could have been used here as well. In the exercises below, I consistently let the possessive form follow rather than precede the noun it connects with, using more common word order.
The noun governed by the possessive does not receive the article in most of our attested examples; it is already sufficiently determined: Róma Oroméva is not indefinite "a horn of Oromë's", as if it is first introduced into the story, or it is implied that Oromë had other horns as well. (According to Tolkien, this meaning would be expressed by means of a "loose compound", the words simply being juxtaposed without involving any case endings at all: Oromë róma = "an Oromë horn".) Róma Oroméva is "Oromë's horn" = "the horn of Oromë", róma being determined by Oroméva. But we could certainly slip in an explicit article and say i róma Oroméva without changing the meaning; as demonstrated in the previous lesson, both constructions are equally valid in a phrase involving a genitive noun. An attested example involving the possessive case is the phrase i arani Eldaivë "the Kings of the Eldar" (WJ:369; this primarily means "those kings in a particular assembly who were Elvish", whereas i arani Eldaron with a genitive means "those among the Eldar who were kings", or simply "the kings ruling the Eldar"). The article could probably be omitted without changing the meaning: Arani Eldaivë would still mean "the kings of the Eldar", the possessive form Eldaivë determining arani anyway. (As for why the ending -iva here appears as -ivë, see below; this probably contradicts some evidence from LotR, so we may read Eldaiva instead.)
	The possessive case does not always indicate "possession" in the narrowest sense, but may also describe somebody's relationship to their more-or-less abstract attributes or properties. In such contexts, one can use the genitive as well. Tolkien mentioned that "the splendour (glory) of Oromë" could be expressed in two ways: One may use the possessive-adjectival case and say alcar Oroméva, referring to Oromë's alcar or splendour as a permanent attribute of his. But one could also use the genitive case; the wording alcar Oromëo emphasizes that Oromë is the source of the splendour. This could refer to "his splendour as seen at the moment (proceeding from him) or at some point in a narrative" – focusing on the moment rather than on some permanent state (WJ:369). Cirion's Oath uses the genitive in the phrase Elenna·nórëo alcar "the glory of the land of Elenna". If one used the possessive instead, to produce the wording (i) alcar Elenna·nóreva, it would apparently put the emphasis on the "glory" of Elenna as a permanent attribute of the land. In Middle-earth time, Cirion's Oath was spoken long after Elenna (Númenor) had been destroyed and its "glory" proven to be rather less than permanent, so perhaps this would be inappropriate.
	In our home-made example alcar Elenna·nóreva, we added the possessive ending to a noun that does not denote a sentient being. This is hardly improper, for we have such attested examples as Taurë Huinéva "Forest of Gloom" and Nurtalë Valinóreva "Hiding of Valinor". Where no sentient is involved, the possessive case obviously takes on other shades of meaning; no "ownership" can be involved, since things or substances can't own anything. Cf. for instance the first example of this case that was ever published, in Namárië in LotR. Here we have yuldar...lisse-miruvóreva for "draughts of [the] sweet mead" (in the prose Namárië in RGEO:68, the words are actually directly juxtaposed as yuldar lisse-miruvóreva; in the poetic version in LotR, a number of other words intrude between the two elements of this phrase). For decades, this was the sole available example of the case in -va. Here, this case ending implies "(made) of": The yuldar or "draughts" consist of lisse-miruvórë or "sweet mead". Following this example, two nouns like rië "crown" and telpë "silver" can evidently be combined as rië telpeva, "crown of silver". It may be noted that in such a case – the possessive noun denoting a material – the noun it governs is not necessarily be determined by it (not "the crown of silver"). Otherwise, yuldar lisse-miruvóreva would have to mean **"the draughts of sweet mead", but Tolkien did not translate it in this way. – Having only this one example from Namárië to work from, early researchers thought the case in -va was what they called a "compositive" case denoting what something consists of (is composed of). This usage should be noted, but we now know that this is only one of the secondary functions of this case.
	Yet the fact remains that the ending -va is in origin simply adjectival, so this case may easily take on a "descriptive" function. Regarding the genitive case in -o, Tolkien noted that properly it was NOT used "adjectivally to describe qualities" (WJ:368): this is rather the function of the case in -va. The example Taurë Huinéva (Etym, entry PHUY) apparently means "Forest of Gloom"; cf. the nouns taurë "forest" and huinë "deep shadow, gloom". One may almost just as well treat huinéva as a regular adjective and translate Taurë Huinéva as "Gloomy Forest" or "Shadowy Forest". The idea is that the "forest" is characterized by "gloom", so the case in -va can describe what characterizes something or someone. Perhaps the expression Eruva lissë (isolated from a longer phrase, VT44:12) also fits in here: This could be translated "God's grace", but the Litany of Loreto that Tolkien was rendering into Quenya has "divine grace" in this place, and it may well be that Eruva is here best understood as an adjective "divine" – not as a noun "God's". The word Eruva describes the divine quality of the "grace" as a characteristic of this grace.
Such a "characteristic" may also be an abstract or action: In early material (LT1:14) we find the example Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva "Cottage of Lost Play" – the mar or "cottage" being characterized by vanwa tyalië, "lost play" (one must read the earliest Silmarillion manuscripts as reproduced in LT1 and LT2 to understand precisely what this refers to). It should however be noted that the genitive case may also be used in such a context; in the late essay Quendi and Eldar we have Rithil-Anamo for "Doom-ring" or more literally "Ring of Doom" (WJ:401; the Old Quenya word rithil "ring, circle" would probably become risil in Exilic Quenya). Rithil-Anamo does not refer to Sauron's Ring, but to the Máhanaxar, the circle where the Valar passed judgement. The word anamo is not otherwise attested, but must be the genitive of either anama or anan (with stem anam-); it apparently means "doom, judgement, judging" – the activity characterizing or going on in the Circle (Rithil). Perhaps the possessive case could have been used instead (?Rithil Anamáva or ?Rithil Ananwa) without changing the meaning.
	In some instances one may indeed be in doubt which case to use, the genitive or the possessive; sometimes Tolkien's own choice is slightly surprising. He used the possessive in the phrase Noldo-quentasta Ingoldova "Ingoldo's History of the Noldor" (VT39:16) – the Elf Ingoldo being the author of this particular Noldo-quentasta or "Noldo-history". Yet the emphasis is hardly on the fact that Ingoldo owns this "Noldo-history" (unless copyright was a big issue in Valinor). Ingoldo is just the author or originator, and for this meaning we might expect the genitive case to be used instead, since it frequently describes origin or source. Yet there may be certain conflicting concerns here: Since the genitive case may also signify about, concerning (as in Quenta Silmarillion), perhaps Noldo-quentasta Ingoldo with a genitive instead could easily have been misunderstood as "the Noldo-history about Ingoldo".
Anyhow, in one attested example, Tolkien's choice of case certainly amounts to an outright contradiction of what he had written earlier, in the essay Quendi and Eldar: We have quoted his explanation of why it would normally be improper to use the genitive in a phrase like lambë Eldaron "the language of the Eldar" – this would imply "the language coming from the Eldar, later taken over by others"! One had to use the possessive case instead: lambë Eldaiva. Yet Tolkien himself used lambë Quendion for "the language of Elves" in a very late source (PM:395) – and Quendion is unmistakably a plural genitive. The fact that Tolkien here uses another word for "Elf" (Quendë instead of Elda) can hardly make any difference: According to the system set out in Quendi and Eldar, we would expect lambë Quendíva, the possessive case being used of current ownership. Perhaps we can resolve the contradiction in "internal" terms, appealing to a linguistic development within the mythos: Tolkien noted that there was an increasing tendency to prefer the genitive case, people sometimes using it instead of the possessive case (WJ:369). So in "late usage" it would perhaps be more natural to say lambë Quendion, rather than lambë Quendíva – the former distinctions fading away. If one is in doubt which case to use, the genitive or the possessive, it is probably best to pick the former.

VARIOUS NOTES
filling in some details
NOTE #1: Vowel-lengthening in the syllable preceding the case ending: The observant student will have noted that sometimes, the last vowel of a noun is lengthened when the ending -va is added. For instance, Eldalië + va produces Eldaliéva with a long é (which must then receive the stress, according to the normal rules). Oroméva and tyaliéva as the possessive forms of the nouns Oromë and tyalië are other examples. Notice that the words Eldalië, Oromë, tyalië all end in two short syllables (containing neither consonant clusters, diphthongs or long vowels). If the ending -va were added after them and no further changes were made, the extra syllable provided by this ending would make the stress move to what is now the third syllable from the end (cf. the stress rules set out in Lesson One). This would result in the rather awkward pronunciations **orOMeva, **eldaLIeva, **tyaLIeva. So where the ending -va is added to a noun ending in two short syllables, and there is no final consonant, the vowel of the last of these syllables is apparently lengthened to make sure that it will receive the stress: oroMÉva, eldaliÉva, tyaliÉva. But if the noun ends in a consonant, there is never any need to lengthen the vowel, for where we are dealing with a noun of such a shape, the suffixing of the case ending (probably appearing as -wa) will result in a consonant cluster which will make the stress move to the vowel before the new cluster anyhow. For instance, while a name like Menelmacar (the Quenya name of Orion) is naturally accented on the third syllable from the end because it ends in two short syllables, its possessive form Menelmacarwa would be accented on -arw- because of the cluster rw here arising: This cluster makes what is now the second-to-last syllable long, and therefore it receives the stress.
In the original version of this course, I wrote: "It is unclear whether the system just sketched – the final vowel of a noun ending in two short syllables being lengthened before the ending -va – would still be valid in the case of a word that only consists of these two short syllables." As I also wrote, my gut feeling was that in such a case, there would be no lengthening. This has now been confirmed by the example Eruva as the possessive form of Eru (VT44:12, published in June 2002). Though Eru ends in two short syllables, we do not see **Erúva in the possessive, for the two short syllables of Eru are also the entire word. The lengthening rule only applies to words of more than two syllables.
Huinéva (instead of **huineva) as the possessive form of huinë "shadow, gloom" is however a puzzling example. Here we do see lengthening of the final -ë to -é-. For a while I actually thought final -ë is always lengthened before the ending -va, but the Plotz Letter indicates that the possessive form of lassë "leaf" is lasseva (not **lasséva). If the ui of huinë is counted as two syllables (u-i), not as a diphthong, this example would conform with the rule set out above: hu-i-në would have its final vowel lengthened when -va is added, producing huinéva. But since Tolkien explicitly stated that Quenya ui is a diphthong – hence pronounced as one long syllable and not as two short ones – this explanation is not satisfactory. Yet ui is supposed to be a diphthong in Sindarin as well, but in one Sindarin poem, ui occurs where the poetic meter demands two syllables. Perhaps ui, although a diphthong, is somehow "overlong" and sometimes counts as two syllables, even though it is perceived as one syllable by the ear. Bottom line is, if the case ending -va is to be added to a noun with ui in its second-to-last syllable, the vowel in the final syllable is apparently lengthened before -va is suffixed. So the possessive form of nouns like cuilë "life" or tuima "sprout" should evidently be cuiléva, tuimáva.
As for the genitive ending -o, there is no similar lengthening when the ending is to be added to a noun ending in two short syllables: The genitive form of Oromë is attested as Oromëo, not **Oroméo (contrast possessive Oroméva). The form Oromëo must be accented on -rom-. It seems likely, then, that nothing special happens when -o is added to a word like huinë either (genitive probably huinëo, hardly ?huinéo). However, I should like to see an attested example of what happens when the ending -o is added to a noun ending in two short vowels in hiatus – most frequently -ië, as in Valië "female Vala". ?Valiëo would have to be accented on i, which sounds rather awkward; the same goes for the plural form ?Valieron. I strongly suspect that in such a case, the vowel in the syllable before the genitive ending would be lengthened, thus attracting the stress: Valiéo, Valiéron. But once again, there is no way of being certain; we must await further publications. 
NOTE #2: Special stem-forms of nouns: Where a noun has a special stem-form, it would always appear when the genitive ending -o is added. The genitive of nís (niss-) "woman" or talan (talam-) "floor" would be nisso "woman's" and talamo "floor's". Yet the ending -va or -wa for possessive may sometimes produce more complex results. Adding -wa to a noun like talan, talam- would probably result in talanwa, not **talamwa, since mw regularly becomes nw in Quenya. Suffixing -wa to filit (filic-) "bird" would result in filicwa all right, but this we must spell filiqua according to the normal conventions. I am not quite sure what the possessive form of nís (niss-) "woman" should be. **Nisswa is certainly not a possible Quenya word; perhaps we would see something like nisseva, an extra e turning up before the ending to break up the impossible consonant cluster (and following a vowel, we would regularly see -va instead of -wa). – The "stem-form" of some nouns is simply a contraction, e.g. fern- as the stem of feren "beech-tree". Surely the genitive would be ferno, but the possessive may well be ferenwa with no contraction, since other examples indicate that such contraction does not occur before a consonant cluster (**fernwa is not a possible Quenya word). Of course we could slip in an e here as well, producing ?ferneva, but I would certainly put my money on ferenwa.
NOTE #3: A Tolkienian rule we can afford to ignore (!): In WJ:407, Tolkien states that the case derived by adding -va never lost its strong adjectival connotations; he actually says that it "was and remained an adjective". Compare Eruva being used in the sense "divine" rather than "God's" in Tolkien's Quenya Litany of Loreto. As we remember from Lesson Four, adjectives in -a have plural forms in -ë (for archaic -ai). According to what Tolkien says in WJ:407, a possessive noun (with ending -va) that governs a plural word would agree with it in number just like any other adjective, the ending -va turning into -vë. For this reason, he used i arani Eldaivë for "the Kings of the Eldar" in WJ:369: Eldaiva "of the Eldar" becomes Eldaivë (archaic Eldaivai) to agree in number with the plural noun it is dependent on, namely arani "kings".
However, this may be one of the cases of Tolkien revising Elvish grammar without noticing that his new ideas contradicted something he had already published. For in Namárië in LotR, we have yuldar...lisse-miruvóreva for "draughts of sweet mead", and Tolkien later confirmed this construction in his comments on Namárië in The Road Goes Ever On. Since yuldar "draughts" is a plural word, lisse-miruvóreva should have been lisse-miruvórevë according to the system Tolkien set out in WJ:407. As I said, the likeliest "external" explanation is simply that Tolkien introduced a new rule without noticing that he had already published something that contradicted it. In "internal" terms, we may perhaps assume that the possessive form was still perceived as a kind of derived adjective in the older period, and therefore it also agreed in number like regular adjectives. But as the Ages went by in Middle-earth, the forms derived by means of the ending -va came to be perceived more strictly as a noun case only, and by the late Third Age when Galadriel composed her Lament, the adjective-style agreement in number had been abandoned. I do not use it in the exercises I have made for this course.

VERBAL OR ABSTRACT NOUNS
and how they interact with the genitive and possessive cases
We have earlier defined nouns as words denoting things, whereas verbs are words that denote actions – but we have also hinted that linguists would find such definitions rather simplistic. Some nouns do denote actions, and they are appropriately called verbal nouns. Since such nouns may interact with the genitive and possessive cases in a way that should be noted, this is a good place to introduce them.
	A verbal noun is derived from the stem of a verb; in English, the relevant ending is -ing. (This is also the ending used to derive active participles, but they are adjectives, not nouns; the forms merely happen to coincide in English.) Singing is the verbal noun corresponding to the verb sing; in other words, singing is the action you perform when you sing.
	In Quenya, the stems of some primary verbs are the source of abstract formations in -më; some of them seem to have been verbal nouns in origin. For instance, whereas the verb "to love" is mel-, the noun "love" (or "loving") is melmë. Some of these may take on more specialized meanings. Carmë is used for "art" (UT:439), though this is basically simply a kind of verbal noun derived from the verb car- "make, do" – hence literally "making". (See below regarding oiencarmë.)
	Primary verbs may also receive the ending -ië; the verb tyal- "to play" corresponds to the abstract formation tyalië "play, playing" (as noun; cf. the Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva or "Cottage of Lost Play" mentioned above). Added to an A-stem verb, the ending -ië makes the final -a drop out; cf. naina- "to lament" producing the abstract noun nainië "a lament(ing)". 
Yet another frequent formation is to lengthen the stem-vowel of a primary verb and add the ending -ë. The verb ser- "rest" corresponds to the abstract noun sérë "rest, repose, peace". Very often, the nouns so derived have taken on a somewhat more concrete meaning. From the verb sir- "to flow" we have sírë, which would basically refer to a "flowing", but this noun is used = "river". The noun nútë connects with the verb nut- "to tie", but the noun has developed beyond the full abstract "tying, binding" and has come to signify "knot" instead. From lir- "to sing, chant" we have lírë, used for "song" rather than just "singing, chanting". Yet the underlying idea of a verbal noun is often discernible still.
The stems of some A-stem verbs, especially in -ta, can also be used as abstract nouns with no additions. Vanta- is the verb "to walk", but vanta is also used as an abstract: "a walk" (that is, "walking" considered as a noun). Likewise, the verbs lanta- "to fall" corresponds to the noun lanta "a fall(ing)". However, the noun may also be lantë, as in the name of the song Noldolantë or "Fall of the Noldor" mentioned in the Silmarillion. In Quenya, most abstract nouns indeed end in the vowel -ë, either alone or as part of a longer ending.
One such ending is -lë, which seems to one of the most versatile Quenya abstract suffixes. It may be that it can in principle be added to any A-stem verb, and the resulting word is basically a verbal noun. The verb laita- "to bless/praise" occurs in LotR (in the Cormallen Praise), and the corresponding abstract noun laitalë "praise" or "praising" occurs in UT:166, 436 (where reference is made to the Erulaitalë or "Praise of Eru", a Númenórean festival). In earlier lessons we have used the verb nurta- "to hide", which is actually only attested as a verbal noun nurtalë "hiding" (see below concerning the phrase Nurtalë Valinóreva "Hiding of Valinor").
	Then let us return to the genitive and possessive cases. If you combine a verbal noun (or an abstract formation that still clearly connects with a verb) with a noun in the genitive case, it suggests that this noun is the "subject" of the corresponding verb. An attested example is Altariello nainië for "Galadriel's lament" (RGEO:66; the Quenya form of Galadriel's name is Altariel with stem Altariell-). The genitive Altariello "Galadriel's" governing the abstract noun nainië "lament, lamenting" indicates that Galadriel is the one who does the lamenting: subject genitive. Perhaps the phrase i equessi Rúmilo "the sayings of Rúmil" (WJ:398) may also be analyzed in such a way: Rúmil is the subject who originally "said" the "sayings". An obvious case is provided by the phrase Oiencarmë Eruo "the One's [Eru's, God's] perpetual production" (MR:471). Eru is the one who does the "perpetual production" (oi-en-carmë = probably "ever-re-making"), and this is indicated by the genitive form Eruo: subject genitive yet again.
Way back in Lesson Two, I pointed out the error contained in the title of the fanzine Parma Eldalamberon; it should have been Parma Eldalambion instead. I must now take affair with the title of another (good!) Tolkien-linguistic journal, Tyalië Tyelelliéva. This was meant to signify "Play of the Tyelellië" (a folk of little Elves). But since the Tyelellië are the subject of the abstract noun "play" (the ones who do the playing), it would probably have been better to use the genitive case here: perhaps Tyalië Tyelelliéo.
	So far subject genitive; what about object genitive? This kind of genitive is usually replaced by an of-construction in English: "the discovery of America" = the discovery which America was the object of. Subject and object genitive can even be combined in a phrase like "Columbus' discovery of America" (Columbus is the subject who does the discovery, America is the object that is discovered).
Our one-and-only attested example of a Quenya object genitive seems to indicate that for this meaning, Quenya uses the case in -va. This one example is found in the Silmarillion, near the end of Chapter 11: Nurtalë Valinóreva, the "Hiding of Valinor" (Valinóreva is formed from Valinórë, an older variant of the name normally shortened as Valinor). The point is that the Valar hid Valinor, so Valinor is the object of the nurtalë or "hiding". If one used the genitive case instead, saying Nurtalë Valinórëo, it might imply that this is a subject genitive – Valinor doing the hiding instead of being its object. This would make little sense, since Valinor is not a person that can "hide" anything. Conversely, oiencarmë Eruo cannot be understood as "perpetual production of the One" even if some kind of sense could be made of this, for if Eru were the grammatical object that is produced, we would evidently see oiencarmë Eruva instead.
	Probably, the o-case could be used for subject genitive and the va-case for object genitive within the same phrase; if so it would probably be best to let the former genitive precede the verbal noun. Nurtalë Valinóreva or "Hiding of Valinor" could then be expanded to Valaron nurtalë Valinóreva, "the Valar's hiding of Valinor". Or, to use a wholly home-made example:

	Eruo melmë Ataniva = "God's love of Men"

and conversely:

	Atanion melmë Eruva = "Men's love of God"

Summary of Lesson Twelve: The possessive (or adjectival) case is formed by adding the ending -va (probably -wa after nouns ending in a consonant), in the plural -iva. (There is no explicit information about dual forms; presumably the ending -va can be added to nouns with dual forms in -u, whereas the case ending might appear as -wa when added to a dual form in -t.) If the ending -va is to be added to a noun of at least three syllables that ends in a vowel, and the two last syllables are short, then the final vowel is lengthened before the case ending is added so as to attract the stress: the possessive form of Oromë is therefore Oroméva (not **Oromeva). For some reason, such lengthening also occur if the diphthong ui occurs in the second-to-last syllable of the noun; the possessive form of huinë "gloom" is therefore huinéva. – A possessive phrase like "X Yva" may mean "Y's X" or "X of Y" referring to simple ownership, e.g. lambë Eldaiva "the language of the Elves" or coa i Eldava "the Elf's house". The pattern "X Yva" may also refer to a permanent attribute (e.g. alcar Oroméva "the glory of Oromë"), or to the prevalent characteristic of a place (e.g. Taurë Huinéva "Forest of Gloom"). Another use of this case is expressing "X that consists of Y" (e.g. yuldar lisse-miruvóreva "draughts of sweet mead"). – Verbal nouns, or abstract nouns derived from verbs, denote an action viewed as a "thing" or process. Such nouns may be derived in a variety of ways; relevant endings include -më, -lë, -ië and -ë. Notice especially the ending -lë, which (it seems) may in principle be added to any A-stem verb, as when the verb linda- "to sing" produces lindalë "singing, music". When dependent on a verbal noun or an abstract clearly associated with some verb, the genitive case takes on the meaning of a subject genitive (as in Altariello nainië "Galadriel's lament"), whereas the possessive case is used for object genitive (Nurtalë Valinóreva "Hiding of Valinor").

VOCABULARY

minquë "eleven"
varya- "to protect"
alya "rich"
seler (sell-) "sister"
malta "gold" (so according to Appendix E of LotR; the Etymologies, entry SMAL, gives malda instead – but post-LotR sources seem to indirectly confirm that malta was Tolkien's final decision, as when PM:366 cites the Eldarin root yielding words for "gold" as MALAT.)
engwë "thing" 
muilë "secrecy" (including one of the abstract endings mentioned above, -lë; in this case it is added directly to the root MUY, here manifesting as mui-. Apparently this word is related to Sindarin muil as in one place-name occurring in LotR: Emyn Muil, possibly meaning something like Hills of Secrecy or Hidden Hills).
sérë "peace" (in origin an abstract formation based on the verb ser- "to rest", derived from the same root SED which also produces the name of Estë [from Esdê/Ezdê], the Valië or "goddess" of rest and sleep)
ramba "wall"
ondo "stone" (as material, though ondo is also used = "a rock"; the Sindarin equivalent gon, gond occurs in the names Gondor and Gondolin, the latter of which is adapted from Quenya Ondolindë)
osto "city" (according to late sources also used = "fortress", but we will use it in the sense of "city" here; the word seems to refer primarily to a fortified city, so there may not be much of a distinction anyway)
mornië "darkness" (cf. morë "black"; the word mornië is actually an abstract formation based on another adjective derived from the same primitive root MOR, namely morna = "dark")

EXERCISES

These exercises involve both the genitive case and the possessive/adjectival case. Make sure to pick the right case in Exercises I-P (though sometimes, either case will do).

1. Translate into English:

A. I limpë Eldaron vs. i limpë Eldaiva (and since both phrases may have the same English translation, explain what the difference is)
B. Haryalyë yulma maltava.
C. I rocco i Eldava alantië mir i núra cilya.
D. Neri séreva úvar ohtari.
E. Altë rambar ondova nurtaner i coar i cainen analyë neriva i osto.
F. I coa i arano selerwa ná carnë.
G. Minë i mólion amápië i macil i aranwa.
H. I vendëo toron hirnë ilyë i harmar i minquë Naucoiva imbë i canta rassi i ninqui orontion.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. Rivers of wine poured into the man's mouth.
J. The boys' sister [/the sister of the boys] gathered (together) the things of the boys and went into the house of the queen.
K. The secrecy of the women protected a great treasure of gold.
L. The eleven warriors could not protect the peace of the city, for a great darkness fell.
M. They will go through a land of great trees and many rocks, for they want to see the city of the mighty warrior.
N. A wall of secrecy protected the hidden gold of the city, and I did not find it.
O. The land of the Elves is a land of many beautiful things; a land without Elves is a land of darkness, for the Men (Atani) of the land do not hear the rich language of the Elves.
P. The king's sister's gathering of books about Elves. (To make an abstract noun "gathering", try adding the ending -lë "-ing" to the verb hosta- "to gather".)

LESSON THIRTEEN
The Dative case. The Gerund. The pronominal endings -lmë, -lvë and -mmë. An indefinite pronoun.

THE DATIVE CASE
Back in Lesson Five, we introduced the concept of grammatical objects, the "target" of the verbal action performed by the subject: I Elda máta massa = "the Elf is eating bread", i Nauco hirnë harma = "the Dwarf found a treasure".
So far in this course, all the objects that we have concerned ourselves with have been, more precisely, direct objects. These are objects directly affected by the verbal action. In archaic Quenya, such objects had their own grammatical case, the accusative – but this case no longer had any distinct forms in Third Age Quenya. But there are also indirect objects, to which Quenya grammar likewise assigns special case forms. The case marking indirect objects, the dative, was still alive and well in Third Age Quenya. But before discussing how dative forms are constructed, let us have a closer look on indirect objects.
An indirect object is, logically, an object indirectly affected by the verbal action of the sentence. Thus the indirect object is often the beneficiary of the verbal action (though it may also denote a party that is adversely affected by this action). The archetypal example involves the verb "to give", which must logically entail three parties: the subject that does the giving, the direct object which is the thing that is given, plus the indirect object that is the recipient of the gift and thus the beneficiary of the verbal action: 

The man [subject] gave the boy [indirect object] a book [direct object].

Modern English (unlike, say, German) has no distinct dative case, so in the English example above, the noun "boy" receives no extra inflectional elements to explicitly mark it as the indirect object of the sentence. In English, indirect objects may be indicated simply by word order; the indirect object is then jammed into the sentence in front of the direct object, just like "the boy" appears before "a book" in our example above. But just like English often uses a phrase involving the preposition "of" instead of the genitive case, the absence of a distinct dative case is frequently compensated for by means of prepositional circumlocutions: The two prepositions most often used to simulate the function of the dative case are "to" and "for". So instead of saying "the man gave the boy a book" (word order alone identifying "the boy" as the indirect object), one might say "the man gave a book to the boy". Examples with "for" could be, say, "we did it for the children", or "the men work for the queen". 
In Quenya, "the boy", "the children" and "the queen" of these examples would be considered indirect objects – the parties indirectly affected by the verbal action – and the corresponding nouns would be inflected for the dative case. There would be no need to maintain a specific word order, or to use prepositions like "to" or "for". Cf. the question occurring in the middle of Namárië, where the pronoun ni "I" (related to the pronominal ending -n or -nyë of similar meaning) appears in the dative case:

Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva? "Now who will refill the cup for me?"

The element here translated "for" is not a separate word in Quenya; it is simply the final -n of nin – which -n is the Quenya dative ending. Hence nin = "I-for", or in correct English: "for me". In other contexts it could also have been translated "to me" or (where in English the indirect object is identified by word order alone) simply "me": The verb "to give" being anta-, the Quenya equivalent of "you will give me a book" would in all likelihood go something like antuvalyë nin parma. The dative pronoun nin turns up in the last line of Fíriel's Song, as part of a sentence which Tolkien translated "what will the Father...give me...?" (LR:72). Of course, one might also translate "...give to me".
	The Plotz Letter confirms that the ending -n for dative is not only applicable to pronouns; it can also be attached to common nouns. (Plotz lists ciryan as the dative form of cirya "ship" and points to lassen as the dative form of lassë "leaf".) Thus we can build sentences like carnelyes i Naucon "you did it for the Dwarf" or i nér antuva i parma Eldan "the man will give the book to an Elf". In English, the latter sentence could also be translated "the man will give an Elf the book", word order alone indicating that "an Elf" is to be understood as the indirect object of the English sentence. In Quenya, word order would be much freer (the main advantage of a highly inflected language!), the case ending indicating that the noun in question is the indirect object no matter where the noun occurs in the sentence. This enables the speaker to move the indirect object around to express subtle nuances of emphasis. For instance, we may probably front the indirect object to put special focus on it: Eldan i nér antuva i parma, meaning something like "it is to an Elf [not to a Dwarf, etc.] the man will give the book". Whether the direct or the indirect object comes first may not be very material; while i nér antuva i parma Eldan means "the man will give the book to an Elf", i nér antuva Eldan i parma may be translated "the man will give an Elf the book".
	In the plural, dative forms end in -in. Nouns with nominative plurals in -i would in effect simply add the dative ending -n; the Plotz Letter points to lassin as the dative form of lassi "leaves". The dative plural of a word like laman (lamn-) "animal" would therefore be lamnin = "to animals" or "for animals". The ending -in is however also added to nouns that would have nominative plurals in -r; the plural marker -r does not appear in dative forms. From the first line of Fíriel's Song (translated "the Father made the World for Elves"), we know what the plural dative of Elda would be: Eldain. It should be noted that the ending -in merges with the last vowel of the noun to form a diphthong, like ai in this case. Fíriel's Song also provides the dative plural of "Mortals": Fírimoin (nominative plural Fírimor, LR:245; Tolkien later came to prefer the form Fírimar, as in the published Silmarillion, chapter 12. The dative plural would then become Fírimain, of course.)
	In the previous lesson I pointed out that "it is not quite clear what would happen when the [plural possessive-adjectival] ending -iva is added to a noun already ending in -i, like tári 'queen', or a noun with a stem-form in -i, like lómë (lómi-) 'night' (SD:415)". The same problem arises in the case of the plural dative forms. The dative singular "to/for a queen" would presumably be tárin, but when trying to derive a plural dative by adding -in to tári, we are probably left with tárin once again (the final -i or the noun and the initial i- of the ending simply merging). Conceivably the two vowels might merge into a long i, producing tárín as the word for "to/for queens", but this seems a somewhat unlikely word: Quenya rarely has a long vowel in a final unaccented syllable (though there is the word palantír). It may well be that tárin has to do duty for both singular and plural, so that one must rely on the context to find out which number is meant.
	The dual dative ending is given as -nt in the Plotz Letter, the dual dative form of cirya "ship" being listed as ciryant – which would mean something like "for a couple of ships". Of course, this ending -nt simply combines the dative ending -n with the dual ending -t. Already in Lesson One I briefly mentioned that this -nt seems to be the sole example of a final consonant cluster being allowed in LotR-style Quenya. – It may be that only nouns with nominative dual forms in -t would have dative dual forms in -nt; in the case of nouns with dual forms in -u, it may well be that the simplest dative ending -n would be employed. Once again using Aldu "Two Trees" as our example, the dative form should perhaps not be Aldunt, but rather Aldun (or possibly Alduen; see below concerning Ar-Veruen). We lack examples either way, though.

In some instances, a sentence may include an indirect object (in Quenya, a dative object) even though the sentence contains no direct object. In the Quenya equivalent of "the men work for the king", the English preposition "for" would be represented by the case ending -n added to aran (probably producing aranen, a helping vowel -e- intruding before the ending). There is at least one attested example of a sentence having a dative object, but no direct object: Tolkien in his Quenya version of the Pater Noster used a dative form of the pronoun "we, us" when rendering the phrase "...those who trespass against us". (This, by the way, is an example of the dative case being used to identify a party adversely affected by the verbal action: The context must decide whether the dative form should be translated "against us" or "for us". Grammatically speaking, both interpretations would be equally valid, but "those who sin for us" would not make sense in this particular context.) The verb "to trespass" or "to sin" can have no direct object, but obviously some party may be indirectly affected by the trespassing or sinning, so there can be an indirect object – aptly presented as a dative object in Quenya. 
	Dative forms may also turn up in sentences having no subject, a grammatical phenomenon virtually unheard of in modern English. Yet such sentences may be compared to phrases like "it seems to me that...", where the formal subject "it" is actually nothing but a grammatical dummy with no real content: In informal speech it may even be omitted, "seems to me that...", and the meaning is quite intact. Such English wordings are comparable to Quenya phrases like orë nin caritas, literally "[it] impels for me to do it", expressing the meaning that in English might be worded something like "I would like [or, feel moved] to do so" (VT41:13). Notice that the sentence orë nin caritas has no subject, but it does have a dative object: nin "to me, for me". Or- or ora- "impel, urge" is one of the Quenya impersonal verbs which invite such constructions; we will return to these verbs in a later lesson.
	Dative forms may even turn up in phrases where no verb occurs at all. Tolkien's (incomplete) translation of the Gloria Patri goes, in part: Alcar i ataren ar i yondon ar i airefëan = "glory [be] to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit" (VT43:36). Notice the dative ending -n appended to atar "father", yondo "son" and airefëa "holy spirit". (In the form ataren a connecting vowel -e- is inserted before the ending -n, since **atarn would not be a possible Quenya word.)

An earlier application of the case ending -n: In Tolkien's long evolution of Quenya, -n was not always the dative ending. From the perspective of the LotR scenario, one of the few things that are "wrong" with the Quenya of the Etymologies (written in the mid-thirties) is that -n is here the genitive ending instead. For instance, the entry LEP lists the names of various Valinorean weekdays, including Ar Manwen = Day of Manwë, or Ar Ulmon = Day of Ulmo (cf. the noun ar(ë) "day" – but later, Tolkien changed the word for "day" to aurë or ré, as indicated by the LotR appendices).
This use of the ending -n is also found in a phrase written in the mid-forties, reproduced in SD:303: Quenta Eldalien, "History of the Elves [Eldalië, Elf-people]". In draft versions of the poem that was to become Namárië, Tolkien used Vardan as the genitive "Varda's" (see for instance the early version reproduced in TI:284-285). In one of the later manuscripts, Tolkien still wrote Vardan, but then he crossed it out and replaced it with Vardo. This may seem to pinpoint the moment when Tolkien changed the genitive ending from -n to -o. Actually the genitive ending -o turns up in earlier sources as well; a "Qenya" poem of the early thirties already has ciryo (spelt kiryo) as the genitive of cirya "ship" (langon veakiryo "the throat of the sea-ship", MC:216). As for the dative case, the "Qenya" of the pre-LotR composition Fíriel's Song already uses -n (pl. -in) as the dative ending, as is evident from some examples quoted above. Later, -n for a while reverted to being the genitive ending, as the Namárië drafts seem to indicate. It appears, then, that Tolkien changed his mind back and forth over the decades – but the final resolution, as reflected in LotR and as codified in the Plotz Letter, was that -o is to be the genitive ending, while -n is the dative ending.
	Some of the obsolete genitives from the Etymologies are still interesting as forms. In the entry AY, the noun ailin "pool, lake" is said to have the "g.sg." (genitive singular) ailinen. Because of Tolkien's later revisions, the form ailinen must rather be understood as a dative singular in LotR-style Quenya – meaning "for a lake" instead of genitive "of a lake". The example ailinen is interesting insofar as it shows us what happens if the case ending -n (no matter what case it is assigned to!) is added to a noun ending in a consonant, like ailin. Since **ailinn is not a possible Quenya word, an e is inserted before the ending, producing ailinen. Though the ending -n had its meaning redefined, the principle of inserting this helping vowel whenever it is required would still be valid. [Update, late 2002: This assumption has now been confirmed by ataren as the genitive form of atar "father", VT43:36. This is a genuine dative form from post-LotR Quenya, so Tolkien was still using the same connecting vowel even after he had changed the meaning of the case ending -n.]
If the noun has a special stem-form – the final consonant turning into another consonant or a consonant cluster when endings are to be added – such changes occur before this extra -e- as well: In the entry LIN2 in the Etymologies, we learn that Laurelin (Laurelind-), the name of the Golden Tree of Valinor, has the "g.sg." Laurelinden. In LotR-style Quenya, this would be the dative singular instead, but the form as such is presumably valid still. The same goes for lissen as a form of lis (liss-) "honey"; see the entry LIS. We may then assume that a noun like nís (niss-) "woman" would be treated in a similar fashion: dative nissen.
One of the "genitive" forms of the Etymologies may even throw some light upon what the later dative of dual forms in -u should look like. One Valinorean weekday listed in the entries BES and LEP is Arveruen or Ar-Veruen, the "Day of the Spouses", referring to the Vala couple Aulë and Yavanna. Here we have veruen as the genitive of the dual form veru "spouses, married pair". It should be noticed that the helping vowel -e- is employed here as well (somewhat surprisingly: one might have thought that **verun would be an acceptable form). If this genitive veruen would still be a valid form after Tolkien redefined the ending -n so that veruen is a dative form in LotR-style Quenya, it would indicate that nouns with nominative dual forms in -u should have dative forms in -uen. The dative of Aldu "Two Trees" would then be neither Aldunt nor Aldun, but rather Alduen. But I hardly need to say that we are not on solid ground here, and I will not construct any exercises based on such hypotheses.

THE GERUND
Most of the time, nouns and verbs are distinct parts of speech. There are, of course, the verbal nouns discussed in the previous lesson, but they are unquestionably genuine nouns – abstract formations denoting verbal actions considered as "things". But verbs have one form, the gerund, which almost defies the dichotomy of noun vs. verb. One might say that a gerund is a verb masquerading as a noun.
	In Cirion's Oath occurs the word enyalien, literally meaning "for recalling" (that is, "in order to remember"). The prefix en- means "re-", and the final -n is the case ending discussed above, the dative marker corresponding to the English preposition "for". Stripping away these extra elements, we are left with -yalie-, yalië. In his notes on Cirion's Oath, as reproduced in UT:317, Tolkien makes it clear that yalië is an "infinitive (or gerundial) form" of a verb yal-, meaning to call or to summon. Thus we can isolate -ië as a grammatical ending used to derive 'infinitive or gerundial' forms.
	Earlier in this course, we have discussed another kind of infinitive, which is simply the stem of the verb (with -ë added, in the case of primary verbs). An attested example is the sentence polin quetë, "I can speak" (VT41:6), with quetë as the infinitive form of the verb quet- "speak". Since Tolkien clearly identifies -ië as an infinitive ending in UT:317, it may be that polin quetië would have be equally possible (more on this below). In her tutorial Basic Quenya, written before the example polin quetë became available, Nancy Martsch uses -ië as the Quenya infinitival ending throughout. This may not necessarily be wrong; Tolkien definitely imagined an old Elvish infinitive in -ie. In the Etymologies, entry NAR2, the Old Noldorin word trenarie "to recount" is explicitly called an "inf." form ("Old Noldorin" being the language Tolkien might later have referred to as Old Sindarin, after he revised his linguistic mythos in the early fifties). However, I think that in many cases, the Quenya verb forms derived by means of the suffix -ië are best termed gerunds (rather than infinitives).
	In English, gerunds are derived by means of the ending -ing, e.g. "finding" vs. the verb "to find". Now a form like "finding" can of course also be an abstract noun (synonymous with "discovery") as well as an adjectival participle (as in "the man finding the treasure"). But what we are interested in here, is rather the word "finding" as it appears in a sentence like "finding the treasure was wonderful". Here, "finding" in a way behaves like a noun, for it is the subject of the sentence. But we can tell that in some sense, "finding" is still a verb, for it has not lost one of the unique characteristics of a verb: the ability to take an object. In the phrase "finding the treasure", "the treasure" is the object of "finding". If "finding" had here been an abstract noun, one would have to use an "of"-construction to bring in the thing which is found: "the finding (= discovery) of the treasure". Cf. our discussion of the Quenya object genitive (as in Nurtalë Valinóreva, "Hiding of Valinor") in the previous lesson.
Since we are able to tell that in the sentence "finding the treasure was wonderful", the word "finding" is not a verbal noun, we can conclude that it is actually a gerund. A gerund is a form of the verb which can function as a noun, with much the same meaning as a genuine verbal noun. However, a gerund is still capable of taking an object, and this goes for Quenya gerunds as well: Regarding the Quenya gerundial form in -ië which Tolkien used in Cirion's Oath, he noted that it was "governing a direct object" (UT:317).
NOTE: In Quenya as in English, gerunds and abstract nouns cannot always be clearly distinguished. Just like the English ending -ing is used to derive both gerunds and verbal nouns, the Quenya ending -ië may also be used to derive abstracts, e.g. tyalië "play" (as noun) from the verb tyal- "to play". Indeed -ië is also used as a general abstract ending, much like English "-ness", cf. for instance mornië "darkness".
	As usual, there is an extreme scarcity of attested examples. But we must assume that in Quenya as in English, gerunds may often function as the subjects of sentences, perhaps something like this:

	Hirië harma caruva nér alya "finding a treasure will make a man rich"
	Tirië i aiwi anta i vendin alta alassë "watching the birds gives the maidens [vendin, dative] great joy"

In these examples we have equipped the gerunds with objects (harma and i aiwi), but a gerund could certainly function as subject without any further additions, for instance like this: Matië ná i analta alassë ilyë tiucë Naucoron, "eating is the greatest joy of all fat Dwarves".
Presumably Quenya gerunds can also function as the object of a sentence, comparable to such English constructions as "I love fishing". The gerund functioning as object may in turn govern its own object: A sentence like "I love watching the birds" may perhaps be rendered into Quenya as melin tirië i aiwi ("watching" being the object of the phrase "I love", and "the birds" in turn being the object of the gerund "watching"). Perhaps the latter might also be expressed as "I love to watch the birds" = melin tirë i aiwi (?), using an infinitive instead of a gerund. Gerunds and infinitives may well be interchangeable in many contexts, in Quenya as in English. 
Indeed our terminology may be stricter than the one Tolkien himself used, if we reserve the term infinitive for forms like tirë "to watch" and insist on calling tirië "watching" a gerund only: In UT:317, quoted above, Tolkien himself refers to the forms in -ië as both "infinitival" and "gerundial". As we mentioned above, in the "Old Noldorin" of the Etymologies one form in -ie is explicitly identified as an infinitive. The post-LotR example polin quetë "I can speak" demonstrates that -ië at least cannot be a universal infinitive ending. Would polin quetië be a possible wording, or would this sound about as weird as "I can speaking" in English? And what about "I want to find a treasure"? Would merin hirië harma be OK, or would the Eldar find this wording as awkward as "I want finding a treasure" in English? It may be safer to use the simplest infinitive, hirë, in such a context. 
When a verbal action is the subject or object of a sentence, one may to some extent choose between the infinitives and gerunds in English: "To err is human, to forgive is divine" = "Erring is human, forgiving is divine". Especially when a verbal action functions as subject, I think it would be safer to use the gerund (the form in -ië) in Quenya. But since we have no actual examples, it is presently impossible to say with any confidence what Tolkien would have thought of as acceptable Quenya in this regard.
There is, however, one important use of the gerund which luckily is attested in our tiny corpus. In English, the normal infinitive (marked by "to") is often used to indicate purpose: "They have come to see the king." Whether this could be rendered "directly" into Quenya as ?utúlientë cenë i aran none can say at present – but I tend to doubt that this is a valid construction. Notice the wording used in Cirion's Oath: Vanda sina termaruva Elenna·nórëo alcar enyalien. Tolkien's translation in UT:305 goes "this oath shall stand in memory of the glory of the Land of the Star", but more literally the Quenya wording is something like "this oath shall stand for recalling [the] Elenna-land's glory". Cf. Tolkien's comments on the form enyalien in UT:317, already quoted in part:

yal- 'summon', in infinitive (or gerundial) form en-yalië, here in dative 'for the re-calling', but governing a direct object [namely alcar "glory"]: thus 'to recall or "commemorate" the glory'.

So here we have a verb en-yal- "re-call-" = "commemorate". Add the gerundial ending -ië, and we get the gerund enyalië, "recalling". Since a gerund may be described as a verb functioning as a noun, it may also receive case endings as a noun. So Tolkien supplied the dative ending -n "for" to produce enyalien "for recalling". The word can now function as the indirect object of the sentence, the "benefactor" of the verbal action: The oath termaruva "shall stand", and this action promotes "recalling" (enyalië). The dative gerund enyalien "for recalling" in turn has Elenna·nórëo alcar, "[the] Elenna-land's glory", as its object.
Of course, in English one does not say "this oath shall stand for recalling the Elenna-land's glory", but rather "this oath shall stand (in order) to recall the glory of the land of Elenna". Nonetheless, this example seems to tell us that English infinitives indicating purpose should be rendered into Quenya as gerunds with a dative ending attached. "They have come (in order) to see the king" would then translate into utúlientë cenien i aran, literally "they have come for seeing the king". (If we were to slavishly follow the word order Tolkien used in Cirion's Oath, with the gerund at the end of the sentence, we would actually have to say utúlientë i aran cenien = "they have come the king for seeing"! However, Quenya word order is in all likelihood quite flexible.) The rule we have tried to make out may be summarized like this: If in English you can add the words "in order" in front of a infinitive without destroying the meaning (never mind the style!), this infinitive indicates purpose and should be rendered into Quenya as a gerund inflected for dative.

Forming gerunds from A-stem verbs: All the gerunds so far exemplified have been formed from primary (ending-less) verbs. What happens if the ending -ië is to be added to an A-stem verb? We have no direct, explicit attestations to guide us, so I saved this problem for the end. But all the indirect evidence points to one conclusion: the final -a should be dropped before -ië is suffixed.
The Etymologies, entry ORO, lists the Quenya verb orta- "rise, raise", but a form ortie is also cited, though this is "Old Noldorin" (/Old Sindarin) rather than Quenya. This word ortie, simply glossed "rise", would be an archaic Elvish form that later evolved into a Sindarin infinitive. But it could very well correspond to a Quenya gerund ortië "rising, raising", since "Old Noldorin" is relatively close to Quenya. This would indicate that when the ending -ië is to be added to an A-stem verb, the final -a drops out before the ending. We have one possible attestation of a Quenya form which would confirm this conclusion: Listing various forms of the verb ora- "urge", Tolkien did include orië (VT41:13), and while he did not clearly identify this or any other of the forms, orië may well be intended as the gerund. Also notice nainië "lament(ing)" as a derivative of the verb naina- "to lament" (compare RGEO:66 with the Etymologies, entry NAY): Nainië may be seen either as a gerund or as a verbal noun.
As we have already touched on, -ië can also function as a general abstract ending, somewhat like English "-ness". Where -ië is used to form abstract nouns from adjectives, adjectives in -a lose this final vowel before -ië is added; mornië "darkness" is apparently formed from morna "dark". Another attested pair of this kind is láta "open" vs. látië "openness". The abstract ending -ië is certainly closely related to the gerundial ending -ië; basically it is the same ending we are dealing with (as noted above, the distinction between gerunds and abstract nouns often becomes blurred). If the ending -ië causes a final -a to drop out when it is added to adjectives, it seems very likely that this also happens when it is added to A-stem verbs. So starting from verbs like orta- "raise" and nurta- "hide", we may probably derive the gerunds ortië, nurtië and build sentences like ortië Pelóri nurtien Valinor úmë mára noa "raising [the] Pelóri to hide Valinor was not a good idea". (It wasn't – see MR:401, 405 for Tolkien's critical comments on this move by the Valar!)
In the case of verbs in -ya, e.g. harya- "to possess", the entire ending -ya would probably drop out before -ië is suffixed. Otherwise the gerund would have to be **haryië, but yi is not a possible Quenya combination. Abstract nouns formed by means of the ending -ië from adjectives in -ya are seen to surrender the latter ending, e.g. verië "boldness" from verya "bold" (see the Etymologies, entry BER). We may probably assume that verië would also be the gerund of the related verb verya- "to dare". So the gerund of a verb like harya- "to possess" is most likely harië (e.g. in a platitude like harië malta úva carë nér anwavë alya, "possessing gold will not make a man truly rich").

THE PRONOUN "WE"
We have been practicing various pronominal endings: -n or -nyë "I" (the short form must not be confused with the dative ending!), -lyë "you", -s "it", -ntë "they" and -t "them". It is time to introduce the endings for the first person plural, corresponding to the English pronoun "we".
	This is a rather complicated story, actually. There are several Quenya endings for "we", and Tolkien seems to have redefined their exact meaning repeatedly. One of the relevant endings occurs in the Cormallen Praise: Andavë laituvalmet, "long shall we bless them". Here we have a future-tense verb with pronominal endings for "we" (subject) and "them" (object): lait·uva·lme·t, "bless·shall·we·them". The ending for "we" is seen to be -lmë (-lme-).
	However, in WJ:371 Tolkien discusses the Quenya exclamation vá, signaling refusal or prohibition: in effect "no!" in the sense of "I will not" or "do not!" Tolkien also indicated that this vá could receive explicit pronominal endings, such as -n(yë) for "I", producing the form ván or ványë for "I won't". But Tolkien also mentioned the form vammë, "we won't". So here the pronominal ending for "we" is suddenly not -lmë, but rather -mmë. 
NOTE: Notice, by the way, how the long á of vá is shortened in the form vammë. This is one of the examples indicating that Quenya normally cannot have a long vowel in front of a consonant cluster or a long consonant – a phonological rule we have repeatedly alluded to earlier in this course. The fact that the vowel remains long in ványë suggests that ny is perceived as a single consonant, palatalized n like Spanish ñ, and not as a cluster n + y.
	But we are not finished. In VT42:35, in Bill Welden's article Negation in Quenya, he cites a sentence including -lwë as the ending for "we" (the relevant word is navilwë "we judge"). However, in VT43:6, one ending for "we" is said to include the consonants -lv-, not -lw- as in -lwë. This ending for "we" would correspond closely to the ending for "our" (see the next lesson), and armed with this knowledge we recognize another -lv- in the word omentielvo "of our meeting" occurring in LotR. (And we won't confuse the matter even further by citing evidence pointing to -ngwë as yet another ending for "we"!)
	In short, there is a whole zoo of endings that seem to mean "we", and before we can even start to make sense of them, two facts must be recognized. Firstly, the chaos is partly due to Tolkien's incessant revisions; we should not think that all of these samples belong to quite the same form of Quenya. Secondly, Quenya upholds distinctions that do not appear in English. To a speaker of English, the pronoun "we" is just "we". But this system would appear rather over-simplified to the Eldar. They distinguished between several kinds of "we".
	Most importantly, "we" may be either inclusive or exclusive. Tolkien referred to the ending -mmë as the "first [person] plural exclusive" (WJ:371, emphasis added). At the time Tolkien wrote this, the ending -mmë denoted an exclusive "we", a "we" that excludes the person(s) addressed. The exclamation vammë "we won't" represents a refusal as it would be spoken to some other party (likely the one whose will "we" refuse to obey). This other party is not included in "we", but stands outside the "we" group. Therefore, the exclusive "we" is proper here.
	On the other hand, the ending -lmë at one point denoted an inclusive "we": The party being addressed is included in "we". When Tolkien first wrote the sentence andavë laituvalmet "long shall we bless them", he probably intended it to be interpreted as follows: The people who are praising Frodo and Sam are addressing one another, not the Ring-bearers. They encourage one another to praise the Ring-bearers. If they had said "long shall we bless you" instead, addressing Frodo and Sam directly, they would have had to use an exclusive "we". Frodo and Sam would not be part of this exclusive "we"; they would stand outside the "we" group addressing them.
	Back in Lesson Eight, it was noted that while the author of this course may sometimes seem to refer to himself as "we", this is not (necessarily!) because he has an ego of royal dimensions. The author tends to include the reader in this "we", as if implying that the author and his readers somehow share this odyssey through the various aspects of Quenya grammar. (You can take it as a friendly gesture, or as a particularly cunning brain-wash technique which the author uses to somehow make you an accomplice whenever he draws conclusions that he should actually take the full responsibility for himself!) Anyhow, in Quenya there could have been no misunderstanding. There would be distinct forms for exclusive "we" and inclusive "we". A royal "we", referring to the speaker/writer only, could only be exclusive. An author using the word "we" to refer to himself and his readers, directly addressing them in his text, would have to use the inclusive "we".
	Well and good – but what are the endings for inclusive and exclusive "we" according to Tolkien's more-or-less final decision? Some of the forms cited above were apparently abandoned or redefined. At the time Tolkien published LotR, the ending for inclusive "we" was quite clearly -lmë, as in laituvalmet "we shall praise them". The corresponding ending for inclusive "our" occurred in the greeting "a star shines on the our of our meeting": In the first edition of LotR, the word "of our meeting" appeared as omentielmo (notice that it includes the same combination -lm- as in -lmë). We have already pointed out that in the essay Quendi and Eldar, written about five years after the publication of LotR, Tolkien explicitly identified -mmë as an ending for exclusive "we" (WJ:371). In the first version of this course, I likewise used -lmë for inclusive "we" and -mmë for exclusive "we".
	However, it now turns out that Tolkien later carried out an important revision of this part of the pronoun table, and since this revision was partially reflected in the Second Edition of LotR (1966), I guess it is so "canonical" that teachers and learners of Quenya should take it into account. When Tolkien revised his magnum opus, the original omentielmo in Frodo's greeting to Gildor became omentielvo. Dick Plotz, famous among Tolkien-linguists as the recipient of the Plotz Letter containing the table of Quenya case endings, also received a letter from Tolkien explaining this change: The forms in -lm- were not after all inclusive, but exclusive! Since Frodo is talking to Gildor and the other Elves when he says "our meeting", an exclusive form is not proper, and according to Tolkien's latest discoveries, the inclusive form was to include the cluster -lv-: Thus omentielmo had to become omentielvo. VT43:6 refers to this revision from -lm- to -lv- in the inclusive forms. (We will discuss this revision ad nauseam in the next lesson.) 
	One consequence of this revision is that the Cormallen Praise has to be re-interpreted. When Tolkien first used the phrase andavë laituvalmet "long shall we praise them", he surely thought of this as an inclusive "we": The people of Gondor are encouraging one another to praise the Ring-bearers. After the revision reflected in the Second Edition, the form laituvalmet suddenly contains an exclusive "we" instead: Now the meaning must be something like "we, the people of Gondor, speaking to the universe in general, declare that we [exclusive!] will long praise the Ring-bearers!"
	One minor problem we have already mentioned: if the (revised) ending for inclusive "we" is to contain -lv-, why does the ending -lwë (rather than -lvë) appear in the word navilwë "we judge" (VT42:35)? Various explanations have been offered, none entirely convincing. I will use -lvë here. 
	There is at least one other ending for "we", namely dual "we", referring to two persons only: "the two of us". (The endings -lvë and -lmë would signify "we" involving three or more persons.) According to VT43:6, the pronominal endings for dual "we" have -mm- (instead of -lv- or -lm-). The ending -mmë is indeed attested, for instance in the form vammë "we won't" referred to above. But this form dates from the earlier conceptual phase, when -mmë was still the "first [person] plural exclusive" (WJ:371, emphasis added). Later, Tolkien changed his mind and decided that -mmë should be dual and not plural. One question remains: In its revised meaning, is -mmë dual inclusive "we", sc. "thou and I", or dual exclusive "we", sc. "I and one other person"? Or maybe the distinction between inclusive and exclusive forms is not upheld in the dual pronouns? If it is, I would tend to think that -mmë is an exclusive form, since it could then be related to the independent dual exclusive pronoun met "us (two)" occurring in Namárië. But we cannot be certain. If the distinctions plural/dual and inclusive/exclusive are to be upheld in all forms, it would obviously require four distinct endings for "we". Indeed four endings for "we" do seem to be implied: -lvë (variant -lwë), -lmë, -mmë and -ngwë. Tolkien created something of a mess when trying to make up his mind where in the plural/dual and inclusive/exclusive grid these endings belong. But (as I interpret it) the more-or-less final resolution was this: the new ending for inclusive "we" is -lvë (replacing former -lmë), the new ending for exclusive "we" is -lmë (redefined from inclusive to exclusive!), whereas -mmë (formerly exclusive plural) is now "dual" (inclusive? exclusive? or both, if there is no distinction?!) Only the endings -lvë and -lmë are used in the exercises below; the endings -mmë, and still more -ngwë, remain somewhat obscure.

AN INDEFINITE PRONOUN
In English, words like "one" and "you" are often used with deliberately vague or general reference: "One has to earn a living..." or "you have to wonder..." Here, "one" is not the number 1 (Quenya minë), and "you" does not refer to the one who is addressed. For such meanings, Quenya has the pronoun quen (WJ:361) – essentially an unstressed variant of the noun quén, which simply means "person". Though ultimately related to Quendë "Elf", these words have no special reference to Elves. As usual, we lack attested examples, but we must assume that quen would be used for "one" or "someone" in such sentences as quen milyanë leryalë "one longed for release" or quen hantë i yulma "someone broke the cup". Presumably quen may also receive case endings, e.g. genitive queno "one's" or dative quenen (which in English would often be translated "for you" rather than "for one": Matië yávë ná mára quenen, "eating fruit is good for you" – "you" here meaning "people in general"!)
	Most Quenya pronouns usually appear as endings, and it may be that Tolkien at one stage even reckoned with a pronominal ending for the indefinite pronoun "one". There exists an early "Qenya" text where this meaning seems to be associated with an ending -o: Kildo kirya ninqe, translated "a white ship one saw" (MC:220-221). However, transforming this into LotR-style Quenya would probably require rather more than altering the spelling to cildo cirya ninquë: While the two last words would certainly be acceptable, the verb form kildo does not seem to fit Tolkien's later system, and the status of the ending -o at the LotR stage is highly doubtful. If we aim for LotR-style Quenya, it is certainly much safer to use the indefinite pronoun quen from a post-LotR source. 
NOTE: Yet another impersonal pronoun is mo, as in Tolkien's sentence alasaila ná lá carë tai mo navë mára, "it is unwise not to do what one judges good" (VT42:34). But it is less clear whether this mo could receive case endings  (in the genitive, this form would be unchanged!) In the exercises of this course, I have used quen throughout. 

Summary of Lesson Thirteen: The Quenya dative case identifies indirect objects, the party indirectly affected by a verbal action (often the beneficiary of this action, though the indirect object may also be adversely affected by it). In the singular, the dative ending is -n (when it is to be added to a noun ending in a consonant, a helping vowel -e- is inserted before it). Nouns with nominative plurals in -i have dative plurals in -in; this ending -in is also used in case of nouns which have nominative plurals in -r, so that the dative form corresponding to nominative Eldar is Eldain. The dual dative ending is -nt, at least in the case of nouns which have nominative dual forms in -t. (Nouns with nominative dual forms in -u should perhaps have dative dual forms in -uen, if we can put any trust in earlier material where the ending -n was actually assigned to the genitive case rather than the dative.) – A gerund is a form of the verb which can function almost like a noun, denoting the corresponding verbal action, but unlike regular verbal nouns, gerunds are still able to take objects. Quenya gerunds are formed with the ending -ië (also a general abstract ending); if this suffix is to be added to an A-stem, the final -a evidently drops out. In the case of verbs in -ya, this entire ending is apparently omitted before the suffix -ië. English infinitives expressing purpose (i.e., infinitives signifying "[in order] to do" something) translate into Quenya as gerunds inflected for dative, e.g. hirien "(in order) to find". – Quenya has several pronominal endings corresponding to English "we". One of them is (apparently) -lvë, denoting a "we" that includes the party that is addressed, whereas the ending -lmë expresses an exclusive "we", used when the speaker addresses a party outside the "we" group that the speaker himself belongs to. (We ignore an earlier conceptual phase, when -lmë was inclusive "we" and -mmë the exclusive.) – The indefinite pronoun "one" or "someone" is in Quenya quen. Presumably it can receive case endings, e.g. genitive queno "one's".

VOCABULARY
In each Vocabulary section, we have first of all introduced a new number. The numbers 1-11 are explicitly mentioned in the Etymologies: minë, atta, neldë, canta, lempë, enquë, otso, tolto, nertë, cainen and minquë. The Elvish way of counting, with base 12 instead of 10, would obviously require a word for "twelve" as well – the last of the basic numbers. However, the Etymologies does not mention the Quenya word for "twelve", and neither is it attested elsewhere. Etym only cites the primitive root-word for this number: RÁSAT. "No other forms are given," Christopher Tolkien notes. However, students of Elvish agree that a Quenya word derived from this root would most likely have the form rasta (the complete Primitive Elvish word being something like rásatâ, the accent mark here indicating stress rather than length). Some writers have used rasta in their own compositions, so it is at least a post-Tolkien Quenya word. To complete our survey of the basic numbers, I have included rasta in the vocabulary below – but it must be understood that while this is definitely a plausible word, it is not explicitly given in published material. (At another point, Tolkien cited yunuk(w)- as the Elvish root for "twelve", and then the Quenya word would perhaps be something like yunquë! See VT42:24, 31. Regarding "twelve", Tolkien apparently had the nasty habit of citing only the ancient roots and not the actual words in later Elvish...)

?rasta "twelve"
mahta- "to fight"
anta- "to give", irregular past tense ánë. (This past tense is listed in a very old source, the Qenya Lexicon p. 31. It is entirely possible that in Tolkien's later Quenya, the past tense of anta- could just as well be regular: antanë. However, the Sindarin verb form ónen "I gave" occurring in LotR Appendix A would correspond to Quenya ánen rather than ?antanen. The Etymologies, entry ONO, indicates that the past tense of the verb onta- "beget, create" may be both ónë and ontanë; perhaps the past tense of anta- may likewise be both ánë and antanë. We will use the attested form ánë here.)
suc- "to drink"
anna "gift"
alassë "joy"
hroa "body" (related to a word introduced earlier, hrávë "flesh"; Tolkien meant them to be descended from Primitive Elvish srawâ and srâwê, respectively. See MR:350.)
noa "idea"
cala "light" (as in Calaquendi "Light-elves", Calacirya/-cilya "Light-cleft")  
mára "good" (in the sense of "fit, useful" – Quenya has other words for "good" in the moral sense)
quen indefinite pronoun "one", "someone"
arwa adjective "possessing", "in control of", "having", followed by genitive (see note) 

NOTE ON ARWA "POSSESSING, IN CONTROL OF": This adjective is listed in the Etymologies, entry 3AR (though it is derived from a variant root GAR). It can be used to form compound adjectives; Tolkien mentioned the example aldarwa "having trees" = "tree-grown" (alda + arwa, "tree-having"). But apparently arwa "having, possessing" can also be used by itself, and then it would be followed by a genitive form. (As we have touched on above, the Quenya genitive ending was -n when Tolkien wrote the Etymologies, but we must assume that the rule as such was still valid when he changed the ending to -o later.) So we may probably have phrases like nér arwa collo, "a man having/possessing a cloak" (colla "cloak", genitive collo). Perhaps this may simply be translated "a man with a cloak", and if we use arwa to mean "with", it would mean that the words for "with" and "without" (arwa and ú, respectively) are both followed by genitive! Yet arwa is said to be an adjective and not a preposition, so arwa presumably agrees in number, becoming arwë (for archaic arwai) when pointing back to a plural word: Neri arwë collo, "men possessing a cloak", Naucor arwë harmaron "Dwarves possessing treasures", arani arwë ohtarion "kings in control of warriors".

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English:

A. I nér ánë i nissen anna.
B. Anar anta cala Ambaren.
C. Hiruvalvë i harma, ar antuvalves i rasta Naucoin.
D. Matië hrávë carë quen tiuca, ar umilvë merë tiucë hroar, an tiucë hroar umir vanyë.
E. Lendelmë mir i osto hirien i sailë nissi, an mernelmë cenitat.
F. Nér arwa márë noaron ná saila ar antuva sérë ar alassë i oston.
G. Utultielmet quetien rimbë engwion.
H. Sucië limpë umë mára queno hroan.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. Someone gave the warrior a great sword.
J. Making a house for the boys is a good idea.
K. We (inclusive) fight for peace; fighting does not give the people [any] joy, for we (inclusive) have seen the light.
L. Speaking the Elven-tongue (Eldalambë) is a great joy to Men (Atani).
M. The warriors of the two lands will fight for the [twin] peoples (dual), and we (exclusive) will go through a great darkness to find light.
N. The men having the good wine wanted cups to drink the wine, and the king's thralls gave the men twelve cups of gold.
O. We (exclusive) want to go into the city to free all Men (Atani) and (to) give the gold of the king to the thralls.
P. The walls of the city are great; we (inclusive) have made them to protect the people.

LESSON FOURTEEN
The Allative and Ablative cases. Equë and auta: two peculiar verbs. Possessive pronominal endings: -nya, -lya, -lva, -lma, -mma

THE ALLATIVE AND ABLATIVE CASES
The dative case ending -n presented in the previous lesson may sometimes correspond to the English preposition "to", as when it is appended to gerunds: enyalien = "to recall" (UT:317). Yet this is a rather abstract kind of "to"; as we have seen, the Quenya dative may also be translated as phrases involving the preposition "for", or its meaning may simply be expressed by a specific word order in English.
	However, Quenya does have a special case form implying "to" in the more basic sense of "towards" or "against"; the Latin term for such a case is allative. The relevant Quenya ending is -nna: In the entry Eldanna in the UT Index, Christopher Tolkien identifies this ending as a "suffix...of movement towards". The word Eldanna itself is not a bad example; it may be translated "Elfwards" and was used by the Númenoreans as the name of a bay on the west coast of Númenor, thus in the direction of the Blessed Realm where the Eldar dwelt (UT:164). In Elendil's Declaration, repeated by Aragorn at his coronation, the ending -nna carries the full force of "to" with the implication of motion towards: Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien = "out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth [Endor] I am come." Cf. also the sentence Sin Quentë Quendingoldo Elendilenna (PM:401) – apparently meaning "Thus Spoke Quendingoldo to Elendil" (or perhaps "This Quendingoldo Said to Elendil"; the meaning of the word sin is not quite clear). As the allative forms of cirya "ship" and lassë "leaf", the Plotz Letter points to ciryanna "to a ship" and lassenna "to a leaf". (Of course, the stress now falls on the vowel of the second-to-last syllable because of the following consonant cluster introduced by the ending -nna: ciryAnna, lassEnna.) So if you want to say "I'll go to the ship" in Quenya, you don't normally use a separate word for "to", but employ the ending -nna instead: Lelyuvan i ciryanna. 
While the ending -nna may sometimes be rendered "-wards" in English, e.g. Elenna "Starwards" as a name of Númenor (see below), the English ending "-wards" cannot be freely applied to any noun like the Quenya ending can. But if the day ever comes when Columbus lendë Americanna can be translated "Columbus went Americawards", people thinking this is acceptable English, the language shall have acquired a living allative case.
NOTE: Besides -nna, there are also traces of an older allative ending in Quenya. In primitive Elvish it had the form -da, later reduced to -d (WJ:366). In Quenya, this -d became -z and later -r, and we have already met it in the word mir "into" (this is literally mi-r "in-to", cf. mi "in"!) Since this ending came to clash with the plural ending -r, as in Eldar, it only survived in a handful of words indicating motion to or towards a point. Attested examples include tar "thither", oar "away", yar "to whom" and mir "into". Actually "into" can also be minna with the normal, "modern" allative ending -nna. Likewise, "thither" can be tanna as well as tar.
	In the plural, the ending -nna changes to -nnar, hence lassennar "to leaves" and ciryannar "to ships" (e.g. lelyuvan i ciryannar "I'll go to the ships"). The final -r here appearing seems to be the same plural element that we are familiar with from nominative forms like Eldar, ciryar.

Since Quenya may express "to, towards" by means of a case ending, the question naturally arises whether there is an ending for "from" as well. There is.
As we pointed out in Lesson 11, the genitive ending -o may occasionally take on this meaning, as in one word in Namárië: Oiolossëo = "from Oiolossë" (Mount Everwhite). However, the idea of "from" is more regularly expressed by the ablative case, which is marked by the ending -llo. According to Plotz, we can have forms like lassello "from a leaf" and ciryallo "from a ship" (again accented on the second-to-last syllable, of course). So we may build sentences like tulin i ciryallo "I come from the ship". For a Tolkien-made example, cf. the phrase métima hrestallo "from the last shore" in the Markirya poem. Both the ablative and the allative cases are exemplified in the phrase telmello talmanna "from hood [telmë] to base [talma]", that is, "from top to bottom". (In the entry TEL of the Etymologies as reproduced in LR, this expression is actually cited as "telmello telmanna", but this is plainly a typo, for as is evident from the entry TAL, the word for "base, foundation, root" is not telma, but talma.)
As for the plural form of the ablative, there are apparently several options. Just like the suffix -nna for allative turns into -nnar in the plural, the ablative ending -llo may have a plural equivalent -llor: In the Markirya poem, Tolkien used elenillor as the plural ablative of elen "star", hence "from stars". Also, when making a Quenya translation of the Sub Tuum Praesidium, Tolkien rendered "from all dangers" as ilya raxellor (VT44:5); the noun "danger" would seem to be raxë. (Incidentally, we might have expected ilyë raxellor instead; cf. ilyë tier for "all paths" in Namárië.)
However, according to the Plotz letter, the plural ablative is to have the ending in -llon instead. Here we have the same plural marker -n as in the ending -on for plural genitive (the basic genitive ending -o + the plural sign -n, WJ:407). One of Tolkien's earlier tables of Quenya case endings lists both -llor and -llon as possible plural ablative endings. So "I come from the ships" could evidently be both tulin i ciryallor and tulin i ciryallon. I generally prefer -llon, the Plotz variant, since the Plotz letter is our best late source regarding the Quenya case system – but -llor must be considered a valid alternative.

Dual allative/ablative: The dual forms of the allative and ablative endings include the already-familiar dual element -t, which replaces one of the consonants of the suffixes -nna and -llo to produce -nta and -lto instead. Thus the nominative ciryat "two ships, a couple of ships" corresponds to an allative form ciryanta "to(wards) a couple of ships" and an ablative form ciryalto "from a couple of ships". These are the examples Tolkien used in the Plotz letter, but again it is uncertain whether the same endings would be suffixed to a noun that forms its nominative dual in -u rather than -t. Still using Aldu as our standard example, should "to the Two Trees" be Aldunta or simply Aldunna? Similarly, should "from the Two Trees" be Aldulto or simply Aldullo? I tend to think of Aldunna, Aldullo as the more likely forms, but lacking attested examples we cannot be sure. (For a fuller discussion, see the Appendix to this course.)

Additional shades of meaning of the Allative and Ablative cases: While the primary implication of these cases is "to(wards)" and "from", they may have other shades of meaning as well.
The idea of actual, physical motion towards or from something is not always present. Notice the use of the ablative in a phrase found in J.R.R. Tolkien – Artist and Illustrator: Itarildë Ondolindello, "Itarildë from Ondolindë", or using the better-known Sindarin forms: Idril from Gondolin. In English, this is best rendered Idril of Gondolin, identifying Idril as a person living in Gondolin; the Quenya wording may not necessarily imply that Idril had actually left Gondolin. Possibly, the ablative can also be used in other ways that carry no implication of motion. It may be noted that regarding the Quenya verb ruc- "to feel fear or horror", Tolkien wrote that it is "constructed with 'from' of the object feared" (WJ:415). He did not provide any further information or examples, but "from" is regularly expressed by the ablative case in Quenya. So given that the Quenya word for "monster" is ulundo, perhaps "I fear the monster" would translate something like rucin i ulundollo. (Insofar as the words "from" and "of" express related meanings, this may be compared to such an English wording as "I'm afraid of the monster".)
As for the allative, it does not always mean "to(wards)", but may also imply "on, upon": The meanings are related insofar as an object that rests "upon" something also presses "towards" it, though there is no actual motion. This use of the allative may typically occur in connection with the verb caita- "lie", as in this sentence from the prose Namárië: Mornië caita i falmalinnar, "darkness lies on the foaming waves" (falma "foaming wave", here not only with the plural allative ending -nnar but also the "partitive plural" marker -li, in this context possibly implying a great number of waves: In his interlinear translation in RGEO:67, Tolkien analyzed falma-li-nnar as "foaming waves-many-upon"). Further examples of allative forms implying "on, upon" are found in the Markirya poem; we have atalantië mindoninnar (or, mindonnar) "upon fallen towers" and axor ilcalannar "on bones gleaming".
However, the student should also notice that while the allative and ablative cases may not always imply physical motion to or from something, their basic meanings of "to, towards" and "from" may also be strengthened. Instead of just indicating motion "towards" something, the allative may also suggest motion "into" it: Attested examples include ëari lantier cilyanna "seas fell into a chasm" (LR:56) and mannar Valion "into the hands of the Vali [Valar]" (Fíriel's Song). The ablative may likewise indicate motion "out of" something rather than merely "from" it: The word sindanóriello occurring in Namárië Tolkien translated "out of a grey country" (though in the interlinear analysis in RGEO:67, he broke it down as sinda-nórie-llo, "grey-country-from").
These additional uses of the allative and ablative cases may lead to some ambiguities: Is lenden i coanna to be interpreted "I went to the house" or "I went into the house"? Where confusion may arise, it is probably best to use the independent word mir (or minna) if "into" is the desired meaning: Lenden mir/minna i coa. As for "out of" as opposed to merely "from", Elendil's Declaration demonstrates that the word et "out" can be placed in front of an ablative form to clarify the meaning: Et Eärello...utúlien, "out of [or, out from] the Great Sea I am come." Some would even analyze et "out" as a preposition governing the ablative case (like ú "without" governs the genitive case).

Adding the allative and ablative endings to nouns ending in a consonant: Suffixes like -nna and -llo and their dual/plural variants can never be added directly to a noun ending in a consonant without creating impossible consonant clusters. For instance, the allative "to Elendil" cannot be **Elendilnna, for Quenya phonology does not permit the group "lnn". As is evident from the actual form Elendilenna occurring in PM:401, the language may work around this problem by inserting a connecting vowel e before the case ending. The ablative and allative forms occurring in Elendil's Declaration in LotR may be examples of the same: et Eärello "out of the Great Sea" (Eär: Quenya name of the Ocean), Endorenna "to Middle-earth" (Endor: Quenya for "Mid-land" = "Middle-earth"). However, the word Eär is also cited in the form Eärë (SD:305), and Endor is shortened from an older form Endórë, so we cannot be absolutely certain that the e's occurring before the case endings in the forms Eärello, Endorenna are not simply part of the nouns proper. On the other hand, the example Elendilenna almost certainly includes a connecting vowel e, for there is no reason to assume that the name Elendil ever ended in -ë. So the main strategy for avoiding unwanted consonant clusters before case endings is probably to insert an -e- before the ending.
	It should be noted, though, that in the case of a plural noun requiring a connecting vowel, it seems that -i- rather than -e- is preferred. We have already mentioned that in the Markirya poem, Tolkien used elenillor as the plural ablative form of elen "star". If effect, the pl. ablative ending -llor has been added to the nominative plural eleni. One version of the Markirya poem also had mindoninnar as the pl. allative "upon towers" (before Tolkien decided to go for a contracted form instead; see below). Here, the pl. allative ending has been added to the nominative plural mindoni "towers".
NOTE: Notice, though, that nouns in -ë with nominative plurals in -i (e.g. lassë "leaf", pl. lassi) do not change their final -ë to -i before -nnar or -llon/-llor is suffixed: Plotz indicates that the pl. allative and ablative forms of lassë are lassennar and lassellon, respectively – not **lassinnar, **lassillon. Cf. also raxellor, not **raxillor, as the plural ablative of raxë "danger" (VT44:5). The plural allative/ablative endings are simply added to the uninflected noun in -ë. In this respect, the allative and ablative cases differ from the genitive case: A noun that forms its nominative plural in -i always receives this ending before the genitive plural ending -on is added – the genitive plural of lassë being lassion, not **lassëon.
	If one does not insert any connecting vowel, another way of getting rid of an unwanted consonant cluster is to simply omit the final consonant of the noun that is to receive a case ending. Especially where the final consonant of the noun is identical to the first consonant of the case ending, these two consonants may simply merge. As indicated above, Tolkien first used mindoninnar as the plural allative of mindon "tower". But then he decided to drop the connecting vowel intruding before -nnar and introduced a contracted form instead: Mindonnar, which simply represents mindon-nnar. As we see, the final -n of mindon merges with the first n of the ending -nnar. A more-well known example is Elenna (for Elen-nna) as a name of Númenor: After following the Star of Eärendil across the ocean to their new land, the Edain "called that land Elenna, which is Starwards" (Akallabêth; cf. UT:317: Elenna·nórë = "the land named Starwards"). In a similar fashion, perhaps the ablative of Menel "heaven" could – or even should – be Menello (for Menel-llo) rather than Menelello.
NOTE: We may wonder how certain nouns with special stem-forms would be treated. In the case of talan, talam- "floor", the allative "to a floor" or "(up)on a floor" might probably be expressed as talamenna with a connecting vowel inserted (the ablative should almost certainly be talamello), but perhaps we could also start from talan and use talanna (for talan-nna) as the allative form? And what about a noun like toron, torn- "brother"? Should "to a brother" be tornenna with a connecting vowel e inserted between the stem-form and the case ending, or may we simply say toronna for toron-nna? At this stage, we cannot know what Tolkien would have accepted as correct Quenya. I would not reject any of these alternatives as wrong.
It seems that the final -n of the four directions Formen, Hyarmen, Rómen, Númen "North, South, East, West" quite regularly drops out before the case endings for allative, ablative and locative (the locative case will be discussed in the next lesson). One haven in the east of Númenor was called Rómenna, literally "Eastwards" (see its entry in the UT index, and cf. LR:47) – clearly because ships sailed eastwards from it. Of course, Rómen-nna > Rómenna as such is just another example of a final consonant of a noun merging with the first consonant of the case ending because they happen to be identical. However, Namárië provides Rómello "from the East" as the ablative of Rómen "East", and here there can be no doubt that the final -n has been omitted to avoid the impossible form **Rómenllo. It may be that Rómenello with a connecting vowel inserted would also be a valid form, but as pointed out above, contracted forms seem to be normal when the words for the four basic directions are to be inflected for allative or ablative.

EQUË AND AUTA: TWO PECULIAR VERBS
¤ The verb equë: We have earlier introduced the Quenya word for "say" or "speak": quet- (aorist quetë, present tense quéta, past tense quentë). Yet this verb is not always used; there is an alternative word that may be used to introduce quotations. In WJ:392, Tolkien refers to

...a curious and evidently archaic form that survives only in the languages of Aman: [primitive] *ekwê, Q[uenya] eque, T[elerin] epe. It has no tense forms...being mostly used before either a proper name (sg. or pl.) or a full independent pronoun, in the senses say / says or said. A quotation then follows, either direct, or less usually indirect after a 'that'-conjunction [e.g., "Galadriel said that she wants to go to Middle-earth"]

So as far as inflection is concerned, this equë may well be the simplest verb in the entire language. "It has no tense forms", so equë may be interpreted either as a past tense "said" or as present tense "say(s)", depending on the context (perhaps it could even cover the future tense "shall say"!) It is used mainly where the subject is a full independent pronoun (to be discussed later in this course) or a proper name (not a common noun). Also notice the word order indicated by Tolkien: The word equë comes before its subject. Tolkien gave us no actual sentences containing the word equë, but based on the information he provided, something like the following must be possible:

	Equë Elendil: "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien."
	Elendil says/said: "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come."

Tolkien glossed equë not only as "says", but also as "say". Since "say" must be understood as a plural verb in English, it seems that unlike normal verbs, equë does not receive the ending -r even where it has a plural subject or more than one subject. Notice that Tolkien stated that equë is typically "used before...a proper name (sg. or pl.)". Now proper names normally don't appear in the plural (except in sentences like "there are many Johns in this town"), so when Tolkien speaks of "pl." proper names, he probably means several proper names occurring together. So we must assume that a sentence like this would be acceptable:

	Equë Altariel ar Teleporno: "Utúliemmë Valinorello."
	Altariel and Teleporno [Galadriel and Celeborn] say/said: "We have come from Valinor" (notice the ending -mmë for dual "we"!) 

Tolkien indicated that equë rarely received suffixes of any kind, usually not even pronominal endings (WJ:392), though forms like equen "said I" may also occur (WJ:415).
	It cannot be wrong to replace equë with a form of the verb quet-, complete with all the normal inflections (Elendil quetë/quentë... "Elendil says/said...",  Altariel ar Teleporno quetir/quenter... "Galadriel and Celeborn say/said...") Where the subject is not a proper name or a full independent pronoun, it would seem that a form of quet- is usually to be preferred: I nís quentë... "the woman said..." Perhaps word order is also significant. Tolkien appears to be saying that equë is used to introduce a following quotation; if the speaker and the act of speaking is mentioned after the quotation, it is perhaps better to use a form of quet-, e.g.

	Equë Elendil: "Utúlien." = Elendil said: "I am come."
	but:
	"Utúlien," Elendil quentë = "I am come," Elendil said.

Also where no direct or indirect quotation is included in the sentence at all, it is probably best to use a form of quet-. Cf. the attested example Sin Quentë Quendingoldo Elendilenna referred to above (PM:401) – apparently meaning "Thus Spoke Quendingoldo [= Pengolodh] to Elendil". Perhaps quentë could have been replaced by equë here as well – but probably not.

¤ The verb auta-: This verb means "pass" or "go away, leave (the point of the speaker's thought)" (WJ:366). Readers of the Silmarillion will have encountered it in chapter 20, as part of a battle-cry: Auta i lómë! "The night is passing!"
	According to the rules so far set out in the course, this verb is quite irregular, though Tolkien may not have thought of it that way: In WJ:366 he refers to its various "regular forms". Anyway, the past tense of auta- is not **autanë as we might expect. There are actually several possible past tense forms. One of them is anwë, formed by nasal-infixion of the primitive root-word AWA; the ending -ta seen in auta- (primitive ?awatâ-) does not appear at all in this past tense form. However, the form anwë was "only found in archaic language", so we will focus on the "modern" forms instead.
	There are two sets of past and perfect forms of the verb auta-, with somewhat different shades of meaning. If the meaning is "went away" in a purely physical sense, about someone leaving one place and going to another, the past tense form oantë is used. According to Tolkien, this form is "regular for a -ta verb of this class" (though most verbs in -ta seem to form their past tense simply by adding the ending -në). The past tense is supposed to descend from awantê, evidently a nasal-infixed form of awatâ, and in Quenya, these forms regularly developed into oantë and auta, respectively. (For the shift awa > oa, cf. one word introduced in the previous lesson: hroa "body", which Tolkien derived from primitive srawâ.) – The perfect tense of auta- used in the same "physical" sense is oantië = "has gone away [to another place]". This perfect form is obviously influenced by the past tense oantë. Tolkien noticed that the form oantië shows "intrusion of n from the past [tense form]" (WJ:366): Normally, nasal-infixion does not occur in the perfect tense.
	The other set of past and perfect forms of the verb auta- seems no less irregular. The alternative past tense is vánë, the perfect avánië. The first syllable of vánë is apparently the Quenya descendant of the stem wâ (WJ:366, apparently another manifestation of AWA), whereas the ending -në must be simply the normal past tense ending. (Again, the perfect form seems influenced by the past tense form – the n of vánë sneaking into the perfect avánië.) 
The form vánë and the corresponding perfect avánië have acquired a more "abstract" meaning than the forms oantë, oantië. Vánë does not mean "went away (to another place)", but rather "disappeared", "passed". The perfect avánië occurs (with the plural marker -r) in Namárië, in the sentence yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier = "long years have passed like swift draughts". This sentence nicely illustrates the meaning of this perfect form, for obviously the meaning is not that the yéni or "long years" have gone away to another place (sc. oantier!) They "long years" have simply passed, and now they are gone. Where the subject is more tangible than "long years", the forms vánë/avánië would imply that the subject has disappeared, is lost, has died off, etc.
 Indeed Tolkien indicated that the meaning of vánë/avánië was influenced by the related word vanwa "gone", "lost", "vanished", "past and over". It occurs twice in Namárië: Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar = "now lost, lost [to those] from the East, is Valimar". In WJ:366, Tolkien calls vanwa the "past participle" of auta-, though it obviously has no connection with the past or passive participles we have discussed earlier in this course (constructed with the ending -na or -ina). There is some evidence for an alternative, rarer participle in -nwa. However, for all intents and purposes, it matters little whether we call vanwa a participle or merely a verbal adjective (as does Nancy Martsch in her Basic Quenya). 

NOTE 1: As pointed out in Lesson Eight, it may well be that when Tolkien wrote Namárië, he thought of the word avánier as the perfect form of a verb listed in the Etymologies: vanya- "go, depart, disappear" (see the entry WAN). We should still accept Tolkien's post-LotR ideas about the verb auta-; it occurs, after all, in such a primary source as the Silmarillion. Interestingly, the adjectival word vanwa "gone, lost, over" is found already in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915 (QL:99) and was retained throughout all stages of Tolkien's development of Quenya. 

NOTE 2: In the Etymologies, entry GAWA, a quite distinct verb auta- "to invent" is listed. It would seem that the later verb auta- "go away" did not exist at the time Tolkien wrote Etym. If we nonetheless accept both verbs as valid within the same form of Quenya, we can distinguish between them in some tenses, for auta- "to invent" may perhaps have the simplest past tense form autanë. 

POSSESSIVE PRONOMINAL ENDINGS
We have already discussed a number of pronominal endings that may be suffixed to verbs to function as their subject: -nyë (very often shortened to -n) "I", -lyë "you", -ntë "they" and -lvë and -lmë "we" (inclusive and exclusive, respectively – we also have -mmë and -ngwë as yet other endings for "we", but their exact application at the late stages of Tolkien's evolving scenario is uncertain). We have also pointed out that Quenya pronouns usually appear as endings, not so often as separate words as in English.
	Pronouns may also describe possession or belonging. Among the English possessive pronouns we have "my" (and "mine"), "your(s)", "our(s)", "their(s)".  Quenya has endings for these pronouns as well, though these endings are logically added to nouns, not to verbs. For instance, the ending for "my" is -nya. Thus, "my house" is coanya, while "my land" would be nórenya. The accent now falls on the syllable before the pronominal ending: co-A-nya, nó-RE-nya. All the pronominal endings begin in a consonant cluster, and in accordance with the normal rules, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable when its vowel is followed by a group of consonants.
	Notice that the subject endings that we have already introduced, all end in the vowel -ë: -nyë "I", -lyë "you" etc. The corresponding possessive pronominal endings can be derived simply by changing the final vowel to -a, thus:

	-nyë "I" / -nya "my"
	-lyë "you" / -lya "your"
	-lvë "we" (incl.) / -lva "our" (incl.)
	-lmë "we" (excl.) / -lma "our" (excl.)

So besides coanya "my house" we can have coalya "your house", whereas coalva and coalma would both translate as "our house" in English.
NOTE: As for the distinction between inclusive and exclusive "our", it would closely correspond to the distinction between inclusive and exclusive "we", explained in the previous lesson. Hence "our house" is expressed as coalva if the one(s) you are addressing is (are) also among the owners of the house and thus included in the word "our". Conversely, coalma is the word to use for "our house" if you are talking to a party that is not among the owners of the house and hence is not included in the word "our".
It seems very reasonable to assume that the ending -ntë "they" has a counterpart -nta "their", though the latter suffix is not attested in published material. One problem may seem to be that it would clash with the dual allative ending, but in context it would hardly be very difficult to tell whether (say) ciryanta is to be interpreted "to a couple of ships" or "their ship". Presumably the endings could even be combined: ciryantanta, "to their couple of ships"! I won't construct any exercises involving the unattested ending -nta "their", but I think it is safe enough to be recommended to writers.

Combining pronominal possessive endings with endings for case and number: Combining these two kinds of endings is what truly makes the total number of forms that a Quenya noun can assume explode. We are left with hundreds of possible combinations, but since they are just that – combinations – the endings involved are not nearly as numerous, and the load on the student's memory is not so great after all.
Here follows sambelya "your room" (sambë "room, chamber" + -lya "your") inflected for the all the numbers and cases so far discussed in this course. If this list appears somewhat complicated and daunting at first glance, the student will be relieved to discover that it is actually perfectly regular and in a way contains no new information at all: Just start from sambelya "your room" and treat it as you would any other noun in -a, adding the normal endings for number and case. One consequence of this is that the word now has a plural in -r (sambelyar "your rooms"), though sambë "room" occurring by itself would be an i-plural (sambi "rooms").

¤ NOMINATIVE/ACCUSATIVE: singular sambelya "your room", dual sambelyat "your couple of rooms", plural sambelyar "your rooms". (In the archaic form of Quenya that had a distinct accusative, we would presumably see the acc. sing. sambelyá and the acc. pl. sambelyai, but in this course, we don't use distinct accusative forms.)
¤ GENITIVE: singular sambelyo "of your room" (the genitive ending -o regularly displacing the final -a of sambelya even though the -a is here part of another ending), dual sambelyato "of your couple of rooms", plural sambelyaron "of your rooms".
¤ POSSESSIVE: singular sambelyava "of your room", dual ?sambelyatwa "of your couple of rooms", plural sambelyaiva "of your rooms". (While we here provide the same translations for the genitive and possessive cases, there are of course certain subtle shades of meaning that distinguish them.)
¤ DATIVE: sambelyan "for your room", dual sambelyant "for your couple of rooms", plural sambelyain "for your rooms".
¤ ALLATIVE: sambelyanna "to your room", dual sambelyanta "to your couple of rooms", plural sambelyannar "to your rooms".
¤ ABLATIVE: sambelyallo "from your room", dual sambelyalto "from your couple of rooms", plural sambelyallon (or, -llor) "from your rooms". (In the case of the allative and the ablative, the accent falls on the vowel in front of the case ending [e.g. sambelyAllo], in accordance with the normal stress rules – which apply for all the forms here listed.)

NOTE: Elendil's Declaration includes the words sinomë maruvan, ar hildinyar "in this place will I abide, and my heirs". From the example hildinyar "my heirs", one might argue that plural nouns with plural forms in -i (like hildi "heirs") should assume this ending before pronominal endings and secondary plural markers (like the -nya- and -r of hildinyar) are added. If so, "your rooms" should actually be sambilyar rather than sambelyar as we suggested above. This is possible, but the example hildinyar may have its own peculiarities; see below. 

Notice that the possessive pronominal ending is normally added first, and endings for number and case are added after it: "From your room" is therefore sambelyallo rather than sambellolya. For a Tolkien-made example, cf. the greeting Anar caluva tielyanna "the Sun shall shine upon your path" (UT:22, 51): The noun tië "path" here appears combined with the pronominal suffix -lya "your", and tielya "your path" is further expanded with the allative ending -nna "upon" to express "upon your path". (In some of Tolkien's posthumously published texts, the opposite order does occur, so perhaps "upon your path" could be tiennalya as well. But the order "pronominal ending first, case ending second" seems to be the most canonical system, consistently used in this course.)
	Another example of a noun equipped with both a pronominal ending and a case ending occurs in the most famous Elvish greeting of all, "a star shines on the hour of our meeting": Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo. With this lesson we have finally presented all the grammar one needs to fully understand this sentence: Elen "a star", síla "shines" or rather "is shining" (the present/continuative tense of the verb sil-), lúmenn' or in full lúmenna "on (the) hour" (the noun lúmë "hour" + the allative ending -nna "on"), and finally the word that is relevant for our present discussion: omentielvo. This must be analyzed as an abstract noun (or gerund?) omentië "meeting" + the ending -lva for inclusive "our" (so far only attested here), and omentielva "our meeting" is then equipped with the genitive ending -o to express "of our meeting": Hence omentielvo, since the ending -o displaces a final -a.
	The first edition of LotR (1954-55) had omentielmo instead of omentielvo, which reading Tolkien introduced in the revised edition of 1966. As for the exact rationale underlying this change, somewhat contradictory and confusing information has been published. Tolkien apparently made up an "internal" explanation for this change, briefly referred to in one of Humphrey Carpenter's notes on the collection of Tolkien's letters that he edited (Letters:447, notes on letter #205):

The Elvish language Quenya makes a distinction in its dual inflexion, which turns on the number of persons involved; failure to understand this was, Tolkien remarked, 'a mistake generally made by mortals'. So in this case, Tolkien made a note that the 'Thain's Book of Minas Tirith', one of the supposed sources of The Lord of the Rings, had the reading omentielvo, but that Frodo's original (lost) manuscript probably had omentielmo; and that omentielvo is the correct form in the context.

The whole matter is rather obscure, and we would really like to see Carpenter's source for this vague explanation. What, exactly, was the mistake occurring the "original (lost) manuscript" (!) written by Frodo Baggins himself (!!)? Why was omentielmo wrong and omentielvo correct "in the context"? According to this source, a "dual inflexion" is involved. In the first version of this course, I interpreted this as follows: Frodo, saying "a star shines upon the hour of our meeting" to Gildor, ought to have used a dual "our", since only two persons are involved (Frodo + Gildor). But Frodo wrongly used a plural "our" instead. Now this would not seem to be a particularly glaring mistake, for when saying "our meeting", Frodo could well refer to his own group (the hobbits) meeting Gildor's group (the Elves). Thus the number of persons involved would far exceed two, and a plural "our" would be appropriate after all. Nonetheless, the only sense I could make of Carpenter's obscure note was that omentielvo would mean "of our (dual) meeting", whereas omentielmo would mean "of our (plural) meeting". I tried to somehow connect the -v- of the pronouns in -lv- with the dual ending -u, so that the pronouns in -lv- would refer to a dual "we" consisting of two persons only: "thou and I". 
	Yet there early appeared another explanation of Frodo's little grammatical error – the mistake that was mercifully corrected in the "Thain's Book of Minas Tirith" by a later copyist. Dick Plotz, founder of the Tolkien Society of America and recipient of the Plotz Letter, made a mistake of his own which resulted in a garbled reading in certain American editions of LotR. Here is his confession, as quoted in the 1978 study Introduction to Elvish (editor Jim Allan), p. 20:

The original version was Elen síla lúmenn' omentielmo, which means, literally, 'A star shines on the hour of our (my, his, her, NOT your) meeting.' Tolkien, on reflection, changed this to omentielvo, 'of our (my, your, possibly his, her) meeting.' This was[,] of course, a proper change, and this is how it appeared in the earliest printings of the Ballantine edition. I, however, saw it as an obvious error, and prevailed upon Ballantine to CORRECT it! The "correction" introduced another error, since [the resulting reading] omentilmo, as far as I know, means nothing at all. Now they won't change it back, because it's too expensive. But omentielvo is correct. Sorry to have messed everyone up. 

(I understand that in current American editions, the error caused by Mr. Plotz' well-meaning, but misdirected efforts has long since been corrected.) So what Plotz is telling us, is that omentielvo contains an inclusive "our" (which is correct in the context), whereas the rejected form omentielmo contains an "our" which Tolkien finally decided was exclusive (and thus not appropriate here, for when Frodo says "our meeting", he obviously includes the Elves he is talking to in this "our"). This is not the explanation Carpenter hinted at in his note on Tolkien's letter #205, cited above, where the problem seems rather to be "dual inflexion" or lack of same. Yet Plotz implied that the explanation he offered was based on a letter he had received from Tolkien, though this letter is apparently no longer extant (too bad...both the community of Tolkien-linguists and Sotheby's would be very interested).
	In January 2002 we had Vinyar Tengwar #43, where the editors comment on "the restructuring of the pronominal system that preceded the publication of the Revised Edition of The Lord of the Rings" (p. 6). One of the changes involved "the shift of -lm- to -lv- as the marker" of plural inclusive "we, our". (Formerly -mm- was exclusive and -lm- inclusive; now Tolkien made -lm- exclusive instead, whereas -lv- was introduced as the new inclusive pronoun, replacing -mm- which according to VT43:6 now became "dual" instead... At this point at the latest, the student can appreciate Christopher Tolkien's remark in SD:440 – that his father's unceasing revisions are "often frustrating to those who study these languages"!) The information from VT43 would seem confirm Plotz's explanation of the omentielmo > omentielvo revision, but it finds no support in Humphrey Carpenters note in Letters:447, vague though it is.
	Bill Welden, member of the group that is to publish Tolkien's linguistic manuscripts, threw in his contribution in an Elfling post dated February 8, 2002:

Carpenter's account is not canon, having simply been lifted without Tolkien's participation from his own notes, and so could easily have been a passing (ill thought out) notion. Plotz' account, which says no more than that -lmo was a mistake, is canon, as Tolkien considered everything [...] that he made a proactive decision to send out in correspondence.

So Welden argues that 'since Tolkien sent this explanation to Dick Plotz, it must be accepted as cannon'. Now I can cite other linguistic ideas from Tolkien's letters which he nonetheless appears to have abandoned later. (A drastic example: in 1958 Tolkien wrote to Rhona Beare that "the Valar had no language of their own, not needing one", but in the essay Quendi and Eldar written maybe only a year later, he quoted many words from the language of the Valar – Letters:282 vs. WJ:397-407.) Nonetheless, in the current version of this course I have adopted the system presented in VT43 and by Dick Plotz. Thus plural inclusive "our" is indicated by the ending -lva, plural exclusive "our" has the ending -lma, and there is apparently also the ending -mma for a "dual" our (though it remains unclear whether this is inclusive, "thy and my", or exclusive, "his/her and my"). This corresponds to the endings for "we" used in the previous lesson: -lvë for inclusive "we", whereas -lmë is exclusive "we" (and -mmë a dual "we" – inclusive or exclusive we don't know).

Adding pronominal endings to nouns ending in a consonant: To avoid impossible consonant clusters, an extra vowel -e- may be inserted before the pronominal ending where necessary. As we remember, this extra vowel may also turn up before case endings. Combining atar "father" with -lya "your" to express "your father" would probably produce atarelya (since **atarlya is not a possible Quenya word). "Our father" is attested as ataremma in Tolkien's translation of the Lord's Prayer (VT43:8; later versions curiously read átaremma with an initial long vowel, which is perhaps a contraction of a Ataremma "o our Father"). This form belongs to the earlier conceptual phase, when the ending for exclusive "our" was still -mma instead of -lma as it later became, but it should be noted that Tolkien inserted -e- as a connecting vowel between the noun and the ending. If he had revised his Lord's Prayer translation in the last years of his life, the first word would presumably have become atarelma (or átarelma) with a new ending, but the same connecting vowel before it.
It may be that if the noun is plural, one would use i as the connecting vowel, if pronominal endings and case endings behave in the same way. Cf. Tolkien's form elenillor for "from stars". Thus, "your stars" might similarly be elenilyar, and "our (excl.) fathers" should evidently be atarilmar rather than atarelmar. (Of course, it is primarily the final -r which functions as a plural marker here, so there can be no misunderstanding regarding the number anyway.) It may be that hildinyar "my heirs" from Elendil's Declaration is an example of this, if the noun "heir" is ?hil with a stem hild-, hence pl. hildi.
	However, the ending -nya "my" seems to be somewhat special. Where a connecting vowel is required, it apparently always prefers -i-, whether the noun it is added to is singular or plural. It seems that this connecting vowel reflects the vowel of the primitive root producing the Eldarin 1st person pronouns, namely NI2 (listed in the Etymologies and simply defined "I"). Fíriel's Song has Anarinya, not **Anarenya, for "my Sun". Similarly, "my father" is atarinya (LR:61) rather than ?atarenya; we cannot know whether the latter form is valid at all. The (nominative) plural "my fathers" would of course be atarinyar, so the singular and plural remain distinct. In the same fashion, the singular form of hildinyar "my heirs" is hildinya "my heir" with the same connecting vowel i, since it is always preferred by the ending -nya (the form hildinya was hypothetical when I wrote the first version of this course, but it has now turned up in a Tolkien manuscript: VT44:36). In the case of another ending, like -lma "our", we might conceivably see a variation between hildelma (?) "our heir" and hildilmar "our heirs"; in the latter case, the -i is the normal nominative plural ending used as a connecting vowel. (The Etymologies, entry KHIL, lists precisely such a plural form hildi – there glossed "followers", close enough to "heirs" in meaning.)
	It has been suggested that the ending -nya, added to a noun in -ë, would also displace this -ë with -i- (much like the plural ending -i displaces a final -ë when added to a noun). However, one Tolkien example that was published in the summer of 2000 demonstrates that this is not so: VT41:11 has órenya, not **órinya, for "my heart" (órë: "heart" in the sense of "inner mind"). According to the system we are trying to sketch, even the plural "my hearts" would be órenyar rather than ?órinyar, since órë ends in -ë and thus requires no connecting vowel before suffixes anyway. Cf. the Plotz Letter: lassennar, not **lassinnar, as the plural allative of lassë "leaf" – though the nominative pl. is lassi. In a similar fashion, we would probably see lassenya "my leaf" vs. lassenyar "my leaves" (hardly **lassinyar). The connecting vowel -i- only turns up where plural nouns ending in a consonant are to receive endings; singular nouns have -e- instead, except in the case of the ending -nya "my" which prefers -i- whether the noun it is added to is singular or plural. (If it is plural, this will be sufficiently indicated by the secondary endings for number and/or case that are added after the ending -nya.)
NOTE: Of course, we must assume that nouns in -ë that have stem-forms in -i- would appear in the latter form when endings are to be added. So if lírë (líri-) means "song", "my song" would evidently be lírinya (plural lírinyar "my songs"). But this is actually a quite different matter, for here we would evidently see líri- before any suffix, for pronoun or case (lírilya "your song", genitive lírio "of a song", etc.)
In some instances, contracted forms are used instead of inserting any connecting vowel. UT:193 provides the form aranya, untranslated but apparently meaning "my king" (Erendis uses this word when addressing the King of Númenor). This is apparently aran "king" + -nya "my", the impossible form **arannya being simplified to aranya. Possibly ?araninya would also be acceptable Quenya, but when the noun ends in the same consonant as the pronominal ending begins in, it may be permissible to let the last consonant of the noun and the first consonant of the ending merge – a phenomenon also observed where case endings are involved. (Cf. mindonnar rather than mindoninnar as the pl. allative of mindon "tower"; perhaps "my towers" would be mindonyar rather than mindoninyar.)

Especially where the ending -nya "my" is concerned, contracted forms may turn up even where no contraction would be "necessary" to achieve a phonologically permissible Quenya word. The High-elven word for "son" is yondo, so "my son" might simply be yondonya, and there is little reason to doubt that this is a valid form. Yet in LR:61 Elendil addresses his son as yonya, apparently a contracted variant of yondonya. Perhaps yonya would be used for "my son" primarily when addressing the son concerned. If so, it would parallel another example: One Quenya word for "child" is hína, or hina with a short vowel – the latter only being used when "addressing a (young) child" (WJ:403). Tolkien went on to note that this hina, used as a form of address, often appeared in the form hinya "my child" – the latter being contracted from hinanya (still WJ:403). 

Summary of Lesson Fourteen: The Quenya allative case has the ending -nna (plural -nnar) and expresses the basic idea of "to, toward", e.g. ciryanna "to a ship". In certain contexts, this case may also express "on, upon" or "into". The ablative case has the ending -llo (plural -llon, or alternatively -llor) and signifies "from", e.g. ciryallo "from a ship"; sometimes the ablative may also imply "out of". The dual forms of the allative and ablative endings are -nta and -lto, respectively (at least in the case of nouns with nominative dual forms in -t; it may be that nouns with nominative dual forms in -u would rather have the basic endings -nna or -llo following this vowel). If a noun ending in a consonant is to receive the case ending for allative or ablative, a connecting vowel (in the singular -e-, in the plural -i-) may be inserted before the case ending to avoid an impossible consonant cluster; otherwise, a contracted form is used (e.g. Rómello "from the East", for Rómen-llo). – The verb equë is a peculiar form that is not inflected for tense and rarely receives endings of any kind; it means "said" or "says" and is used to introduce quotations where the subject (which follows the verb equë and precedes the quotation) is a proper name or an independent pronoun. – The verb auta- "pass, go away, leave" has rather surprising past and perfect forms: oantë or oantië if the verb refers to physically leaving one place (and going to another), but vánë and avánië if the verb refers to disappearing, being lost, or dying off. – Quenya possessive pronouns are normally expressed as endings added to the relevant noun (the thing that is owned). These suffixes include -nya "my", -lya "your", -lva "our" (inclusive), and -lma "our" (exclusive). The endings for "we" underwent certain revisions in the sixties, but this seems to be the final resolution. Notice that these possessive endings correspond to the subject pronominal endings suffixed to verbs, the former ending in -a whereas the latter end in -ë (therefore the unattested ending for "their" may well be -nta, corresponding to -ntë "they"). There is also an ending for dual our, evidently -mma after Tolkien's revisions, though it is unclear whether this ending is inclusive ("thy and my") or exclusive ("his/her and my"). Where required, connecting vowels may be fitted in before the noun and the pronominal ending, probably by much the same rules that apply to the case endings -nna and -llo, except that the ending -nya "my" seems to consistently prefer the connecting vowel -i-. Once a noun has received a possessive pronominal ending, this noun may be further inflected for number or case just like a regular noun in -a would be.

VOCABULARY
We have now exhausted the basic numbers 1-12 (including the extrapolated number rasta). Higher numbers are unfortunately rather uncertain, though we have some clues. I may add some thoughts about this in the appendices to this course, but in this and the next couple of lessons we will introduce the attested ordinal numbers – showing order or position in a series, like English "first", "second", "third" etc. 

minya "first" (cf. the number minë "one" and the adjectival ending -ya. The original name of the First Clan of the Elves was Minyar, literally "Firsts", though the Noldor later called them Vanyar or "Fair Ones" instead [WJ:380, 382-383].)
equë "say(s), said" (tense-less verb introducing quotations)
auta- "to leave, to go/pass away" (past tense oantë and perfect oantië, alternatively vánë and avánië, the latter two forms referring to disappearing or dying off as explained above).  The "past participle" of auta- is said to be vanwa "lost, gone, passed, vanished" – but this word may be treated almost as an independent adjective.
menta- "to send"
ruc- "to feel fear or horror"; "to fear" (said to be constructed with "from" of the object feared, presumably meaning that what would be the direct object in English appears in the ablative case in Quenya)
ambo "hill"
mindon "(great) tower" (cf. the Mindon Eldaliéva or "Great Tower of the Eldalië" mentioned in the Silmarillion. The first syllable of mindon is related to the number minë "one", since a mindon is an isolated tower, not part of a larger structure.)
Númen "West" (cf. Númenor, Númenórë "Westernesse" or "West-land": núme(n)-nórë). It seems that the names of the basic directions are treated as proper names, capitalized and not requiring the article; cf. Rómello in Namárië (which Tolkien translated "from the East" even though there is no i in the Quenya text).
sambë "room, chamber" (Sindarin sam, samm-; cf. the Sammath Naur or "Chambers of Fire" inside Mount Doom)
yondo "son"
haira "far, remote"
et "out" (followed by ablative to express "out of")

In addition to our traditional list of twelve new glosses we will also introduce a couple of proper names, required in these exercises. In accordance with our established policy we will avoid explicit references to Tolkien's mythos in these exercises, so no proper names coined by him will appear here. Yet we can readily coin new names using his principles. The ending -(n)dil often occurs in masculine names and signifies "friend" or "lover", e.g. Eärendil "Sea-friend" or Elendil "Star-friend" (but also implying "Elf-friend" since the words elen and Elda are ultimately related and were even confused by the Edain: WJ:410). So we can venture, say, Calandil "Friend of Light". As for feminine names, one observed pattern is that an adjective in -a can be turned into a fem. name by changing the ending to -ë (not to be confused with the plural form of the adjective). For instance, one of the queens of Númenor was called Ancalimë, transparently formed from the superlative form ancalima "brightest, exceedingly bright". (Similarly, masculine names can be made by changing the ending -a to -o or -on, cf. Sauron vs. the adjective saura "foul, putrid" – one suddenly understands why the Dark Lord didn't permit his servants to use the name the Elves had given him!) Starting from a suitable adjective like nessima "youthful", we can derive a plausible woman's name Nessimë "Youthful One". However, the meaning of the names Calandil and Nessimë is of no importance for the exercises.

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English: 

A. Lelyuvalvë i mindonello i coanna.
B. Ilyë Eldar avánier Ambarello.
C. I Naucor utúlier i orontillon; elendientë i coannar ar súcar limpelva.
D. I úmië ohtari mapuvar i malta lielvava mentien harmalvar haira nórenna.  [Lielvava = lielva + case ending -va!]
E. I nís oantë coanyallo ar lendë i sírenna.
F. I minya cirya tuluva Númello.
G. Quen rucë i rávillon, an amátientë i aran lielmo, ar úvantë auta nórelmallo.
H. Equë Nessimë Calandilenna: "Yondonya avánië sambenyallo!"

2. Translate into Quenya (and notice that "our" is meant to be a plural pronoun throughout, whether inclusive or exclusive, since it remains unclear whether the dual "our" in -mma is inclusive or exclusive):

I. Calandil said to Nessimë: "Your son has gone out of the house, for all the boys went to the hill."
J. From heaven [Menel: the sky] the sun is giving light to our (inclusive) world, and the darkness has passed.
K. Calandil said to the evil king: "You have sent your warriors to the tower to find my sons. My thrall will protect the boys, and they will not be lost!"
L. The man having [arwa] the ships wanted to leave, and all the ships went away west[wards].
M. We (exclusive) went to a two-room apartment [dual of sambë!], and the man from the hills gave your son a great sword, saying [quétala]: "The sword comes from a remote land, out of the outermost West." ("Outermost": use the superlative of haira.)
N. All trees died and disappeared from our (incl.) land, and Calandil and Nessimë said: "We (excl.) will send our (excl.) thralls to find a land with [or, 'having' = arwa] many trees."
O. The maiden said to the animal: "I fear [/I'm afraid of] your big horns (dual)."
P. I went to our (incl.) room to gather my things, for I wanted to give my brother my first book; the book lay [/was lying] on the floor.

ADDITIONAL EXERCISES
involving Quenya nouns combining pronominal endings with suffixes for number and/or case 

(Students may check the keys to the exercises above before proceeding to these exercises.) There exercises above include several examples of nouns with both pronominal endings and case endings, e.g. lielvava "of our people". A skilled Quenyaist would be able to extract the meaning of such forms at a glance, indeed perceiving a single word like ostolvallon as something like a single meaning, "from our cities", without having to consciously break this down into osto-lva-llo-n "city-our-from-plural". Of course, a skilled Quenyaist would also be able to readily produce such words, combining the relevant endings without hesitation.

3. Translate the following list of single Quenya words into English phrases. 
NOTE: In the keys to this exercise, the following simplified "equivalents" are used: genitives and possessive-adjectival forms are all turned into "of"-constructions, dative forms are represented as prepositional phrases in "for", whereas allative and ablative forms are represented as phrases involving the prepositions "to" and "from", respectively. The same system is used in the English-to-Quenya exercises below, with specification of whether "of" is to be rendered as a genitive (gen.) or a possessive-adjectival (poss.) form. – In these exercises, there are also a few examples of the suffix for dual "our" (-mma), but since we don't know whether it is inclusive or exclusive, it is simply identified as "dual" here.

a) Coalvallon
b) Hroanyan
c) Hroalvain
d) Lambelvar
e) Nórelyanna
f) Engwelmar
g) Aranelyallo
h) Mólinyo
i) Mólinyaron
j) Ostolvannar
k) Lielmo
l) Yondolyava
m) Sambelmat
n) Sambenyant
o) Sambelyato
p) Sambelvanta
q) Sambelyalto
r) Lienyava
s) Yondolvaiva
t) Tárilyan
u) Lielmaiva
v) Nerinyaiva
w) Nerinyava
x) Seldonyain
y) Ciryalmalto
z) Yondommo

4. Translate into single Quenya words ("of" = genitive or possessive as further specified, "for" = dative, "to" = allative, "from" = ablative):

a) To your hills
b) For our (excl.) peace
c)Your two-volume book (use a dual form of parma)
d) To your tower / To your towers (translate the sg. and pl. separately)
e) Of (poss.) our (excl.) queen
f) Of (poss.) my sisters
g) From my sister
h) Of (gen.) our (incl.) gifts
i) Of (gen.) our (incl.) gold
j) For our (incl.) joy
k) Of (gen.) your wine
l) From your world
m) Of (gen.) my sun
n) For my king
o) Of (poss.) our (excl.) son
p) Of (gen.) our (excl.) cups
q) For your pair of birds (use a dual form of aiwë)
r) To our (excl.) double walls (use a dual form of ramba)
s) From our (incl.) double walls (same)
t) From your lands
u) Of (gen.) my [two twin] sisters (use a dual form of seler, sell-)
v) Of (gen.) our (excl.) treasures
w) To our (incl.) horses
x) For our (dual) house (= "for the house of the two of us")
y) For my brother
z) To our (excl.) trees

LESSON FIFTEEN
The ending -rya and more about possessive pronominal endings. The Locative case. Relative sentences. Third Person obscurities.

MORE ABOUT POSSESSIVE PRONOMINAL ENDINGS
(plus a slightly digressive inquiry into the true nature of the combinations ly, ny, ry, ty)

In the previous lesson we introduced a series of possessive pronominal endings that can be added to nouns: -nya "my", -lya "your", -lva "our" (incl.) and -lma "our" (excl.); furthermore, there is an ending for dual "our", evidently -mma (but it remains unclear whether it is inclusive or exclusive). Ignoring a strange variant of the ending -lya "your" (-lda, mentioned only in WJ:369), only one of the attested pronominal endings remains to be mentioned: -rya. It occurs twice in Namárië. The first time it is followed by the genitive ending, regularly producing the form -ryo: The relevant word if ómaryo, translated "of her voice", the genitive form of ómarya "her voice". The word óma "voice" is attested by itself elsewhere (Etym., entry OM; VT39:16).
The second time -rya occurs in Namárië, it also has another ending following it, in this case the dual marker -t: the word máryat is translated "her hands", referring to a natural pair of hands (the word má "hand" is also attested by itself). Anyhow, the ending -rya is seen to mean "her", and from the Namarië examples it is clear that it can be used and combined with other endings just like any of the other pronominal suffixes we have already discussed and practiced (samberya "her room", samberyan "for her room", samberyanna "to her room", samberyallo "from her room", samberyo and samberyava "of her room"...and so on with plural and dual forms: samberyar "her rooms", samberyat "her couple of rooms/her two-room apartment", etc. etc.)
For thirty years, from The Fellowship of the Ring (with Namárië in it) appeared in 1954 until Christopher Tolkien published The War of the Jewels in 1994, "her" was the sole known meaning of the ending -rya. In the meantime, we had one more example of -rya = "her" in the Markirya poem, which was published in The Monsters and the Critics in 1983 (though in Markirya, "her" does not refer to a person, but to a ship). But when WJ appeared in 1994, it became evident that the suffix -rya actually covers not only "her", but also "his": Coarya is shown to be the Quenya for "the house of him" or "his house" (WJ:369, there spelt köarya). Of course, the form coarya as such could just as well mean "her house", and conversely the Namárië forms máryat, ómaryo could in another context mean "his hands" and "of his voice": We have to conclude that Quenya simply does not make a distinction between "his" and "her". Indeed it is entirely possible that -rya covers "its" as well (see below) – so that there is one single ending for the entire third person singular in the table of possessive pronouns. The English translation would depend on the context, of course.
There is more to learn from the two examples of -rya in Namárië. Notice the dual form máryat "her (pair of) hands". As described in Lesson Three, Quenya developed a system whereby -t is the normal dual ending, ordinarily replaced by -u only where euphonic concerns demand this, as when the word that is to receive a dual ending already includes t or d (Letters:427, footnote). But in Lesson Three we also argued from the example peu "(pair of) lips" that body-parts occurring in pairs occur in "fossilized" dual forms, always taking the ending -u – "reflecting the older system in which only -u denoted a natural or logical pair". Nonetheless, the student may also remember a parenthetical warning to the effect that "the other ending -t may however be used if certain other endings intrude before the dual ending itself; we will return to this in a later lesson". It is time to have a closer look on this.
It has often been assumed that removing the ending -rya "her" from máryat "her hands" would simply leave us with mát "(a pair of) hands". Yet since the dual form of pé "lip" is attested as peu, we might reasonably assume that the dual form of má "hand" is likewise mau "pair of hands", though the latter form remains unattested. If the noun that normally has a dual form in -u is to receive a possessive pronominal suffix, it seems that the dual ending -u is suppressed and duality is instead expressed by means of the ending -t, suffixed after the pronominal suffix – as in máryat. Though the dual "(pair of) lips" is peu, we can assume that "her (two) lips" would be constructed by starting from the singular form pé "lip" and adding -rya for "his/her" and then -t for dual number, so that as a parallel to máryat we would see péryat. (It then follows that the genitive is péryato, the dative péryant, the allative péryanta, the ablative péryalto, etc.) Aldu may be the normal dual "pair of trees", but "her pair of trees" would perhaps be constructed from the singular alda with the appropriate suffixes, producing aldaryat. Even so, we may suspect that the dual ending -u could function as a connecting vowel where one is needed – just as the plural ending -i is known to function in certain instances. The word for "foot" is tál with stem tal-, so perhaps the dual "(pair of) feet" is talu. Adding a possessive pronominal ending to tál, tal- would however require a connecting vowel before we can even think about adding -t as a dual marker at the end of the word. Should "her pair of feet" perhaps be something like taluryat with double dual markers, -u- and -t, just like there would apparently be double plural markers (-i- and -r) in a plural word like (say) talilmar "our feet"? If so, this would be an exception to the apparent rule that the dual marker -u is not used before a possessive pronominal suffix. As usual, we lack attested examples, but since Elendil's Declaration indicates that "my heirs" is hildinyar, it would not be wildly implausible to assume that a corresponding dual form would be something very much like hildunyat. (Or maybe the rule that -nya "my" prefers -i- as its connecting vowel would prevail, producing hildinyat, but we might still see -u- as a connecting vowel before other pronominal endings, e.g. hilduryat "her pair of heirs".)

Another thing to be learnt from the Namárië examples máryat "her hands" and ómaryo "of her voice" has to do with whether ry here counts as a consonant cluster (r + y) or as a single consonant: palatalized r. What we learn is however somewhat paradoxical. We touched on these problems already in Lesson One, but a new inquiry may be in place here, since the combinations in -y (like ry, ly, ny, ty) occur in several of the possessive pronominal endings. Tolkien repeatedly indicated that ómaryo is accented on the a in the second-to-last syllable (in one of his Namárië transcripts in RGEO, he indicated all major and minor stresses in this song, and we also have two or three actual recordings where he is heard to use this accentuation). For ómaryo to be accented in such a way, ry must count as a consonant cluster, not as a single consonant. If ry were a single consonant, the normal rules dictate that the stress would not land on the vowel before it, but on the third syllable from the end.
	Yet we have repeatedly referred to another observed rule of Quenya phonology: there cannot be a long vowel in front of a consonant cluster. Thus the long vowel of má "hand" is logically shortened in the plural allative form mannar "into...hands", attested in Fíriel's Song. **Mánnar would not be a possible Quenya word. So if ry is also a consonant cluster as we thought we had just established, why is á not shortened in the form máryat? Why don't we see ?maryat as a parallel to mannar?
Frankly, I can't think of any obvious explanation. Apparently we must simply accept that ry – as well as ly, ny, ty – count as consonant clusters for the purpose of stress, but a preceding long vowel does not have to be shortened. Thus we would have márya "his/her hand", mánya "my hand" and málya "your hand" with the preceding long vowel intact. Before the other attested pronominal suffixes, it would have to be shortened, since these endings unquestionably introduce a following consonant cluster: malva and malma = "our hand" (inclusive and exclusive). **Málva, **málma would hardly be possible Quenya words. Such variations would closely parallel a couple of attested forms we have referred to earlier, though they involve subject endings (-mmë for "we" and -nyë for "I") rather than the pronominal possessive endings added to nouns: The exclamation vá signifying refusal has its long vowel shortened before the cluster mm in vammë "we won't", but the long vowel is seem to persist in ványë "I won't" (WJ:371 – later Tolkien changed the ending -mmë to -lmë, as discussed in the previous lesson). So we can tell that while mm is unquestionably a cluster (as the later lm would also be), ny may well count as a single consonant – palatalized n like Spanish ñ.
There are only a handful of nouns that can be affected by these variations in vowel-length, words of a single syllable that end in a long vowel: Besides má "hand", only cú "bow", pé "lip", ré "day" (24 hours) and lú "time, occasion" spring to mind – if we don't bring in Tolkien's early "Qenya" material as well. Of course, the long vowels of these words would also be shortened before case endings introducing a following consonant cluster, as indicated by the plural allative mannar "into hands" in Fíriel's Song. But "into your hands" would evidently be mályannar, or mályanta as a dual form – since ly, ny, ry, ty do not count as consonant clusters for this purpose.
On the other hand, there is also some evidence suggesting that these combinations should be taken as clusters. In a Namárië manuscript reproduced in RGEO:76, Tolkien split the word ómaryo into its constituent syllables and seemingly indicated that -ar- and -yo are separate syllables – as if ry is a genuine consonant cluster after all, not just palatalized r. (Sure enough, r would probably be palatalized before y, but if y is also to be sounded as a distinct consonant, we would still have a cluster.) Likewise, Tolkien split the words fanyar "clouds" and ilyë "all" into fan/yar, il/yë. If ry, ny, and ly, and by implication ty as well, really are to be taken as consonant clusters when they occur in the middle of words, this would explain the observed stress patterns. But then we are left with the problem of why long vowels are not shortened before these combinations. Luckily, these seeming inconsistencies cause no problems to people trying to write in Quenya, since we can simply imitate the system or systems that Tolkien used.
Even so, I haven't bored the student with the paragraphs above only as an academic exercise, for there remains the problem of how ly, ny, ry, ty occurring in the middle of words should really be pronounced: Are we dealing with single, unitary palatalized consonants, long palatalized consonants, or single consonants followed by a distinct y? It seems that we can't reach any definite answer based on what has been published so far. When Tolkien in RGEO:76 syllabified fanyar as fan/yar, it seems to demonstrate that he at least can't have the pronunciation **fañ-ar in mind, though palatals like ny and ty must always be pronounced as single, unitary consonants when they occur initially (as Quenya cannot have consonant clusters at the beginning of words: SD:416-417). The choice apparently stands between fañ-ñar (with a long or double palatal ñ) and fan-yar or rather fañ-yar (a distinct y being sounded). In either case, a word like atarinya "my father" (that is, atariñña or atariñya) would then logically be accented on the i according to the normal rules. Why this combination ny, as well as ly, ry, ty, apparently lack the power to make a preceding long vowel become short remains a mystery. If they are pronounced with a distinct y, as I tend to think, these combinations may not be counted as regular consonant clusters because y is a "semi-vowel" rather than a quite "proper" consonant.

Possessive pronominal endings used with infinitives: In Lesson Ten we described how infinitive forms of verbs have an extended form in -ta which is used when the infinitive is to receive a suffix denoting an object pronoun: thus carë (cari-) "to do", but caritas "to do it" or "doing it". To such an extended infinitive it is also possible to add a pronominal ending denoting the subject of the verbal action. Our attested example is caritalya(s), which Tolkien translated "your doing (it)" (VT41:17). "You" is here the subject of the verbal action (that is, the "doing"), and this is expressed as a possessive pronominal ending -lya "your". A second pronominal ending, denoting the object, may then be added at the end of the word: caritalyas, "your doing it", tiritanyat "my watching them". Such a phrase can probably be used as a noun, functioning, for instance, as the subject or object of a sentence. Perhaps "I want you to watch them" would be expressed something like merin tiritalyat, literally "I want your watching them". The object of the infinitive could certainly be an independent word as well, e.g. merin tiritalya i seldor, "I want you to watch the boys" ("I want your watching the boys").
	By their meaning, such infinitives would come very close to gerunds, and these Quenya forms in -ta are probably meant to be related to Sindarin gerunds (ending in -ad or -ed). Indeed we must assume that regular gerunds (in -ië) may also receive possessive pronominal endings, e.g. tulierya "his coming" (tulië "coming"). It is, however, uncertain whether a second pronominal ending denoting the object may then be suffixed (?carieryas "his doing it").

THE LOCATIVE CASE
In connection with the forms mir, minna "into" we have referred to the Quenya preposition mi "in", which is sometimes combined with the definite article to produce the form (mi + i =) mí "in the". It occurs in Namárië, in the phrase mí oromardi, translated "in the high halls" (so in RGEO:66, at least – the text in LotR has mi with a short vowel, though this should be a simple "in" with no article incorporated, and indeed the translation provided in LotR goes simply "in lofty halls").
	Yet Quenya often dispenses with prepositions, using special case forms instead, as when "to, towards" is normally expressed by the allative ending -nna, whereas "from" is usually expressed by means of the ablative ending -llo – though Quenya does have separate prepositions that could express the same meanings. It should be no surprise, then, that Quenya instead of using a preposition like mi often prefers a specific case form in order to express the meaning of "in" (or "on, upon"). The relevant case is called the locative, marked by the ending -ssë (probably inspired by the Finnish ending -ssa, -ssä of similar meaning). For instance, "in a house" can be expressed as coassë, "in the house" could be i coassë, "in my house" would be coanyassë, etc. (Of course, the stress moves to the vowel immediately preceding the case ending, since the ending begins in a consonant cluster.) The locative can refer to "location" in time as well as space: In an early version of the greeting "a star shines on the hour of our meeting", Tolkien had the noun lúmë "hour" appearing in the locative case (lúmessë, RS:324).

NOTE 1: Students should notice that the ending -ssë is not always a locative marker, meaning "in" or "on" wherever it occurs. Sometimes -ssë functions as an abstract ending. We have already introduced the noun alassë "joy, merriment". Entulessë is attested as the name of a ship, said to mean "Return" (UT:171; entul- would be the verb "to re-come" = "to return"). Caimassë could be the locative form of caima "bed", but caimassë is also used as a noun "lying in bed" = "sickness", and this is even the basis of the adjective caimassëa "bedridden, sick" (Etym., entry KAY). Sometimes -ssë as a noun ending is not abstract, but it is seen to maintain the connotations of locality that it also has when used as a locative ending: The noun aicassë "mountain peak" is derived from the adjective aica "sharp", so the term aicassë basically refers to some kind of 'sharp place'. The ending -ssë also turns up in the names of a couple of the months of the Elvish calendar, listed in LotR Appendix D: Víressë and Lótessë, roughly corresponding to April and May. The meaning of the word Víressë is uncertain, but Lótessë certainly connects with lótë "flower" and would seem to mean essentially "In Flower", a fitting description of the month of May. – Whether the locative ending -ssë could or should be attached to a noun already ending in -ssë is uncertain. Lótessessë does seem like a rather cumbersome way of expressing "in May", and aicassessë for "on a mountain peak" is not much better. Instead of adding the locative ending to nouns of such a shape, it may be better to use the preposition mi "in": Mi Lótessë, mi aicassë. But in the Plotz Declension, Tolkien does seem to indicate that lassessë would be an acceptable locative form of lassë "leaf". Yet the preposition mi would always be a valid alternative to the ending.

NOTE 2: As we remember, the allative case in -nna does not always denote motion towards something, but may also express the idea of "on, upon". In some contexts, it would perhaps be permissible to use either the locative or the allative, resulting in pretty much the same meaning (caitan caimanyassë = "I lie in my bed" / caitan caimanyanna "I lie on my bed"). Yet Tolkien sometimes translated a Quenya locative form using the English preposition "upon". An example of this is ciryassë "upon a ship" (MC:216, there spelt kiryasse); cf. also mahalmassen below.

	In the plural, the simple locative suffix -ssë is expanded with the same plural element -n that is also seen in the plural forms of the endings for genitive (-on) and ablative (-llon). Thus, plural locative forms end in -ssen. The plural locative of mahalma "throne" occurs in Cirion's Oath, where the Valar are referred to as i hárar mahalmassen mi Númen, "those who sit upon [the] thrones in the West".
	The dual locative ending is formed by substituting the dual element t for the first of the s's of the ending -ssë. The resulting ending -tsë is not attested in any actual Quenya composition by Tolkien, but he listed it in the Plotz letter, so presumably we can have forms like sambetsë "in a two-room apartment" or ciryanyatsë "on my [two sister] ships". (These words may be seen as the simplest dual forms sambet, ciryanyat with the locative ending -ssë attached, though it is simplified to -së to avoid the impossible combination **-tssë.)
	Of course, endings like -ssë, -ssen, -tsë can never be added directly to a noun ending in a consonant without producing impossible consonant clusters. In the original version of this course, I wrote regarding this:

Lacking attested examples, we can only assume that connecting vowels would be fitted in by much the same rules as the ones that are seen to apply in the allative and ablative cases: -e- is used as a connecting vowel in the singular, whereas plural forms have -i-. Hence presumably elenessë "in a star", elenissen "in stars". The dual "in a couple of stars" might prefer the connecting vowel -e- (?elenetsë). Contracted forms may also turn up, e.g. elessë for elen-ssë. The directions Formen, Hyarmen, Númen, Rómen = North, South, West, East would almost certainly surrender their final -n in the locative, just as they are seen to do in the allative and ablative cases. Hence probably Formessë "in the North", etc. Fíriel's Song has Númessier for "they are in the west". This strange form seems to include the ending -ië "is", pl. -ier "(they) are" which Tolkien probably dropped later. Even so, an underlying locative form Númessë "in the West" must in any case be presupposed here. Since the noun Númen "West" also appears in the shorter form Númë, we cannot be certain that a final -n has dropped out here, but this locative form may be noted all the same.

(Unquote myself.) Since I wrote this, new relevant evidence has turned up. Cemessë "on earth" (VT43:16) as one locative form of cemen "earth" could be seen as a certain example of a final -n dropping out before the ending -ssë . However, cemessë may actually be meant to have evolved from cemen-së, with a shorter version of the locative ending, ns in this instance becoming ss by assimilation. In his various drafts for a Quenya version of the Lord's Prayer, Tolkien is seen to be struggling with the question of what the locative forms of menel "heaven, sky" and cemen "earth" should be. One version has menelzë and cemenzë, the locative ending -ssë being shortened to -së and voiced to -zë by contact with the voiced consonants l, n preceding it (VT43:9). However, forms like menelzë, cemenzë cannot belong to the kind of Quenya used in Middle-earth in the Third Age; in Appendix E to LotR we are told that "the z-sound did not occur in contemporary Quenya". Tolkien eventually settled on the forms meneldë and cemendë (VT43:11, 12), apparently suggesting a development ls > lz > ld and similarly ns > nz > nd. (Whether this would render obsolete the form cemessë, apparently presupposing a development ns > ss instead, is of course unclear.) Nouns ending in the consonants -l and -n may thus have locative forms in -dë (in the plural presumably -den, corresponding to the regular ending -ssen). Nouns in -s and -t may simply have locative forms in -së (compare the dual locatives in -tsë, which is simply the dual ending -t + the shortened locative ending -së). Phonetically, words in -r would be excepted to have locative forms in -ssë (e.g. Ambassë as the locative form of Ambar "world"), since the group rs historically becomes ss (for instance, the name Nessa is said to descend from neresâ, evidently via an intermediate form nersâ: WJ:416).
However, there also seems to be a much simpler system: one may use the full ending -ssë "everywhere", slipping in a connecting vowel -e- before it where it would otherwise follow a consonant. In one of the Lord's Prayer versions, Tolkien in the phrase "our Father in heaven" translated "in heaven" by the adjectival form menelessëa, which is clearly based on menelessë as yet another locative form of menel (VT43:9, 13). This use of -e- as a connecting vowel before -ssë corresponds to one of my suggestions in the original version of this course. So as the locative form of a noun like elen "star" there may be at least three more or less equally valid alternatives: elessë (dropping a final consonant before the ending -ssë, or -ssë may be considered an assimilated form of -nsë here), elenessë (slipping in a connecting vowel -e- before the locative ending, probably -i- in the plural) or elendë (using the ending -dë for older -zë, in turn from -së). Writers may pick their choice, but generally one of the two latter alternatives would probably be the best solution. For the sake of clarity, the locative form of a noun like Ambar should probably be Ambaressë rather than (Ambar-së >) Ambassë, which could just as well be formed from a noun **Amba.
Would nouns with dual forms in -u also form their dual locatives in -tsë, or does this ending occur only where we are dealing with nouns that have nominative dual forms in -t? We may well wonder what the locative form of Aldu "Two Trees" would be. Aldussë with the simplest ending -ssë, because duality is already sufficiently expressed by -u? Aldatsë formed from the uninflected form alda? Aldutsë with double dual markers, -u and -t-? Personally I lean toward Aldussë, but I would like to see a Tolkien-made example.

The locative ending(s) can of course be combined with possessive pronominal endings just like the other case endings we have discussed. The Markirya poem has ringa súmaryassë for "in her cold bosom" (ringa "cold", súma "bosom"; the reference is to the "bosom" of a ship).

RELATIVE SENTENCES
In LotR, there is one single example of a Quenya locative. The ending -ssen for plural locative occurs in Namárië, in the phrase Vardo tellumar..., yassen tintilar i eleni = "Varda's domes..., wherein [or, in which] the stars twinkle..."
	The word ya "which", here appearing with the locative ending -ssen to imply "in which", is a relative pronoun. It can be used to build relative sentences, that is, sentences embedded in other sentences as a kind of descriptive phrases. Two sentences like "the treasure is great" and "you found it" can be combined as "the treasure which you found is great". Notice that the pronoun "it" of the sentence "you found it" is replaced by "which". This relative pronoun is capable of referring back to the words "the treasure", and "which I found" now becomes a descriptive phrase providing extra information about "the treasure". The probable Quenya equivalents of these examples:

	I harma ná alta "the treasure is great"
	+ hirnelyes "you found it" 
	= i harma ya hirnelyë ná alta "the treasure which you found is great"

As a relative pronoun, English may also use "that" ("the treasure that you found...")
	In German, the definite articles der, das, die (all = English "the", for various genders and numbers) are also used as relative pronouns. The Quenya article i may likewise take on this function. This is evident from Cirion's Oath, the last words of which exemplify i used first as article, then as relative pronoun: ...i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar ëa tennoio, "the One who is above all thrones forever". Since "the One" (Eru, God) is a person and not a thing, the relative pronoun must here be translated "who" rather than "which". In the original version of this course, I suggested that if there is any distinction in meaning between i and ya used as relative pronouns, this may indeed be it: i refers back to a person (English "who"), while ya refers back to a thing or a situation (English "which"). Notice, by the way, that these glosses have nothing to do with the question-words "who" and "which": The word i cannot be used for "who" in a question, like "who are you?" The Quenya word for "who" in this sense is quite different (man).
	Material that has been published later has muddied the picture somewhat. In VT42:33 we have the sentence lá caritas i hamil mára alasaila ná, which Tolkien translated "not to do what you judge good [is] unwise". While i hamil mára is here translated "what you judge good", it seems that this phrase means, more literally, "[that] which you judge good". According to the theory I was leaning towards, I would have expected ya rather than i here, but it seems that i as well may refer to a thing or a situation (English "which") rather than to a person (English "who").
	Yet another interpretation of a possible distinction between i and ya as relative pronouns went like this: i is used when the relative pronoun is the subject of the relative sentence, while ya is used when it is the object. By this interpretation we could have sentences like Elda i tirë Nauco "an Elf who watches a Dwarf", but Elda ya tirë Nauco "an Elf whom a Dwarf watches" (English uses "whom" as the object form of the relative pronoun "who"). However, as I cautiously warned in the first version of this course: "We need more examples before we can pick the right interpretation with confidence." It now seems that i, at least, can function as a relative pronoun whether it is the subject or the object of the relative sentence (subject: i Eru i ëa "the One who is", object: lá caritas i hamil mára... "not to do [that] which you find good"). As it now appears, there may be no significant distinction in meaning between i and ya used as relative pronouns. Just like one may use both "which" and "that" as relative pronouns in English ("the ship which I saw" = "the ship that I saw"), so one may perhaps use either i or ya in Quenya (i cirya i cennen = i cirya ya cennen???) 
	However, in one respect i and ya are evidently not interchangeable. The word i is in Quenya the "indeclinable article 'the'" (Etymologies, entry I). That is, i = "the" cannot be declined; it cannot receive any case endings. We must assume that this is still true when i functions as a relative pronoun "who, which" instead. However, ya is perfectly able to receive case endings, as indicated by the example yassen "in which" from Namárië. The locative ending is plural because the relative pronoun refers back to a plural word, tellumar "domes"; in the case of a single telluma or "dome", the relative pronoun referring back to it would likewise be singular: yassë. Likewise with other nouns: coa yassë "a house in which...", but plural coar yassen... "houses in which..."
	Besides the form yassen in Namárië, we have one more example of ya occurring with a case ending. An early Elvish poem by Tolkien includes the words tanya wende...yar i vilya anta miqilis, translated "that maiden...to whom the air gives kisses" (MC:215, 216). This is not quite LotR-style Quenya, so I don't regularize the spelling, but the form yar "to whom" is interesting. The final -r here suffixed to ya seems to be the old allative ending, as in mir "into"; hence yar = "whom-to", "to whom". The examples yassen "in which" and yar "to whom" suggest that if you need a relative pronoun to receive case endings, such endings are always attached to ya-. We must assume that ya can receive all the various endings for number and case, being inflected like a noun in -a, as in these examples: 

	¤ DATIVE: i nér yan ánen annanya "the man to whom I gave my gift", plural i neri yain... "the men to whom..." (The attested form yar "to whom", occurring in a context involving the verb "give", may evidently also take on dative-like functions – but yar is properly an archaic allative, and generally I think yan, pl. yain, is to be preferred.)
	¤ GENITIVE: i nís yo yondo cennen "the woman whose [= who's] son I saw" (we must assume that ya + the genitive ending -o would produce yo, a final -a being displaced as usual), plural i nissi yaron... "the women whose [= who's]..." (for a form like yaron, cf. aldaron as the plural genitive of alda "tree")
	¤ POSSESSIVE: i aran yava malta mapuvan "the king whose [= who's] gold I will seize", plural i arani yaiva... "the kings whose [= who's]..."
	¤ ALLATIVE: i coa yanna lenden "the house to which I went / the house whither I went / the house that I went to", plural i coar yannar... "the houses to which..."
	¤ ABLATIVE: i coa yallo tullen "the house from which I came / the house whence I came / the house that I came from", plural i coar yallon [alternatively, yallor]... "the houses from which..."
	¤ LOCATIVE: i coa yassë marin "the house in which I live / the house that I live in / the house where I live", plural i coar yassen... "the houses in which..."

	In the nominative singular, the simple form ya is of course used: i parma ya etécien, "the book which I have written". It may be that this would become yar (with the plural ending -r) when referring back to a plural word: i parmar yar... "the books which..." (Distinguish the attested relative pronoun yar "to whom", MC:215, 216; this form includes the old allative ending -r instead.) Where i is used as a relative pronoun, it receives no plural ending, since i is indeclinable: Eldar i lindar "Elves who sing".
	We have listed no dual forms, but they would presumably be quite regular: nominative yat (e.g. i peu yat... "the [pair of] lips that..."), dative yant (e.g. i veru yant... "the [married] couple to/for whom..."), genitive yato, possessive yatwa (?), allative yanta, ablative yalto, locative yatsë (e.g. i sambet yanta/yalto/yatsë... "the two-room apartment to/from/in which...")
	It should be noted that in some grammatical contexts, a case ending that could have been added to ya may be omitted and understood. For instance, given that the word for "night" is lómë (lómi-), we could presumably have a sentence like lómissë yassë cennenyes "in [the] night in which I saw it" = "(in/on) the night when I saw it", but it is also permissible to let ya occur by itself: Lómissë ya cennenyes, a construction paralleling English "in [the] night that I saw it" (very frequently, English would drop the initial "in", but in Quenya the locative ending should probably be included). 
Notice that the article may in such a case be dropped before the first noun (lómissë in our example); it is perhaps sufficiently determined by the following relative phrase. Tolkien employed such a construction in his Quenya translation of the Hail Mary. He paraphrased "in the hour of our death" as "in [the] hour that we shall die": lúmessë ya firuvammë (VT43:28 – here the ending for exclusive "we" is still -mmë, later revised to -lmë). 

Usually, a relative pronoun refers back to a noun so that the following relative sentence provides information about that noun, as in all the examples above. Notice, however, the example i carir quettar "those who form words", quoted as a description of the Elves (WJ:391). I carir quettar by itself is a relative sentence, and we could certainly connect it with a noun and let the relative sentence refer back to it, e.g. Eldar i carir quettar "Elves who form words". However, it appears that i can be put in front of a verb to express "the one who" (if the verb is singular) or "those who", "the ones who" (if the verb is plural, marked by the ending -r). Cirion's Oath provides another example: i hárar mahalmassen mi Númen "those who sit upon thrones in the West". We can probably feel free to build sentences like these:

	I túla ná nís "[the one] who is coming is a woman"
	I hirner i malta nar alyë "[the ones] who found the gold are rich"
	Hiruvan i suncer limpenya "I will find [the ones] who drank my wine" (singular ...i suncë limpenya, "[the one] who drank my wine")

In the original version of this course, I wrote at this point:

If ya can also be used in such constructions, and we are right to assume that i signifies "who" while ya means "which", there may be distinctions in meaning like ecénien i túla "I have seen [the one] who is coming" vs. ecénien ya túla "I have seen what is coming" (literally, "I have seen [that] which is coming"). The sentence "what I want is wine" would perhaps translate something like ya merin ná limpë (i.e., "[that] which I want is wine").

Later publications have muddied this nice little scenario, since it now appears that i and ya may be largely interchangeable. In the exercises below and their keys, I have however maintained the distinction that ya is used in the impersonal sense of "which", whereas i refers to persons: "who(m)" (except when the relative pronoun is to receive some ending; then ya- must be used anyway). It would be a useful distinction, even if Tolkien didn't think of it...!

Word order: Some languages employ a special word order in relative sentences. German insists on placing the verb last, so that we have constructions like "the man who there stands" (der Mann der dort steht) for "the man who stands there". For a while I wondered if Quenya employed a similar system; the verb ëa "is, exists" appears near the end of the relative sentence concluding Cirion's Oath: i or ilyë mahalmar ëa tennoio, literally "who over all thrones is forever". However, as we see, the verb is not absolutely final; an entirely "German" word order would require "who over all thrones forever is".
In Namárië, the verb actually follows immediately after the relative pronoun in the relative sentence yassen tintilar i eleni "wherein the stars twinkle", literally "in which twinkle the stars". We might think that this is just a "poetic" word order, but Tolkien did not change it in the prose Namárië in RGEO:66-67. Does it make any difference that this is a relative pronoun with a case ending attached? Would it be wrong to say yassen i eleni tintilar, with the subject of the verb preceding rather than following the verb? We cannot tell. Especially in the case of yasse(n), yanna(r), yallo(n) "in/to/from which", I would imitate our attested example and let the verb immediately follow the relative pronoun: I osto yassë marë i nér "the city in which the man dwells", i tol yanna círar i ciryar "the island whither the ships are sailing", i nóri yallon tulir i ohtari "the lands whence the warriors come". Otherwise, I will not try to make out any hard-and-fast rules for what word order Quenya relative sentences should have. 

THIRD PERSON OBSCURITIES
Above we introduced the possessive pronominal ending -rya, covering "his" and "her". So what is the corresponding subject ending, meaning "he" and "she"?
	Since the ending -lya "your" is known to correspond to an ending -lyë "you", many researchers, starting from -rya "her", have extrapolated an unattested suffix -ryë as the subject ending = "she". If, as indicated by Namárië, the Quenya for "you will find" is hiruvalyë, "she will find" would then be hiruvaryë. Nancy Martsch uses this extrapolated ending -ryë "she" throughout her Basic Quenya – and it may well be correct. Now that it is known that -rya covers "his" as well as "her", we would have to assume that -ryë may similarly signify "he" as well as "she".
	The subject endings of the Third Person Singular – the endings for "he", "she", and "it" – however belong to one of the more obscure parts of the Quenya pronoun table. In material closely related to Fíriel's Song, one ending for "he" is seen to be -ro. It occurs in the form antaváro "he will give", attested in the question e man antaváro? "what will he give indeed?" (LR:63). Antáva as the simple future tense "will give" occurs on the same page (and in the full text of Fíriel's Song as printed in LR:72). This may not be quite LotR-style Quenya; as we argued in Lesson Seven, the future tense of anta- should perhaps be antuva rather than antáva according to the system Tolkien decided upon later. Even so, the form antaváro nicely illustrates one apparent property of the ending -ro: For some reason, the vowel immediately preceding this ending is lengthened, antáva becoming antaváro when -ro is added (and the original long vowel of antáva is shortened to avoid the form **antáváro: It may be that Quenya cannot have a long vowel in the syllable immediately preceding the vowel receiving the main accent except when this syllable is also the first syllable of the word). Should we update antaváro to something like antuváro in LotR-style Quenya?
This ending -ro also turns up in a "Qenya" poem reproduced in MC:220, there added to a couple of verb forms including the past-tense ending -në, and again the vowel preceding -ro is lengthened so that it receives the accent. One of them is laustanéro, which would seem to be a verb lausta- "make a windy noise" (cf. MC:216) + the past tense ending -në + the ending -ro "he" (and "it"?) The whole phrase goes súru laustanéro, translated "the wind rushed" (literally perhaps "[the] wind, he/it [-ro] rushed"). Since this is "Qenya" rather than LotR-style Quenya, we shouldn't put too much emphasis on the details, but Tolkien does seem to be using an ending -ro, that may mean "he" (but also "it"?), and that has the strange power of making the preceding vowel long. It has been suggested that the vowel rather remains long in this position because Tolkien imagined it to have been long in Primitive Elvish. If so, the vowel -i- seen in the aorist of primary verbs (e.g. tulin "I come") should not be lengthened, since this vowel was never long (?tuliro rather than ?tulíro for "he comes"). It is also possible that such lengthening only occurs when -ro is added to a word ending in two short syllables that are not by themselves the entire word (so that the new long second-to-last syllable can attract the stress: laustanë > laustanéro; without the lengthening the stress would fall on -ta- after the suffixing of -ro, resulting in a somewhat awkward pronunciation). It would be interesting to know whether, say, "he made" would be carnéro or carnero; I now tend to think that there would be no lengthening when -ro is added to a word of such a shape.
Where would this ending -ro for "he" come from, and what is the ending for "she"? The entry S- in the Etymologies throws some light on what Tolkien imagined. Various Elvish words for "he, she, it" are there discussed. One primitive word for "he" is cited as sô or so, "cf. -so inflection of verbs" – apparently meaning that the primitive Elvish language might express "he" by means of an ending -so added to verbs. This -so could be the origin of the Quenya ending -ro, for in Quenya, -s- occurring between vowels was normally voiced to -z-, which later became -r- (the sound z merging with original r). In the Etymologies, Tolkien went on to cite one primitive word for "she" as sê or se, "cf. -se inflexion of verbs". If -so produces -ro as a Quenya ending for "he", we would have to assume that -se similarly yields -rë (earlier -zë) as an ending for "she". This -rë is possibly directly attested in the "Qenya" phrase kirya kalliére, translated "the ship shone" (MC:220, 221) – literally "[the] ship, she shone"? Turning the form kalliére into LotR-style Quenya would probably take more than just altering the spelling to calliérë, but it may be noted that the ending -rë, like -ro, seems to prefer the company of a long vowel in the preceding syllable. Again, this may happen only when it is added to a word ending to two short syllables (probably kallië in this case).
Many writers have used the endings -ro = "he" and -rë = "she", so students of Quenya should certainly memorize them – but as far or short as we know, they are only attested in material predating the writing of LotR. In 1994, there finally turned up a tiny scrap of evidence regarding Tolkien's post-LotR ideas about the pronominal ending for "he, she". In the essay Quendi and Eldar, in the discussion of the tense-less verb equë "said, says", Tolkien noted that while this form normally does not receive endings of any kind, it may occur with certain pronominal endings. He cited two examples of this: equen, translated "said I", and also eques, translated "said he / she" (WJ:414) or "said he, said someone" (WJ:392). So here we have an ending -s that covers both "he" and "she" (and even "someone"). In the post-LotR period, Tolkien demonstrably used the ending -rya for both "his" and "her", so it is not surprising that he might have decided that Quenya used one ending for both "he" and "she" as well (cf. also the Finnish gender-neutral pronoun hän). Actually this ending -s must also cover "it", for it can hardly be kept apart from the ending -s that we have already met in object position – as in tiruvantes "they will keep it" (Cirion's Oath) or caritalyas "your doing it" (VT41:17). So eques could probably mean "it said" just as well as "(s)he said". Conversely, -s may probably refer to people in object position as well: Perhaps tiruvantes might also mean "they will keep [or, watch] him/her". 
A form like tulis would have to be translated either "he comes", "she comes", or "it comes" depending on the context. The existence of such an ending does not necessarily contradict the references Tolkien made to primitive "-so inflexion" and "-se inflexion" of verbs in the Etymologies: Normally, the final short -o and -e of primitive Elvish have been lost in Quenya, so primitive forms like tuli-so "he comes" and tuli-se "she comes" might well merge as tulis "(s)he comes". Where this would leave the longer, gender-specific endings -ro and -rë found in early material is unclear. Tolkien may have meant them to descend from variant endings with long vowels (-sô and -sê), final -ô and -ê becoming -o and -ë in Quenya. Perhaps the gender-specific endings would be used where the short, general 3rd person ending -s "he, she, it" is not specific enough? But there is every reason to believe that Tolkien repeatedly changed his mind about the details; we can't even rule out the possibility that the long endings -ro "he" and -rë "she" were dropped altogether.
Anyhow, if -s is to be the ending for "(s)he", where does this leave the unattested ending -ryë that some students have (plausibly) extrapolated from the possessive ending -rya "his, her"? The ending -ryë may still be valid. Perhaps the ending for "(s)he" alternates between -s and -ryë just like the ending for "I" may appear as either -n or -nyë; the ending for "you, thou" likewise alternates between -l (as in hamil "you judge", VT42:33) and -lyë. (While the endings -s and -ryë may seem less similar than -n vs. -nyë and -l vs. -lyë, it should be understood that -ryë would come from earlier -sye: Following a vowel, the combination sy turns into zy and then ry. Cf. the Etymologies, entry SUS; from this root, Tolkien derived the Quenya word surya "spirant consonant", which must be understood to come from susyâ in the primitive language.) The longer ending -ryë would be used primarily when a second pronominal ending denoting the object is to be added, e.g., tiriryet "(s)he watches them" – whereas "(s)he watches" by itself could be either tiris or tiriryë, but more commonly the former. But writers who want to avoid the unattested ending -ryë may opt for the gender-specific endings -ro and -rë instead, to bring in a connecting vowel: tirirot "he watches them", tiriret "she watches them". 
In the exercises below, we will however avoid all speculative endings and constructions and concentrate on the only known facts we have at our disposal regarding the 3rd person singular of the pronoun table: In Quenya as Tolkien had come to see this language in the post-LotR period, the ending -s may be used for "he, she, it", whereas -rya covers "his" and "her". (We may plausibly assume that -rya covers "its" as well: Notice that in the phrase ringa súmaryassë "in her cold bosom" cited above, the reference is actually to a ship, so "its bosom" would seem to be an equally appropriate translation.) The long endings -ro and -rë are not used in the exercises or the keys, since their status in LotR-style Quenya is slightly uncertain (not that I necessarily discourage writers from using them).

Summary of Lesson Fifteen: The Quenya pronominal possessive ending for "his, her" is -rya, behaving like the other endings of this kind (endings for number or case may be added after it). If a dual noun is to receive a pronominal ending, its duality is indicated by -t added to this ending (cf. máryat "her [pair of] hands" in Namárië), apparently even in the case of nouns that would otherwise receive the alternative dual marker -u instead. – The extended infinitives in -ta which may receive pronominal endings denoting the object (e.g. caritas "to do it") may also receive possessive pronominal endings denoting the subject, e.g. caritalya(s) "your doing (it)". – Nouns ending in a long vowel, e.g. má "hand", would shorten this vowel before a consonant cluster; thus the plural allative is attested as mannar (for the impossible form **mánnar). Curiously, long vowels are not shortened before ry, ly, ny, ty, though these combinations do count as consonant clusters for the purpose of stress. – The Quenya locative case has the basic ending -ssë, plural -ssen, and dual -tsë (at least in the case of nouns with nominative dual forms in -t; nouns with nominative dual forms in -u may simply add -ssë). When added to a noun that ends in a consonant, the locative ending may appear as -dë following -l and -n, and perhaps as -së following -s and -t. (However, a final consonant may also be dropped before the ending -ssë is attached, or a connecting vowel may be slipped in before the ending.) These endings express the idea of "in", "on", "upon", e.g. ciryassë "(up)on a ship", coassen "in houses". – Quenya relative sentences may be formed using the relative pronoun ya "which, that". Ya may also receive endings for case and number, cf. the plural locative yassen "in which" or "wherein" occurring in Namárië (plural because it refers back to a plural word). The article i "the" may also be used as a relative pronoun, cf. i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar ëa tennoio, "the One who is above all thrones" in Cirion's Oath, but i apparently cannot receive endings for case or number. In front of a verb, i can be used by itself to express "the one(s) who do(es)" whatever the verb expresses, e.g., i carir quettar "the ones/those who form words". – The pronominal endings for "he" and "she" are somewhat uncertain. Early material contains verbs with the endings -ro "he" and apparently -rë "she". In post-LotR material, we have one attestation of -s as an ending covering both "he" and "she", and since the same ending is attested with the meaning "it" elsewhere (as object), we may assume that -s is a general ending covering the entire 3rd person singular, as subject or object. One educated guess has it that this -s alternates with a longer form -ryë (plausibly extrapolated from the possessive ending -rya "his/her"), but only the attested ending -s is used in the exercises below.

VOCABULARY

tatya "second" (The original name of the Second Clan of the Elves was Tatyar, literally "Seconds, Second Ones", though the Eldarin branch of that clan would later be called Noldor instead [WJ:380-381]. A variant form of tatya is atya [attested, compounded, in VT41:10], which connects more clearly with the basic number atta "two". As will be explained in Lesson 17, "second" was later expressed as attëa, but students should know the archaic form tatya as well, and we will use this form here.)
mar- "to dwell, abide"; to "live" somewhere in the sense of dwelling there (cf. Elendil's Declaration: sinomë maruvan = "in this place will I abide")
ya relative pronoun "that, which", often with case endings; as relative pronoun alternating with i (but i apparently cannot receive case endings)
aurë "day" (the actual daylight period, not a full 24-hour cycle)
veru "(married) couple, man and wife, pair of spouses" (an old dual form apparently lacking any singular; there are only the gender-specific words verno "husband" and vessë "wife" from the same root)
má "hand"
pé "lip", nominative dual peu (so according to VT39:9, reproducing a post-LotR source. Earlier, in the entry PEG of the Etymologies, the word pé had been glossed "mouth" instead – which would be pure plagiarism of the Hebrew word for "mouth"! But Tolkien apparently thought better of it: in LotR Appendix E, the Quenya word for "mouth" is given as anto instead, which word we introduced in Lesson Eleven.)  
mallë "road, street" (nominative pl. maller, LR:47, 56; SD:310 – as we theorized in Lesson Two, nouns in -lë may regularly have plural forms in -ler rather than -li.)
hrívë "winter"
apa preposition "after" (cf. Apanónar "the Afterborn" as an Elvish name of Men, the Elves themselves being the Firstborn – see the Silmarillion, near the beginning of chapter 12. VT44:36 confirms that apa also appears by itself in Tolkien's notes.)
Hyarmen "the South"
hyarya adjective "left"

NOTE: As suggested by their shapes, the words for "south" and "left" are closely related. As explained by Tolkien in LotR Appendix E, the four directions Númen, Hyarmen, Rómen, Formen = West, South, East, North were normally listed in that order, "beginning with and facing west" – apparently because that was the direction of the Blessed Realm. It may be no coincidence that the directions are listed counterclockwise so that the North is named last, for in the First Age when this convention was presumably established, North was the direction of Morgoth's stronghold (Angband or Thangorodrim). Our imaginary speaker facing the West would have the South on his left hand, and Tolkien explained that Hyarmen means basically "left-hand region". As Tolkien also noted, this system is "the opposite to the arrangement in many Mannish languages", which tend rather to use the East (the direction of the sunrise) as the starting-point "faced" by the speaker. Thus the words for "south" and "right" may be associated or identical – cf. for instance Hebrew yamîn.

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English (the pronominal ending -s may have various English equivalents):

A. Tuluvas i tatya auressë.
B. I hrívessë rimbë aiwi autar marien Hyarmessë; apa i hrívë autantë Hyarmello ar tulir nórelvanna. [Here, Hyarmessë could also be Hyarmendë.]
C. Hiritarya malta i orontissen ánë alassë lieryan, an hiritaryas carnë lierya alya.
D. Tatya hrívessë ya marnes i coassë hirnes harma nu i talan.
E. Quetis lambelva, an maris nórelvassë.
F. Eques: "Cennen macil i ohtaro hyarya massë."
G. I nér i hirnë i harma nurtuva i engwi yar ihíries samberyatsë.
H. I ambossë cenis i veru yat itíries coaryallo, ar yant ánes annarya.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. She saw a couple in the street.
J. I found the woman who lives in the house between the rivers, and I watched her lips (dual) and her hands (dual); in her left hand I saw a book.
K. I saw his cup in his hands (dual), the cup from which he poured wine into his mouth.
L. The ones who dwell in the towers to which the man is going are warriors. 
M. His drinking the wine was not a good idea, for what he did after his drinking it was not wise. 
N. After we (excl.) went away [pa.t. of auta-] from our (excl.) land in the South, we have seen many Dwarves on the roads.
O. The towers on the hills are great; the one who owns [harya = possesses] the greatest tower, from which one [quen] can see the Elven-land [Eldanórë], is the richest man in the city.
P. A people whose king is wise will dwell in peace in a good land which they will love deeply. 

Further Lessons may be downloaded from this URL:
www.Ardalambion.com/less-d.rtf