auta- (1) vb. "go away, leave" (leave the point of the speaker's thought); old "strong" past tense anwë, usually replaced by vánë, perfect avánië but when the meaning is purely physical "went away (to another place)" rather than "disappear", the past tense oantë, perfect oantië was used. Past participle vanwa "gone, lost, no longer to be had, vanished, departed, dead, past and over" (WJ:366)
Quenya
auta-
verb. to go (away), depart, leave; to pass away, disappear, be lost, to go (away), depart, leave; [variant: vanya-] to pass away, disappear, be lost
auta-
go away, leave
auta-
verb. go away
auta-
invent, originate, devise
auta- (2) vb. "invent, originate, devise" (GAWA/GOWO) This could be obsoleted by # 1 above; on the other hand, the verbs would be quite distinct in the past tense, where auta- #2 would likely have the straightforward form *autanë.
auta-
verb. to possess, own, keep
öa-
verb. to possess, own, keep
A verb Tolkien coined in Late Notes on Verb Structure (LVS) written in 1969 (PE22/155-156) to have the meaning “possess, own, keep (have in hand, use or with one)” (PE22/151). It was derived from the root √AW, apparently not in its usual sense “away”. Tolkien considered two base forms: auta- with pasts au̯ante, oante, vante, or oa- with past aune, future auva, and alternate present āva. Since auta- clashes with better known auta- “depart”, I recommended using oa- “possess, own, keep” for purposes of Neo-Quenya.
anwë
anwë
†anwë (1) vb. archaic past tense of auta-, q.v. (WJ:366)
avánië
avánië
avánië, pl. avánier, perfect tense of auta-, q.v. (WJ:366)
lelya-
go, proceed (in any direction), travel
lelya- (1) vb. "go, proceed (in any direction), travel", pa.t. lendë / elendë (WJ:363, VT14:5, PE17:139) At one point Tolkien assigned a more specific meaning to the underlying root LED: "go away from the speaker or the point in mind, depart" (PE17:52), which would make lelya- a near synonym of auta-. The same source denies that the derivatives of _LED _were used simply for "go, move, travel", but elsewhere Tolkien assigns precisely that meaning to lelya-.
lenna-
go
lenna- vb. "go", pa.t. lendë "went" (LED; cf. lelya-). In the Etymologies as printed in LR, the word lenna- wrongly appears as **linna-; see VT45:27.
lenweta-
go away, migrate, leave ones abode
lenweta- vb. "go away, migrate, leave ones abode", pa.t. lenwentë (PE17:51)
men-
go
#men- (4) vb. "go" (VT47:11, cf. VT42:30, VT49:23), attested in the aorist (menë) in the sentence imbi Menel Cemenyë menë Ráno tië "between Heaven and Earth goes the path of the Moon". In the verb nanwen- "return" (or go/come back), -men- is changed to -wen- following nan- "back" (etymological form cited as nan-men-, PE17:166). In examples from VT49:23, 24, Tolkien used men- in the sense of "go as far as": 1st person sg. aorist menin (menin coaryanna "I arrive at [or come/get to] his house"), endingless aorist menë, present tense ména- "is on point of arrival, is just coming to an end", past tense mennë "arrived, reached", in this tense usually with locative rather than allative (mennen sís "I arrive[d] here"), perfect eménië "has just arrived", future menuva "will arrive". All of these examples were first written with the verb as ten- rather than men-, Tolkien then emending the initial consonant.
oantë
went away (to another place)
oantë vb. "went away (to another place)"; past tense of auta-. Also perfect oantië. (WJ:366, VT48:32)
vanya-
go, depart, disappear
vanya- (2) vb. "go, depart, disappear", pa.t. vannë (WAN). The verb auta- may have replaced this word in Tolkien's later conception.
vánië
vánië
vánië vb., an augmentless perfect of auta- (q.v.) that may occur in verse; regular form avánië (WJ:366)
vánë
vánë
vánë past tense of auta-, q.v. (WJ:366)
A rather irregular verb whose base meaning is “go (away), depart, leave” and by extension with the senses “pass away, disappear, be lost”, derived from the invertible root √WĀ/AWA “away” (PE17/63; WJ/366). Its most notable use is in the Namárië poem where it appeared in its plural perfect form avánier “have passed” (LotR/377). The related adjective vanwa “lost, departed, vanished” appeared in the same poem. Tolkien’s desire to retain the forms avánie and vanwa likely influenced his investigation of this verb; its conceptual development is quite complex (see below).
The irregularity of this verb is due to some of its tenses being based on √AW, and others on √WĀ. Starting in the late 1950s he usually represent the base verb stem as auta- (PE17/63; PE22/164; WJ/366), such as in auta i lómë “the night is passing” from The Silmarillion (S/190). The stem form auta- was based on √AW + tă, similar to other verbs whose roots ended in y/w which usually required a formative suffix like ✶-tă (PE22/156). Such “half-strong” verbs normally had past forms with nasal-infixion before the formative suffix, in this case with primitive ✶áwa-n-tē becoming modern öante because ancient awa become öa in Quenya’s phonetic history (WJ/366-367). Tolkien posited similar perfect forms öantie or öávie (WJ/366; PE17/148; PE22/164).
In the Quendi and Eldar essay from 1959-60, Tolkien said that:
> In the more purely physical sense “went away (to another place)” the regular forms (for a -ta verb of this class) öante, öantie were used (WJ/366).
However, in this document (and others) he described another past form váne from primitive ✶wāne, derived from √WĀ rather than √AW (PE17/63; WJ/366). From this ancient past form the perfect avánie was derived, with Tolkien saying “the forms of past and perfect became progressively more closely associated in Quenya” (WJ/366). This variant of the past and perfect was associated with the adjective (originally a perfective adjective) vanwa “gone, lost, no longer to be had, vanished, departed, dead, past and over”, and from it got the meaning: “✱passed away, went away (to never return)”. It was in this sense the perfect form avánier was used in the Namárië poem.
Conceptual Development: This verb has numerous precursors in Tolkien’s earlier writings, since the original root ᴱ√AVA “go away, depart, leave” dates back to the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s (QL/33). This root had a verb form ᴱQ. avin “he departs” with past form ambe (QL/33). The early root also had an inversion ᴱ√VAHA, from which an alternate past form vâ “went” was derived (QL/99). Thus the notion that the past and present forms of this verb were from inversions of the root was quite an old idea in Tolkien’s mind.
The English-Qenya Dictionary of the 1920s had a verb form ᴱQ. vana- “pass, depart, vanish, go away” (PE15/76). This became ᴹQ. vanya- “go, depart, disappear” in The Etymologies of the 1930s under the root ᴹ√WAN “depart, go away, disappear, vanish” (Ety/WAN). This verb reappeared in the “Merin Sentence” from the mid-to-late 1950s: merin sa haryalyë alassë nó vanyalyë Ambarello “I hope that you have happiness before you pass from the world” (MS). It is thus likely the base verb was vanya- when Tolkien first composed the Namárië poem, and in the 1st edition of The Lord of the Rings the perfect form was vánier without the leading a (RC/341).
The verb form ᴹQ. auta- with the sense “to go away” first appeared in the Outline of Phonetic Development (OP1) from the 1940s, where it was a variant of ᴹQ. apsa- < ᴹ✶abtā- of the same meaning, a back-formation from the past form avante < ✱aba-n-tē, all based on the root ᴹ√ABA/BA “away, go away” (PE19/45). However, sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s, Tolkien revised the meaning of ᴹ√AB to “refuse, deny, say no” (Ety/AB). In the Outline of Phonology (OP2) from the early 1950s, Tolkien had a similar verbal paradigm with Q. apta < ✶ab-ta vs. Q. auta as back-formation from past avante, but in that document the past was glossed “refused, denied, said nay” (PE19/90).
The derivations of auta- “go away, depart” from the root √WĀ/AWA began to appear in documents from the late 1950s and early 1960s such as Notes on Galadriel’s Song (NGS: PE17/63), Definitive Linguistic Notes (DLN: PE17/148), and Quendi and Eldar (Q&E: WJ/365-366). He seem to stick with this paradigm going forward, but continue to experiment with various forms for different verb tenses. For example, in couple places Tolkien gave anwe as another (archaic) past along with oante (WJ/366; PE17/148). In another place he consider a variant verb ava- “depart, go away, disappear, be lost” with present avea, future auva, past vāne, and perfect avānie (PE17/63).
Neo-Quenya: It is pretty clear Tolkien intended the aorist form of this verb to be auta. In NGS Tolkien gave a future form autuva (PE17/63) and in Late Notes on Verb Structure (LVS) from 1969 a present form autya (PE22/164). LVS had a number of -ya or -ia present tenses for various ta-formative verbs, but also said something like “make Q. ea as present tense invaded other forms” in a difficult-to-read note. I take that to mean that the -ya/-ia presents regularized to -ea across many verb classes, so I would use the present tense form ✱autea “is departing” instead and assume that †autya is archaic; see the discussion of the Quenya present tense for more details.
This verb had two past paradigms: öante “went away (to another place)” vs. váne “✱pass away, went away (to never return)”, along with associated perfects öantie vs. avánie, with the last meaning “have passed away” (RGEO/58). In the aorist, present and future tenses this distinction is frequently less relevant, because the “to never return” qualifier is necessarily unknown. Where it is relevant, however, I would use a variant stem form vanya- “to pass away, disappear, be lost”, a back-formation derived from the alternate perfect avánie, inspired by the verb form in The Etymologies and the Merin Sentence (see above).