pella "beyond", apparently a postposition rather than a preposition: Andúnë pella "beyond the West", elenillor pella "from beyond the stars" (Nam, RGEO:66, Markirya) In one version of the Quenya Lord's Prayer, Tolkien used pell' (evidently an elided form of pella) as a _preposition, but this version was abandoned (VT43:13)_
Quenya
pella
preposition/adverb. beyond (boundary or limit)
pella
beyond
andúnë pella vardo nu luini tellumar
West beyond [the borders of] Varda’s under blue domes
The 5th phrase of the prose Namárië. Tolkien altered the text from the poetic version as follows:
> Andúnë pella Vardo tellumar nu luini >> Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar
Tolkien moved the preposition and adjective nu luini “under blue” to be in front of the plural noun tellumar “domes” that it modifies. However, this separates the genitive modifier Vardo “Varda’s” from its noun, which is hard to explain. It might make more sense to place Vardo after the preposition nu “under” to give the complete noun phrase Vardo luini tellumar “Varda’s blue domes”, or perhaps moving it to the end as in luini tellumar Vardo “blue vaults of Varda” (which is the poetic translation):
> Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar »»» ✱Andúnë pella nu luini tellumar Vardo
The preposition pella “beyond” also presents some problems of interpretion, given that it follows the noun that it modifies. See the entry for Q. pella for further discussion.
elenillor pella talta-taltala
beyond the stars falling
The twenty-ninth and thirtieth lines of the Markirya poem (MC/222). The first word is the ablative plural form of the noun elen “star” followed by the postposition pella “beyond”. The noun is modified by adjectival talta-taltala “falling”, a combination of the infinitive (or perhaps just the verb stem) with active participle of the verb talta- “to fall”.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> elen-illo-r pella talta-talta-la = “✱star-from-(plural) beyond fall-fall-ing”
andúnë pella vardo tellumar nu luini
beyond the West, beneath the blue vaults of Varda
Fifth and the beginning of the sixth lines @@@
ala
after, beyond
ala (5) prep. "after, beyond" (MC:221, 214; however, LotR-style Quenya has han and pella "beyond" and apa "after")
han
beyond
han prep. "beyond" (compare the _postposition pella of similar meaning) (VT43:14)_
apa
after
apa (1) prep. "after" (VT44:36), attested as a prefix in apacenyë and Apanónar, q.v. Variant ep- in epessë, q.v.; see epë for futher discussion. (According to VT44:36, apa was glossed "after" and also "before" in one late manuscript, but both meanings were rejected.) See also apa # 2 below. For Neo-Quenya purposes, apa should probably be ascribed the meaning "after", as in our most widely-published sources (compare Apanónar, "the After-born", as a name of Men in the Silmarillion). Variants pa, pá (VT44:36), but like apa these are also ascribed other meanings elsewhere; see separate entry. Apo (VT44:36) may be yet another variant of the word for "after".
apo
after
apo prep. ?"after" (see apa #1) (VT44:36)
cata
after
epe
after
han
preposition. beyond
A word for “beyond” in the final version of the Átaremma prayer of the 1950s in the phrase Átaremma i ëa han Eä, equivalent to “our Father who art in Heaven” but more literally “✱who is beyond Creation” (VT43/12). This word also appeared with the gloss “beyond” in notes from around 1970 as a derivative of √HAN “add to, increase, enhance, honour (espec. by gift)” (VT43/14).
tar
beyond
tar (2) prep. "beyond" (FS)
A word for “beyond” in the Namárië poem as well as the 1960s version of Markirya poem, in both cases uses as a post-position in the phrases Andúnë pella “beyond the West” (LotR/377) and elenillor pella “[from] beyond the stars” (MC/222) respectively. It was also used in the second-to-last version of the Átaremma prayer from the 1950s, appearing as a preposition in the phrase Átaremma i ëa pell’ Ëa “✱our father who is beyond existence” with pell’ revised to han in the final version of the prayer (VT43/12).
Tolkien specified that the more precise meaning of pella was “beyond the borders of” (RGEO/58) and that it was “only used of structures, natural or artificial, forming a fence or wall or a boundary” (PE17/92).
Possible Etymology: In Words, Phrases and Passages from the Lord of the Rings (WPP) from the late 1950s or early 1960s, Tolkien derived pella from ✶peth-la (PE17/64). In notes from around 1965, Tolkien tried to explain why pella was used as a post-position. He first considered making its second element lá a deictic (demonstrative) element meaning “far away”, and made its initial element be √PEL “edge, bound, fence, limit”, so meaning something like “✱far away there past the boundary”. But he became dissatisfied with this derivation due to similarities with French là “there” (PE17/65).
He then decided that lá was an ordinary preposition meaning “across, over, beyond”, and the initial element should be √PAL as seen in palan “far”, resulting in a new form palla, saying that its use as a post-position in Namárië was poetical rather that normal grammar (PE17/65). However, this new form palla was not applied in the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, and in the “prose” version of Namárië from The Road Goes Ever On published in 1967 pella was still used as a post-position (RGEO/58).
Finally, in notes from 1967, Tolkien said that the original formation was Andúne pelo lá as in “beyond the West fence”, which was then reduced to Andúne pella and reinterpreted as “beyond the boundary of the West” (PE17/92).
Neo-Quenya: For purposes of Neo-Quenya, I would assume pella is a preposition or adverb meaning “beyond the boundary of”, useable only of things that form boundaries like mountain ranges, fences, and rivers. For “beyond” in a more general sense, use Q. lá. I would further assume that due to quirks of its origin (pelo lá > pella) it tends to be used as a post-position, but can be used as a preposition as well.