@@@ possibly modal adverb
Quenya
yan
for/to which
yan
adverb/conjunction. *as
ya
pronoun. which, that (relative pronoun)
The basic relative pronoun in Quenya, mostly used in inflected forms such as: yassen tintilar i eleni “wherein the stars tremble” (LotR/377). See the entry on relative pronouns for further discusion.
Conceptual Development: The use of ᴱQ. ya as a relative pronoun dates back to the Early Qenya Grammar (EQG) of the 1920s (PE14/54), but for a period in the 1930s and 40s ᴹQ. ya was used more as a remote demonstrative (Ety/YA; PE23/96-98). See the entry on correlatives for more on this usage as of 1948.
yan i wilyar antar miquelis
*to whom the air gives kisses
sív’ emmë apsenet tien i úcarir emmen
as we forgive those who trespass against us
The eighth line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word sív’ is an elided form of sívë “as”. It is followed by the emphatic second person plural subject pronoun emmë “us” and apsenet “forgive [them]”, the aorist form of the verb apsen- “forgive” with a plural direct object suffix -t. The fourth word tien “those” is a dative (indirect object) form of tie, apparently a variant of the third person plural pronoun te.
The second half of this phrase is the subordinate clause i úcarir emmen “who trespass against us”, composed of i “who”, úcarir “trespass” (aorist plural of úcar- “to do wrong, to sin”) and emmen “against us” (dative of emmë). The last of these is unusual in that it has an emphatic pronoun used as an object rather than the subject.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> sív(e) emmë apsene-t tie-n i úcari-r emme-n = “✱as we forgive-them those-for who trespass-(plural) us-against”
Taken together, the first half of the phrase has a subject (emmë), verb (apsene), a direct object suffix (-t) and an indirect object (tien). The sense of the phrase is probably something like “✱as we forgive them [the trespasses] for those [the trespassers] who trespass against us”.
Conceptual Development: Earlier versions of the prayer (I-IV) used a different verb avatyar- for “forgive”, as well as different prepositions for “so”: ier (I-IIa) and yan (III-IV). They also lacked any Quenya equivalent of “those who” (tien i in versions V-VI). The literal meaning of this phrase in versions I-IV of the prayer seems to be “✱as we forgive our trespassers”.
Tolkien considered a variety of ways to express “trespassers”. In version I-III, he used a (?verbal) element meaning “trespass” with the agental suffix -ndo: lucando (I), lucindo (IIa-IIb) and rocindë (III), all meaning “trespasser” and all in the plural. In version IV, he used rohtalië “trespass-people”, a compound of the noun rohta “trespass” and lië “people”.
These he combined with either the independent pronoun menya “our” (I-IIb, IV) or the possessive suffix -mma “our” (I deletion, III). Finally, he used an ablative element meaning “from”, either the preposition va (I-IIb) or the ablative suffix -llo (I deletion, III-IV). There was a similar construction for the verb avatyar- in line 6.
In version V of the prayer, Tolkien corrected úcarer to úcarir. This second form is more consistent with the rules Tolkien followed elsewhere in forming the aorist tense of a (basic) verb: it ends in an -e if unsuffixed but has an -i- between it and any suffix (-r in this case). However, Tolkien still used the form úcarer in version IV of the prayer, for reasons unknown.
| |  I  |IIa|IIb|III|IV|V|VI| |ier|yan|sív’| |emme| |{avatyarirat >>}|avatyarir ta|avatyarilta|apsenet| | |tien i| |{lucandollommar >>}|va menya lucandor|va menya lucindor|rocindillomman|menya rohtaliello|úcarer emmen|
For better consistency with Tolkien’s other writings, I have used the more typical aorist form úcarir for the entry of this phrase. As Helge Fauskanger points out (LP-AM), there is a similar issue with apsenet, which might be expected to be ✱✱apsenit, though in this case the variation may be due to the fact that object suffixes are appended directly to the verb instead of to a subject suffix.
yá
conjunction. when
A relative conjunction “when” appearing in various phrases in Tolkien’s writings of the 1950s and 60s, a vowel-lengthened form of the relative pronoun ya.
Conceptual Development: Demonstrative, Relative, and Correlative Stems (DRC) from 1948 had ᴹQ. í glossed “(relative) at the time mentioned, at the same time”, a vowel-lengthened form of the relative pronoun ᴹQ. i (PE23/109). This was also given the gloss “when, whenever” in the Quenya Verbal System (QVS) from this same period (PE22/121). Earlier still, ᴹQ. íre was used as the relative conjunction “when” in Fíriel’s Song of the 1930s. In the Early Qenya Grammar it seems ᴱQ. yan “when” served this function (PE14/59).
aista
adjective. *holy
anta-
verb. give
anta- (1) vb. "give" (ANA1, MC:215, 221), pa.t. antanë (antanen "I gave", VT49:14) or †ánë, perfect ánië (PE17:147, cf. QL:31). According to VT49:14, Tolkien noted that anta- was sometimes often with an "ironic tone" to refer to missiles, so that antanen hatal sena "I gave him a spear (as a present)" was often used with the real sense of "I cast a spear at him". Usually the recipient of the thing given is mentioned in the dative or allative case (like sena in this example), but there is also a construction similar to English "present someone with something" in which the recipient is the object and the gift appears in the instrumental case: antanenyes parmanen, "I presented him with a book" (PE17:91). The verb occurs several times in FS: antalto"they gave"; strangely, no past tense marker seems to be present (see -lto for the ending); antar a pl. verb translated "they gave", though in LotR-style Quenya it would rather be the present tense "give" (pl.); antaróta "he gave it" (anta-ró-ta "gave-he-it"), another verb occurring in Fíriel's Song, once again with no past tense marker. Also antáva "will give", future tense of anta- "give"; read perhaps *antuva in LotR-style Quenya; similarly antaváro* "he will give" (LR:63) might later have appeared as antuvas (with the ending -s rather than "Qenya" -ro for "he"). Antalë imperative "give thou" (VT43:17), sc. anta "give" + the element le "thou", but this was a form Tolkien abandoned. Apparently ana** was at one point considered as another imperative "give", but Tolkien rewrote the text in question (VT44:13), and the normal patterns would suggest *á anta with an independent imperative particle.
ier
preposition. *as
sívë
preposition. *as
yá
when
yá (2) conj. "when" in the sentence yá hrívë tenë, ringa ná "when winter comes, it is cold" (VT49:23). Compare írë #2.
í(qua), illume, iquallume
conjunction. when, whenever
írë
when
írë (2) conj. "when" (subordinate conjunction, not question-word: írë Anarinya queluva, "when my sun faileth") (FS). Compare yá #2.
malumë
adverb. when
yan relative pronoun in dative "for/to which" or "for/to whom" (PE16:90, 92, 96). Used for "to whom" in the poem Nieninque; according to the system described elsewhere, which distinguishes personal ye "who" from impersonal ya "which", "to whom" would be *yen instead. A wholly distinct ya(n) seems to appear as an ephemeral word for "as" in one version of the Quenya Lord's Prayer; see ya #2 (VT43:16, VT49:18)