LESSON SIX
Past tense 

The previous lesson discussed the Quenya present tense, which is typically used to describe an on-going present action. However, Quenya has different tenses covering the entire trinity of past, present and future, and when recounting past events one will normally use the past tense.
	In English, very many past tenses are formed by means of the ending -ed, e.g. filled as the past tense of the verb fill. In Quenya, most past tense forms are likewise formed by means of an ending added to the verbal stem. As far as we know, all past tense verbs end in the vowel -ë (though further endings, such as the plural ending -r that is used in the case of a plural subject, may of course be added after this vowel). In many cases, this vowel -ë is part of the ending -në, that seems to be the most general past tense ending in Quenya.
	As discussed in the previous lesson, most Quenya verbs are A-stems, meaning that they end in the vowel -a. The past tenses of these verbs are typically formed simply by adding the ending -në. For instance, the Etymologies mention a verb orta- "raise" (see the entry ORO), and in Namárië in LotR its past tense is seen to be ortanë. (The simplest translation of ortanë is of course "raised"; the somewhat free rendering in LotR employs the translation "has uplifted" instead, but Tolkien's interlinear translation in RGEO:67 reads "lifted up" – which is merely an alternative wording of "raised".) Other examples from Tolkien's notes:
	
	ora- "urge", past tense oranë "urged" (VT41:13, 18)
	hehta- "exclude", past tense hehtanë "excluded" (WJ:365)
	ulya- "pour", past tense ulyanë "poured" (Etym, entry ULU)
	sinta- "fade", past tense sintanë "faded" (Etym, entry THIN)

We may add the verb ahyanë "changed" (or "did change"), only attested like this in the past tense, as part of the question manen lambë Quendion ahyanë[?] "how did the language of the Elves change?" (PM:395). The verb "change" would seem to be ahya-.
	Regarding the verb ava- (apparently meaning "refuse, forbid"), Tolkien noted that its past tense avanë "revealed that it was not in origin a 'strong' or basic verbal stem". The latter seems to be more or less the same as a primary verb. He called avanë a "weak" past tense form (WJ:370). That probably goes for all the past tenses so far discussed. (What Tolkien would call a "strong" past tense is not quite clear. Perhaps he would use this term of the past tenses formed by means of nasal-infixion – see below.)
	We must also consider the "basic" or "primary", ending-less verbs, verbs that unlike the A-stems do not have a final vowel: verbs like sil- "to shine", tir- "to watch", mat- "to eat". 
It seems that the ending -në can be used to form the past tense of some primary verbs as well. Tolkien mentioned tirnë as the past tense of the verb tir- "to watch" (Etym, entry TIR), and he also quoted tamnë as the past tense of the verb tam- "to tap" (Etym, entry TAM). In these cases, adding -në to the verbal stems in question does not produce impossible consonant clusters: Both rn and mn are permitted by Quenya phonology. For this reason, the ending -në can probably also be added to verbal stems ending in -n, since double nn is likewise a wholly acceptable combination in Quenya. For instance, the past tense of the verb cen- "to see" is presumably cennë "saw", though we have no attested example of the past tense of a verb of this shape.
But whenever the stem of a basic verb ends in any consonant other than just -m, -n, or -r, simply adding the ending -në would produce consonant clusters that Quenya cannot have. The past tense forms of verbs like mat- "eat", top- "cover" or tac- "fasten" cannot be **matnë, **topnë, **tacnë, for clusters like tn, pn, cn are not found in the language. So what happens? 
The difficult way of describing what occurs is to say that the n of the ending -në is replaced by nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant of the verbal stem. What is "infixion"? We have already mentioned suffixes, elements added at the end of a word (like the plural ending -r, added to the noun Elda in its plural form Eldar), and prefixes, elements added at the beginning of a word (like the superlative prefix an-, added to the adjective calima "bright" in its superlative form ancalima "brightest"). If you want to add something to a word, there are only so many places you can fit it in; if it is not to be prefixed or suffixed, the final option is to infix it, that is, jam it into the word. For instance, the verb mat- "to eat" has the past tense mantë "ate" (VT39:7), an infixed n turning up before the final consonant of the verbal stem (t becoming nt). Similarly, the verb hat- "break asunder" has the past tense hantë (Etym, entry SKAT).
Before the consonant p, the infix takes the form m rather than n, so that the past tense of top- "to cover" is tompë (Etym, entry TOP). Before c, the infix appears as n (or actually ñ, see below), so that the past tense of tac- "to fasten" is tancë (Etym, entry TAK). The various forms of the infix – n, m or ñ, depending on the environment – are all nasals, sounds pronounced by making the stream of air from the lungs go out through the nose rather than the mouth. Hence nasal-infixion is a fitting term for this phonological process.
As I said, that was the difficult way of stating what happens. Put more simply: if adding the past tense ending -në to a primary verb would result in any of the impossible clusters tn, cn, pn, the n and the consonant before it switch places. Tn and cn simply become nt and nc; what would be np changes to mp to ease pronunciation. (Actually what would be nc similarly changes to ñc, using ñ for ng as in king as Tolkien sometimes did – but according to the spelling conventions here employed, ñc is represented simply as nc.) Hence:

	mat- "eat", past tense (**matnë >) mantë "ate"
	top- "cover", past tense (**topnë > **tonpë >) tompë "covered"
	tac- "fasten", past tense (**tacnë >) tancë "fastened"

This, at least, is an easy way to imagine it for pedagogical purposes. We cannot know for certain whether Tolkien imagined this to be the actual development – a form something like matnë actually occurring at an earlier stage, but later becoming mantë by swapping around the consonants t and n. The linguistic term for such transposing of two sounds is metathesis, and there are other examples of metathesized consonants in the imaginary evolution of Tolkien's languages (see for instance the Etymologies, entry KEL-). However, some clues suggest that Tolkien imagined these past tenses to reflect "genuine" nasal-infixion occurring already in primitive Elvish, not merely a later transposition of consonants. After all, he had one of his characters observe that "nasal-infixion is of considerable importance in Avallonian" (SD:433; Avallonian is another term for Quenya). But this is an academic question.
Primary verbs with -l as their final consonant must be given special attention. The verb vil- "to fly" is said to have the past tense villë (Etym, entry WIL). This double ll probably represents some combination of l and n. Perhaps villë is meant to represent older wilnë with the normal past tense ending (notice that in this case, v comes from older w: root WIL), the group ln turning into ll in Quenya. However, other examples suggest that older ln would rather produce Quenya ld. It may well be that villë is meant to represent older winlë, that is, a nasal-infixed variant of the verb wil- (since nl also became ll in Quenya; for instance, the noun nellë "brook" is said to come from older nen-le: Etym, entry NEN). Whatever development Tolkien may have imagined, primary verbs with l as their final consonant seem to form their past tense form by adding -lë.

NOTE: In Telerin, the sister language of Quenya in the Blessed Realm, a verb formed from a root DEL ("go") is said to have the past tense delle: WJ:364. As pointed out by Ales Bican, this form probably descends from older denle (with nasal-infixion). If it descended from delne, it would likely have remained unchanged in Telerin, since the cluster ln is permitted in this language (cf. a Telerin word like elni "stars", WJ:362). This observation supports the view that past tenses with nasal-infixion did occur already in Primitive Elvish.

The system set out above is what I shall consider the "regular" way of forming the past tense of a verb in Quenya. That is, as long as a verb conforms with this system, I will not explicitly list its past tense when I first mention it. All the past tenses in the exercises below are constructed according to this system, so your task this time is to internalize the rules above. Some irregular forms will be discussed in later lessons, but even so, we will here survey certain "alternative" past tense formations (contrasting them with the more regular forms may actually be helpful in memorizing the normal system – but the student is not expected to memorize this survey as such). So do skim through as much as you can take of the stuff below, and proceed to the exercises when you've had enough.
	The past tense of primary verbs with -r as their final consonant is relatively well-attested: Attested examples include car- "make, do", pa.t. carnë (Etym, entry KAR),  tir- "watch", pa.t. tirnë (Etym, entry TIR) and tur- "govern", pa.t. turnë (Etym, entry TUR). So above we set out the rule that verbs of this shape have past tense forms that are constructed by adding the suffix -në. But a few verbs behave quite differently. The past tense of the verb rer- "sow" is not **rernë as we might expect, but rendë: See Etym, entry RED. The reason for this is precisely the fact that the original root-word was RED rather than **RER. Thus the verb rer- appeared as red- at an earlier stage, and then the past tense rendë is actually "regular" enough: it is simply formed from red- by means of nasal-infixion + the ending -ë (just like such a regular verb as quet- "say" has the pa.t. quentë). What slightly complicates matters is that in Quenya, original d only survived as part of the clusters ld, nd, and rd; in all other positions it was changed, and following a vowel it normally became r. Hence red- turned into rer-, while the past tense rendë remained unscathed by the phonological changes. In this perspective, the verb is strictly speaking not "irregular" at all; it just behaves differently because it has a special history – and this goes for very many of the "irregularities" in Quenya: As observed by his son, Tolkien's linguistic creations "imagine language not as 'pure structure', without 'before' or 'after', but as growth, in time" (LR:342). Tolkien clearly liked leaving in various testimonials to this imaginary age-long "growth".
We don't know very many verbs in -r that should have past tenses in -ndë because of their special history. From the Etymologies we must presumably include the verbs hyar- "cleave" and ser- "rest" (since these come from roots SYAD and SED, see the relevant entries in Etym – but Tolkien did not actually mention the past tense forms hyandë and sendë). In a post-LotR source we have a verb nir- "press, thrust, force"; again no past tense form has been published, but since the stem is given as NID it should presumably be nindë rather than nirnë (VT41:17). More attested examples could be quoted from early "Qenya" material, but these writings do not have full authority as regards LotR-style Quenya. For instance, the 1915 Qenya Lexicon seems to include the verb nyar- "tell, relate" in this category (past tense nyandë, QL:68). But in later material, Tolkien derived this verb from a root NAR (entry NAR2 in Etym) rather than NAD, so now its past tense would presumably be regular (nyarnë).
	Some primary verbs are also seen to use a past tense formation that dispenses with any nasal sounds. The verb does receive the ending -ë, the vowel displayed by all past-tense forms, but instead of adding a nasal sound (infixed or as part of the ending -në), the stem-vowel of the verb is lengthened. For instance, the past tense of the verb lav- "lick" is seen to be lávë (attested in Namárië as part of the verb undulávë "down-licked", that is, "covered"). Likewise, the past tense of the negative verb um- "not do" or "not be" is said to be úmë (Etym, entry UGU/UMU; we will return to this peculiar verb in Lesson Nine). This past tense formation is quite common in the early Qenya Lexicon, and it also turns up in relatively late (but still pre-LotR) sources. Fíriel's Song of ca. 1936 agrees with the 1915 Lexicon that the past tense of the verb car- "make, do" is cárë (QL:45, LR:72; the spelling used in the sources is káre). However, according to the Etymologies (entry KAR), the past tense is carnë – and that is the form we will use here: The Etymologies is, at least in part, slightly younger than Firiel's Song. Following the pattern of cárë, some pre-LotR sources give túlë as the past tense of the verb tul- "come" (LR:47, SD:246), but villë as the past tense of vil- in the Etymologies suggests that the past tense "came" could just as well be tullë (representing older tulne or tunle) instead.
It might seem that Tolkien eventually decided to limit the use of the past tense formation represented by túlë and cárë, though it was never wholly abandoned, as the form undulávë in Namárië in LotR demonstrates. We might actually have expected the past tense of lav- "lick" to be **lambë rather than lávë. A past tense form lambë would be constructed by nasal-infixion of the original root-word LAB (itself listed in Etym): In Quenya, original b normally became v following a vowel, but b persisted unchanged in the group mb. The Qenya Lexicon actually lists ambë as the past tense of a verb av- "depart" (QL:33); this may be an example of this phenomenon. However, **lambë as the past tense of lav- would clash with the noun lambë "tongue, language"; perhaps this is why Tolkien decided to go for the irregular formation lávë instead. Or should we generalize from lav- and let all Quenya primary verbs in -v form their past tense after the pattern of lávë?
Luckily, these verbs are not very numerous. There is a distinct verb lav- meaning "yield, allow, grant" (root DAB, see Etym), possibly a verb tuv- "find" (verbal stem isolated from a longer form), plus tyav- as the verb "taste" (see entry KYAB in Etym). Should the past tense "tasted" be tyambë or tyávë? The latter past tense form is actually attested in the Qenya Lexicon (p. 49), but since the QL is seen to use this formation quite liberally compared to later Quenya, we cannot be sure that the information is valid for the later stages of Tolkien's conception. (Tyávë is attested in a post-LotR source as a noun "taste"; whether this argues against the same form being used as a past tense "tasted" is unclear. In the 1915 Lexicon, Tolkien did have similar-sounding nouns and verbal tenses coexisting; see QL:49, entry KUMU.)
	There are some curious cases where even longer, derived verbs (A-stems) drop their ending and have lávë-style past tenses derived directly from the ending-less root. One early example is the verb serta- "tie", past tense sérë (QL:83) rather than **sertanë as we might expect. These formations are far from uncommon in the 1915 Lexicon, but the idea was not wholly obsolete in later Quenya either: The Etymologies of the mid-thirties records that the verb onta- "beget, create" has two possible past tenses: beside the regular form ontanë we also have the irregular form ónë (Etym, entry ONO).
The simplest A-stems, those that add the short ending -a to the root (and not a longer ending like -ta or -ya), may also drop this ending in some past tense formations. Above we quoted the QL form tyávë as an attested past tense of the verb tyav- "taste", but in the 1915 Lexicon, the verb "taste" is actually given as an A-stem tyava-: It is not a primary verb tyav- as it becomes in later sources (QL:49 vs. Etym, entry KYAB). Within the later system, we would expect an A-stem tyava- to have the past tense tyavanë, but the validity of either form in LotR-style Quenya is highly questionable. More commonly, the simplest A-stem verbs have past tenses that are "regular" enough – if you pretend that the final -a does not exist! Above we quoted oranë as an example of the regular past tense of a simple A-stem verb (ora- "urge"), but immediately after writing oranë, Tolkien actually added ornë as a parenthetic alternative (VT41:13). Of course, ornë would be a perfectly regular form if it were the past tense of a primary verb **or- (cf. for instance tur- "govern", pa.t. turnë). In effect, ora- may behave as a primary verb in the past tense, discarding its ending and jumping over into another class. The earliest material has examples of the same phenomenon: In the QL, the past tense forms of the verbs papa- "tremble" and pata- "rap, tap" are given as pampë, pantë (p. 72), not **papanë, **patanë as we would expect according to the "regular" system. The nasal-infixed past tense forms would be perfectly "regular" if we assume that in the past tense, the simple A-stem verbs papa- and pata- are masquerading as primary verbs **pap-, **pat-. Thus we cannot be certain whether the past tense of the verb mapa- "grasp, seize" should be mapanë or mampë; writers have used both. Since Tolkien seems to imply that the past tense of ora- can be both oranë and ornë, perhaps both are permissible. 

NOTE: In QL:59, Tolkien actually listed the past tense of mapa- as nampë (sic!) In the 1915 scenario, there were two variant roots, MAPA and NAPA, that shared the past tense nampë. Do we dare to assume that this idea was still valid decades later? The verb mapa- is listed in the Etymologies, but if Tolkien had still imagined its past tense to be as irregular as nampë, I tend to think that it would have been explicitly mentioned in Etym as well. Furthermore, in Etym there is no trace of the alternative root NAPA; we only find MAP (LR:371) corresponding to MAPA in the QL. But on the other hand, the form nampë is attested, so if you like it better than the unattested forms mapanë or mampë, feel free to use it.

The verb lala- "laugh" is another example of one of the simplest A-stems. It may have the past tense lalanë, but it is also possible that it should behave as a primary verb in the past tense. But if so, we must take into account the fact that lala- is to be derived from older g-lada- (PM:359); this is one of the cases where an original d following a vowel turned into l rather than r (influenced by the l earlier in the word). So if lala- has a "short" past tense, it should probably not be lallë, but rather landë – derived from a nasal-infixed form of the original word g-lada-. On the other hand, the similar but distinct verb lala- "deny" found in the Etymologies (LR:367) never contained a d, so its past tense may well be lallë (unless it is lalanë, and I think I lean toward that form).
The Etymologies actually provides a few examples of even more complex A-stems that also drop their ending and in effect transform themselves into primary verbs in the past tense. The verb farya- "to suffice" is said to have the past tense farnë (Etym, entry PHAR); here the whole ending -ya drops out in the past tense, which is formed as if this were a primary verb **fer-. Based on such a regular example as the one we quoted above – namely ulya- "pour", past tense ulyanë –  we would of course expect the past tense of ferya- to be **feryanë. But actually even our "regular" example ulya- also has an alternative past tense form ullë (Etym, entry ULU), and this is a particularly interesting example, for Tolkien indicated that the two past tenses ulyanë and ullë were not interchangeable. They had somewhat different meanings. There will be a fuller discussion of this in Lesson Ten; for now it suffices to say that I think most verbs in -ya would retain this ending when the past tense suffix -në is added. (But ullë as one past tense of ulya-, formed directly from ul- rather than the full form of the verb, would seem to confirm that primary verbs in -l normally have past tenses in -lë. Except for ullë, we only have the example vil- "fly", pa.t. villë to go on – so an extra, if indirect, confirmation of this pattern is very welcome!)
	Finally we will discuss a strange past tense formation that may occur in the case of verbs in -ta. Perhaps it should not be seen as irregular, for Tolkien actually described one such past tense as "regular...for a -ta verb of this class" (WJ:366). Nonetheless, its formation is less than straightforward. It is exemplified already in the earliest material: The 1915 Lexicon contains a verb lahta- (QL:50; the verb is not clearly glossed), but its past tense is not **lahtanë as we might expect: Instead we find lahantë. In other words, the verb lahta- is reworked into lahat- (the stem-vowel being repeated between the second and the third consonant, breaking up the consonant cluster, whereas the final -a is dropped), and the past tense lahantë is then formed from this lahat- by means of nasal-infixion and an added -ë, in itself a quite regular process familiar from primary verbs.
A much later example can be found in the Etymologies, where the verb orta- "rise, raise" is assigned a past tense form orontë (Etym, entry ORO), though orontë is not there clearly presented as a Quenya form: In Etym, it is actually quite unclear what language it is meant to belong to. However, in some of Tolkien's earlier drafts for Namárië, the past tense of orta- did appear as orontë, not "regular" ortanë as it became in the final version. So what is going on here? 
	Our only real clue is what Tolkien wrote in WJ:366, where he somewhat surprisingly declared the form oantë – the past tense of auta- "go away, leave" – to be quite regular "for a -ta verb of this class". According to the "regular" system we have tried to make out, oantë instead of **autanë inevitably seems highly irregular. Tolkien derived the verb auta- from a root AWA (WJ:365), so its form in the primitive language is probably meant to be awatâ (my reconstruction). As primitive Elvish evolved towards Quenya as we know it, the second of two identical short vowels in concomitant syllables was often lost; hence awatâ would have been shortened to aw'tâ = autâ, and this in turn is the direct ancestor of Quenya auta-. But it seems that the old past tense of such a verb as awatâ, with a vowel immediately preceding the ending -tâ, was formed by nasal-infixion: Tolkien explicitly gave the past tense of the primitive verb as awantê (WJ:366; the spelling there used is actually áwa-n-tê, the hyphens before and after the n apparently emphasizing that it is an infix – whereas the accent on the initial á here only means that it is stressed, not that the vowel is long).
In the case of a word like awantê, the rule that the second of two identical short vowels is lost could not apply (no **aw'ntê), for such loss does not occur immediately in front of a consonant cluster – and the nasal-infixion has here produced a cluster nt. The "final" Quenya form of awantê, namely oantë, is somewhat obscured because the group awa later became oa in Quenya – but this change has nothing to do with the past tense formation. Now we can explain a form like orontë as the past tense of orta-: In the Etymologies, the original root is given as ORO (LR:379), so Tolkien probably meant the verb orta- to be descended from older orotâ- after the regular loss of the second vowel. But the past tense of this orotâ- was the nasal-infixed form orontê (both are my reconstructions), and this produced Quenya orontë, the second vowel here being preserved because of the following cluster nt (no one wants to say **orntë!)
When Tolkien apparently changed his mind and altered the past tense of orta- from orontë to ortanë (a "regular" form according to the system we have set out), this would seem to suggest that he had now decided that the primitive forms were instead ortâ- with past tense orta-nê: There was never any vowel immediately in front of the ending -tâ after all, and therefore the past tense was not formed by nasal-infixion, but by the independent ending -nê (> Quenya -në). This is not the only example of Tolkien apparently changing his mind about which verbs actually belong to this exclusive "class". The Etymologies lists a verb atalta- "collapse, fall in" (entry TALÁT); no past tense is there mentioned, but in one text we have atalantë (LR:56, translated "down-fell"). This would seem to presuppose that the primitive forms were atalatâ- with past tense atalantê (my reconstructions, but cf. WJ:319 regarding ATALAT as a derivative form of the root TALAT). Yet in Tolkien's later texts the past tense of atalta- becomes ataltanë (LR:47 and SD:247), simply formed by adding the normal ending -në. So now Tolkien had presumably come to envision the primitive forms as ataltâ-, past tense atalta-nê (my reconstructions).
If the apparent revisions orontë > ortanë and atalantë > ataltanë do not reflect changes in his ideas about the primitive Elvish forms, it may be that he imagined a development whereby the Eldar replaced the more complex past tense formations with simpler, analogical forms. For instance, orontë as past tense of orta- could have been replaced by ortanë because of analogy with such straightforward past tense formations as hehta-, pa.t. hehtanë (WJ:365). In the Etymologies, the form orontë is indeed marked with a symbol that indicates that it is "poetic or archaic" (cf. LR:347); is this to suggest that it was ordinarily replaced by the "non-archaic" form ortanë? Especially considering how Tolkien later came to envision the history of the Quenya tongue – that it was used as a ceremonial language in Middle-earth, but was no longer anyone's mother-tongue – we could very plausibly assume that its grammar was somewhat simplified, more complex formations being suppressed and replaced by simpler analogical ones. Indeed oantë rather than **autanë as the past tense of auta- "to leave" is the only verb I can think of where we "must" use this special past tense formation, unless we are to accept some of the earliest "Qenya" material with no reservations (and I have plenty).

With this we conclude our survey of various strange or irregular ways of forming the past tense; as I said above, the exercises below are meant to reflect the regular system instead.
Remember that just like present-tense verbs, a past tense form receives the ending -r if it has a plural subject (or multiple subjects). For instance, the simplest past tense of the verb lanta- "fall" is lantanë, but with a plural subject it becomes lantaner (SD:246). Naturally, he diaeresis over the final -ë disappears, since the vowel is no longer final when the plural ending -r is added after it.

Summary of Lesson Six: While various irregular formations occur, it would seem that the past tense of Quenya verbs is typically formed according to these rules: A-stem verbs simply receive the ending -në. The "primary" or ending-less verbs can also receive this ending if their last consonant is -r or -m, probably also -n (no examples). If added to a primary verb in -l, the ending -në turns into -lë (resulting in a double ll, e.g. villë as the past tense of vil- "fly"). Primary verbs ending in one of the consonants p, t, c have past tenses constructed by adding the ending -ë combined with nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant of the verbal stem; the infix manifests as m before p (hence tompë as the past tense of top- "cover"), otherwise as n (hence mantë as the past tense of mat- "eat").

VOCABULARY
lempë "five"
elen "star" 
harma "treasure" (noun)
sil- verb "shine" (with white or silver light, like star-shine or moon-shine)
hir- verb "find"
cap- verb "jump"
tec- verb "write"
quet- verb "speak, say"
mel- verb "love" (as friend; no Quenya word referring to erotic love between the sexes has been published)
cen- verb "see" (related to cenda- "read", which word is derived from a strengthened form of the same stem and meaning, basically, to watch closely). 
orta- verb "rise", also used = "raise, lift up".
harya- verb "possess; have" (related to the noun harma "treasure", basically referring to a "possession")

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English (and practice your vocabulary at the same time; most of the words employed in exercises A-H were introduced in earlier lessons):

A. I nér cendanë i parma.
B. I Naucor manter.
C. I aran tultanë i tári.
D. Nís lindanë.
E. I vendi tirner i Elda.
F. I lempë roccor caitaner nu i alta tasar.
G. I eleni siller.
H. I Nauco cennë rocco.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. A Dwarf found the treasure.
J. The Elf spoke.
K. The horse jumped.
L. The king loved the Elves.
M. A man wrote five books.
N. The queen rose.
O. The kings possessed great treasures.
P. The king and the queen summoned four Elves and five Dwarves.

LESSON SEVEN
Future tense and Aorist

THE FUTURE TENSE
In this lesson we will introduce two new tenses of the verb, the future and the aorist. We shall have to spend quite a few paragraphs trying to define the function of the latter, but the function of the future tense is easy enough to grasp: This tense is used with reference to future actions.
	English (unlike, say, French) has no distinct future tense. Instead of a unitary, inflectional form of the verb that only refers to future actions, English may fall back on longer phrases involving extra verbs like "shall" or "will": A past tense form like "came" has no one-word counterpart with future reference that would exemplify a true future tense – we only find circumlocutions like "shall come" or "will come" (or even "is going to come"). It is even possible to use the present tense with future reference: "He comes tomorrow." For this reason, linguists may refer to the English "present" tense as a non-past tense instead: It actually covers both present and future.
	These somewhat asymmetric features of English are avoided in Tolkien's Elvish. Languages like Quenya and Sindarin do possess true future tense forms of the verb. For instance, the future tense of the verb hir- "find" appears near the end of Namárië, in the sentence nai elyë hiruva, "maybe thou shalt find [it]". The example hiruva "shall (shalt) find" includes what seems to be the normal – possibly universal – Quenya future tense marker: the ending -uva. This pattern is confirmed by the Markirya poem, that includes the examples cenuva "shall heed", tiruva "shall watch" and hlaruva "shall hear" (verbs cen- "see, behold, heed", tir- "watch", hlar- "hear"). In LR:63, Tolkien translates the verb queluva as "faileth", but this is only an example of the English "present" or non-past tense embracing the future as well. The context clearly indicates that the verbal action in question belongs to the future: Man tárë antáva nin Ilúvatar, Ilúvatar, enyárë tar i tyel írë Anarinya queluva? "What will Ilúvatar, O Ilúvatar, give me in that day beyond the end, when my Sun faileth [literally: shall fail]?"
The examples listed so far exemplify the future tense of "primary" or ending-less verbs only. It seems that the ending -uva is also used in the case of the more numerous A-stem verbs, which however lose their final -a before the future tense ending is added (one exception, see note below). In a post-LotR source, the future tense of the verb linda- "sing" appears as linduva (attested with a secondary ending here removed; see Taum Santoski's article in the October 1985 issue of the newsletter Beyond Bree). Also, what must be the future tense of the A-stem verb ora- "to urge, impel" is apparently given as oruva in another post-LotR source (VT41:13, 18; Tolkien actually wrote oruv·, but the editor points out that "the dot may be an inadvertently incomplete a": No Quenya word can end in -v.) 
NOTE: Notice, however, that a final -a does not drop out before the ending -uva when this -a is also the only vowel of the verbal stem. Thus, the future tense form of the copulas derived from the stem NÂ "to be" (cf. ná "is") is not **nuva, but nauva: This word for "will be" is attested in VT42:34.
It may be that Tolkien at one point imagined a somewhat more complicated system regarding the A-stems. Above we quoted a line from the pre-LotR Quenya text usually called Fíriel's Song, including antáva as the future tense of anta- "give" (LR:63, 72). Here Tolkien seems to be using a system whereby A-stem verbs form their future tense by lengthening the final -a to -á and adding the ending -va (shorter variant of -uva?) However, in light of the later examples linduva and oruva (instead of **lindáva, **oráva), we may conclude that Tolkien eventually decided to make -uva the more or less universal future tense marker: This ending simply causes the final -a of A-stems to drop out. My best guess is that in LotR-style Quenya, the future tense of anta- should be antuva rather than antáva, since Tolkien may seem to have simplified the system.
However, there is one possible complication in LotR-style Quenya as well, regarding the primary verbs. In Namárië in LotR occurs the future tense form enquantuva, "shall refill". Removing the prefix en- "re-", we have quantuva for "shall fill". This used to be taken as the future tense of a verb quanta- "to fill", related to the adjective quanta "full". Tolkien's earliest "Qenya" wordlist indeed lists such a verb (QL:78, there spelt qanta-). However, about half a decade after publishing LotR, Tolkien in the essay Quendi and Eldar seemingly cited the Quenya verb "to fill" as quat- (WJ:392). This would seem to be a primary verb, past tense presumably quantë (the pa.t. "qante" is actually given in QL:78, but there it is evidently only meant as a permissible shortening of the full form "qantane"; the regular past tense of a verb quanta- would be quantanë in later Quenya as well). If Tolkien had decided that the Quenya verb "to fill" is actually quat-, and its future tense is quantuva as Namárië would seem to indicate, should we conclude that the same verbs that form their past tense with nasal-infixion + the ending -ë similarly form their future tense with nasal-infixion + the ending -uva? For instance, should the future tense of verbs like mat- "eat", top- "cover" and tac- "fasten" be mantuva "shall eat", tompuva "shall cover", tancuva "shall fasten"? (Compare the nasal-infixion in the past tense forms: mantë, tompë, tancë.) Or should we just add the ending -uva to the verbal stem without any further manipulations, hence matuva, topuva, tacuva instead? General principles would perhaps suggest the latter, but there remains the curious example of quantuva next to quat-. If there is to be no nasal-infixion in the future tense forms, we would have to accept that the verb "fill" can be both quanta- and quat-, with separate future tenses quantuva and quatuva.
I have used future tense forms with nasal-infixion in certain compositions of my own (and so have some people who put greater trust in my so-called "expert opinion" than they possibly should). But it may well be that Tolkien, mentioning the form quat- in WJ:392, actually intended this to be simply the way the underlying root KWATA manifests in Quenya. The exact wording in the source involves a reference to "the verb stem *KWATA, Q quat- 'fill'." If quat- is merely the way the ancient stem KWATA appears in Quenya, the actual verb "fill" could still be quanta- with future tense quantuva. (Compare for instance the entry PAT in the Etymologies, this root PAT producing the Quenya verb panta- "open". There is also an adjective panta "open", exactly parallelling quanta "full" next to the verb quanta- "fill"; perhaps the verb is derived from the adjective in both cases.)
Alternatively, quat- really is the verb "to fill" and not just an underlying root-form, but the future tense quantuva still presupposes a longer A-stem quanta-. Perhaps Tolkien had just plain forgotten that he had already published a form of the A-stem verb quanta- "fill", so that he was no longer free to change it to a primary verb quat-. (See PM:367-371 for an example of Tolkien working out some elaborate linguistic explanations that he had to scrap because he discovered that they conflicted with something he had already published in LotR – a fatal footnote in an Appendix forcing him to reject his nice new ideas!)  
	Thus, material presently available does not allow any certain conclusion in this matter. Writers can equally plausibly let verbs that show nasal infixion in the past tense do so also in the future tense (arguing from the quat-/quantuva pair that this is how the language works) or choose to explain quat- differently and form the future tense of any primary verb simply by adding the ending -uva (as in hir-/hiruva). As users of Quenya we can probably well afford to live with slightly different dialects regarding this detail, until future publications hopefully allow us to pick the right explanation.

It must be assumed that the future tense, like all other tenses, receives the ending -r where it occurs with a plural subject (e.g. elen siluva "a star will shine", but plural eleni siluvar "stars will shine").

THE AORIST
We have now discussed all the three tenses corresponding to the basic trinity of past, present, and future. Yet the Quenya verb has other tenses as well. One is called the aorist. The use of this term with reference to Quenya grammar was long disputed by some, but a Tolkien text that finally became available in July 2000 demonstrates that he had indeed invented a Quenya tense he called aorist (VT41:17).
While even people with no linguistic training readily understand what the past, present and future tenses are "for", it is hardly equally obvious what function the aorist tense has. (Some linguists would say that the aorist is strictly not a "tense" at all, according to certain definitions of that term; however, Tolkien did use the phrase "aorist tense" in VT41:17. We will not discuss this question here, wholly academic as it is.) So what, really, is an aorist?
To start with the word itself, it comes from Greek and literally means something like "unlimited" or "undetermined". The word was originally coined to describe a certain Greek form of the verb. In Greek this form contrasts with the past tense or "imperfect", the latter being used of a past action that was being done over a period of time (not just a momentary action). The aorist, on the other hand, has no such implications regarding the "duration" of the action. It just denotes a past action, period, with no further distinctions. When contrasted with the imperfect, the Greek aorist can be used for a momentary or clearly finished (not on-going) action. Another use of the Greek aorist is not especially associated with the past: the aorist could be used to express general truths that are not limited to any specific time, like "sheep eat grass".
But this was the Greek aorist; the Quenya aorist is not used in quite the same way. Yet their functions do overlap in some respects, which must be the reason why Tolkien decided to employ this term from Greek grammar in the first place. We will try to determine the function of the Quenya aorist before we discuss how it is actually formed. For now, just take my word that the verbs in the examples I cite are aorists.
The Quenya aorist, like the Greek one, can be used to express "general truths". Our best example is a sentence occurring in WJ:391, where Elves are described as i carir quettar ómainen, "those who make words with voices". The aorist verb carir "make" here denotes a general habit of the Elves, covering past, present and future, for the Elves were making words throughout their history. The sentence polin quetë "I can speak" (VT41:6) includes another aorist verb, and again a "general truth" is presented, though in this case it relates only to the speaker: The meaning is of course "I can (always) speak", presenting a general ability, not just something that applies only to the present time (as if the speaker was dumb yesterday and may go dumb again tomorrow). So one important function of the Quenya aorist is that it is used, or rather can be used, with reference to verbal actions that transcend the here and now – rather describing some "timeless" truth or "general" situation. In Namárië in LotR, Galadriel describes the gloomy state of Middle-earth using an aorist verb: sindanóriello caita mornië "out of a grey country darkness lies" (not present tense caitëa = "is lying", as if this were merely a strictly present phenomenon, soon to pass). The first words of Namárië also include an aorist: laurië lantar lassi, "like gold fall the leaves" – but this is not just a here-and-now description of leaves that are falling (which would presumably be lantëar, present tense): The following lines indicate that Galadriel describes the general situation in Middle-earth, the ever-recurring autumnal decay as she has been observing it throughout yéni únótimë, "long years uncountable". So our example "sheep eat grass" is probably best rendered into Quenya using an aorist verb: mámar matir salquë (singular "sheep" = máma, "grass" = salquë). As the example polin quetë "I can speak" demonstrates, the aorist can also be used to describe the abilities or habits of a single individual (i máma matë salquë = "the sheep eats grass").
It seems, however, that the Quenya aorist is not only used to describe "timeless truths". In some cases Tolkien himself seems to waver in the choice between the aorist and the present tense, the latter more typically describing an ongoing here-and-now situation. This hesitation on Tolkien's part suggest that these tenses are to some extent interchangeable. We have an aorist in the sentence órenya quetë nin "my heart tells me" (VT41:11), which is apparently quite synonymous with the alternative wording órenya quéta nin (VT41:13) employing a present tense form instead of an aorist. In the famous greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines [or rather is shining] on the hour of our meeting", Tolkien finally decided to use a present tense form – but in earlier drafts, he used an aorist silë instead (RS:324). This greeting, having relevance for "our meeting" only, obviously cannot describe any "general truth" transcending time. Yet it is apparently permissible to use an aorist form even in such a context (though Tolkien decided that it was better to use the present tense).
It should be noted that the Quenya aorist is generally associated with the present, not with the past as in Greek. As Jerry Caveney wrote about Tolkien on the Elfling list (August 3, 2000):

In what seems to me typical of his creativeness and 'fun' in creating languages, he took the idea of the aorist aspect, and said, in effect, 'What if a language used the aorist to contrast present general (unlimited) actions to present continuative actions instead of using it to contrast past general actions to present continuative [as in classical Greek]?' The result is Tolkien's 'present aorist'. :)  He thus created a language that could distinguish continuative from general present actions simply, something classical Greek could not readily do, and which modern English and French, for example, can only do with extra words (I walk, I am walking; je marche, je suis en train de marcher). I suspect Tolkien enjoyed the elegance of this basic grammatical distinction, which I am not aware that any 'living' language has.

On the other hand, Carl F. Hostetter thinks the Quenya aorist is used to describe an action that is "punctual, habitual, or otherwise durationless" (VT41:15). This is probably correct in most cases, describing the typical function of the aorist. Yet some examples suggest that it may be better to say that whereas the present tense explicitly identifies an ongoing action, the Quenya aorist is simply unmarked as far as duration is concerned. It does not necessarily contrast with the continuative present tense; an aorist as such does not signal that a verbal action must be non-continuative or "durationless". Rather, as Caveney says, it is a "general" form, an all-purpose "present tense" that simply doesn't address the question of whether the action denoted is continuative, habitual or momentary. As Luká Novák observed on the Elfling list (August 1, 2000): "It seems that the aorist is so 'aoristos' [Greek: unlimited] that it can express almost everything." 
In the exclamation auta i lómë! "the night is passing" (Silmarillion ch. 20), the form auta would seem to be an aorist (contrasting with the present tense, which is probably autëa) – yet Tolkien employs the translation "is passing" rather than "passes". So it would seem that the aorist can also be used for an ongoing action; it just isn't explicitly marked as such, grammatically speaking. If this is correct, it would be difficult to pin down any case where it is palpably wrong to replace the present tense with an aorist. Using the aorist would be simply a rather neutral way of talking about "present" actions – whether such action is actually ongoing, habitual, or merely an expression of "general truths". (Hence mámar matir salquë = "sheep eat grass" could also be understood as "sheep are eating grass", though for this meaning it is probably better – but hardly mandatory – to use the present tense: mátar.) In choosing between the aorist and the present tense, the only hard-and-fast rule one has to go on seems to be that the present tense should not be used with reference to entirely duration-less actions: The Quenya present tense is always used about some kind of continuous action. (Indeed some students would dispense with the term "present tense" and rather speak of the "continuative" form.) Beyond this one restriction, it seems that writers can choose quite freely between the aorist and the present tense.
Generally, however, it seems that the Quenya aorist corresponds to the English simple present (that shows either the ending -s or no ending at all, depending on the grammatical context). So Tolkien often translated Quenya aorists: e.g. topë "covers" (LR:394), macë "hews" (VT39:11), tirin "I watch" (LR:394). The Quenya present tense, on the other hand, is often best translated using the English "is... -ing" construction: tópa "is covering", máca "is hewing", tíran "I am watching". (The ending -n in the examples tirin/tíran, as well as in the form polin "I can" cited above, signifies "I": This suffix will be discussed in the next lesson.) In Lesson Five we pointed out that the present tense form quéta denotes "is saying" rather than just "says"; conversely, the aorist quetë is usually "says" rather than "is saying". If the Quenya aorist is used somewhat like the English simple present tense, the aorist can be used to describe actions that are perceived as duration-less or habitual. For instance, an aorist like capë "jumps" may describe an action that is momentary ("he jumps") or habitual/characteristic ("any frog jumps"). 
Yet we also seem to have examples of Tolkien using the Quenya present/"continuous" tense instead of the aorist where English would still translate the verb in question as a simple present tense form, not as an "is ...-ing" construction. Consider this line from Namárië: hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri "mist covers the jewels of Calacirya". The present tense form untúpa describes a continuous action, more literally "is covering", but here Tolkien wrote "covers" instead. Presumably it would in no way have been wrong to use an aorist instead. After all, the mist covering the jewels of Calacirya is evidently perceived as a rather general state of things, not merely as an ongoing meteorological phenomenon that will soon pass! (The aorist would presumably be untupë – perhaps this form, stressed on the first rather than the penultimate syllable, just didn't fit the meter of Tolkien's poem? Anyhow, the latter element of this verb untup- seems to be a variant of top- in the Etymologies, both verbs meaning "cover".)
Another example of a present tense where we might expect to see an aorist can be found in Cirion's Oath (UT:305, 317), in the sentence i hárar mahalmassen mi Númen = "those who sit on thrones in the West". This refers to the Valar, and their being enthroned in the West must be considered a "general truth", just like it is a general truth that Elves make (aorist carir) words with voices. Yet Tolkien used what seems to be a present tense instead of an aorist: hára, here plural hárar, apparently suggesting a primary verb har- "to sit". The plural aorist would probably be harir instead. It may be noted that while Tolkien translated hárar as "sit" in the running English translation in UT:305, he employed the more literal translation "are sitting" in his linguistic discussion in UT:317. Yet this seems to demonstrate that in Quenya, one can use the present tense as well as the aorist to describe also a general state of things. After all, the Valar's agelong state of being enthroned is also after a fashion "continuous". Cf. also the sentence yonya inyë tye-méla, "I too, my son, I love thee" (LR:61), where Tolkien uses a present tense instead of an aorist: Literally inyë tye-méla would seem to mean "I am loving you", but the reference must be to a quite "permanent" emotional state. If anyone else that Tolkien had written this, I would strongly advice the writer to use an aorist (melë) instead of méla – actually I still think the aorist would be better in this context, even though it was Tolkien who wrote this! But this example confirms that the present tense can also be used to describe "general truths" or more or less permanent situations, though this is more typically the domain of the aorist.
I can well imagine that after this discussion, the student wonders if there is any point in maintaining the aorist and the present as distinct tenses, since their functions seem to overlap to such an extent – the only concrete rule being that if some kind of present action cannot in any way be seen as continuous, but is entirely duration-less, one must use the aorist. In just about all other contexts, either tense will apparently do, and the use of the aorist may not necessarily imply that an action has to be duration-less: For instance, it could also describe a "general truth", or indeed an ongoing action (as in auta = "is passing"). The context must be taken into consideration.
I can only say that I didn't make this language (another guy did...) Perhaps future publications will throw more light on whatever subtle distinctions Tolkien had in mind. But in the exercises I made for this course, I have consistently used aorists for the English simple present, whereas I use the Quenya present tense for the English "is... -ing" construction. I do think writers transposing English usage to Quenya using this formula would get it right (or rather, wouldn't make palpable mistakes!) most of the time.

That was the function of the aorist, difficult though it is to pin down. Now we must discuss how the Quenya aorist is actually formed.

It seems that in Primitive Elvish, the rules for how the aorist is constructed were quite simple: In the case of a "derived" or A-stem verb, the aorist tense is simply identical to the verbal stem itself (irrespective of the fact that the aorist can of course receive such secondary endings as the plural marker -r, where such is required). No explicit tense-marker had to be present. Regarding the A-stems, this system persists in Quenya. The aorist of a verb like lanta- "to fall" is simply lanta "falls" (occurring in Namárië, there with the plural ending -r to agree with its plural subject "leaves": laurië lantar lassi, "golden fall [the] leaves").
In the case of the "primary" or ending-less verbs like mat- "to eat", they originally (in Primitive Elvish) formed their aorist tense by adding the ending -i: "Eats" apparently used to be mati. It is somewhat arguable whether the ending -i is here strictly an aorist tense-marker. If so, we might have expected to see it in the formation of A-stem aorists as well. Perhaps the rule for aorist formation in Primitive Elvish should rather be stated like this: The aorist is normally identical to the verbal stem, but in the case of "primary" or ending-less verbal stems, they receive the ending -i as a kind of stopgap to make up for the absence of any other ending. (I should add that this "simplified" view is not wholly unproblematic, but it works most of the time.) This system essentially persists in Quenya, but the phonological development occurring since Primitive Elvish has added one minor complication: Where final, the short -i of Primitive Elvish was at some point changed to -ë. (For instance, the Quenya word morë "black" is said to descend from primitive mori: See the entry MOR in the Etymologies. Where Quenya has a final -i, it is normally shortened from long -î in the primitive language.) Hence the old form mati "eats" had turned into matë in Quenya. But since this change only occurred where -i was final, we still see mati- if the aorist form is to receive any ending, such as -r in the case of a plural subject. Hence Nauco matë "a Dwarf eats", but with a plural subject Naucor matir "Dwarves eat". The ending "shielded" the final -i so that it was not really final at all, and therefore it did not change to -ë.

NOTE 1: There are a few examples of what seems to be aorist forms where the ending -ë persists in the form -e- even if the aorist receives an ending. For instance, what must be the plural aorist of the verb ettul- "come forth" appears as ettuler (instead of the expected form ettulir) in SD:290. Perhaps Tolkien at one stage imagined that the primitive ending -i had become -e in all positions, even where it was not final – like ettulir being altered to ettuler on analogy with the ending-less form ettulë. But this seems to have been just a passing "phase" in Tolkien's evolution of Quenya: In our best late source, the essay Quendi and Eldar of about 1960, the plural aorist of car- "do, make" appears as carir, not **carer (WJ:391). Hence Tolkien had reestablished the system he had also used a quarter of a century earlier, in the Etymologies. – The form ettuler is (apparently) translated "are at hand" in SD:290; a more literal translation would presumably be "are coming forth". This would confirm that it may be permissible to use the aorist also for ongoing actions; this tense is simply unmarked regarding the duration of the action, whereas the "present" or "continuous/continuative" tense explicitly identifies an action as ongoing. In our exercises, we will nonetheless use the aorist in the most "typical" way (to denote actions that are momentary or habitual/timeless).

NOTE 2: In the case of primary verbs, the aorist and the present tense differ not only regarding the ending. In the present tense, the stem-vowel is lengthened (máta "is eating"), whereas in the aorist, it stays short (matë "eats"). Yet there are a very few strange forms in our corpus that look like aorists by their ending, but still show a long stem-vowel, e.g. tápë "stops, blocks" (Etym, entry TAP). We would expect tapë with a short vowel (it is tempting to believe that the accent above a is just an ink-smear in Tolkien's manuscript...) – It may also be noted that a few derived verbs (A-stems) include an "intrinsically" long vowel, e.g. cúna- "bend",  súya- "breathe" or móta- "labour, toil". To use the latter verb as an example, its aorist would presumably be móta, even though this may look like the present tense of a non-existing primary verb **mot-. (We must assume that the actual present tense of móta would be mótëa.)

NOTE 3 (added September 2002): As I have pointed out earlier, one grammatical interpretation presented in this course has proved controversial: the notion that A-stem verbs have present-tense forms in -ëa. This admittedly depends on the one example órëa. Writers who do not want to use the controversial present-tense forms in -ëa may work around the problem by using the aorist instead. After all, Tolkien indicated that a form like auta can be translated "is passing" (not just "passes"), so the aorist can clearly cover the function of the English "is ...-ing" construction. Indeed some students of Quenya (who do not accept the -ëa theory) believe that in the case of A-stem verbs, there is no distinction between aorist and present tense: Only the context can decide whether auta is best translated "is passing" or simply "passes". This would make the Quenya verb system somewhat asymmetric, but at the present stage, it is simply impossible to reconstruct all of Tolkien's intentions with confidence.

Summary of Lesson Seven: In Quenya, the future tense is formed with the ending -uva. When added to an A-stem, the -a of the stem drops out before this ending; for instance, the future tense of the verb linda- "sing" is linduva (not **lindauva). Quenya also has a tense termed aorist, which differs from the present tense in that the latter explicitly describes an on-going action. The aorist says nothing about the duration of the action, and while the use of an aorist form does not preclude that the action denoted is drawn-out or on-going, it seems that this tense is more typically used to describe duration-less, punctual, habitual, characteristic or altogether timeless actions. An example of an aorist is quetë = "speaks", as opposed to present tense quéta "is speaking". It may be that the Quenya aorist corresponds quite well to the English simple present tense ("speaks"), whereas the Quenya present tense rather corresponds to the English "is ...-ing" construction ("is speaking"). In the case of A-stem verbs, the aorist is identical to the verbal stem itself (irrespective of any secondary endings the aorist verb may receive). In the case of primary verbs, the aorist tense is formed by means of the ending -i, which however changes to -ë if no secondary ending (e.g. -r for plural) is to follow. Hence the aorist of mat- "to eat" is matë "eats" if there is no further ending added to the word, but otherwise we see mati- + ending (e.g. matir "eat" in the case of a plural subject).

VOCABULARY
enquë "six"
ilya, noun/adjective "all, every" ("every" before a singular noun, e.g. ilya Elda "every Elf", but ilya occurring by itself would rather mean "all"). Note that before a plural noun, this word also signifies "all" and is inflected for plural as a common adjective, hence becoming ilyë for older ilyai (cf. ilyë tier "all paths" in Namárië and ilyë mahalmar "all thrones" in Cirion's Oath)
rimba, adjective "numerous", here used for "many" (presumably becoming rimbë when used in conjunction with plural nouns, if it is inflected like any other adjective – hence e.g. rimbë rávi "many lions")
Atan "Man" (not "sentient male", which is nér, but Mortal Man as opposed to Immortal Elf, or Dwarf. Within Tolkien's mythos, this word came to be used especially of the Elf-friends of Beleriand and their descendants, the ones called Edain or Dúnedain in Sindarin. But even within the mythos, the word was originally used simply of humans as opposed to Elves, and so do we use it here. Cf. Ilúvatar's words in the Silmarillion, chapter 1: "Behold the Earth, which shall be a mansion for the Quendi and the Atani [Elves and Men]!")
ohtar "warrior"
rá (ráv-) "lion"
Ambar "the world" (the Quenya word probably does not require the article i; it is capitalized and apparently treated as a proper name)
hrávë "flesh"
macil "sword"
fir-, verb "die, expire" (cf. the adjective firin "dead")
tur-, verb "govern, control, wield"
or, preposition "over, above"

EXERCISES 

1. Translate into English:

A. Rimbë Naucor haryar harmar.
B. Anar ortuva ar i aiwi linduvar.
C. Enquë neri tiruvar i ando.
D. Ilya Atan firuva.
E. Ilyë Atani firir.
F. Saila nér cenda rimbë parmar.
G. Ilya elen silë or Ambar.
H. I Elda mapa i Nauco.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. Every Elf and every Man.
J. The Elf will find the Dwarf.
K. The horse jumps over the Dwarf.
L. The king controls many warriors and will control (/rule) all the world.
M.  The king and the queen will read the book.
N. The warrior wields a sword.
O. All lions eat flesh.
P. Six lions are eating flesh.

LESSON EIGHT
Perfect tense. Pronominal endings -n(yë), -l(yë), -s.

THE PERFECT TENSE
Tolkien certainly imagined the Quenya verb to have more tenses than the ones that appear in published material, but only one of these known tenses now remains to be discussed. The last known Quenya tense is the perfect. (There are still other forms of the verb that we shall have to discuss later, such as the infinitive, the gerund and the imperative, but these don't count as tenses.)
	Linguistically speaking, English has no perfect tense, just as English has no future tense. However, just as the language quite regularly expresses the idea of futurity by involving extra verbs like "shall" or "will", so the meaning of a true perfect tense is typically achieved by means of a circumlocution involving the verb "have". For instance, some typical English constructions doing the job of a perfect tense are seen in these sentences: "Peter has left", "the guests have eaten" (as opposed to a mere past tense: "Peter left", "the guests ate"). The perfect tense thus describes an action that itself is past, but by using the perfect tense one emphasizes that this past action is somehow still directly relevant for the present moment: "Peter has left [and he is still gone]", "the guests have eaten [and they are hopefully still satiated as we speak]", etc. – In English at least, such constructions may also be used to describe an action that started in the past and still goes on in the present moment: "The king has ruled (or, has been ruling) for many years."
	Quenya, unlike English, does have a true perfect tense – a unitary form of the verb that expresses this meaning, without circumlocutions and extra verbs. Several examples of this perfect tense occurs in LotR. Two of them are found in the chapter The Steward and the King in Volume 3. The first example is from Elendil's Declaration, repeated by Aragorn during his coronation. It goes, in part: Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien = "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come [or: I have come]." Removing the ending -n meaning "I", we find that the naked present tense "have/has come" is utúlië (according to the spelling conventions here employed, we must add a diaeresis to -e when it becomes final). Later in the same chapter, Aragorn finds the sapling of the White Tree, and exclaims: Yé! utúvienyes! "I have found it!" (The word yé is not translated; it is apparently simply an exclamation "Yes!" or "Yeah!") Utúvienyes can be broken down as utúvie-nye-s "have found-I-it". We are thus left with utúvië as the perfect tense of a verb tuv- "find". (This verb is not otherwise attested, unless it can be equated with a verb tuvu- "receive" found in very early [1917] material; see GL:71. Whether this tuv- somehow differs in meaning from hir-, we cannot know. In the exercises of this course, I always use hir- for "find".)
	A post-LotR example of a Quenya perfect tense is found in VT39:9, Tolkien mentioning a form irícië "has twisted" – evidently the perfect tense of a primary verb ric- "twist" (not otherwise attested, but the Etymologies lists a primitive root RIK(H)- "jerk, sudden move"). As stated above, the form utúvië "has found" seems to presuppose a verb tuv- "find", and utúlië "has come" is the perfect tense of a verb tul- "come" that is attested in the Etymologies (entry TUL-). From these examples it is clear that the perfect tense is formed with the ending -ië, but the stem of the verb is also manipulated in other ways. In the case of primary verbs at least, the stem-vowel is lengthened: utúvië, utúlië, irícië.
The ardent student will remember that a similar lengthening occurs in the present tense (we would have túva "is finding", túla "is coming", ríca "is twisting"), but the perfect tense formation differs from the present tense not only in the fact that the former receives the ending -ië instead of -a. The perfect, alone of all known Quenya tenses, also receives a kind of prefix. This prefix is variable in form, for it is always the same as the stem-vowel (but short). Hence the verbs tuv- "find" and tul- "come" become utúvië and utúlië in the perfect (I underline the prefix), since their stem-vowel is u. On the other hand, the verb ric- "twist", with the stem-vowel i, turns into irícië in the perfect tense. Further examples (constructed by me, with underlining of stem-vowel and prefix):

	Stem-vowel A: mat- "eat" vs. amátië "has eaten"
	Stem-vowel E: cen- "see" vs. ecénië "has seen"
	Stem-vowel I: tir- "watch" vs. itírië "has watched"
	Stem-vowel O: not- "reckon" vs. onótië "has reckoned"
	Stem-vowel U: tur- "govern" vs. utúrië "has governed"

The prefix seen in the perfect tense is usually referred to as the augment. It may also be noted that the process of "copying" or "repeating" a part of a word, like the prefixing of stem-vowels seen here, is by a linguistic term called reduplication. So to use as many fancy words as possible, one feature of the Quenya perfect tense is that it includes a reduplicated stem-vowel that is prefixed as an augment.
	So far we have only used examples involving primary verbs. The evidence is actually extremely scarce regarding derived (A-stem) verbs. General principles suggest that they would drop the final -a before the ending -ië is added. For instance, the perfect tense of lala- "laugh" or mapa- "seize" is presumably alálië "has laughed", amápië "has seized". (Where such a verb has a long stem-vowel, it presumably just stays long in the perfect, where it would have been lengthened anyway. The augment should probably always be a short vowel, though; hence a verb like móta- "toil" may have the perfect tense omótië "has toiled".)
	However, very many A-stems have a consonant cluster following the stem-vowel, e.g. rn following the first A in a verb like harna- "wound". Since Quenya isn't fond of long vowels immediately in front of consonant clusters, we must assume that the lengthening of the stem-vowels simply does not occur in verbs of this shape. Otherwise the perfect tense would be formed according to the normal rules: reduplicate the stem-vowel as an augment and replace final -a with the ending -ië (so "has wounded" would be aharnië, not **ahárnië). We may have some attested examples of augment-less perfects that are seen to skip the lengthening of the stem-vowel where there is a consonant cluster following it (see below).
The numerous A-stems that end in -ya may be somewhat special. Take a verb like hanya- "understand". According to the rules so far given, the perfect "has understood" should be **ahanyië (or even **ahányië with a lengthened vowel, for it is rather unclear whether ny here counts as a consonant cluster or a unitary consonant – palatalized n like Spanish ñ). However, such a form is impossible, for the combination yi does not occur in Quenya.
We may have one example to guide us: In Namárië, there occurs a perfect tense avánië "has passed" (actually it appears in the plural: yéni avánier ve lintë yuldar lisse-miruvóreva = "years have passed like swift draughts of the sweet mead" – notice that the perfect, like other tenses, receives the ending -r when it occurs with a plural subject). In the essay Quendi and Eldar of ca. 1960, Tolkien explained avánië (or vánië without the augment) as being the perfect tense of the highly irregular verb auta- (WJ:366). But a quarter of a century earlier, in the Etymologies, he had listed a verb vanya- "go, depart, disappear" (see the entry WAN). It is eminently possibly that when he actually wrote Namárië in the forties, he still thought of (a)vánië as the perfect tense of this verb vanya-, though he would later come up with another explanation (perhaps he wanted to eliminate the clash with the adjective vanya "fair", though the words would not be difficult to distinguish in context?) If so, Tolkien gave away how to treat verbs in -ya: In the perfect tense, the whole ending -ya is dropped before -ië is added, and what remains of the verb is treated just as if it were a primary verb. The perfect tense would therefore show both augment and lengthening of the stem-vowel, something like this:

hanya- "understand", perfect ahánië "has understood"
hilya- "follow", perfect ihílië "has followed"
telya- "finish", perfect etélië "has finished"
tulya- "lead", perfect utúlië "has led"

Of course, from the perfect forms you cannot determine with certainty what the original verb stem looks like. For instance, ihílië could also be the perfect of a primary verb **hil- or a short A-stem **hila-. In this case, no such verb is known to exist, but utúlië would be the perfect not only of tulya- "lead", but also of the distinct primary verb tul- "come". So one must apparently depend on the context to find out whether the perfect utúlië is formed from tulya- (so that it means "has led") or from tul- (so that it means "has come"). Same with the perfect ahárië: this form would mean "has possessed" if it is formed from harya, but "has sat, has been sitting" if it is the perfect of har- (apparently a primary verb "sit"; only the plural present tense hárar "are sitting" is attested: UT:305, 317).

Verbs including diphthongs: In some cases it may be somewhat difficult to determine what the stem-vowel is. Where a verb contains a diphthong in -i or -u, it is probably the first vowel of this diphthong that functions as an augment in the perfect tense. For instance, the perfect tense of verbs like taita- "prolong" or roita- "pursue" would probably be ataitië, oroitië, and the perfect tense of hauta- "cease, take a rest" is presumably ahautië. (The stem-vowel can hardly be lengthened when it's part of a diphthong, so we wouldn't expect to see **atáitië, **oróitië, **aháutië.) The original roots of these verbs are given in the Etymologies as TAY, ROY, KHAW, respectively; thus the proper stem-vowels of these verbs are seen to be A, O, A (again respectively). The final -i or -u seen in the Quenya diphthongs arise from original consonants -y and -w, so they cannot count as stem-vowels.

Unaugmented perfects: The material contains some examples of perfect-tense verbs that are constructed according to the rules set forth about, except that they do not have any augment prefixed. MR:250 (reproducing a post-LotR source) mentions a form fírië "has breathed forth" or in later usage "has died"; the augment is missing, though there is no reason to assume that the "full" form ifírië would be wrong. (The actual translation of fírië given in MR:350 is "she hath breathed forth", but no element meaning "she" can be identified; it is evidently understood.) The verb avánier "have passed" occurring in Namárië was actually vánier with no augment in the first edition of LotR; Tolkien supplied the augment in the second edition (1966). Before this, in the essay Quendi and Eldar of about 1960, he explained the unaugmented variant as being simply a variant form "appearing in verse" (WJ:366). Adding a syllable, as Tolkien did when introducing the full form avánier into the poem in 1966, actually doesn't fit the meter of Namárië very well – but he evidently decided to let grammatical accuracy take priority.
In the other perfects occurring in LotR (utúlien, utúvienyes), the augment was present also in the first edition of 1954-55. Nonetheless, it seems that the whole idea of augmenting perfect-tense verbs appeared relatively late in Tolkien's evolution of Quenya. In early sources, the augment is missing. For instance, the phrase "the Eldar have come" appears as i·Eldar tulier in Tolkien's earliest "Qenya" (LT1:114, 270). The perfect of tul- here appearing features the same ending -ie- as in LotR-style Quenya, but the augment, as well as the lengthening of the stem-vowel, still have not been introduced into the language. Updating this sentence to LotR-style Quenya by implementing Tolkien's later revisions would probably produce Eldar utúlier (with an augmented perfect and no article before Eldar when it refers to the entire Elvish race).
In much later, but still pre-LotR, material, we find lantië (with a plural subject lantier) as a form of the verb lanta- "fall": LR:56. These forms would also seem to be unaugmented perfects, showing the ending -ië characteristic of this tense. True, Tolkien translated these forms as "fell" (lantië nu huinë "fell under shadow", ëari lantier "seas fell") as if they represent some kind of past tense form – not perfect "has/have fallen". However, he later noted that "the forms of past and perfect became progressively more closely associated in Quenya" (WJ:366). If this is to mean that Quenya might sometimes use the perfect where English would rather have a past tense, we can explain "fell" rather than "has/have fallen" as a possible translation of lantië/lantier. In SD:310, where Christopher Tolkien discusses a later version of the text in question, he records how his father changed lantier to lantaner – apparently substituting a true past tense form for a perfect-used-as-past. 
If lantier, sg. lantië, can indeed be considered a perfect tense form, it would confirm that the stem-vowel cannot be lengthened before a consonant cluster (not **lántië). Around this stage, Tolkien had certainly introduced such lengthening of the stem-vowel in the perfect; Fíriel's Song has cárier for "made" (or "they made", since the plural ending -r is included). This form of the verb car- "make, do" would seem to be another perfect-used-as-past, judging from the translation. Since the stem-vowel is lengthened in cárier, we must assume that it stays short in lantier for purely phonological reasons: no long vowels are allowed before a consonant cluster. – It may be that the absence of the augment in some early sources is simply due to the fact that Tolkien had not invented it yet; in LotR-style Quenya I would recommend alantië as the perfect tense of lanta- and acárië as the perfect of car-.
Nonetheless, the above-cited example fírië "has breathed forth, has expired" from a post-LotR source (MR:250) would seem to indicate that even in LotR-style Quenya, it is permissible to leave out the augment, constructing the perfect simply by means of the ending -ië + lengthening of the stem-vowel if there is no consonant cluster following it. Possibly unaugmented perfects are meant to be more common in spoken or informal language, and in poetry one can leave out the augment if the extra syllable would spoil the meter (hence vánier for avánier in Namárië, though Tolkien changed his mind in 1966 and introduced the full form). However, in the exercises I made for this course, all perfect-tense forms do include the augment.

Verbs beginning in vowels: Verbs beginning in a vowel pose a problem. Where a verb has a prefix beginning in a vowel, the augment may slip in between the prefix and the most basic verbal stem. For instance, the verb enyal- "recall, remember" is quite literally en-yal- "re-call", where yal- and not en- is the basic verbal stem incorporating the stem-vowel; in such a case I would expect the perfect to be enayálië. But some verbs begin in a vowel even without any prefixed element, e.g. anta- "give". In such a case the first vowel is also the stem-vowel, here occurring without any consonant in front of it. A verb may also include a prefix that happens to be identical to the stem-vowel, e.g. onot- "count up" (formed from not- "reckon" with a prefix o- meaning "together", hence onot- is literally "reckon together"). Other verbal stems already prefix the stem-vowel as a kind of intensification, e.g. atalta- "collapse, fall in" (vs. the verb talta- with a somewhat less harsh meaning: "slope, slip, slide down"). In all of these cases, it is difficult to prefix the stem-vowel as an augment in the perfect tense. We cannot well have a'antië for "has given", o'onótië for "has counted up", a'ataltië for "has collapsed". So what do we get instead?
One popular assumption has been that in such cases, the entire first syllable is reduplicated as an augment: Hence the perfect tense of a anta- "give" would be anantië (antantië?), and so on. With the publication of Vinyar Tengwar #41 in July 2000, this theory was almost confirmed. It turns out that in a late source, Tolkien listed orórië as the perfect tense of the verb ora- "urge" (VT41:13, 18; actually this form is not explicitly identified as the perfect tense, but it can hardly be anything else). Notice that the entire first syllable (or-) is reduplicated in the perfect: By reduplicating the consonant following the stem-vowel as well as the stem-vowel itself, the awkward form **o'órië is avoided; in orórië the reduplicated consonant r keeps the augment and the initial vowel of the verbal stem comfortably apart. Well and good – the only problem is that after writing down the form orórië, Tolkien struck it out! Whether this means that we are back on square one, or whether Tolkien struck out the form orórië not because he invalidated it but simply because he didn't feel like discussing the perfect tense of ora- there and then, none can say. 
Since it is rather unclear how we should add the augment to most verbs beginning in a vowel, I have simply avoided the perfect tense of such verbs in the exercises I made for this course. But since augmentless perfects seem to be permissible, the easiest solution must be to simply omit the augment in the case of such verbs: anta- "give" becoming antië "has given", onot- "count up" becoming onótië "has counted up" (though this is also the perfect of not- "reckon"!), and so on. After the rejected form orórië, Tolkien actually wrote orië. Was this a replacement perfect tense, with no augment? I would expect órië with a lengthened stem-vowel; orië looks more like a quite different form of the verb (a gerund, to be discussed in later lessons). This word may be worth noticing, all the same.

Before leaving the perfect tense, I should briefly comment on a somewhat strange form occurring in the Silmarillion, chapter 20. Here we have the exclamation utúlie'n aurë, translated "the day has come". Utúlie (utúlië) is clearly the perfect tense of tul- "come", as confirmed by the translation "has come". However, the added 'n is something of a mystery. What is this extra consonant doing there? The form utúlie'n is reminiscent of utúlien "I am come" in Elendil's Declaration in LotR, but here -n is a pronominal ending "I" (see the next section). No such ending can be present in utúlie'n, given Tolkien's translation. The apostrophe ' inserted before this latter n probably indicates a different pronunciation as well; in utúlie'n the final consonant is perhaps meant to be sounded as a separate syllable. It may be that this n is added simply for the sake of euphony, preventing three vowels in sequence (since the next word also begins in a vowel; if you count the diphthong au in aurë as two vowels, there would even be four sequential vowels). If a perfect tense appears with no secondary ending added to -ië, and the next word begins in a vowel, should we always insert 'n to avoid too many vowels in hiatus? I have used such a system in at least one composition of my own, but this conclusion is extremely tentative: In the exercises below I have never used this extra 'n, since no one really knows its function. Some even think it represents an alternative incarnation of the article (which normally appears as i): After all, Tolkien did employ the translation "the day has come". Hence utúlie'n aurë = ?utúlië en aurë or ?utúlië in aurë "has-come the day"??? (For a possible attestation of in as a Quenya article, see PM:395.) We can only hope that future publications will shed some more light on this. It may be noted that Christopher Gilson, who has access to unpublished Tolkien material, advocates the 'n = "the" interpretation.

PRONOUNS
It is time to introduce one of really economic devices of Language, the pronouns. (If you know perfectly well what a pronoun is, and you also know about the three different "persons" that personal pronouns are divided into, please scroll down until you see the word Quenya in red. I'm not trying to waste anyone's time here!)
The word "pronoun" is a giveaway; it simply means "for (instead of) a noun". Pronouns are words (or endings) that can replace a noun, often referring back to a noun that has already been mentioned. Thus you don't have to repeat the noun itself all the time. Pronouns provide a kind of spoken shorthand, saving the language from utter tedium. Thanks to pronouns, speakers of English can keep up a conversation with another people without having to endlessly repeat the other party's name every time they are being addressed; instead the pronoun you is substituted. Instead of having to say "the group just referred to" or "the people presently being discussed" speakers of English have at their disposal the short, snappy word they. And try to imagine how you would go about referring to yourself without the pronoun I. Phrases like "this person" or "the one who is talking now" get tedious really fast.
	There are several kinds of pronouns (even interrogative ones like "who"), but the ones most frequently found are the personal pronouns, which we will focus on in this introduction. Customarily, they are divided into three different "persons" (not that the pronouns involved only refer to sentient beings; in this context, "person" is just an established term for a pronoun class). In English, this traditional tripartite classification produces a table something like this:

¤ FIRST PERSON (referring to oneself or one's own group): Singular I, as object me, of ownership my and mine; plural we, as object us, of ownership our and ours.
¤ SECOND PERSON (directly addressing another person or another group): Singular and plural both you, which is also the object form; of ownership your and yours. Archaic English also has distinct singular pronouns: Thou, as object thee, of ownership thy and thine.
¤ THIRD PERSON (referring to another person or group): Singular he, she, or it depending on the gender and/or nature of what is being referred to; as object him, her, or it (the latter being the same as the subject form), of ownership his, her (the latter happens to coincide with the object form, but there is also hers) and its. In the plural we have they, as object them, of ownership their and theirs. 

While the concept of these three "persons" as such is near-universal in the languages of the world, it is quite arbitrary what other distinctions languages build into their pronoun tables. The system is not necessarily symmetric, either – certainly not so in English. English pronouns normally maintain a distinction of singular vs. plural, e.g. singular I vs. plural we, but this distinction is suddenly abandoned in the second person, where you is used no matter whether the speaker addresses one person or several people. On the other hand, English suddenly becomes very pedantic in the third person singular. Here you have to use he if you are referring to a male, she if you are referring to a female (or a ship!), and it if you are referring to something inanimate or abstract, or to an animal (unless "it" is a pet and you feel you know "it" so intimately that you must consider saying "he" or "she" instead!)
Such hair-splitting distinctions are not made anywhere else in the English pronominal system, and certain other languages dispense with them. Finnish, ever relevant for this study since it was Tolkien's foremost inspiration for Quenya, only has a single word (hän) that covers both "he" and "she": The Finns get happily along without making this distinction. On the other hand, other languages may go even further than English. For instance, the Hebrews apparently thought the masculine/feminine distinction was so interesting that it wasn't enough to have separate words for "he" and "she". Hebrew also has separate words for "you" (atta when speaking to a man, att when addressing a woman); the language even carries the principle into the plural by having separate words for "they" (hem when referring to a group of men, but with reference to an all-female group, "they" is henna...as I understand it, a mixed group is referred to by the "masculine" term hem, and then we are left to wonder if a group of 10,000 women and 1 man is still hem rather than henna).
What, then, about Quenya? What pronominal distinctions did Tolkien have his Elves make?
It is somewhat difficult to say anything very definite about the Quenya pronominal system. Even now, with enormous amounts of material still unavailable to scholarship, it is already safe to say that the pronouns of Tolkien's Elvish languages were rather "unstable" – probably even more so than many other aspects of his ever-fluid linguistic constructs. The pronoun tables seem to have undergone countless revisions, and some think Tolkien never quite managed to sort out every detail. (Personally I think he did – the problem is rather that he did it so often!)
We know that the Quenya pronominal system, as Tolkien envisioned it in his later years, makes some distinctions that are not regularly expressed in English. For one thing, just as Quenya has a dual form of the noun in addition to the singular and plural forms, so there are also at least some dual pronouns. So in the First Person we don't find singular "I" and plural "we" only, but also a distinct dual pronoun meaning "you (sg.) and I" or "the two of us". Another subtle distinction is made in the words for "we": In Quenya, there are separate words or endings for "we", depending on whether or not the party that is addressed is included in "we" or not. On the other hand, it seems that Quenya does not always maintain the distinction between "he", "she" and even "it"; all of these may be covered by a single pronoun.
As this course proceeds, we will discuss various parts of the pronoun table and their associated obscurities, and also return to the special pronominal distinctions made in Quenya. However, let us introduce a few pronouns right away.
One thing should be understood: in Quenya, pronouns typically appear as endings, not so often as independent words. (Where a Quenya pronoun does appear as a separate word, it is often emphatic – producing much the same effect as putting an English pronoun in italics: "You [and no one else] did it." We will return to the independent pronouns later.) In the final lines of Namárië we find the word hiruvalyë, translated "thou shalt find" by Tolkien. If you have worked your way through all the exercises, you will remember the form hiruva, future tense of hir- "find". This hiruva "shall find" here appears with the pronominal ending -lyë attached, denoting the subject of the verb. This ending belongs to the Second Person and signifies "thou" – or using a less archaic translation, "you". Hence hiruvalyë = "thou shalt find", or "you will find". The suffix -lyë can be attached to any verb to indicate that its subject is "you, thou".
Having mentioned this pronoun we however run into Instant Obscurity, which is a situation we shall often find ourselves in while discussing Quenya pronouns. It is unclear whether or not this ending -lyë covers both singular and plural "you"; in Namárië it is singular, as demonstrated by the translation "thou". In one of Tolkien's draft texts for the LotR Appendices, he actually wrote that the Elvish languages did not distinguish between singular and plural "you" (no more than English does): "All these languages...had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and plural of the second person pronouns; but they had a marked distinction between the familiar forms and the courteous" (PM:42-43). The ending -lyë, used by Galadriel to address a relative stranger like Frodo, would seem to be a polite or courteous "you". In Namárië it is thus used as a singular "thou", only one person being addressed, but according to PM:42-43 just quoted it could equally well be plural "you" (so if all the members of the Fellowship had understood Quenya, they still couldn't be certain whether Galadriel was addressing them all, or Frodo alone).
However, in the essay Quendi and Eldar written about half a decade after the publication of LotR, Tolkien did imply the existence of pronominal endings that make a distinction between singular and plural "you" (WJ:364). Here he referred to "reduced pronominal affixes of the 2nd person", implied to be -t in the singular and -l in the plural. This -l could well be a "reduced" form of -lyë, which would then be a plural "you". Even so, Tolkien indisputably used this ending for a singular "you" in Namárië, since he translated it as "thou" in the text in LotR. This shorter ending -l is also attested as part of the verb hamil "you judge" (VT42:33), and this may also be taken as a singular "you", though the context is not conclusive either way. It would seem that in the second half of the fifties, Tolkien had been rethinking the pronominal system. The statement made in the draft text for the LotR Appendices, to the effect that Elvish did not distinguish singular and plural "you", had not actually made it into the published LotR. Therefore he would not be bound by it. (Whenever we are dealing with Tolkien material that has been published only posthumously, we can never be certain that the information provided is entirely "canonical": The author could always change his mind, and so he often did, especially regarding the languages.)
Tolkien had apparently discovered that Quenya possesses distinct pronouns for singular and plural "you" after all. Perhaps the new (ca. 1960) idea goes something like this: -lyë and the shorter variant -l would properly be a plural "you", but it is also used as a polite singular, hence the translation "thou" in Namárië. The idea of addressing a single person as if (s)he were several people could be a way of showing respect, emphasizing the importance of the other. Parallels are found in languages of our own world. (A former British PM on occasion carried this system over from the Second Person to the First, referring to herself as a plural "we" rather than a singular "I", apparently to emphasize her own importance. Of course, royals have been using this linguistic device for centuries – and for that matter, even the author of this course sometimes refers to himself as "we"! But actually I tend to include the reader in this "we", so that you quite undeservedly receive some of the credit for the gradual unraveling of Quenya grammar that "we" are undertaking here...) As for English "thou" vs. "you", Matthew Skala wrote on the Elfling list (January 4, 2001):

"Thou" is second person singular, and "you" is second person plural, with the added rule that in formal contexts it's polite to use plural even when talking to an individual.  Much like French "tu" (singular/informal) and "vous" (plural/formal).  In English it has become standard to use "you" for both singular and plural regardless of politeness, but that is a recent innovation; until about 100-200 years ago, English speakers routinely used "thou" in informal contexts. The bizarre situation today is that because of this historical change, most of us only ever encounter "thou" in historical and formal contexts, such as the Bible... and so now, if you use it you sound like you're being especially formal and polite.  The "formality/politeness" charge has been flipped backwards.

It may be, then, that Quenya -lyë or -l corresponds to the original use of English "you", before the historical change Skala describes – but because of that change, -l(yë) used as a polite singular may now be rendered "thou", as Tolkien translated it in LotR.
To summarize: the ending -l(yë) can certainly be used as a singular "you", and it is probably a polite/courteous form rather than a familiar/intimate form. It may be that -l(yë) also covers plural "you", this may even be its proper meaning, but this is where things get somewhat obscure. Tolkien probably changed his mind back and forth about the details. In the exercises below, I have simply used the neutral word "you" as the equivalent of -l(yë). Then it is impossible to go wrong.
But we seem to have plunged right into the Second Person; let us return to the First. In the First Person singular, things are luckily crystal clear (well, very nearly so). The pronoun "I" is most often represented by the ending -n. (Linguists have noted that in the languages of the world, the term for "I, me" remarkably often includes some nasal sound like N or M. Whatever subtle features of human psychology underlie this phenomenon, Tolkien seems to have liked this association, and worked it into several of his languages. Cf. Sindarin im = "I".) Notice how the ending -n is added to the verbs utúlië (perfect tense of tul- "come") and maruva (future tense of mar- "abide, dwell") in Elendil's Declaration:

Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien = "out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come."
Sinomë maruvan = "in this place will I abide".

However, the ending -n for "I" also occurs as a longer variant, -nyë. (As noted above, the ending -lyë for "you" has a shorter variant -l; the variation -nyë vs. -n for "you" would parallel this.) This longer variant is seen in a word we have already touched on in this lesson, the form utúvienyes! "I have found it!" – Aragorn's exclamation when he found the discovered the sapling of the White Tree. The word utúvië, apparently the perfect tense of a verb tuv- "find", here occurs with two pronominal endings. The first of them, -nyë or "I", denotes the subject of the verb: Utúvie+nyë "have found+I" = "I have found". However, following -nyë we have yet another pronominal ending, the Third Person Singular suffix -s, meaning "it". Thus an entire sentence of verb, subject and object has been telescoped into a single word: utúvienyes = "I have found it". 

NOTE: Notice that according to the spelling conventions here employed, final -ë loses its diaeresis whenever an ending is added so that it is not final anymore: utúvië + -nyë = utúvienyë and not utúviënyë; adding -s to utúvienyë likewise produces utúvienyes and not utúvienyës. This is solely a matter of orthography.

 We can abstract this grammatical rule: if a verb is to receive two pronominal endings, one denoting the subject of the verb and the second the object, the subject ending is attached first and the object ending next. In published material, there are two or three other examples of this, beside utúvienyes.
It is then obvious why the long form -nye- is preferred here. While utúvien would do nicely for "I have found", the object ending -s "it" could not have been added to the short ending -n, since **utúviens is not a possible Quenya word. So we can formulate another rule: The long form -nyë (-nye-), NOT short -n, must be used for "I" if another pronominal ending is to follow it. (Similarly, for "you" one must use the long ending -lyë [-lye-], not the shorter form -l, if a second pronominal ending is to be added: "You have found" could be either utúviel or utúvielyë, but "you have found it" must be utúvielyes, since **utúviels would be impossible.)
The long ending -nyë "I" may however occur even if there is no object pronoun following it (as can the long form -lyë for "you, thou", cf. hiruvalyë "thou shalt find" in Namárië). The form linduvanyë "I shall sing" occurs on the frontispiece of the 1975 French bilingual edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (ISBN 2-264-00913-6). The frontispiece reproduces a manuscript page by Tolkien, including some brief linguistic notes. (Taum Santoski, analyzing these notes in the newsletter Beyond Bree, October 1985, read this form as "linduvanya" – but as pointed out by Carl F. Hostetter, Tolkien probably intended "linduvanye" instead. Tolkien was capable of wonderful calligraphy, but his normal handwriting is often a challenge to transcribers!) As long as no second pronominal ending is to follow, it is apparently wholly optional whether one uses the long ending -nyë or the short ending -n for "I". We have the long ending in linduvanyë "I shall sing", but Elendil's Declaration uses the short ending in maruvan "I will abide". Certainly these examples could be scrambled to produce linduvan, maruvanyë of exactly the same meaning.
It seems, however, that the short ending -n is much more common than the longer suffix -nyë. We have already encountered this -n attached to several verbs, such as polin "I can", tirin "I watch" in the previous lesson. Tolkien very often cites primary verbs like this, listing them as they appear in the 1st person aorist (with the ending -i- intact because it is followed by an ending and hence not final, so that it would become -ë). Tirin is an example actually found in the Etymologies (entry TIR), but by the standards of this field, examples truly abound: carin "I make, build" (entry KAR), lirin "I sing" (GLIR) or "I chant" (LIR1), nutin "I tie" (NUT), nyarin "I tell" (NAR2), rerin "I sow" (RED), serin "I rest" (SED), sucin "I drink" (SUK), tamin "I tap" (TAM), tucin "I draw" (TUK), tulin "I come" (TUL), turin "I wield" (TUR), tyavin "I taste" (KYAP), vilin "I fly" (WIL), umin "I do not" (UGU/UMU). The form polin "I can" (VT41:6) is one of several examples from post-LotR sources. Presumably it would in no way be wrong to use the long ending -nyë instead (e.g. polinyë), but -n is the commonest ending in the published corpus. But especially for the purpose of poetry, it is often practical to be able to choose between a long and a short pronominal ending, so that one can include or get rid of a syllable if the meter demands this.
Also notice that the ending -nyë, as well as -lyë for "you", cause the accent to fall on the syllable preceding the ending because ny and ly here count as consonant clusters. Cf. the stress rules set out in Lesson One. If hiruvanyë "I will find" (with the accent on a) doesn't sound good in your poem, you can always use the short form hiruvan and have the accent land on i in the first syllable instead. (Again, we may have the same system in the Second Person: It is entirely possible that in Namárië, Tolkien wrote hiruvalyë rather than the shorter form hiruval simply because the former variant fit his poetic meter better.)
As for the ending -s meaning "it", occurring as an object pronoun in utúvienyes "I have found it", it seems that it may also be used as a subject. For instance, if polin is "I can", we must assume that "it can" would be polis. However, the ending -s brings us into the Third Person with its own set of obscurities, which we will save for later (Lesson 15). In the exercises below, -s is used in the same way as in the example utúvienyes: attached to another pronominal ending to denote the object of the verb (just as the first ending added to the verb denotes its subject).

Summary of Lesson Eight: The Quenya perfect tense is formed by adding the ending -ië to the verbal stem (if the stem ends in a vowel, it is apparently omitted before -ië is added; verbs in -ya seem to loose this entire ending). Unless followed by a consonant cluster, the stem-vowel is lengthened. Normally it is also reduplicated as an augment prefixed to the verb (ric- "twist" vs. irícië "has twisted", hanya- "understand" vs. ahánië "has understood"). However, there also appear some unaugmented perfects in the published corpus (notably fírië rather than ifírië for "has expired"), so it may be permissible to leave out the augment and still have a valid perfect tense form. It is somewhat unclear how the augment is to be prefixed to verbal stems beginning in a vowel. – Quenya pronouns most typically appear as endings rather than separate words. Among these pronominal endings we have -n or -nyë "I", -l or -lyë "thou, you" and -s "it". Two pronominal endings may be added to the same verb, the first of them denoting the subject of the verb, the second its object.

VOCABULARY
otso "seven"
seldo "boy" (actually Tolkien didn't provide an explicit gloss, but the word is cited in a context where he is discussing Quenya words for "child", and seldo seems to be a masculine form. See the entry SEL-D- in the Etymologies.)
mól "thrall, slave"
an "for" (or "since, because", introducing a sentence giving a reason, as in "I rely on him, for he has often been of help to me".)
tul- verb "come"
lanta- verb "fall"
nurta- verb "hide" (cf. the Nurtalë Valinóreva or "Hiding of Valinor" referred to in the Silmarillion)
lerya- verb "release, (set) free, let go"
metya- verb "end" = "put an end to"
roita- verb "pursue"
laita- verb "bless, praise"
imbë preposition "between"

EXERCISES 

1. Translate into English (and practice your vocabulary; except for the numeral otso and the pronominal endings, exercises A-H only employ words you are supposed to have memorized in earlier lessons):

A. I nér ihírië i harma.
B. I rávi amátier i hrávë.
C. I aran utultië i tári.
D. I nissi ecendier i parma.
E. I úmëa tári amápië i otso Naucor.
F. Etécielyë otso parmar.
G. Equétien.
H. Ecénielyes. 

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. The man has come.
J. The seven Dwarves have eaten.
K. The boys have seen a lion between the trees.
L. The six Elves have pursued the seven Dwarves.
M. The Dwarf has hidden a treasure.
N. I have praised the king, for the king has released all thralls.
O. You have fallen, and I have seen it.
P. I have put an end to it [/I have ended it].

LESSON NINE
The infinitive. The negative verb. Active participles.

THE INFINITIVE
All of the forms of the verb that we have discussed so far, all the tenses, are what a linguist would call finite verb forms. The definition of a finite verb is that it is capable of functioning as the predicate of a sentence, the part of the sentence that tells us what the subject does (or is – in Lesson Four we pointed out that a phrase made up of copula + noun or adjective also counts as a predicate, e.g. "gold is beautiful", but here we will deal with more normal verbs instead). In a sentence like i Elda máta massa "the Elf is eating bread", linguists can readily label the roles of all parts of the sentence: just like i Elda "the Elf" is the subject and massa "bread" is the object, so the verb máta "is eating" is the predicate of the sentence. And precisely because the form máta, present tense of mat- "eat", is able to function as a predicate here, we can tell that máta is a finite form of the verb.
	The infinitive is another story. It is, as the name suggests, in-finite – non-finite. It is not inflected for time, as are the tenses. It does not receive the ending -r, even if the subject of the sentence is plural. So by itself, an infinitive is not capable of functioning as the predicate of a sentence. An infinitive cannot be directly teamed up with a subject. What, then, is its use?
	English infinitives have various uses, but an important function of the infinitive is that it allows several verbs to be combined in one sentence. In a sentence like "the Dwarves wanted to eat", the verb "wanted" is a finite form, appearing in one specific tense (in this case past tense). But the verb "eat" appears as an infinitive, "to eat", complementing the finite verb to form a longer verbal phrase "wanted to eat". In English, infinitive verbs are very often marked by inserting "to" before the verb proper, but this "to" is not always included. In a sentence like "I let him go", the verb "go" counts as an infinitive even though there is no "to" before it. (Contrast "I allowed him to go".) Neither is "to" included before an infinitive following certain verbs like "can" or "must" (e.g. "I must go", not **"I must to go").
	In Quenya, there seems to be no independent infinitive marker like English "to", so we don't have to worry about where to include or omit it. Attested examples of Quenya infinitives most certainly do not abound, but there is the sentence polin quetë "I can speak" (VT41:6). Here the verb polin "I can" is a finite form, the aorist of the primary verb pol- appearing with the pronominal ending -n "I" attached – but the word quetë must be analyzed as an infinitive. Of course, quetë is similar in form to an aorist "speaks", but as indicated by the translation "speak" as well as the context, the form quetë is infinitival here. We can tell, then, that primary verbs like quet- have infinitives in -ë (undoubtedly representing Primitive Elvish -i). The ending may be analyzed simply as a kind of stopgap that is supplied to make up for the absence of any other ending, or quetë may be seen as representing an uninflected primitive "I-stem" kweti. No matter how we imagine the ultimate derivation and the "meaning" of the ending -ë, we probably know enough to actually start using the infinitive form of primary verbs. Here are some (home-made) examples combining infinitives with various finite forms (tenses) of the verbs mer- "wish, want" and pol- "can". Finite verbs in red, infinitives in blue:

I Elda polë cenë i Nauco "the Elf can see the Dwarf" (notice that though the verbs pol- "want" and cen- "see, behold" receive the same ending -ë here, the former is an aorist and the latter is an infinitive: The context must decide whether the form cenë is to be understood as an aorist "sees" or an infinitive "[to] see")
I Naucor merner matë "the Dwarves wanted to eat" (finite verb merner "wanted", inflected for past tense and plural, + infinitive verb matë "to eat")
I seldo pollë hlarë ilya quetta "the boy could hear every word"
Polilyë carë ilqua "you can do everything"
I nissi meruvar tulë "the women will want to come"

What, then, about A-stems? In the Etymologies, Tolkien often glossed A-stem verbs as if they were infinitives, e.g. anta- "to present, give", varya- "to protect" or yelta- "to loathe" (entries ANA1, BAR, DYEL). This is not by itself conclusive evidence that a form like anta could actually be used as an infinitive "to give" in a Quenya text, for in the tradition of Western linguistics, the infinitive is commonly the form used to name, list or gloss a verb in wordlists. Sometimes this system is carried through even where such a gloss is strictly wrong: A Hebrew-English wordlist may insist that nathan means "to give", though it actually means "he gave" – this being the simplest and most basic form of this verb, the logical form to be listed in a dictionary. However, a form like anta- is simply an uninflected A-stem, and Tolkien did refer to certain grammatical circumstances "when the bare stem of the verb is used...as infinitive" (MC:223). The general system also seems to suggest that A-stems with no additions can function as infinitives. (Notice that the infinitives of both primary verbs and A-stems seem to be similar in form to ending-less aorists.) So I guess we can have sentences like the following (and let me just underline the infinitives to avoid too much fancy coloring):

I vendi merner linda "the maidens wanted to sing"
I norsa polë orta i alta ondo "the giant can lift the big rock"
Merin cenda i parma "I want to read the book"

In some cases, English may prefer a form in -ing to a regular infinitive, for instance after the verbs "start" and "stop". I think it is a fair guess that Quenya would use the normal infinitive in such cases as well:

I nissi pustaner linda "the women stopped singing" (or, "...ceased to sing")

Several infinitives can probably be juxtaposed by means of ar "and":

	I neri merir cenda ar tecë rimbë parmar "the men want to read and 
(to) write many books"

The discussion above certainly does not cover all there is to say about Quenya infinitives. Some more details are known and will be filled in later in this course, but there are many obscure points. In some very late (ca. 1969) notes, Tolkien refers to "the general (aorist) 'infinitive' formed by added -i" (VT41:17), but since only brief quotes from this material have been published, we cannot be certain what he means. Is there a specific "aorist infinitive"? We have earlier discussed the distinction made between such forms as máta "is eating" (present/continuative tense) and matë "eats" (aorist). Does Quenya carry these distinctions over into the infinitive, so that one can somehow distinguish "to eat" (aorist infinitive) from "to be eating" (continuative infinitive)?
Moreover, what does Tolkien refer to by "added -i"? Obviously there is an infinitive that is formed by adding -i to the verbal stem (of primary verbs at least). But is this ending a contemporary Quenya suffix, or does it represent a Primitive Elvish form? As mentioned above, the attested infinitive quetë "(to) say" may be meant to represent a primitive form kweti, which would indeed be the root kwet- with "added -i". But if this -i is a contemporary Quenya suffix, there would be an alternative infinitive queti "to say". How it is used, and whether it is interchangeable with the attested form quetë, we cannot even begin to guess. In the essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien did mention a few verb forms that may seem to exemplify an infinitive in -i, namely auciri and hóciri, both meaning "cut off" (in two different senses, see WJ:365-366). But later in the essay, he quoted the same forms with a hyphen attached (auciri-, hóciri-), as if these are verbal stems rather than independent infinitive forms (WJ:368). So we cannot be sure of anything, and must await the publication of more material.

As noted above, the infinitive is traditionally used to name or list verbs, or to give their meaning as a general gloss. From now on we will often define verbs in such a way, e.g. glossing a verbal stem like tul- as "to come" and lanta- as "to fall" (rather than simply "come", "fall"). It must still be understood that the mere stem of primary verb like tul- cannot function as an actual infinitive ("tul") in a Quenya text (it must be tulë instead). It is simply customary and convenient to give the meaning of a verb by quoting its gloss in the infinitive. In the Vocabulary listings of Lessons 5 through 8, I had to write "verb" in front of the gloss of every new verb to make it crystal clear what part of speech the new word belonged to. Sometimes this was actually necessary: If I defined lanta- simply as "fall", some student would surely manage to overlook the final hyphen of lanta- that is meant to suggest that this is a verbal stem, and conclude that "fall" is here a noun – autumn, or something! Finally having introduced the infinitive, I will use this form instead when glossing verbs – like "to fall" in this case.

NOTE 1: In English, infinitives introduced by "to" (or "in order to") are often used to describe an intention: "I came to see you." In such a context, it seems that Quenya does not use the forms discussed so far, but a quite different construction (gerund in dative, to be discussed in a later lesson). 

THE NEGATIVE VERB
This may be a good place to introduce a somewhat peculiar Quenya verb. Earlier we have mentioned the copula ná "is", which we can now refer to as a tense of the verb "to be". (Don't ask me if ná is the present tense or the aorist, and the other tenses of this verb are unfortunately even more obscure: The verb "to be" is notoriously irregular in the languages of the world, and Tolkien may well have invented some nice irregularities for Quenya as well.)
Anyhow, Quenya also has a unitary verb meaning "not to be"; you can express this meaning without combining some form of ná with a separate word for "not" (though Quenya does have such a negation as well). This verb is listed in the Etymologies, entry UGU/UMU, where it appears as umin "I am not" (another example of Tolkien's frequent habit of listing primary verbs in the 1st person aorist). The past tense is also listed, somewhat irregular: it is úmë, not **umnë as it would have to be according to the simplest "regular" pattern. Úmë as the past tense of a primary verb um- would seem to belong to the same pattern as lávë, pa.t. of lav- "to lick" (cf. undulávë "down-licked" = "covered" in Namárië in LotR). One must take care not to confuse the past tense form úmë "was not" with the ending-less aorist umë "is not".
As the future tense of this verb, we might expect umuva, and this unattested form may well be permissible – but actually a shorter form úva occurs in Fíriel's Song. Here we have the phrase úva...farëa, "will not be enough" (farëa = adjective "enough, sufficient"). Possibly, this úva is actually the future tense of another verb: Besides umin "I am not" from the root UMU Tolkien also listed a form uin of the same meaning – apparently derived from the root UGU. Perhaps úva is strictly the future tense of the latter verb. It could represent a primitive form something like uguba, whereas uin is to be derived from ugin (or ugi-ni at an even older stage). Between vowels, g was lost in Quenya, so that the two u's of uguba merged into one long ú in úva, whereas the u and the i of ugin merged into a diphthong ui (as in uin) when the disappearance of g brought the two vowels into direct contact. Whatever development Tolkien may have imagined, we will here use úva as the future tense of um- "not to be", avoiding the unattested (and perhaps somewhat awkward) form umuva.

Like ná, this "negative copula" can presumably be used to connect a subject with a noun or an adjective:

	I Nauco umë aran "the Dwarf is not a king"
	I nissi umir tiucë "the women are not fat"
I rocco úmë morë "the horse was not black"
I neri úmer sailë "the men were not wise"
Elda úva úmëa "an Elf will not be evil" 
Nissi úvar ohtari "women will not be warriors" (sorry, Éowyn!)

Or, using pronominal endings instead of an independent subject:

Umin Elda "I am not an Elf"
Úmen saila "I was not wise"
Úvalyë ohtar "you will not be a warrior"

But above I said that this was a good place to introduce the negative verb. This is because it can probably be combined with infinitives as well. We lack actual examples, but in the entry UGU/UMU in Etym, Tolkien indicated that umin does not always signify "I am not". It can just as well mean "I do not". By combining such a verb with an infinitive, one can probably negate the verbs in question. Home-made examples involving various tenses of the negative verb:

	Umin turë macil "I do not wield a sword"
	Máma umë matë hrávë "a sheep does not eat flesh"
	I Nauco úmë tulë "the Dwarf did not come"
	I neri úmer hirë i harma "the men did not find the treasure"
	I nís úva linda "the woman will not sing"
	I neri úvar cenë i Elda "the men will not see the Elf"

We must assume that following the negative verb, as well as in other contexts, several infinitives may sometimes be combined, like merë and cenë in this sentence (the finite verb in red, the two infinitives in blue and pink):

	I Elda úmë merë cenë i Nauco. "The Elf did not want to see the Dwarf."

Or again, with the infinitives merë and cenda:

	I Nauco úva merë cenda i parma. "The Dwarf will not want to read the book."

Presumably the present/continuous tense of the negative verb, which would have to be úma, can be used to deny the existence of an ongoing action:

I Nauco úma linda "the Dwarf is not singing" (just now)

Contrast the aorist: I Nauco umë linda "the Dwarf does not sing". The latter would often (but not necessarily) have a wider application, like "the Dwarf is not a singer". Anyhow, we will stick to the aorist in the exercises below.

ACTIVE PARTICIPLES
The various parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, remain relatively distinct categories most of the time. However, some words fuse the properties of several parts of speech. The participles are words with a basically adjectival function, but they are directly derived from verbs, and in the case of active participles, they are still able to take an object.
The participles are subdivided into two categories, often called present participles and past participles. These terms are somewhat misleading, for the most important distinction between has nothing to do with tenses. The alternative terms active participles and passive participles are better, and I will try to use them consistently here.
We will save the "past" or passive participle for the next lesson and focus on the "present" or active participles here. In English, this form is derived by means of the ending -ing. For instance, the verb "follow" has the active participle "following". This verbal adjective describes the state of something or someone that carries out the action of the corresponding verb: The day that follows can be described as the following day.
If the verb is able to take an object, so is its corresponding participle. A person who loves Elves can be described as a person loving Elves.
In English, the form derived from verbs by adding -ing is somewhat ambiguous. It can also function as a noun. The active participle of a verb like "kill" is of course killing, as it is clearly adjectival in a phrase like "a killing experience", but in a sentence like "the killing must stop", it is equally clear that it is used as a noun. But in the latter sentence, "killing" is a verbal noun, an abstract noun denoting the action of killing. Here we are only interested in verbal adjectives = participles. In Quenya, the two do not coincide in form.
The Quenya ending corresponding to English -ing (when used to form participles) is -la. There are many examples of active participles in the Markirya poem. For instance, Tolkien in his annotation indicated that "ilkala [is the] participle of ilka 'gleam (white)' " (MC:223). The participle ilcala (as we would spell it here) thus means "gleaming", and so it is used in the poem, in a phrase translated "in the moon gleaming" (MC:215).
It seems that in a Quenya active participle, the stem-vowel is lengthened if possible. In ilcala the i cannot become long í because there is a consonant cluster following it. However, Tolkien in MC:223 also mentioned a verb hlapu- "to fly or stream in the wind" (one of the rare U-stems, a rather obscure category of verbs). Its participle appears as hlápula on the previous page: Winga hlápula, translated "foam blowing" (cf. MC:214). We must assume, then, that the participle of a verb like lala- "to laugh" is lálala (!) "laughing": The stem-vowel is lengthened. If the verbal stem includes a vowel that is long already, it simply stays long in the participle: The participles of píca- "to lessen, dwindle" and rúma- "to shift, move, heave" appear as pícala and rúmala in the Markirya poem.
In the case of longer verbal stems where the stem-vowel occurs twice, as in falasta- "to foam" (root evidently PHALAS), it seems that it is the second occurrence of the stem-vowel that is to be lengthened if possible. In this case it cannot be lengthened, since it is followed by a consonant cluster; the participle "foaming" is attested (in Markirya) as falastala. The first occurrence of the stem-vowel could have been lengthened as far as phonology is concerned (**fálastala), but this first vowel evidently does not "count" for the purpose of lengthening. (Presumably it is not lengthened in the present tense, either: falastëa "is foaming", hardly ?fálastëa, much less **falástëa.)
	The primary verbs are a problem. Adding the ending -la to their stems would usually result in consonant clusters not permitted in Quenya. For instance, the participle of the verb tir- "to watch" cannot be **tirla (let alone **tírla), a quite impossible Quenya word. It has been assumed that in such cases, one may start by constructing the "continuative stem" (similar to the present tense) by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, e.g. tíra "is watching", and then derive the participle by adding the participial ending -la to this form: tírala "watching". Markirya has hácala as a participle "yawning"; unfortunately the underlying verb "to yawn" is not attested, but if it is a primary verb hac-, the attested participial form would confirm such a theory. But of course, the verb underlying the participle hácala could just as well be an A-stem haca- or háca- (cf. hlápula "blowing, streaming" from hlapu- and pícala "dwindling, waning" from píca-).
	With the publication of The Peoples of Middle-earth in 1996, a form that may seem to be the participle of a primary verb became available: PM:363 refers to the root "it [as in] itila 'twinkling, glinting', and íta 'a flash', ita- verb 'to sparkle'." But is itila really the participle of a primary verb it-? Tolkien refers to it- as a "stem" or root (cf. PM:346), not as a Quenya verb. The actual Quenya verb in question is listed as ita-, a short A-stem meaning "to sparkle". Its participle would presumably be ítala, not itila. If the latter is a participle at all, it is a peculiar one: it shows no lengthening of the stem-vowel (not **ítila), and a connecting vowel -i- is inserted before the ending -la. Since the aorist of a verb it- would be iti- (becoming itë only in the absence of any endings), one may wonder if itila is an aorist participle. This would mean that Quenya is able to carry the distinction of aorist/present tense over into the participle, so that there are different forms for "doing" (habitually or momentarily) and "doing" (continuously): perhaps something like carila and cárala, respectively (from the verb car- "to do"). But this is speculative, and I cannot recommend such a system to writers; we must await the publication of more material. It may be that itila is simply an old adjectival formation that no longer "counts" as an adjective in Quenya. The ending -la occurs in adjectives as well, e.g. saila "wise"; undoubtedly -la is in origin simply an adjectival ending that came to be favoured as the suffix used to derive verbal adjectives = participles.
	Even so, Quenya participles seem to have established themselves as formations quite distinct from adjectives, for in one respect their behaviour differs: Unlike adjectives, the active participles apparently do not agree in number. For instance, Markirya has rámar sisílala for "wings shining" (the second word being the participle of the verb sisíla-, a longer variant of the verb sil- "shine white"). As we remember, normal adjectives in -a have plural forms in -ë (representing archaic Quenya -ai). So if sisílala were to be agree in number with the noun it describes, we would have expected **rámar sisílalë. Perhaps Tolkien did not want participles in -la to agree in number precisely because the plural form of the participial ending would have to be -lë: This ending could easily be confused with the prominent abstract ending -lë, which is added to verbal stems to derive verbal nouns – e.g. lindalë "singing" from linda- "to sing" (as in Ainulindalë "Ainu-singing", free rendering "Music of the Ainur"). While lindala and lindalë both translate as "singing" in English, the latter is a noun ("a singing"), whereas the former is "singing" in the adjectival sense.

English very often employs the active participle to express the meaning of a continuative tense, combining the participle with a copula like "is" or "was", e.g. "the boy is laughing". But regarding present actions at least, Quenya would rather express this meaning by using the genuine present/continuative tense: I seldo lálëa. None can say whether the English-style wording i seldo ná lálala is a valid Quenya sentence; one suspects that while it would be intelligible, the Eldar (/Tolkien) would not think of it as "good Quenya".
	While we have no attested example of an active participle taking an object, we must assume that it is possible, e.g. Nauco tírala Elda, "a Dwarf watching an Elf".

Summary of Lesson Nine: The infinitive is a form of the verb that is not inflected for tense and is therefore unable to function as the predicate of a sentence (as a finite verb can); an infinitive may be combined with other verbs to form longer verbal phrases. While there are some obscurities, the (or one) Quenya infinitive is apparently identical to the verbal stem itself, except that primary verbs receive the ending -ë – e.g. quet- "to speak" in the sentence polin quetë "I can speak". This infinitive would seem to be the one used when infinite and finite verbs are combined (as in the example just quoted, where the infinitive quetë is combined with a finite form of the verb pol- "can"). – The negative verb um- (past tense úmë, future úva) can apparently function both as a negative copula ("not be") and as a verb that may be combined with the infinitive of other verbs to express "not do..." something, e.g. umin quetë "I do not speak".  – The active participle, a verbal adjective describing the state of the one carrying out the action denoted by the corresponding verb, is derived by adding -la to the corresponding verbal stem. The stem-vowel is lengthened if there is no consonant cluster following it. It is somewhat unclear how the ending -la is to be added to the stems of primary verbs, but one plausible assumption may be that the ending is suffixed to the "continuous" form (with lengthened stem-vowel and ending -a, e.g. tíra from tir- "to watch", hence tírala as the participle "watching"). 

VOCABULARY
tolto "eight"
pol- "to be (physically) able to", normally translated "can" (where this refers to some physical ability – not "can" in the sense "know how to", referring to intellectual skill, or "can" in the sense "may" = "is permitted to", referring to freedom from prohibitions. For the two latter meanings, Quenya uses distinct words.) 
um- negative verb "not to do" or "not to be", past tense úmë, future tense úva
mer- "to wish, want"
hlar- "to hear" (related to Sindarin lhaw as in Amon Lhaw, the Hill of Hearing mentioned in LotR)
verya- "to dare" (from the same root as the Sindarin name Beren, meaning bold or daring one)
lelya- "to go, proceed, travel", past tense lendë, perfect [e]lendië (more about this "irregular" verb in the next lesson)
pusta- "to stop"
ruhta- "to terrify, to scare" (ultimately related to Urco or Orco, the Quenya words for "bogey, Orc")
coa "house" (building only, not "house" = "family")
mir preposition "into"
ter preposition "through" (a longer variant terë also exists, but I have used ter in the exercises below)

EXERCISES

Translate into English:

A. Sílala Isil ortëa or Ambar.
B. I cápala Nauco lantanë ter i talan.
C. Polin hlarë lindala vendë.
D. Minë nér túrala minë macil úva ruhta i tolto taurë ohtari.
E. Mól mápala taura nér umë saila. 
F. I tolto rávi caitala nu i aldar ortaner, an i rávi merner matë i neri.
G. Rá umë polë pusta matë hrávë.
H. I ruhtala ohtar pustanë tirë i lië, an i ohtar úmë saila.

Translate into Quenya:

I. The man pursuing the Dwarf is a warrior.
J. The king wanted to go.
K. The maiden did not dare to see the queen.
L. The laughing women went into the house.
M. The eight traveling Dwarves can find many treasures.
N. You did not praise the Elf, you do not praise the Man [Atan], and you will not praise the Dwarf.
O. I want to travel through the world and free all peoples.
P. A daring man went through the gate and into the mountain.

LESSON TEN 
Adverbs. The pronominal endings -ntë and -t. Infinitives with object pronouns. The past tense of intransitive verbs in -ya. Passive participles.

ADVERBS
Adverbs form a part of speech that is used to provide "extra information" in a sentence. A typical sentence provides information about who does what (to whom), involving a subject, a predicate and if necessary an object. But you may also want to slip in information about when, where or in what manner the verbal action occurs. This is where adverbs enter the linguistic stage.
	In many cases, adverbs are to verbs what adjectives are to nouns. Like an adjective may describe a noun, an adverb may describe the nature of the verbal action of the sentence. In a sentence like "they left swiftly", the last word is an adverb describing how or in what manner "they left". If we say "she is singing now", the word "now" is an adverb answering the question of when the verbal action is taking place. And if we say "they did it here", the word "here" is an adverb telling us where the verbal action took place.
	Some adverbs may be called "basic", since they are not derived from another part of speech. Just consider such an adverb of time as English "now" and its Quenya equivalent sí; neither can be further analyzed. But very many English adverbs are not "basic" in this way. They are transparently derived from adjectives, as in one of the examples we just used: The adverb "swiftly" is obviously based on the adjective "swift". The Great English Adverb-Former is the ending -ly, which can in principle be added to any adjective, turning it into an adverb (producing such pairs as deep/deeply, final/finally, great/greatly, high/highly, swift/swiftly and countless others...but preferably not "good/goodly", since the place of "goodly" is already occupied by the basic adverb well!) Since we have only a handful of words that Tolkien explicitly identified as adverbs, but plenty of adjectives, it would be nice if we could pin down a Quenya adverb-former like the English ending -ly. Then we could derive our own Quenya adverbs.
We may have such a Quenya ending. It occurs in LotR, as part of the Cormallen Praise (volume 3, Book Six, chapter IV: "The Field of Cormallen"). As part of the praise received by the Ringbearers we have the two words andavë laituvalmet, translated "long we will praise them" in Letters:308. Here we have the adverb andavë, "long" (here meaning "for a long time"). We know that the Quenya adjective "long" is anda (cf. Sindarin and as in And+duin = Anduin, "Long River"). It would seem, then, that this adjective has been turned into an adverb by supplying the ending -vë (probably related to the Quenya preposition ve "as, like"). In the case of anda/andavë, the English translation is "long" in either case, but normally the ending -vë would correspond to English "-ly". So if alta is "great", can we use altavë for "greatly"? Since tulca is a word for "firm", would "firmly" be tulcavë? Knowing that saila means "wise", can we assume that sailavë an acceptable word for "wisely"? By and large, I think such formations are plausible, though the potential application of the ending -vë may not be literally limitless. The Quenya adjective "good" is mára; one wonders if máravë for "well" would sound just as weird as "goodly" in English! (A basic adverb vandë "well" occurs in Tolkien's earliest "Qenya" wordlist [QL:99]; whether this was still a valid word in LotR-style Quenya some forty years later, none can say.)
Like anda "long", the vast majority of Quenya adjectives end in -a. The less frequent adjectives in -ë in practically all cases descend from Primitive Elvish forms in -i, which vowel would be preserved unchanged before an ending or in compounds: Compare morë "dark, black" with the compound Moriquendi "Dark Elves". We must assume that the original quality of the vowel would also be preferred before the adverbial ending -vë – so if we try to derive an adverb "darkly" from morë, it should probably be morivë rather than morevë. Actually, very few of the adjectives in -ë are likely to have any corresponding adverbs; they mostly denote colours. Perhaps we can have mussë/mussivë "soft/softly", nindë/nindivë "thin/thinly" and ringë/ringivë "cold/coldly" (but in a later source, the word for "cold" appears as ringa rather than ringë, and then the adverb would simply be ringavë).
How the ending -vë would be added to the few adjectives in -n is quite unclear. The adjective melin "dear" (not to be confused with the similar-sounding 1st person aorist "I love") could have a corresponding adjective melinvë "dearly", for while nv does not occur in unitary words, it is a possible Quenya combination (cf. Aragorn's title Envinyatar "Renewer", where en- = "re-"). On the other hand, if the ending -vë is related to the preposition ve "as, like", both probably descend from be in Primitive Elvish. We could then argue that the original melin-be would rather come out as melimbë in Quenya. On the yet other hand (if we can postulate even more hands), adjectives in -in seem to be shortened from longer forms in -ina, and then one could argue that this a would be preserved before an ending. Thus, "dearly" could be melinavë. (I'd say, forget about melin and start from melda or moina instead, which adjectives also mean "dear". Then we can simply have meldavë or moinavë!)

In English at least, an adverb does not necessarily describe a verbal action. It can also be used to modify the meaning of an adjective (or even another adverb). This is a kind of meta-description, one descriptive word describing another. Whether Quenya adverbs (or specifically the ones in -vë) can be used in such a way, nobody knows. For instance: Knowing that valaina is the Quenya adjective "divine", can we feel free to use valainavë vanya for "divinely beautiful"? Tolkien provided aqua as the adverb "fully, completely, altogether, wholly" (WJ:392 – this is a "basic" adverb not derived from an adjective, unlike the English glosses in -ly that are derived from the adjectives "full, complete, whole"). It does seem very likely that this aqua can modify an adjective, e.g. aqua morë "completely dark". If this is not so, Tolkien ought to have told us...!

It may be noted that in some early sources, Tolkien uses adverbs in -o rather than -vë. The one attestation of the latter is, as I have pointed out, andavë vs. the adjective anda "long". However, there exists an early "Qenya" sentence which translates as "the Elves were lying long asleep at Kovienéni [later: Cuiviénen]"; see Vinyar Tengwar #27. In this sentence, the adverb "long" appears as ando, not andavë. Further examples of adverbs in -o include ento "next" and rato "soon" (from an "Arctic" sentence quoted in Father Christmas Letters – obviously a form of "Qenya", though appearing in a context that has nothing to do with Tolkien's serious literary output). We may even include the adverb voro "ever, continually" from such a relatively late source as the Etymologies (entry BOR), though in this word, the final -o may be simply the stem-vowel reduplicated and suffixed.
	The example ando "long" (not to be confused with the noun "gate"), which is obviously derived from the adjective anda, would seem to indicate that the ending -o can be used to derive adverbs from adjectives. May we then have (say) tulco "firmly" from tulca "firm", as an alternative to tulcavë? Or are we to understand that Tolkien, by the LotR period, had dropped -o as an adverbial ending? If so he introduced -vë as a replacement, not an alternative (changing ando to andavë). 
	We cannot know whether -o is still a valid adverbial ending in LotR-style Quenya. But when deriving adverbs from adjectives, I would recommend using the "safe" (or at least safer) ending -vë instead. In the exercises below, I have not used the ending -o, but only -vë. On the other hand, at this stage I would not tamper with attested adverbs like ento, rato, voro (changing them to ?entavë etc.)

Do adverbs, like adjectives, agree in number? It has been suggested that andavë is actually a plural adverb, agreeing with a plural verb (andavë laituvalmet "long we will praise them" – notice the plural subject ending attached to the verb). If so, -vë could be the plural form of a singular adverbial ending -va, completely unattested. According to this system, we would have such variation as i nér lendë andava "the man traveled long" (singular adverb corresponding to a singular verb) vs. i neri lender andavë "the men traveled long" (plural adverb to go with a plural verb). But this is 100 % hypothetical. While nothing can be ruled out at this stage, I tend to believe that this there is no such variation. More likely, the adverbial ending -vë is invariable in form, related to the preposition ve "as, like" as suggested above.

In closing, I should mention that some Quenya adverbs are derived from other parts of speech than adjectives. In Namárië we have oialë as the adverb "for ever" (or "everlastingly", as the interlinear translation in RGEO:67 goes). But the Etymologies, entry OY, indicates that oialë is properly or in its origin a noun meaning "everlasting age". Apparently this noun is used as an adverb in Namárië.
Phrases involving prepositions very often have an adverbial function to begin with, and sometimes unitary adverbs may evolve from them: In Cirion's Oath we have tennoio as another Quenya word meaning "for ever", but in UT:317, Tolkien explains that this form is simply a contraction of two originally distinct words: the preposition tenna "up to, as far as" + oio "an endless period".
Finally we have what I have already called "basic adverbs", not derived from any other part of speech. Aqua "completely" and sí "now" mentioned above are just two examples; we may also include words like amba "up(wards)", háya "far off" (read perhaps haiya as the Third Age form), oi "ever", and others.

THE PRONOMINAL ENDINGS -NTË AND -T
In Lesson Eight, we introduced three pronominal endings: -n or longer -nyë for "I", -l or longer -lyë for "you", and -s for "it". But obviously there are more pronouns, and we will now attempt to identify the pronominal endings of the Third Person Plural: as subject "they", as object "them".
	Cirion's Oath in UT:305 includes the word tiruvantes, in UT:317 translated "they will guard it". The verb tir- "watch, guard", the future-tense ending -uva "shall, will" and the pronominal ending -s "it" ought to be familiar to the student by now. We are left with -nte- as the element translated "they". UT:317 explicitly confirms that -ntë is the "inflection of 3[rd person] plural where no subject is previously mentioned". Like most brief linguistic notes of Tolkien's, this one does require some exegesis. I shall here assume that Tolkien's intention is this: If a sentence has a plural subject that has been "previously mentioned", occurring before the verb, the verb would only receive the normal plural ending -r (e.g. i neri matir apsa "the men eat meat"). But if there is no subject "previously mentioned", the ending -r is replaced by -ntë, meaning "they": Matintë apsa, "they eat meat". Apparently, this ending would still be used if the subject is identified later in the sentence; perhaps we can have such a sentence as matintë apsa i neri "they eat meat(,) the men (do)". Cirion's Oath also identifies the subject later in the sentence (nai tiruvantes i hárar mahalmassen mi Númen "be it that they will guard it, the ones who sit on thrones in the west...")
	Cirion's Oath occurs in post-LotR material, so the information provided in UT:305, 317 was certainly intended to be LotR-compatible. However, a quite different pronominal ending for "they" occurs in Tolkien's early material. In LT1:114, we find the "Qenya" form tulielto "they have come", including the ending -lto for "they". This ending was current as late as when Tolkien wrote Fíriel's Song, which includes the forms cárielto "they made" and antalto "they gave" (LR:72). Whether it is also valid in LotR-style Quenya is another matter. The ending -lto looks somewhat strange compared to the other known pronominal endings. Of the pronominal endings attested in LotR or during the post-LotR period, all the subject endings that constitute a separate syllable end in the vowel -ë (six endings in all, if we include -ntë discussed above). A suffix -lto ending in -o doesn't seem to fit in very well (so some would alter -lto to -ltë in LotR-style Quenya, though there is no evidence for such an ending). I tend to assume that Tolkien eventually scrapped this ending completely, replacing it with -ntë.
	The opinion has been voiced that -lto is valid all the same. Some would interpret Tolkien's note about -ntë being used "where no subject is previously mentioned" in an absolute sense: It wouldn't be enough that the subject has not been "previously mentioned" in the same sentence, as I assumed above. Of course, when the word "they" is used in English, it usually refers back to some group mentioned earlier in the text or conversation. According to the strict interpretation of Tolkien's note about -ntë, this pronominal ending cannot be used for any "they" that refers back to some group mentioned earlier, even if it was in a quite different sentence. The ending -ntë would only point forward, to some group that is to be identified later in the text or sentence (as is the case in Cirion's Oath). "They" referring back to some other group (already mentioned in another sentence) would require a quite different ending, perhaps the -lto attested in earlier sources.
I can't claim that this isn't a possible interpretation of Tolkien's words or the available examples. However, I still have a bad feeling about using the ending -lto in LotR-style Quenya. In the exercises I have made for this course, I have ignored -lto, assuming that -ntë can be used as a pronominal ending signifying "they" in a general sense. When Tolkien speaks of -ntë being used only for a subject that has not been "previously mentioned", I assume that he means "not previously mentioned in the same sentence" (for if a plural subject had already occurred, the verb would receive only the normal plural marker -r). Hence we can – presumably – have forms like these, with -ntë attached to the various tenses of pusta- "to stop":

	Aorist pustantë "they stop"
	Present pustëantë "they are stopping"
	Past pustanentë "they stopped"
	Future pustuvantë "they will stop"
	Perfect upustientë "they have stopped"

As indicated by the attested example tiruvantes = "they will guard it", a second pronominal ending can be attached following -ntë (-nte-), denoting the object of the sentence. This brings us over to another question: If -ntë is the subject ending "they", what is the corresponding object ending "them"?
	Discussing adverbs above, we have already quoted the sentence andavë laituvalmet "long we will praise them" from LotR. Knowing that laituvalmet means "we will praise them", we can easily isolate the final -t as the element translated "them". (The cunning student will also be able to isolate the pronominal ending signifying "we", but we will save that one for later: Actually Quenya has several endings for "we", with different shades of meaning.)
As usual, things are not quite crystal clear. The ones being praised here are Frodo and Sam, two persons. Some have therefore assumed that this -t is a dual "them", even suggesting that laituvalmet may be rendered "we will praise both [of them]". Those adhering to this theory have been encouraged by the fact that there is also a dual ending -t (as in ciryat "2 ships"; look up Lesson Three again). Nothing can be definitely ruled out at this time, but the ending -t "them" would seem to match -ntë "they" quite well. I don't think -t is exclusively dual, but in any case, this is one ending that can be translated "them". Hence, forms like the following must be possible:

	Tirnenyet = "I watched them"
	Melilyet = "you love them"
	Hiruvanyet = "I will find them"
	
and even:

	Pustanentet = "they stopped them"

Likely, this would refer to two different groups. "They stopped themselves" is probably expressed in another way (unfortunately we don't really know how).

INFINITIVES WITH OBJECT PRONOUNS
So far, we have identified two pronominal endings that can be used as the object of the sentence, -s for "it" and -t for "they". As is evident from attested examples (tiruvantes "they will guard it", laituvalmet "we will praise them"), these object endings may be attached to a finite verb following another pronominal ending denoting the subject. But what about a longer verbal phrase involving an infinitive?
	Let us start with a sentence like i mól veryanë cenë i aran ar i tári, "the thrall dared to see the king and the queen". Here we have a finite verb veryanë "dared" + an infinitive cenë "to see". Now we want to get rid of the whole phrase "the king and the queen", replacing it with the object pronoun "them", hence "the thrall dared to see them". (Notice that I deliberately construct an example that will be compatible with the theory of -t "them" being dual only, even though I don't believe this to be the case...unnecessary risks are just that, unnecessary!) Well, where do we put the ending -t? Quite obviously, it must be attached to the infinitive cenë "to see". Cenet, then? Or, since the infinitive cenë seems to represent Primitive Elvish keni and primitive -i changes to -ë only when final, one might think that cenit is a better choice. So "the thrall dared to see them" = i mól veryanë cenit, right?
	Wrong! In Vinyar Tengwar #41, July 2000, it was revealed that the infinitive of primary verbs is formed with the ending -ita if any pronominal endings are to be added (actually the suffix is only -ta-, which added to an infinitive like cenë = ceni- produces cenita-). Tolkien in some of his late (ca. 1969) notes refers to "the general (aorist) 'infinitive' formed by adding -i (not as such capable of any further suffixion; with pronominal affixes it was the stem of the aorist tense); the particular infinitive with -ita differing in use from the preceding mainly in being able to receive pronominal object affixes" (VT41:17). He went on to quote the example caritas, "doing it" (or probably just as well "to do it") – an infinitive of the verb car- "do" with the object ending -s "it" attached.
As I pointed out in the previous lesson, it is unclear whether the reference to an infinitive constructed by "adding -i" implies that there is a contemporary Quenya infinitive that shows the ending -i. Tolkien may simply refer to the original form of the infinitive ending, e.g. Primitive Elvish kweti as the form underlying the contemporary Quenya form quetë "(to) speak" (attested in the sentence polin quetë "I can speak"). Anyhow, this infinitive was "not as such capable of any further suffixation", apparently to avoid confusion with "the stem of the aorist tense". The infinitive of car- "make, do" would be carë (cari-), but if we tried to add an ending like -s "it" directly to it in order to express "to do it", the resulting form **caris would look just like the aorist "it does" or "it makes". The actual form caritas is not ambiguous.
In the case of "they make" vs. "to make them", there would be a distinction even without the extra -ta-, since the subject ending for "they" (-ntë) differs from the object ending "them" (-t). Even so, Tolkien apparently decided to eliminate any possible confusion between aorist forms with subject endings and infinitives with object endings: The infinitives insert -ta- between the infinitive proper and the pronominal suffixes. Therefore, the infinitive "to see" is expanded from cenë to cenita- when it is to receive any object ending. "The thrall dared to see them" must actually be i mól veryanë cenitat, the extra -ta- intruding between the infinitive and the object ending.
	It is unclear whether A-stem verbs behave in the same way. Vinyar Tengwar #41 published only a very brief quote from Tolkien's 1969 notes (the editor apparently needed the space for more important things, like an in-depth article about the optimal Bulgarian translation of the Ring Poem). The quote, reproduced above, apparently only deals with the infinitive form of primary verbs – the ones that have aorists in -ë or with endings -i-. Some writers have assumed that A-stem verbs functioning as infinitives would similarly add -ta before any object pronominal endings are suffixed. So with verbs like metya- "to end, to put an end to" and mapa- "to seize", it would work something like this:

	Merintë metyatas "they want to end it" 
	I ohtari úvar mapatat "the warriors will not seize them"
		
Perhaps such sentences are quite OK, perhaps not. Presently there is no way of telling. One may doubt that the ending -ta would be added to the stem of a verb that ends in -ta already, like orta- "to lift up, to raise". Should "I can lift it" really be polin ortatas? Generally, Quenya is not very fond of two adjacent similar-sounding syllables, like the two ta's here.
	Luckily, we can work around this uncertainty. We can simply avoid attaching object pronominal endings to the infinitives of A-stem verbs, since we know at least some independent object pronouns (e.g. te "them" instead of the ending -t – so for, say, "you wanted to seize them" we can have mernelyë mapa te instead of the uncertain construction ?mernelyë mapatat). We will discuss the independent pronouns in a later lesson. In the exercises below, the infinitives in -ita + object suffix only involve primary verbs.

It is interesting to notice that Tolkien translated caritas as "doing it" (VT41:17). This may suggest that such infinitives can also function as the subject of a sentence, e.g. cenitas farya nin "seeing it is enough for me" (farya- verb "to suffice, to be enough"; nin "to/for me").

THE PAST TENSE OF INTRANSITIVE VERBS IN -YA 
In Lesson Six, we set out some rules for "regular" past tense formation, but we also touched on various "irregular" forms (that is, past tense formations that don't readily fall into the most common patterns). Some of these may actually form sub-groups that are "regular" enough according to their own special rules.
	Let me first introduce a couple of terms that will facilitate the following discussion: transitive and intransitive. In linguist terminology, a verb is said to be transitive if it can have an object. Most verbs readily can, but not all. A verb like "to fall" is not transitive (= intransitive). The subject itself may "fall", but the subject cannot "fall" something else; there can be no object. A typical intransitive verb only describes an action which the subject itself performs, not an action that is, or can be, done to someone or something. (I say "typical", for Quenya actually has some verbs that cannot even have a subject, the so-called impersonal verbs – to be discussed in Lesson Eighteen.)
	Some verbs form pairs where one verb is transitive, the other intransitive. The subject may raise an object (transitively), but the subject by itself can only rise (intransitively) – not involving any object at all. Other examples of such pairs include transitive "to fell" vs. intransitive "to fall", or transitive "to lay" vs. intransitive "to lie". But in many cases, English uses the same verb form both intransitively and transitively, e.g. "to sink". A subject may sink an object (e.g. "the torpedo sank the ship", transitive verb with both subject and object), or the subject just "sinks" all by itself, so to speak (e.g. "the ship sank", intransitive verb with subject only – obviously "sank" is used with two quite different meanings here). Such ambiguity may also occur in Quenya; for instance, orta- covers both "to raise" and "to rise", and the context must be taken into account to determine which meaning is relevant. (To be more concrete: check if the sentence includes an object or not! E.g. i aran orta = "the king rises", but i aran orta ranco = "the king raises an arm".)
	Let us then consider some "irregular" Quenya verbs. The verb farya- "to suffice, to be enough" is said to have the past tense farnë, irregular in the sense that the ending -ya of the verbal stem drops out before the past tense ending -në: We might have expected **faryanë, but the Etymologies lists a few more verbs that exemplify the same phenomenon: Vanya- "to go, depart, disappear" has the past tense vannë. (Likely, Tolkien later replaced the verb vanya- with auta- of similar meaning, but we may still consider it here.) To these examples from the Etymologies (see entries PHAR, WAN) we may add a verb the student is supposed to have memorized as part of the previous lesson: lelya- "to go, proceed, travel" from WJ:363. Its past tense is not **lelyanë, but lendë, seemingly a quite irregular form (though not as wildly irregular as English "to go" vs. its past tense "went"!) The sudden appearance of the cluster nd is no big mystery; it arises by nasal-infixion of the original root LED. (This root is listed in the Etymologies, though according to a later source, LED is reworked from even more primitive DEL. Lelya- is meant to descend from primitive ledyâ- [ledjâ-], "since dj became ly medially in Quenya" [WJ:363]. The past tense lendë would come from lendê, not so dissimilar from the verb ledyâ- as these forms later became.) The real mystery here is this: Why do the verbs farya-, vanya-, and lelya- surrender the ending -ya in the past tense?
	It may be noted that by their meaning, all three verbs are distinctly intransitive: To suffice, to disappear, to go. This could be just a coincidence, of course, but the Etymologies provides us with another highly interesting example. In the entry ULU, a verb ulya- "to pour" is listed. Tolkien indicated that it has a double past tense. If the verb is used in a transitive sense, as in "the servant poured water into a cup", the past tense "poured" is ulyanë. This would be an entirely "regular" form. However, if the verb is used intransitively, the past tense of ulya- is ullë instead (presumably representing older unlë, formed by nasal-infixion from ul- without the ending -ya; cf. villë as the past tense of vil- "to fly", though in the latter case no ending -ya appears in any form of the verb). So if you want to translate "the river poured into a gorge", the form to use is ullë, not ulyanë.
	It seems, then, that we can discern a pattern here: Intransitive verbs in -ya drop this ending in the past tense; the past tense is formed from the ending-less root, as in the case of primary verbs. Or put differently: In the past tense, intransitive verbs in -ya surrender this ending to masquerade as primary verbs. In the rare cases where a verb can be both transitive and intransitive, the ending -ya is retained when it is used in a transitive sense (as in the pa.t. form ulyanë), but dropped when the verb is used in an intransitive sense (ullë).
	Why this should be so is of course entirely obscure. In other tenses than the past, the verb ulya- "to pour" would seem to appear in the same form no matter whether it is transitive or intransitive (aorist ulya "pours", present tense ulyëa "is pouring", future ulyuva "shall pour" etc.) But it was never Tolkien's intention to make a new Esperanto, a language aiming to be 100 % regular and logical. Within his mythos, Quenya is supposed to be an ordinary spoken tongue, developed over thousands of years. Hence, Tolkien may deliberately have included what you will find in any natural language: certain features that don't necessarily make immediate "sense".
	Most verbs in -ya are transitive, and would presumably retain their ending in the past tense, before the pa.t. suffix -në is added (as in the attested example ulyanë). Here are most of the remaining intransitive verbs in -ya, though Tolkien did not actually mention any past tense forms in their case: hwinya- "to swirl, to gyrate" (past tense hwinnë?), mirilya- "to glitter" (pa.t. mirillë? – cf. ulya-, pa.t. ullë), ranya- "to stray" (pa.t. rannë?), súya- "to breathe" (pa.t. súnë?), tiuya- "to swell, grow fat" (pa.t. tiunë?) The verb yerya- can be both transitive "to wear (out)" and intransitive "to get old". Perhaps the past tense is yeryanë in the former sense and yernë in the latter sense, just like we have transitive ulyanë coexisting with intransitive ullë as the past tense "poured"?
I should add that all of this is somewhat hypothetical, since Tolkien did not actually mention the past tense of very many intransitive verbs in -ya. But the student should at least notice the attested "irregular" past tenses, including the double pa.t. of ulya- "to pour" and especially lendë "went" as the rather unexpected past tense form of lelya- "to go, travel, proceed".

NOTE: The perfect tense of this verb appears as lendië in some texts. SD:56 indicates that in one draft, Tolkien used lendien rather than utúlien for "I have come" in Elendil's Declaration ("out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth have I come"). Lendien would mean, literally, "I have gone/went/traveled" or something similar. This perfect form is not augmented, possibly simply because Tolkien had not yet invented the augment that is usually prefixed in the perfect tense. I would normally supply it, using elendië as the perfect of lelya-. I have used this perfect in (the key to) one of the exercises below.

PASSIVE PARTICIPLES
Then we will return to the participles. The logical counterpart of the active participles discussed in the previous lesson is obviously the passive participles. They are often called "past participles" instead (just like the active participles are frequently referred to as "present participles"). However, the term "passive participle" is very fitting. This participle is an adjectival form derived from the stem of a verb, and it describes the state that something or someone is left in by being exposed to the corresponding verbal action. For instance: If you hide something, it is hidden. Therefore, "hidden" is the passive participle of the verb "to hide". The word "hidden" can be used as an adjective, both predicatively ("the treasure is hidden") and attributively ("hidden treasure"). The passive participle "hidden" contrasts with the active participle "hiding": The latter describes the state of the subject, the acting party, whereas the passive participle describes the state of the object, the one passively exposed to the verbal action.
	In the case of intransitive verbs, where no object can be involved, this participle describes the state of the subject itself after carrying out the verbal action in question: If you fall, you will thereafter be fallen; if you go, you will thereafter be gone. Here the often-used term "past participle" makes sense; participles like fallen or gone describe the condition of the subject after carrying out some "past" action. They are seen to contrast with the "present participles" (active participles) falling and going, which describe the condition of the subject while the verbal action is still "present" or on-going. But as long as we are dealing with transitive verbs – and most verbs are transitive – I still think it is better to speak of "active participles" vs. "passive participles".
	In English, quite a few passive participles have the ending -en, as in the examples hidden, fallen above. But in very many cases, English passive participles are similar in form to the past tense of verbs, though the words have wildly different functions (a form like tormented is a past tense verb in a sentence like "they tormented the Dwarf", but a passive participle in a sentence like "the Dwarf was tormented"). So what do the corresponding Quenya forms look like?
	The vast majority of Quenya participles seem to be formed by means of the ending -na or its longer variant -ina. Some attested A-stem participles are seen to include the longer ending, the final -a of the verbal stem and the i of the suffix -ina merging into a diphthong -ai- (which receives the stress, like any diphthong in the second-to-last syllable). An example is provided by the phrase Arda Hastaina, "Arda Marred", an Elvish term for the world as it is, tainted by the evil of Morgoth (MR:254). This hastaina "marred" would seem to be the passive participle of a verb hasta- "to mar", not otherwise attested. However, the verb hosta- "to gather, collect, assemble" is attested both in the Etymologies (entry KHOTH) and in the Markirya poem (MC:222-223). Its passive participle turns up in Fíriel's Song, where it is implied to be hostaina (attested in the form hostainiéva "will be gathered"; the suffix -iéva "will be" is hardly valid in LotR-style Quenya, but the underlying participle certainly is). We can probably conclude that A-stems in -ta nearly always have passive participles in -taina. Since anta- means "give", the participle "given" would be antaina. Since orta- means "raise" (or used intransitively, "rise"), the word for "raised" (and "risen") would seem to be ortaina.
	Perhaps the ending -ina can be added to nearly all A-stems? From a verb like mapa- "grasp, seize", I think we may well derive mapaina as the participle "grasped, seized". (Indirect support for this: The ending -ina is also used to derive adjectives, as in valaina "divine" – obviously an adjectival formation based on Vala, which noun is analogous in form to a simple A-stem like mapa-. Indeed it is hinted that the noun Vala is originally derived from a simple A-stem verb vala- "to order, to have power": WJ:403-4. If it had remained a verb only, valaina could have meant "ordered" instead.)
	The behaviour of A-stems in -ya is slightly obscure. In the Etymologies, Tolkien listed a root PER "divide in middle, halve" (cf. Sindarin Perian "halfling, Hobbit"). He then mentioned a Quenya word perya, evidently a verb preserving the root meaning. Immediately after perya, he listed an undefined word perina. Is this the passive participle "halved"? I think this is almost certainly the meaning of this word, but perhaps we should see it as an independent adjectival formation derived directly from the root, not as the passive participle of the verb perya-. (We might have excepted périna with a long é if it were a passive participle; see below regarding the rácina pattern.)
	Elsewhere in the Etymologies, in the entry GYER, we have a verb yerya- "to wear (out), get old". The same entry also mentions a word yerna "worn". As far as the English glosses are concerned, yerna could be the passive participle of the verb yerya-. Should we conclude, then, that verbs in -ya form their passive participles by replacing this ending with -na? Again I think yerna is not actually the participle of yerya-, but rather an independent adjectival formation. The following facts support this: 1) Tolkien traced yerna all the way back to Primitive Elvish gyernâ, so it was not derived from the verb later; 2) Tolkien actually listed the form yerna before he mentioned the verb yerya-, again suggesting that the former is not to be derived from the latter, 3) yerna is glossed "old" as well as "worn", and the first gloss suggests that yerna is to be considered an independent adjective, not a participle. Same story as with perina above, then. This would also go for a pair like halya- "veil " vs. halda "veiled, hidden" (entry SKAL1): The latter form Tolkien referred to Primitive Elvish skalnâ (initial sk- becoming h- and ln becoming ld in Quenya). It may well be that in Primitive Elvish, skalnâ did count as the passive participle of the verbal root SKAL- "screen, hide", but its Quenya descendant halda has developed into an independent adjective (one of Tolkien's glosses for this word, "shady", is also an adjective). Thus, halda is not necessarily the passive participle of the verb halya- derived from the same root, though it has somewhat the same meaning as the actual participle would have.
	So how, really, are we to treat verbs in -ya? I think a highly interesting clue is provided in MR:326 (cf. MR:315), where Christopher Tolkien tells us that in a post-LotR text, Tolkien used Mirruyainar or Mirroyainar for "the Incarnate" (plural). This may seem to be passive participles inflected as nouns: "incarnated ones". Removing the plural ending -r, we are left with mirruyaina/mirroyaina as a possible participle "incarnated" – and if we peel away the presumed participial ending as well, the verb "to incarnate" would seem to be mirruya- or mirroya-. Tolkien later changed the word Mirruyainar/Mirroyainar to Mirroanwi, not involving any -ya- at all, but the rejected forms may still give away what the passive participle of a verb in -ya should look like. Such verbs would seem to have participles in -yaina, just like verbs in -ta have participles in -taina. So given that lanya- is the verb "to weave", the word for "woven" may well be lanyaina. The regular passive participles of the verbs perya- "to halve", yerya- "to wear (out)" and halya- "to veil" would similarly be peryaina, yeryaina, halyaina (meaning much the same as the related adjectives perina, yerna, halda, of course, but the latter may not so clearly imply that the described states are inflicted – see below regarding harna- vs. harnaina).
	We can probably conclude that nearly all A-stem verbs form their passive participles by adding -ina. The only exception occurring in the published corpus is the form envinyanta "healed" or more literally "renewed" (MR:405). It would seem to be the passive participle of a verb envinyata- "renew" (not attested by itself, but cf. Aragorn's title Envinyatar "Renewer"). This participle is formed by means of nasal-infixion intruding before the ending -ta. We cannot know whether the more "regular" formation envinyataina, itself unattested, would be a valid form.
However, the ending -ina is not only used in the case of A-stems; primary verbs with c or t as their final consonant also form their passive participles by means of this ending. The Markirya poem includes a form rácina "broken" (man tiruva rácina cirya[?] "who shall see [/watch] a broken ship?", MR:222). Tolkien explicitly identified rácina as the passive (or "past") participle of the verb rac- "to break" (MC:223). The verb "to reckon, to count" is not-, and in Fíriel's Song we have nótina as the passive participle "counted". It seems, then, that primary verbs ending in unvoiced stops like c or t form their passive participles by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding the long ending -ina. We don't seem to have any attested example of the participle of a primary verb ending in -p (another unvoiced stop), but it would in all likelihood slip into the same pattern: The verb top- "to cover" would have the passive participle tópina "covered". (The verb top- is listed in the Etymologies; the poem Namárië in LotR may suggest that Tolkien later changed it to tup-. If so, the participle would of course be túpina instead.) Perhaps primary verbs in -v also form their passive participles according to this pattern, e.g. lávina "allowed, granted" from the verb lav- "allow, grant" (not to be confused with a similar-sounding verb meaning "lick"). We lack examples, though.
Attested examples don't exactly abound for other primary verbs either, but most of them probably prefer the short ending -na to -ina. MR:408 (cf. MR:405) indicates that Tolkien used vincarna for "healed"; the more literal meaning is transparently "renewed" or wholly literally "newly-made": Vin- is the stem of the Quenya adjective vinya "new", and carna "made" can only be the passive participle of the verb car- "make". So primary verbs ending in -r have passive participles in -rna (and because of the consonant cluster here arising, the stem-vowel preceding it obviously can not be lengthened as in the rácina class discussed above). Given that mer- is the Quenya verb "to want", the Wanted posters of the Quenya Wild West would evidently read Merna. Perhaps mérina, cárina (following rácina) would be possible alternative passive participles of mer-, car-, perhaps not. I think it is best to let the attested example carna guide us here.
For primary verbs in -m and -n, we only have what may be called indirect examples of their passive participles, but they are probably good enough. The verb nam- "to judge" (namin "I judge", VT41:13) seems to have the passive participle namna. This form is attested as a noun meaning "statute" (as in Namna Finwë Míriello, "the Statute of Finwë and Míriel", MR:258). Apparently the participle namna, basically meaning "judged", is also used as a noun "judgement, juridical decision" and then "statute". As for primary verbs in -n, we may consider such nouns as anna "gift" and onna "creature" vs. the verbs anta- "to give" and onta- "to create" (see the entries ANA1, ONO in Etym) These are not primary verbs, of course (and in Quenya we would expect them to have the participles antaina, ontaina) – but the nouns anna, onna may descend from primitive participial formations based on the naked root-word, before -ta was added to produce the verbs as they appear in Quenya. So anna may come from a primitive participle "given", only later used as a noun "something that is given" = "gift". Onna might likewise represent an original passive participle "created", later used as a noun "created one" = "creature". I tend to think, therefore, that the ending -na can be added to the stems of Quenya primary verbs ending in -n. For instance, since cen- is the verb "to see", cenna may well be the passive participle "seen". But again, cénina may be a permissible alternative formation (perhaps we can also have námina for "judged", for all I know).
What about primary verbs in -l, such as mel- "love"? If we don't resort to the pattern of rácina once again, using mélina for "loved", the ending -na would have to be added directly to the verbal stem. But since **melna is not a possible Quenya word, ln would become ld, just as in one example discussed above (Quenya halda descending from Primitive Elvish skalnâ). The Etymologies actually lists a word melda, glossed "beloved, dear". These glosses are adjectives, but by their meaning they are of course very close to the participle "loved". So are we once again looking at an original participle that has developed into an independent adjective? Would the actual participle of mel- differ in form, precisely to distinguish it from this adjective? If so we might consider mélina again. Or is melda both the adjective "dear" and the participle "loved"? One may well ask whether there is any point in even trying to distinguish between them, since their meanings would be virtually the same.
Another example may also be considered: The Quenya verb "to bear, to wear, to carry" seems to be col-, though it has never been independently attested: Only various derivations are found in our corpus. One of them appears in MR:385: colla = "borne, worn" (also used as a noun "vestment, cloak", considered as "something that is worn"). Is this an example of the past participle of a primary verb ending in -l? Can we use mella for "loved", then? I tend to think that colla is rather an adjectival derivative – perhaps representing primitive konlâ with nasal-infixion of the root KOL (not in Etym). By its original derivation it would then parallel such a Quenya adjective as panta "open" (which Tolkien referred to Primitive Elvish pantâ, derived from the root PAT listed in Etym). I'm afraid no quite certain conclusion can be reached regarding the passive participles of primary verbs in -l, but I think the safest would be to either use the ending -da (representing earlier -na), or the longer ending -ina combined with lengthening of the stem-vowel.

Should passive participles agree in number, like normal adjectives do? In other words, should the final -a turn into -ë (for older -ai) if the participle describes a plural noun? As far as I can see, the corpus provides no example that could guide us. We recall that active participles (ending -la) do not agree in number. However, I tend to think that passive participles do behave like normal adjectives in this regard. We have just seen that in many cases it is difficult to even determine whether a form is to be considered a passive participle or an adjective, since adjectives may be derived with the same endings. (For that matter, this goes for English as well: An adjective like naked could well have been a passive participle by its form; however, there is no corresponding verb **nake "denude", so we can't set up a pair **nake/naked like we have love/loved.) Since adjectives like valaina "divine" and yerna "old" must be assumed to agree in number, it is difficult to imagine that participles like hastaina "marred" or carna "made" would not show such agreement. So I would change the final -a to -ë where the participle describes a plural noun (or several nouns).

In English, past/passive participles are used as part of the circumlocutions which simulate the function of a true perfect tense: "The Dwarf has seen the Elf"; "the woman is (or, has) fallen". But here Quenya would simply use the real perfect tense instead: I Nauco ecénië i Elda; i nís alantië. Perhaps ná lantaina is also permissible for "is fallen", but rendering "the Dwarf has seen the Elf" as **i Nauco harya cenna i Elda (copying the English wording directly) only results in nonsense.

A final note: In some cases, forms in -na that were originally participial or adjectival have themselves become A-stem verbs. The primitive word skarnâ, listed in the entry SKAR in the Etymologies, was perhaps originally a passive participle "torn, rent" (since the root SKAR itself is said to mean "tear, rend"). In Quenya, skarnâ turned into harna "wounded", probably felt to be an adjective rather than a participle. The funny thing is that harna- also came to be used as a verb "to wound", and if this verb has its own passive participle harnaina, we would have come full circle! In English, both harna and harnaina must be translated "wounded", but whereas harna would merely describe the state of being wounded, harnaina clearly implies that the wounds were inflicted. Cf. the English adjective "full" (merely describing a state) vs. the passive participle "filled" (implying that the state in question results from the act of filling).

Summary of Lesson Ten: Adverbs are words used to fill in extra information about the how, the when, or the where of the verbal action described in a sentence. In English at least, an adverb can also be used to modify the meaning of an adjective, or even another adverb. – The Quenya pronominal ending for "they" is apparently -ntë (Tolkien probably dropped the ending -lto occurring in early material); the corresponding object ending "them" seems to be -t (though some think it is dual "the two of them" only). – Primary verbs, which have infinitives in -ë (e.g. quetë "to speak, to say"), turn into forms in -ita- if a pronominal ending denoting the object is to be added (e.g. quetitas "to say it", with the ending -s "it"). – Available examples seem to suggest that intransitive verbs in -ya drop this ending in the past tense, which is formed directly from the stem instead (as if the verb were a primary verb). For instance, the pa.t. of farya- "to suffice" is farnë, not **faryanë. – Passive participles are adjectival derivatives that usually describe the state that is inflicted on someone or something by the corresponding verbal action: what you hide (verb) becomes hidden (passive participle). A-stem verbs seem to form their passive participles in -ina (e.g. hastaina "marred" from hasta- "to mar"). This ending is also used in the case of primary verbs ending in -t and -c, probably also -p and possibly even -v; in this class of verbs, the ending is combined with lengthening of the stem-vowel (e.g. rácina "broken" from rac- "to break"). It may be that the same pattern can be applied to all primary verbs, but verbs in -r are seen to take the simple ending -na instead, with no lengthening of the stem-vowel (carna "made" from car- "to make"). Primary verbs in -m, and probably also -n, would similarly take the simple ending -na (e.g. namna "judged" from nam- "to judge", cenna "seen" from cen- "to see"). It is somewhat uncertain how we should treat primary verbs in -l; if we are to use the simple ending -na, it would turn into -da for phonological reasons (e.g. melna > melda "loved" as the passive participle of mel- "to love"; melda is attested as an adjective "beloved, dear"). Passive participles probably agree in number in the same way as adjectives, changing -a to -ë if they describe a plural noun or several nouns.

VOCABULARY

nertë "nine"
núra "deep"
anwa "real, actual, true"
nulda "secret"
telda "final" (adjective derived from the same root as the name of the Teleri, the Third Clan of the Eldar, so called because they were always the last or hindmost during the March from Cuiviénen – far behind the Vanyar and the Noldor, who were more eager to reach the Blessed Realm)
linta "swift" (pl. lintë in Namárië, which poem refers to lintë yuldar = "swift draughts")
hosta- "to assemble, gather"
nórë "land" (a land associated with a particular people, WJ:413) 
lambë "tongue = language" (not "tongue" as a body part)
car- "to make, to do"
farya- "to suffice, to be enough", pa.t. farnë (NOT **faryanë – because the verb is intransitive?)
ve preposition "as, like"

EXERCISES

Translate into English:

A. Melinyet núravë.
B. Lindantë vanyavë, ve Eldar.
C. Ilyë nertë andor nar tirnë.
D. Merintë hiritas lintavë.
E. Haryalyë atta parmar, ar teldavë ecendielyet.
F. Anwavë ecénien Elda.
G. I nurtaina harma úva hirna.
H. Úmentë merë caritas, an cenitas farnë.

Translate into Quenya:

I. They have traveled [/gone] secretly through the land.
J. The assembled Elves wanted to see it.
K. Written language is not like spoken language.
L. Five ships were not enough [/did not suffice]; nine sufficed.
M. I will really stop doing it [/truly cease to do it].
N. They swiftly gathered the nine terrified Dwarves.
O. Finally you will see them as you have wanted to see them.
P. They don't want to hear it.

Lessons 11-15 may be downloaded from this URL:
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/less-c.rtf