introduction
Welcome to part two of the first Na'vi Survival Guide lesson series: Basic Sentence Building
In part two, we will explore the other components that make up a simple sentence. By the end of this lesson, you should expect to be able to do the following:
- Identify the subject of a sentence
- Identify the object of a sentence
- Create complete Na'vi sentences using the subject and object
Take advantage of the review sections at the end of each lesson to practice and reinforce the skills you're learning, and join us on Discord for even more practice. Click the right arrow or press the right arrow key to navigate to the next section in this lesson!
subjects and objects
When you approach Na'vi with a background in English, one of the first hurdles to overcome is Na'vi's flexible word order. Simple English sentences are always structured using the following basic components: subject, verb, and possibly an object if the sentence is transitive.
- The subject is the "doer" of the action of a sentence.
- The action of a sentence is called the verb.
- The object is the person, place, or thing that is being affected by the verb.
The role of the subject or object in an English sentence is indicated by its position relative to the verb in the sentence. Simple English sentences will always be structured in subject, verb, object (SVO) order. Because of this, in a sentence like "Jake eats teylu" it's clear who is eating who, and if we switch the order to "Teylu eats Jake", the meaning is different.
subjects and objects continued
In Na'vi, word order is not fixed to (SVO) order because nouns are modified with noun case endings: an additional sound added to the end of a subject or object which indicates its role (also called a case) in the sentence. This allows for more flexibility in structure, with up to six configurations that would allow a sentence like "teylu eats Jake" (OSV) or "eats Jake teylu" (VSO) to still be understood as "Jake eats teylu" . Let's take a look at how this works.
The first two case endings we are going to address are called the agentive and the patientive.
the agentive case
The agentive case is used to indicate the subject of a sentence in a transitive construction - Remember: A transitive sentence is one that has an object. The agentive case endings are listed below:
| Vowel Ending | Consonant Ending
|
| -l | -ìl
|
Note: If you're using a transitive verb intransitively, meaning that you use it without an object, then the agentive ending is not used on the subject. For example: oe taron, not *oel taron, if you just generally want to say "I hunt", without specifying what you are hunting. Similarily, if you are using an intransitive verb, no agentive ending is used. For example: oe tul, not *oel tul.
the patientive case
The patientive case is used to indicate the object of a sentence in a transitive construction. The patientive suffixes are listed below:
| Vowel Ending | Consonant Ending
|
| -t(i) | -ti, -it
|
Note: For the patientive case endings, -ti can be used with words that end in either vowels or consonants. The choice between -ti and -t for words ending in a vowel, and -ti and -it for words ending in a consonant, is speaker preference. Please note that the overview above is a simplification - specifically with diphthongs (ay, ey, aw, ew) more complicated rules apply, which will not be discussed here to keep it simple for now.
constructing simple sentences
The following sentence is a complete Na'vi sentence in SVO word order. The subject, verb and object are marked with their respective case endings. TapHover over the Na'vi words for a translation:
All together, this sentence translates as I eat fish, with the words arranged in the same word order that we would see in an English sentence. Now, let's take a look at how we can rearrange the order of the words without changing the meaning.
constructing simple sentences continued
Thanks to the flexibility of the language, this sentence can be arranged in one of six ways in Na'vi:
| oel yom payoangti
| yom oel payoangti
|
| oel payoangti yom
| yom payoangti oel
|
| payoangti oel yom
| payoangti yom oel
|
In this example, our subject oe takes the agentive case ending as the subject of the verb. The verb yom remains unmodified, and the object payoang takes the patientive case ending as the object of the verb. Because of this, no matter where these nouns fall in the sentence, the sentence can be understood as "I eat fish" - the word order is flexible!
summary
The subject is the "doer" of the verb of a sentence.
You can identify the subject by asking "who is doing the action" about a sentence.
The object is the person, place or thing affected by the verb of a sentence.
You can identify the object by asking "what is affected by the action being done" about a sentence.
Subjects are marked with the agentive case endings -l or -ìl if there's both a subject and object present - so if the sentence is transitive. -l for nouns ending in a vowel, -ìl for nouns ending in a consonant. Subjects do not get any case ending if they are in an intransitive sentence, so in a sentence without an object.
Objects are marked with the patientive case endings -t(i) or -it. -t(i) for nouns ending in a vowel, -it/-ti for nouns ending in a consonant.
Because of these case endings, Na'vi has flexible word order.
review
Complete the following sentences to check your retention of the terms learned so far! Confirmation will appear when the correct answer is entered.
practice
Mark each noun with the correct ending. Remember: subject is orange, object is purple, and verb is blue. You can hover over unfamiliar Na'vi words to see their meaning. If you have issues with the accented ì or ä, longpress the key on your mobile device keyboard, or copy-paste the letter.
practice
For these final exercises, use the provided Na'vi words to create the English sentence.
conclusion
Excellent!
txantsan
You've completed Lesson 1.2: Your First Sentences!
To begin Lesson 1.3: Indirect Objects, click the button below.