introduction
Welcome to part three of the first Na'vi Survival Guide lesson series: Basic Sentence Building
In part three, we will explore one other component that make up a simple sentence. By the end of this lesson, you should expect to be able to do the following:
- Identify the indirect object of a sentence
- Build on your knowledge to create more complex sentences using the indirect 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!
indirect objects
Now that you have some practice with the basics of Na'vi sentence building, it's time to add another piece to the puzzle: The indirect object.
The indirect object is sometimes referred to as the recipient. This is because the indirect object most frequently "receives" the object of the sentence via the action of the sentence.
Na'vi uses the dative noun case to indicate the indirect object. You can find the case endings below:
| Vowel Ending | Consonant Ending
|
| -r(u) | -ur
|
Note: Similar to the object case endings, the trailing u on the vowel ending can be dropped according to speaker preference. Keep in mind that this again is a simplification, and especially with the diphthongs (ay, ey, aw, ew) more complex rules apply, which will not be discussed in this introduction.
practical use
As discussed, the dative noun case is used to indicate the indirect object or recipient of the object in a sentence. Let's take a look at a Na'vi sentence that uses the dative:
Note the presence of the indirect object case ending on nga here. This indicates that nga is receiving the object, tsko. Because of this, this sentence can be understood as "I give the bow to you". Pretty neat!
Thanks again to the flexible word order in the Na'vi language, this sentence can be arranged in one of twenty-four ways! Don't worry, we're not going to list them out here.
intransitive use
One of the quirks of Na'vi is that there are certain intransitive verbs that can take an indirect object instead of an object (remember: vin. cannot take an object). These verbs are ones that can sometimes be transitive in English, so pay close attention to the transitivity when using a dictionary. Let's take the verb srung si as an example:
Note: If a verb does not have an object, even if it has an indirect object, the subject does not take a case ending.
Note: If a verb has a si included, you can quickly identify it as an intransitive verb (vin.). Often it helps looking at the literal translation to understand why a verb is intransitive: srung si for example, while being translated as "to help" in English, literally means something like "to do help" - and you do help to someone! Therefore, the Na'vi language uses the indirect object with this verb.
summary
The indirect object is the "recipient" of the verb and/or object of a sentence. It can be identified by asking "to whom is the action done".
Indirect objects are marked with the dative case endings -ru/-r or -ur. -ru/-r for nouns ending in a vowel, -ur for nouns ending in a consonant.
Mark each noun with the correct ending. Remember the color codes for subject, object, verb and indirect object. You can hover over unfamiliar Na'vi words to see their meaning.
For the next exercises, translate the English sentence using the Na'vi words provided. Reference the case endings in the previous chapter if necessary!