Explorations into Tolkien's Elvish Languages

Early Elvish Pronouns and The 1920's Early Qenya Grammar

In the first post on Tolkien’s system of Elvish Pronouns, we delved into how he expressed pronouns in his earliest work on Qenya and Gnomish. This involved prefixes, infixes, suffixes, and independent forms, showcasing a somewhat nascent fluid system.

By the time Tolkien became Reader at Leeds in 1920, he'd been working on his first Elvish language since around 1915. During this period, he documented the phonology and vocabulary derived from word roots for his Elvish language in several key documents, including ‘The Qenya Lexicon’ and ‘The Qenya Phonology’. These documents capture the sounds, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax elements that Tolkien used to construct names for people, places, and items in his developing mythology, culminating in the tales known as The Book of Lost Tales.

By 1915-1916, Tolkien's development of Qenya reached a level of linguistic complexity that allowed him to compose a full Elvish poem, ‘Narqelion’. This poem demonstrates a sophisticated vocabulary and grammatical structure (although sadly no real seeming use of pronouns so we will return to this poem when we look at the early noun and verb systems of Qenya). As Tolkien later mentioned in his 1930s talk on language invention, ‘A Secret Vice’, composing poetry is the highest form of language invention (Secret Vice, p. 70).

However, what was missing from this collection of documents was an official Qenya Grammar that consolidated all these elements, including pronouns, into a structured grammar. Tolkien addressed this gap while at Leeds by writing an official Qenya Grammar in both manuscript and typescript, which is now published in Parma Eldalamberon 14. According to the editors:

Tolkien remedied this lack of a structured grammar by creating an official Qenya Grammar, integrating all elements of the language he had developed, providing a comprehensive framework that reflects his familiarity with structured grammar from his own studies.

It was certainly during Tolkien’s time at Leeds between 1920-1925 (and perhaps more precisely during this 1923 interlude at Hilary’s) that Tolkien made the first complete grammar of the Qenya language. [While elements of the earliest form of the Quenya language can be found in pre-Leeds documents such as the Qenyaqettsa (PE 12) - this would be the first time Tolkien wrote attempt to write a ‘complete’ grammar of the Qenya Language. (PE 14, p. 37)

The editors' note on the '1923 interlude at Hilary's' is intriguing and might help pinpoint when Tolkien did much of this work. Humphrey Carpenter, in his official biography of Tolkien, mentions that during Tolkien's time in Leeds, money was tight and he was saving to buy a house, so family holidays were rare (Biography, pp. 106-7). To earn extra money, Tolkien took up marking examination papers. Even when the family went on holiday, such as to Filey on the Yorkshire Coast in 1922, Tolkien spent his time marking papers. However, in May 1923, Tolkien contracted pneumonia (according to Hammond and Scull, 'Tolkien catches a severe cold, which turns to pneumonia. He is gravely ill, his life is in danger but he will begin to recover by 12 June (Chronology, p. 130). After recovering, he went to stay with his brother Hilary, who owned a market garden in Evesham in the West Midlands at the time. Given this period of convalescence, we can suggest that Tolkien may have used it to reengage with writing his legendarium and coeval Elvish language invention. Indeed, one of the notebooks from this period, containing some Elvish language invention, bears a small mechanically printed date of April 16, 1923 (PE 13, p. 157).

Tolkien's treatment of Elvish pronouns is outlined in both the manuscript and typescript versions of the grammar. In the first manuscript version, Qenya pronouns are presented first as unemphatic prefixes added to the verb stem. The third-person pronouns distinguish gender, and there are two forms for the first-person plural to indicate whether the 'we' includes the person speaking or not—a point that will become important later in our exploration of Elvish pronouns.

Singular

1st Person ni- ni-tule I come

2nd Person ke-

3rd Person (m) (h)u-

3rd Person (f) (h)i-

3rd Person (n) (h)a- ha-tule - it comes

Plural

1st Person (excl) me-

1st Person (incl) qe-

2nd Person le-

3rd Person (m) tu-

3rd Person (f) si-

3rd Person (n) ta-

But there is still fluidity has Tolkien states ‘this is the preverbal form. But there exists also an emphatic form that is usually added after the verb (in addition to the pre-verbal prefix but may also stand in place of the preverbal.’ (P.E.14, 52-53).

These emphatic nominative forms are listed as

Singular

First Person nimo

Second Person keto or teko

3rd Person (m) hoyo

3rd Person (f) hie

3rd Person (n) hea

Plural

1st Person (Excl) melmo

1st Person (Incl) qelmo

Second Person lelko

3rd Person (m) tuto

3rd Person (f) sise, site

3rd Person (n) atta

Tolkien also outlines related forms for unemphatic and emphatic forms of pronouns for accusative, genitive and dative forms demonstrating the complexity and richness of the pronominal system Tolkien was developing.

The pattern of unemphatic prefixes and emphatic stand alone words also can be seen in the possessive pronouns. To express my you could use a prefix nya- or a stand alone word ninya.

Tolkien also invents the indeclinable relative pronoun ‘ya’ (we will come back to this).

A good example of the different variations on pronoun placement in action can be seen in this early Qenya sentence from the manuscript grammar

ni-hepsine nimo tanko i-mailinen losselin (PE 14, p. 56)

(it was) I myself (that) bound firmly the beautiful flowers

Another example comes from this line in the grammar which Tolkien uses to discuss poetic scanning

tarak/asse Tan/iqet/ildo // tarak/asse hu/-sōrie ‘on the high top of Taniquetil, on this high top he sat’ (of Manwë) (PE 14, p. 78).

Hu - is the 3rd person singular (m) - referring to the Valar Manwë

After composing the manuscript version of the Qenya Grammar, Tolkien started to create a typed version of the grammar but did not complete this. What we have of the Pronouns section is the outline of the unemphatic prefix forms as in the manuscript but it ends before the emphatic stand alone forms.

Tolkien's Qenya Grammar represents his first significant attempt (though certainly not his last) to codify his Elvish language. Even at this early stage, Tolkien was determined to create a rich and intricate language for the Elves, full of complex vocabulary and grammatical structures. As Christopher Tolkien noted about his father's Elvish languages:

They are very hard, they are hard bitten, they have their own severe phonetics, their severe grammatical history. . . . His fantasy philology is just as strict as the philology of the Germanic languages he expounded on as a professor. (1)

In the next post, I will explore examples of how this structured yet flexible pronoun system operates in Elvish texts from this period. I will also discuss how Tolkien developed the foundation for this pronoun system in his creation of Common Eldarin, the Proto-Elvish language.

Namárië for now!

(1) Section of interview here - from the documentary J.R.R.T.: A Portrait of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 1892-1973 (1992).