The nominative form in Quenya is used for subject of a sentence and is unmarked. It is simply the base form of the noun if singular, or its simple dual, plural or partitive plural forms if non-singular. The verb must be inflected into either the dual or plural to agree
Quenya Grammar P21: Nouns Cases
For Quenya as Tolkien conceived of it in the 1950s and 60s (Late Quenya), the language has seven major noun case inflections: The dative case used for the indirect object of a sentence. The genitive case that was more or less equivalent to English “of”. The possessive-adjectival case, mostly used
Quenya Grammar P20: Plural Nouns
Like most languages, Quenya distinguishes between singular (one) and plural (multiple) nouns. Quenya has two special plural forms, the dual (for pairs) and the partitive plural (for portions of groups = “some”). This entry discusses the general plural, which is used for all the other forms of noun plurality. Quenya
Quenya Grammar P19: Partitive Plural
In addition to the “general” plural, Quenya has a special “partitive” plural used when describing a portion of a group. The partitive plural is formed using the suffix -li, variously translated as “some, many, a lot of” (PE17/62, 127, 135; VT47/12). It is derived from the primitive root √LI “many”
Quenya Grammar P18: Dual Nouns
The Quenya dual form is a special plural used for when there are exactly two of the items in question: atanu “two men”, lasset “both leaves”. It can be translated as “two”, “both” or “(the) pair of”. It is used most frequently with items that are a “natural pair”, such
Quenya Grammar P17: Declension for Number
Like English, Quenya has singular and plural nouns, with singular unmarked and plural marked by -i or -r. However, Quenya has two additional “special plurals”, the dual used when there are only two of an item (“both”), and the partitive-plural when the plural represent a subset of a larger group
Quenya Grammar P10: Definite Article
Quenya has a definite article i that is more or less equivalent to English “the”: i atan = “the man” [human]. Like English, the definite article is used to specify a definite thing specifically referred to (“the man”), as opposed to an indefinite thing (“a man”). Unlike English, there is
Quenya Grammar P9: Word Order
Ordinary word order in Quenya is quite similar to English: The ordinary sentence order is subject-verb-object (PE17/72). Adjectives precede the nouns they modify (PE17/93, PM/346). Prepositions and relative pronouns appear at the beginning of subordinate clauses. Some of these rules were described by Tolkien. He stated that “the classical and
Quenya Grammar P8: Prosodic Lengthening
It has long been known that, under some conditions, the final vowel in Quenya words might lengthen when a suffix is added. One notable example is the phrase a vanimar, vanimálion nostari “O beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children” (Let/308, 448; LotR/981): why is the a short at the end
Quenya Grammar P7: Shortened Final Syllables
With rare exceptions, Quenya does not allow long vowels in final syllables. Such long vowels in final syllables were shortened in the history of Quenya’s phonetic development. It seems this remains an active phonetic rule in Quenya, applying to new compounds as well. Probably the best example of this is