Talk:Grammar of late Quenya

Appleyard's 'Quenya Grammar Reexamined'

One source which the article does not even mention is:

• Appleyard, Anthony (7 March 1995). "Quenya Grammar Reexamined". Tolklang.quettar.org. Retrieved 15 February 2023.

This 1995 source has been criticised as outmoded by Carl F. Hostetter, as documented at Anthony Appleyard#Quenya. However, it would seem that a proper discussion of the history of understanding of Quenya would certainly include a section on it, first presenting its claims and then showing what Hostetter thought was wrong with them. Perhaps a simple brief report like the one in that article would help; if more is needed, someone with more linguistic knowledge ought to write it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:16, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

We don't consider quite a lot of sources in the article, the most important of which would in my opinion be Paul Strack's analysis on Eldamo. Also the article needs some revision in general. Unfortunately I don't have much time for this right now, but still I will be happy to help with any questions that might come up. Lammengollon (talk) 22:57, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. The topic that seems to be missing is any treatment of the development of Quenya scholarship. My limited picture of this is that it began uncritically with the view that there was one thing called Quenya that could be described as an object (like, say, a clock) with various parts which each functioned in certain ways. This moved on to a view that there wasn't one Quenya but a sequence or branching tree of Quenyatic languages; and that this consisted of intertwined developments as Tolkien created new details in the real world, and as the Elves shifted from one language variant to another in the invented world of Arda. I can attempt to write and cite a basic account of this in a 'Scholarship' section, either here or in Quenya (and we certainly don't want duplication).

That leaves the rest of the article, which would be a 'Grammar' section, in an inconsistent state, as we can ask "which Quenya is this the grammar of, if there isn't just one such thing to describe?" The implication is that the grammar part needs to be radically revised into a series of language-stages.

The main Quenya article is in fact organised rather better in this regard, though like Quenya grammar it currently sees "Quenya" as a single language-stage (is that "late Quenya" or what?), while acknowledging a) that Tolkien developed Quenya gradually and b) that there is an internal progression from Primitive Quendian to other languages or variants. It seems to me to make no sense to have two articles which both attempt to describe development, scholarship, and grammar: the two were split in 2013 for reasons of length. The split needs to be revisited; rather than a merger, I think what is needed is a more detailed account of each of the language-stages, rather than the monolithic object we currently have. But that certainly requires linguistic expertise. I've added a bit on 'Scholarship' to Quenya, leaving for others the question of what to do about Quenya grammar. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:27, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that would best go under Quenya#Scholarship instead of the one sentence about some guy writing an article about Quenya prosody (Edit: I see you already did that). I don’t think there is too much citable stuff about this out there, but here are the articles I could think of:

• [1], [2]: conceptual development of Quenya and Eldarin as a whole
• [3], [4]: decisions when crafting Neo-Eldarin
• [5], [6], [7]: difference of scholarship and Neo-Eldarin

“Quenya grammar currently sees "Quenya" as a single language-stage (is that "late Quenya" or what?)”

Unfortunately not, it’s rather a hodgepodge of factoids from all different stages of the language, e. g. I wouldn’t call Late Quenya pasts ‘always pretty regular’ and am rather sure that Eldarin doesn’t have a stem in -nd- by the time of Primitive Quendian Structure (1936) where Tolkien tells us that it derives from -rīna etc. An account of all different stages would be probably best in the long term but that’s quite the task... Lammengollon (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, I have no doubt that the article needs cleaning up, and over-bold generalisations like that one tightened up. However, this article is never going to be able to cover the full evolution of the language (that would in any case be either a section of Quenya as you say, or a new article Evolution of Quenya. I've therefore moved this one to Grammar of late Quenya, which is what it approximates, and to which it can surely be cleaned up: not least because there is at least a reasonable amount of data to work from. Here's hoping someone with the knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject turns up in the next few years. If this is unworkable (the article is an unresolvable muddle) then we should get it deleted and await a more systematic approach. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:36, 19 September 2024 (UTC)