Naʼvi language

The Naʼvi language has its origins in James Cameron's early work on Avatar. In 2005, while the film was still in scriptment form, Cameron felt it needed a complete, consistent language for the alien characters to speak. He had written approximately 30 words for this alien language but wanted a linguist to create the language in full. His production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, contacted the linguistics department at the University of Southern California (USC) seeking someone who would be interested in creating such a language. Edward Finegan, a professor of linguistics at USC, thought that the project would appeal to Paul Frommer, with whom he had co-authored a linguistics textbook, and so forwarded Lightstorm's inquiry on to him. Frommer and Cameron met to discuss the director's vision for the language and its use in the film; at the end of the meeting, Cameron shook Frommer's hand and said "Welcome aboard". Based on Cameron's initial list of words, which had a "Polynesian flavor" according to Frommer, the linguist developed three different sets of meaningless words and phrases that conveyed a sense of what an alien language might sound like: one using contrasting tones, one using varying vowel lengths, and one using ejective consonants. Of the three, Cameron liked the sound of the ejectives most. His choice established the phonology that Frommer would use in developing the rest of the Naʼvi language – morphology, syntax, and an initial vocabulary – a task that took six months. ==Development==

The Naʼvi vocabulary was created by Frommer as needed for the script of the movie. By the time casting for Avatar began, the language was sufficiently developed that actors were required to read and pronounce Naʼvi dialogue during auditions. During shooting Frommer worked with the cast, helping them understand their Naʼvi dialogue and advising them on their Naʼvi pronunciation, stress, and intonation He hopes that the language will "have a life of its own," and thinks it would be "wonderful" if the language developed a following. The community's Lexical Expansion Project, together with Frommer, has expanded the lexicon by more than 50 percent. Frommer also maintains a blog, Na’viteri, where he regularly posts additions to the lexicon and clarifications on grammar. Naʼviteri has been the source of the vast majority of Naʼvi growth independent of Frommer's contract with 20th Century Fox. ==Structure and usage==

. Although all the sounds were designed to be pronounceable by the human actors of the film, there are unusual consonant clusters, as in "metal". Naʼvi syllables may be as simple as a single vowel, or as complex as "moron" or above (both CCVC). The fictional language Naʼvi of Pandora is unwritten. However, the actual (studio) language is written in the Latin script Naʼvi pronouns encode clusivity. That is, there are different words for "we" depending on whether the speaker is including his/her addressee or not. There are also special forms for "the two of us" (with or without the addressee), "the three of us", etc. They do not inflect for gender; although it is possible to distinguish "he" from "she", the distinction is optional. The deferential forms of "I" and "you" are ohe and ngenga. Possessive forms include ngeyä "your" and peyä "her/his". "He" and "she" can optionally be differentiated as poan and poé. The grammatical distinctions made by nouns are also made by pronouns. Adjectives Naʼvi adjectives are uninflected—that is, they do not agree with the noun they modify—and may occur either before or after the noun. They are marked by a syllable a, which is attached on the side closest to the noun. For example, "a long river" can be expressed either as, or as, The free word order holds for all attributives: Genitives (possessives) and relative clauses can also either precede or follow the noun they modify. The latter especially allows for great freedom of expression. The attributive affix a- is only used when an adjective modifies a noun. Predicative adjectives instead take the "be" verb lu: Verbs Verbs are conjugated for tense and aspect, but not for person. That is, they record distinctions like "I am, I was, I would", but not like "I am, we are, s/he is". Conjugation relies exclusively on infixes, which are like suffixes but go inside the verb. "To hunt", for example, is taron, but "hunted" is taron, with the infix ''''. There are two positions for infixes: after the onset (optional consonant(s)) of the penultimate syllable, and after the onset of the final syllable. Because many Na’vi verbs have two syllables, these commonly occur on the first and last syllable. In monosyllabic words like lu "be", they both appear after the initial onset, keeping their relative order. The first infix position is taken by infixes for tense, aspect, mood, or combinations thereof; also appearing in this position are participle, reflexive, and causative forms, the latter two of which may co-occur with a tense/aspect/mood infix by preceding it. Tenses are past, recent past, present (unmarked), future, and immediate future; aspects are perfective (completed or contained) and imperfective (ongoing or uncontained). The aspectual forms are not found in English but are somewhat like the distinction between 'having done' and 'was doing'. :taron [hunt] "hunts" :taron [hunt] "just hunted" :taron [hunt] "will hunt" :taron [hunt] "hunting" :taron [hunt] "hunted" :taron [hunt] "was just hunting" Tense and aspect need not be marked when they can be understood by context or elsewhere in the sentence. The second infix position is taken by infixes for affect (speaker attitude, whether positive or negative) and for evidentiality (uncertainty or indirect knowledge). For example, in the greeting in the section on nouns, Oel ngati kameie "I See you", the verb kame "to See" is inflected positively as kame to indicate the pleasure the speaker has in meeting you. In the subsequent sentence, Oeri ontu teya längu "My nose is full (of his smell)", however, the phrase teya lu "is full" is inflected pejoratively as teya lu to indicate the speaker's distaste at the experience. Examples with both infix positions filled: :taron [hunt] "was just hunting": The speaker is happy about it, whether due to success or just the pleasure of the hunt :taron [hunt] "will hunt": The speaker is anxious about or bored by it Lexicon The Naʼvi language currently has over 2,600 words. These include a few English loan words such as kunsìp "gunship". Additionally, the community of speakers is working with Dr. Frommer to further develop the language. Naʼvi is a very modular language and the total number of usable words far exceeds the 2,600 dictionary words. For example: rol "to sing" → tìrusol "the act of singing" or ngop "to create" → ngopyu "creator". Workarounds using existing words also abound in the Naʼvi corpus, such as "metallic brain" for "computer" and palulukantsyìp "little thanator" for "cat". ==References==