9. Questions, imperatives and such


9.1. Questions
There are two ways of directly asking a question in Arovën, the one being by means of special question words (e.g. vel = who; vel lorya dwrn? = who said that?), the other being by making a statement and inquiring as to the validity of that statement. First we'll take a brief look at these two methods:

 9.1.1. Question words
The grammar of question-words is trivial; with a few restrictions (e.g. question pronouns may not be agglutinated with verbs as other pronouns may be), one may form a question out of a statement by simply replacing the uncertain element with a question-word of the appropriate class, number, etc. E.g. Wil Pïdïen en'nelyavay yn Los-Angeles' = once when I was a child I was in Los Angeles. If it is the time period which is uncertain, this could be made into a question by replacing the time-specifier wil Pïdïen (during (my) childhood) with the word vïen (when) -- Vïen en'nelyavaw yn Los-Angeles? = when were you in Los Angeles?. You'll meet these words in context; for a view of a *lot* of question-pronouns, you may go to the Pronouns page.

9.1.2. To invert or not to invert
If you begin the question with either of the words ayan or ya, then there is no need to invert your sentence, otherwise you must. By inversion I mean a word order of VSO, e.g. cënda damï? = are you sleeping?. If you want to locate the source of the question more precisely, use av before the uncertain word or phrase (if a word, prefix the av, separated from the stem by an apostrophe). E.g. cënda av'damï? = are *you all* sleeping (or are some of you awake)?; Av'cënda damï? = are you *sleeping* (or are you just faking it, or are you drugged)? Use ey instead of av when it is more of a binary question (i.e. are you or are you not sleeping; if you aren't I don't care what you're doing). Inversion is not neccessary if you use ayan or ya to begin a yes or no, or suggestive question, respectively.
Example: Consider the following sentence -- Brindavël övniñen (they have gone to, are currently patronizing a restaurant); below are listed the most straightforeward ways of making this statement into a question. Note: forming questions by inverting the word order of a sentence is a rather precarious pattern in Arovën, which allows completely free word order -- what actually gets the sentence across as a question is one's tone of voice (e.g. stress on the -niñ in övniñ, rather than only on the öv-); the pattern is out of place in Arovën, which likes to communicate all grammatical information by means of sentence construction, and only non-rational information by means of accent. Note also that inversion is not possible in a sentence with a pronoun subject without breaking the pronoun off from the verb, as we did above -- brinda dël rather than brindavël. I'd like to phase out question-inversion in Arovën, so the non-inverted patterns are the ones to get used to.

9.1.3. Indirect questions
Consider the following hypothetical conversation:
The problems exhibited in this dialogue arise from the fact that the pedestrian has asked neither a straightforward question nor request of the old man in regards to his desire to know the time, and the latter takes each of the pedestrian's utterances literally; i.e. does not respond to an indirect question. No, Arovën is not really so pedantic; you are perfectly free to express any type of statement/question, be it "what is the time?", "do you know what you just stepped in?", or "personally I've never been abducted, but all my friends have" and allow the receiver of that comment to interpret it however he/she sees fit. There are no rules for indirect questions and statements. Arovën tends to be much more direct than English, but indirectness is perfectly allowable, at least in spoken conversation. However, unlike English, Arovën generally does not use it for politeness, for which purpose there are patterns which tamper with the meaning less. (I'll get back to that later; the material will be here in this section when I have).


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9.2. Imperatives and such
A direct imperative is formed simply by adding a special word for the type of imperative before the desired circumstance. Take, for instance, the imperative indicator (for lack of a better word) hal, which indicates a passive wish:
Hal Finstán wilend donwï. = Let the weather be good tomorrow.
This is simply the marker hal before the construct Finstán wilend donwï, which means "the weather tomorrow will be good". The list of such words goes, or rather went (the revision has yet to hit this corner of the language), as follows: In addition to these forms, Arovën (but not Danovën) has a further "imperative"-like pattern: you may invite a person to do something by suffixing -ua (for impersonal address) or -uë (for personal address) to the verb, or by using the particles yua or yuë. These represent the most basic "commands" and are not specific to the speaker's purpose in giving them. The -uë form, in any case, is never negative, threatening or coercive, as such senses are not compatible with personal address (I know, I haven't introduced address on these pages yet, but I will!).


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Last edited on March 12th, 1999
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