Cuy ogir’olar. It's neither here nor there. “It's irrelevant.” —Karen Traviss
Literally, ”exist there-here.”
Notably, what in English is translated as “it is,” is in Mando’a simply “cuy.” This is probably an example of pronoun-dropping (“it is”), but furthermore, I would extrapolate that Mando’a likely doesn’t use dummy subjects. After all, dummy subjects are used precisely because the grammar of a language like English requires a subject to be present even when semantically there is no need for one. And since Mando’a is a pro-drop language and can omit pronouns when they aren’t necessary… no dummy subjects.
For example, where English says “it is raining,” Mando’a could get away with simply, “pitati” (“rains”). Or perhaps, “cuy pitat” (“there’s rain”).
So any time you are translating something that starts with “it is…” consider dropping the “it.” In fact, consider dropping cuy as well, since Mando’a often also omits the copula!
To say "It's good", a Mandalorian will often just say jate (good) rather than bic jate - it (is) good - or the full form with the verb, bic cuyi jate. —Karen Traviss
Similarly for sentences that in English start with “there is…” consider: is that a dummy subject? Use simply “cuy.” Or do you actually mean a specific “there”? Use “ogir” and no copula.
Answer: They’re the only adjectives/adverbs modifying verbs in the canon corpus (at least on a quick glance; please let me know if I missed something). That is, not adjectives/adverbs modifying nouns, but actual full canonical Mando’a sentences where a word of the adjective/adverb class is used as an adverb modifying a verb.
And I find it interesting that most of them are tacked onto the verbs as prefixes rather than standing freely and coming after the verbs like in English word order. In fact, only mav in tra’cyar mav (‘to fire freely’) does that. At least if you accept my re-spellings—I didn’t change the word order, I only regrouped the words so they are attached to the words they actually modify.
I’ve heard it argued many times that you can’t take song lyrics (kote lo’shebs’ul narit) or phrasal expressions (su’cuy) as indicative of regular grammar. And while that’s true to an extent, I also find it something of a lost opportunity since we have so few examples of actual grammatical sentences in Mando’a already. (I also object on the grounds that poetry actually does need to make sense, it’s not just word salad. But that’s another conversation…)
So if we were to take these sentences as grammatical Mando’a, how could we make sense of them? Let’s make a few observations/extrapolations:
There are two possible word orders: AV and VA
In the AV order, only the stem of the adverb is used (ul’); while in the VA order, the whole word (ulyc) would presumably be used
All of the adverbs that are used in AV order are common words
One possible explanation I could see is that there are two classes of adverbs: a smaller closed/semi-closed class of common adverbs that can be used as verbal prefixes (like ulyc) and a larger open class of adverbs that can’t be used that way (like mav—if it could be used that way, surely “fire at will” would be a single word in Mando’a).
Another, slightly different explanation could be that rather than looking at adverbs only, these prefixes belong to a class of verbal prefixes that modify verbs. Perhaps somewhat like Hungarian? In which case we could perhaps include verbs like ja’hailir (literally, “to watch well”) and je’narar (‘to feint,’ literally “to act/move falsely”), where ja’ comes from jate (but je’ does not have a canonical full adjective). But we could also include verbs that are modified by adpositions, like ti’gaanur (lit. “with hand”) and she’kemir (lit. “to walk behind). (I’m spelling all of these words with a beten for clarity, regardless of how they’re spelled in the dictionary or how I would spell them in a text.)
Clearly these example words are lexicalised, i.e. there’s no expression “hailir jate” or “kemir shela” that means exactly the same thing as ja’hailir or she’kemir. But I could see this class of verbal prefixes being used not only derivationally but also inflectionally (or grammatically, as in, related to word order; inflectional is not a great term when it comes to Mando’a), in more or less freely alternating word orders. For example:
ni la’kemi cerar ≈ ni kemi laam cerar
Both mean “I walk up the mountain.” The difference is in the focus and implication: by using “up” to modify the verb “to walk,” the implication is that going up and walking are the same action—the meaning would be more like “to climb” or “to ascend.” By using “up” to modify the noun “mountain,” the implication is that “up” is a direction along the mountain—uphill versus downhill—and the sentence is indifferent to the kind of walking required.
Similarly, the implication in su’cuy would be the continued existence, and the implication in ul’narit would be the “carefully” and “insertion” being one action. In English this would be translated as “you can shove your glory up your ass,” so perhaps ulyc is used sarcastically here—or perhaps the meaning is the even more vulgar “you can fuck yourself in the ass with the glory since you like it so much.” Lol.
I have no canon to support the following statement, but I would expect that in this latter case, the class of verbal prefixes would be closed/semi-closed (i.e. new prefixes could be created but not on the fly) and probably fairly large (as far as closed classes go) and consist of adpositions, common adverbs, and perhaps what in English are auxiliary verbs (to express meanings such as “to start to…” or “to must…”). From the top of my head, I don’t think there’s a canon example of if/how Mando’a does auxiliary verbs; it just would make sense that if Mando’a had a class of “things that modify verbs” that it would also cover the ground of auxiliary verbs (which indeed modify verbs).
And the third option is that there are no separate classes of adverbs: adverbs dropping their suffix and attaching to the verb is just a thing they can do in Mando’a grammar.
“The War of Life and Death,” ancient Mandalorian creation myth
This seems to be a phrase—Mando’a has several titles that look like phrases (e.g. Cuy’val Dar).
akaana: could be conjugated form of akaanar (archaic form of akaanir?), or akaan + an epenthetic vowel.
ti: with
dar: ‘no longer’ (in modern Mando’a)
oya: life
The interesting part here is how the conjunction ti is used:
ti dar oya
with death [and] life
Notice the coordinating conjunction ti is before the nouns it coordinates and there’s no “and.” Of course it could be that this is simply a case of dropped “and”—Mando’a does have a habit of dropping unnecessary words.
But well, I’ve ranted about Mando’a prepositions and conjunctions before (especially ti and de), and this is interesting. An alternative explanation could be that perhaps Ancient/Classical Mando’a (which I’m assuming the word comes from) used conjunctions this way. Heck, maybe Modern Mando’a tends to lose the bal and uses some conjunctions this way. Or perhaps Ancient Mando’a had cases, which could allow it to have a freer word order.
We also have another compound word where a preposition/conunction is used differently than perhaps expected: boracyk, “between jobs.” Here acyk seems to be a postposition instead of a preposition!
“Apart from colloquial phrases, everything is strictly English word order: subject - verb - adjective - object. Active voice all the time. Mando'ade don't do passive; it's a vigorous, active language.” —Interview with Karen Traviss by "Mr. Klingon" about the construction of Mando'a from October 2005 (emphasis mine)
There are two interpretations of this statement:
1. The strict interpretation: English grammar is Mando’a grammar. Sentences can be translated word for word (with perhaps some specified exceptions or omissions).
The problem with this interpretation is twofold.
First, not even Traviss herself uses English grammar in her Mando’a sentences. Personally, I consider word of god a B-class canon and the actual work A-class canon. When the two disagree, A-class canon should be the primary source.
Second, that defeats the purpose of conlanging, which is to create a new language rather than a complicated code for an existing language. This is subjective of course, and it should be understood that Traviss’s goal likely was to create a literary prop for her novels, to give some colour and verisimilitude to her world building—not create the next Esperanto. In that sense, Mando’a perhaps wasn’t intended to be a full language. However, her interviews do hint at that she intended the language to be usable for communication.
In any case, regardless of the original authors’ intentions, my intention as a creator of transformative fanworks is to create a naturalistic language that has its own grammar.
2. The limited interpretation: Mando’a has the same basic SVO word order as English.
This much appears to be true, and Mando’a also appears to have the same determiner-noun, adjective-noun, numeral-noun, and noun-relative pronoun word orders. Personally, this is the interpretation that I subscribe to, and the interpretation that these posts are going to be based on.
Zero copula is the omission of the copula (a verb like the English ‘to be’). Some languages simply don’t have a copula at all, while in others it is optional or mandatorily omitted in certain contexts. A language may allow omitting the copula only in some contexts, but not others (for example, in certain tenses).
Mando’a specifically has a copula (cuyir), but allows omitting it in practically all contexts.
Examples from Karen Traviss via the Mando’a Source Index (without which none of this would be happening, everyone say thank you @skierunner).
Zero copula with noun phrases
ni (cuyi) verd ‘i (am) a warrior’ — The verb cuyir (to be) is frequently dropped and indicated by word order, as in ni (cuyi) verd-I (am) a warrior.
Gai be’bic me’sen Aay’han, meg ade partayli darasuum. ‘Name of this ship (is) Aay'han, which people remember forever
Gar taldin ne jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaas'la. ‘Your bloodline (is) not important; you as a parent (are) extremely important.’
Haat o'r an nuhune. ‘(There’s) truth in all jokes’
Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur . ‘Today (is) a good day for someone else to die.’
Kaysh mirsh'kyramud ‘They (are) a brain assassin.’
Mhi vode an. ‘We (are) siblings all.’
mhi mando’ade ‘we (are) mandos’
Traat'aliit gar besbe'trayc ‘The squad (is) your weapon’
Zero copula with adjective phrases
Bic jate. ‘It (is) good.’
gar ori'shukla ‘you (are) extremely broken’
Gar serim ‘you (are) correct’
gar shuk meh kyrayc ‘you (are) no use dead
Kaysh mirsh solus ‘their brain cell (is) lonely’
Kaysh shu'shuk ‘they (are) a disaster’
Ke baslana meh mhi kyrayc Leave if we (are) dead’
meh gar kyrayc, shuk bah ni ‘If you (are) dead, (you are) no use to me’
mhi solus dar'tome ‘We (are) one when parted’
mhi solus tome ‘We (are) one when together’
Ne'tra gal mesh'la, jat'isyc, bal, wayii, jahaal'got ‘black (is) beautiful, tastes good, and - by golly - it does you good!’
aliit ori'shya tal'din ‘family (is) more than blood’
haatyc or'arue jate'shya ori'sol aru'ika nuhaatyc ‘Visible big enemies (are) better (than) small enemy not visible’
Mando’a also omits the copula with comparatives, although the comparative ori’shya could also derive from a verb like *ori’shyar, ‘to exceed, surpass,’ in which case the the comparative construction would not be relevant to the topic. (Headcanon: this is how I have chosen to interpret it in my version of Mando’a as a deliberate nod towards creole languages—which I headcanon Mando’a to be—which often derive their comparatives from similar sources.)
Zero copula with locatives
Cuy ogir’olar. ‘(It) is neither here nor there.’
The only canon example I could find is an idiom, and I’m not convinced that the copula is here because of the locative specifically, rather than as a sort of a “dummy verb” to make this a complete sentence.
Extrapolation: I see no reason why Mando’a would require a copula with locatives, when it allows omitting it with other predicates.
(Headcanon: I have played around with the idea that Mando’a could use more descriptive verbs like stand/sit/lie with locatives rather than the copula, if it uses any at all. Am undecided as of now.)
Zero copula with commands
The copula is dropped with commands, even when there is no other verb:
Ke’serim! ‘Take aim!’ Lit. “(Be) accurate!”
An alternative explanation could be that this is a verb *serimir, ‘to aim,’ and the command has dropped the verbal suffix like in ke’mot(ir).
So where does Mando’a use the copula then?
Out of the canon sentences in the Mando’a Source Index, I can find just a few usage cases.
1. In one example specifically meant to show omitting the copula.
Bic (cuy) jate. ‘It is good.’
2. As a verb meaning ‘to be alive.’
Ni su’cuy. ‘I’m still alive.’
Su cuy’gar. ‘You’re still alive.’
Extrapolation: The verb cuyir possibly has a meaning that’s somewhat more like English ‘to exist’ or ‘to be alive’ than ‘to be.’ It’s not ungrammatical to use it, but using it in contexts where it’s usually omitted makes the sentence sound stiff and non-fluent.
3. In this one idiom, discussed above.
Cuy ogir’olar. ‘(It) is neither here nor there.’
4. Supporting tense particles
Tion vaii gar ru’cuy? ‘Where have you been?’
Wer’cuy. ‘(It) ages ago was,’ or ‘eons was.’
This last one is the most interesting, because it might mean that like Russian, Mando’a only allows dropping the copula in the present tense. The reason might be that the tense particles need a verb to attach to and can’t occur alone.
There’s no word equivalent to English ‘something’ in Mando’a. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what that could be, because all of the other languages I speak have a word for ‘something’ that they use liberally. Surely that’s an obvious concept and a basic word that a language needs, right?
But as I kept failing to think of a word I liked, I’ve found that I’ve actually been getting along fine without it. Usually mayen, ‘anything’ works; and if not, ashi, ‘other.’ And in the rare cases when neither of those does the job, I’ve slapped an article eyn or te on it, or reworded the sentence focusing on the “something, that/which…,” which usually prompts my brain to come up with a more specific word for the something.
And now I’m thinking it could actually be more interesting if there was no word equivalent to English ‘something,’ but if that semantic space was divided differently in Mando’a. It might reflect a fundamental difference in how the two languages handle specificity/definiteness. If there’s no ambiguous ‘something,’ Mando’a forces you to define what you’re looking for, even if that’s in the most basic terms: either it is ‘anything’; or it is something other which is not this, defined by what it isn’t; or you need to reword and at least give a general category in which you’re searching (e.g. “any which…” or “one which…” or “one/a/a specific X”). Or it might just be one of those differences where languages don’t translate exactly.
I think several Mando’a verbs and phrases exhibit noun incorporation.
Noun incorporation is a mechanism where the direct object of a verb gets incorporated into the verb itself, turning the verb from a transitive to an intransitive one. For example, instead of saying “I’m brushing my teeth” I would say “I’m teeth-brushing.”
Examples of noun incorporation in Mando’a
Here are some examples in canon Mando’a, plus a couple of seemingly obvious derivations from existing nouns.
In form, these are VN. The verbs (dinuir, beviinir, jurir) have lost their suffixes, which appear after the incorporated noun instead.
But we also have just as many NV incorporations:
Incorporating a direct object:
skana’din, “to give the scunners”
miit’gaanar, “to word-hand”
tal’galar, “to blood-spill”
tal’onidir, “to sweat blood”
pelkaanir, “to skin-cut”
trattok’or, “to force-fall”
Incorporating an instrument:
bikadinir, “to stab (with a broad blade)”
pir’ekulor, “to water-choke”
cetar’narir, “to motivate through force” “to put the boot in”
gaanynir, “to hit with the hand”
kov’nynir, “to hit with the head”
gaa’taylir, “to hold hand” or “to hold with a hand”
kar’taylir, “to hold in the heart”
tabalhar, “to see by/on foot”
I don’t know what the difference is and why we have both VN and NV types. Though one observation I could make is that most of the NV types seem to have body parts involved somehow; another, that in some of these words the noun is not an object but an instrument (bikadinir, gaanynir, cetar’narir, kar’taylir). The latter would be a great explanation… however we’d still have e.g. tal’galar (and not *gal’talar), trattok’or and skana’din. Perhaps the difference has something to do with the word order in the sentence. Skana’din comes from “bic ni skana’din,” which already has a word order that diverges from SVO; perhaps it would also be “bic ni kartay’din” or “bic din’skanah’ni”? Perhaps it’s just aesthetic, i.e. Traviss felt that tal’galar sounded better than gal’talar? Taking suggestions!
Hukaat’kama/hukaatir kama and eparavur takisit seem to be phrasal verbs, but they could be on their way to becoming verbs with incorporated nouns instead: eparavu’takisir, hukaat’kamar → *n’eparavu’takisi, “I apologise.” & *ni hukaat’kama gar, “I’m covering you.”
Often the incorporating form is only a stem (or root)—cross linguistically, nouns that are derived through nominalisation or compounding generally do not incorporate, and neither do proper nouns. That does not quite hold true here: kartay and bikad are compounds, but there are also languages that appear to allow incorporating larger units than simple stems (including e.g. affixes) and proper nouns.
Since noun incorporations are a type of a compound word, their meanings can be idiomatic or more than the sum of their parts.
Mando’a also has some job titles and other nouns which almost seem like verb phrases:
Tay’haai, “hold-seeing” VN
gayi’kaab, “spread sound” VN
tok’kad, “fall (drop?)-sword” VN
shereshoy, “*seize-life” VN
Gotabor, “machine-work” NV
Meshurkaan, “jewel-cut” NV
Ta’ayl, “jailer” NV
Strictly speaking these aren’t noun incorporations but just compound nouns. But many of these look almost like verb phrases and we also have Cuy’val Dar, another example of a title that looks like a phrase, so I’m putting them here as something that might be related. Here too, we have both VN and NV orders.
Taab’echaaj’la is a past participle/adjective meaning deceased, but you could perhaps use *taab’echaaj as a noun meaning a deceased person, “the person who is marching far away.” Similarly the adjective mirshepar’la could conceivably include verb *mirshepar, or “brain-eat.”
Other things noun incorporation can do
Promoting an oblique object to a direct object
In some languages, noun incorporation can also promote an oblique object to the vacated direct object position. For example: “I’m giving a gift to you.” → “I’m gift-giving you.”
What this could look like in Mando’a could be something like:
Ni dinui kar’tay bah kaysh. “I gave him information” or “I gave a report to him.” Note kaysh (the oblique object) has a preposition.
Ni din’kartay kaysh. “I informed him”; or “I reported to him.”
Noun incorporation is highly productive in many languages, so perhaps it could be used even in sentences such as the following:
Ni shuku kaysh norac. “I broke his back.”
Ni nora’shuku kaysh. or, Ni shuku’nor kaysh. “I back-broke him.”
or:
Ner norac aarayi. “My back aches.”
Nor’aarayi’ni. or, Aara’nor’ni. “I have a back ache.”
Which would allow the experiencer of the action to be promoted to a direct object of the sentence, highlighting that it’s the effect on the experiencer (now the direct object) that’s the salient point of the sentence.
Backgrounding information
Languages that use noun incorporation for both of the kinds of functions above, can also use it for backgrounding information that’s oblique or incidental to the discussion, or that has been previously mentioned.
Incidentally, both passive (which Mando’a is not supposed to have) and noun incorporation reduce the valency of the verb:
Pita’tokka. “It is raining.” Lit: (it) rain-falling.
Ru’tal’gala. “Blood was spilled.”
Striil ru’bant’edeemi. or, Ru’bant’edeemi striil. or, Striil, ru’bant’edeemi’bic. “The strill was bitten by a bantha.”
If Mando’a doesn’t have passive, it needs to have something. And while noun incorporation is not the same, it is the best way to translate the above sentences. Just saying.
Since incorporated nouns are always indefinite:
Ni epa agol. “I eat the meat.”
Ni ep’agol. or, Ni agol’epa. “I eat meat.”
Because the fact that I was hit is the important part, that it was my foot is oblique:
Bic nyni ner taab. “It hit my foot (as opposed to something else).”
Bic nyn’taab’ni. or, Bic ni taa’nyni. “It hit me (in the foot).”
Instruments can be incorporated; they’re oblique since they only qualify the manner of the action but do not define the action itself (cutting is cutting whether you do it with a knife or with scissors):
Kaysh hokaani shuner de kal. “He cut the bread with a knife.”
Kaysh kal’hokaani shuner. “He cut the bread (with a knife).”
Or perhaps bread-slicing is an action that would have its own verb: shunekaanir/hokashunir, ‘to slice bread.’
Maybe you could even say something like kaysh kal’hoka’shuner or kaysh kal’shune’kaani. “He cut the bread with a knife,” or “he knife-cut-bread.”
Locations can be incorporated as well:
Mhi r’ahan’taabi/ru’taab’ahan. “We have crossed the desert.” Lit: we desert-walked.
Note that since the incorporated noun is now a part of the verb, the TAM prefixes go before it.
In many polysynthetic languages that use noun incorporation extensively, when subjects/objects are first introduced they merit an independent noun, but later the noun may be incorporated instead.
Conclusion
In conclusion, canon Mando’a shows several examples of noun incorporation. We have so little information about Mando’a grammar that when canon gives us an inch, I think we should take it for a mile. Noun incorporation is an enormously productive mechanism in many natural languages that employ it, so it could do a lot of heavy lifting for Mando’a’s limited vocabulary (noun incorporation is a type of compound word and languages with extensive noun incorporation can have large lexicons indeed) and grammar (since noun incorporation can do some fun things with sentence/discourse structure). I’ve already been able to translate some things that escaped me before. (It’s also non-English-y, so there’s that too.)
The particular form of noun incorporation in Mando’a is somewhat unclear to me. There appear to be both VN and NV compounds, and I’m not sure whether these represent different kinds of relationships between the verb and the incorporated noun (direct object vs. instrument), whether some of these might be another type of a compound word rather than noun incorporation, or whether it’s just aesthetics (i.e. Traviss thought tal’galar sounded nicer than gal’talar). My gut-punch reaction is that the position of the incorporated noun ought to not be random. VN for incorporated objects of transitive verbs or subjects of intransitive verbs and NV for instruments, locations and oblique arguments seems most promising to me at a first glance, but I need to do some more thinking and digging and experimenting before settling on a firm definition.
P.s. This is super rough, but I’m posting anyway in case someone has something smart and helpful to say (please!). Might rewrite later.
References & further reading
Gerdts, Donna B. (2017). Incorporation. In The Handbook of Morphology (eds Spencer, Andrew and Zwicky, Arnold M.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405166348.ch4
Johns, Alana. (2017). Noun Incorporation. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition (eds M. Everaert and H.C. Riemsdijk). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom093
Massam, Diane. (2009), Noun Incorporation: Essentials and Extensions. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3: 1076-1096. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00140.x
Mithun, Marianne. (1984). The Evolution of Noun Incorporation. Language. 60. https://doi.org/10.2307/413800
