「通往灰精靈語的大門」的書評翻譯

I phith nín...

剛剛收到
Bertrand Bellet 的回信，算是收到他的認可，可以開始翻譯他的書評。我在 Yahoo! Groups 的 Lambengolmor 讀到他對 David Salo 最近出版的"A Gateway to Sindarin"「通往灰精靈語的大門」的書評，雖然之前我就已經在亞馬遜訂了這本書，但 Bertrand 的書評詳細又客觀，所以決定翻翻看。

"A Gateway to Sindarin" 算是今年以來，除了 Vinyar Tengwar 47（聽老媽描述，好像已經收到） 之外，最重要的托爾金語言研究專書，作者是魔戒電影的語言指導 David Salo。至於他的書評要怎麼翻咧... 基本上我應該會以最簡要的方式完成它，沒辦法... 內容太長了 = =......


先秀一下原文：


作者：
Bertrand Bellet
出處：Lambengolmor



_A Gateway to Sindarin_: a grammar of an Elvish language from J.R.R. Tolkien's

Lord of the Rings / David Salo. - Salt Lake City: The University of Utah

Press, 2004. - 24 cm: ill. cov., xvi-438 p.

Bibliogr. p. 416-435. - ISBN 0-87480-800-6



I received my copy of David Salo's book about Sindarin a bit more than a week ago. This was a week of holiday for me, so I was able to browse though it quite a lot (though naturally not in every detail). I think a review might be of interest.


1. Presentation of the book


It is a very nice volume, well printed on alkaline paper, with a silvery cover illustrated in blue with an arch inspired by the one on the Moria gate. It bears a tengwar inscription in the mode of Beleriand, reading _Annon na Edhellen_, i.e. of course a rendering of "A Gateway to Sindarin" in the language itself.


The plan is quite classical for a linguistic monograph. It begins with a brief internal history of the language, before a description of the sounds and the various writing systems used to transcribe it, and then a lengthy phonological history, which reconstructs a list of all the sound changes that occurred during the development from primitive Elvish to Sindarin. Then we have a morphophonology, presenting consonant mutation and vowel affection. An analysis of the various parts of speech and their inflection follows: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs / prefixes / prepositions, conjunctions, articles, interjections. Then we have a detailed analysis of the various processes of word creation - derivation, composition and borrowing from other languages - and to end this grammar a syntax. There are also copious appendices: the extant texts analysed, a double glossary accompanied with a classification of words by roots (attested and deduced), an index of Sindarin proper names, an account of the Sindarin names for the Valar and Maiar, a study of the numerals, and a list of the names for months and days. Finally, there are more peripheral tools: a linguistic glossary, a much annotated bibliography, and an addendum following the publication of the second part of the "Addenda and Corrigenda to the _Etymologies_" in VT46 last July (evidently the book had been completed before).


2. Choice, treatment and presentation of the data


David Salo announces and justifies in a preface his options for the book. He chose to treat together all the material from the _Etymologies_ onwards, which includes the externally late stage of Noldorin as well as the whole of the conceptually later Sindarin. He dates back the starting point of the stage he

studies to 1939. To explain this choice, he says "the change in name from Noldorin to Sindarin did not coincide with a change in structure or vocabulary. We will therefore call this language Sindarin, even though some of the words and specimens referred to were called 'Noldorin' at the time of their

invention" (p. xiv). Taken literally, this is very questionable, and even quite wrong. There are differences in the grammar: some plural patterns, the infinitives in _-i_ and _-o_ which are not attested in Sindarin, some uses of lenition, the genitive construction with _na_ which is more specifically Noldorin (though not completely given _Orod-na-Thôn in LR book III ch. 4). As for the lexicon, comparison is not easy (as we know, we have much more Noldorin than Sindarin because of the Etym), many a Sindarin word was already extant in Noldorin but there are sometimes slight shifts in meaning, e.g. _iant_ "yoke" in

the Etym (V:400) and "bridge" in the Silm. Appendix or _cû_ "arch, crescent" in the Etym and "bow" in the Silm Appendix. It is true however that much of the divergence lies in a series of well-established phonological differences, which are regular enough to allow reliable revision, and to "update" Noldorin

into Sindarin if wanted (notably for composition). David Salo's statement is much more acceptable if one understands that the two stages are in continuity, that there is no abrupt break between the two. No doubt he wrote it in this sense, but it is slightly misleading to newcomers I think.


This sense of continuity explains the treatment of Noldorin in the book. David Salo chose a very internist point of view and regarded Noldorin as a special dialect of Sindarin, possibly the one spoken by the population of Gondolin during the First Age. So he can reconcile contradictory facts: the specific traits of Noldorin are just to be seen as dialectal. Since the Gondolindrim were cut off from the other inhabitants of Beleriand, they were bound to develop linguistic peculiarities; indeed in Tuor's story a mention is made of their somewhat strange Sindarin (UT:44). If Noldorin and Sindarin did coexist in our primary world, they would probably be seen as dialects of the same language: at least on a phonetic basis, their differences would probably be small enough to allow them to be mutually comprehensible (they are not greater than between BBC English and American AFAIK). So on an internal point of view this interpretation can be sustained to reconcile our various data; as a matter of

fact it has been employed for a long time on Ardalambion's page about Sindarin.


Nonetheless, there is a great disadvantage in this: it leads to viewing everything through the prism of *one* interpretation, one very peculiar at that, not sustained by Tolkien's texts. David Salo treats Sindarin like any other ancient language, and is clearly successful; but he does not consider another side, which is the personal dimension of Tolkien's languages, the fact that they have an author and bear the mark of it. More generally, it can be said that most of the external side is crushed in this approach. Only a facet of Sindarin is therefore represented in the book. This is not a problem actually

as long as it is borne in mind, but I am afraid it could not be for beginners. There are other problems in this lack of consideration for the external point of view. It deprives the author of the possibility to explain some discrepancies which can be understood only as different stages of external

development. Sometimes one really gets the impression that David Salo wants to explain too much and forces the facts into his theoretical frame. Some conclusions are not expressed with enough caution, so the image of Sindarin the book gives is in my opinion clearer than it really is. It is not said enough how dubious some points are - e.g. the liquid mutation, the status of the Noldorin infinitives in Sindarin, what _aen_ is. In some instances things really become strongly objectionable: for instance, since the absence of mutation cannot be accounted for in _bo Ceven_ "on Earth" in the Sindarin Lord's Prayer, the author boldly asserts that it is a transcription error for _* bo Geven_ because of Tolkien's famously difficult handwriting (pp. 230-1). This is too hasty an explanation, and not corroborated by the source (VT44), but much worse is the fact that this "corrected" form **_bo Geven_ is quoted everywhere else in the book! Being very severe, one cannot help thinking that if facts do not match

the theory, well, facts are wrong.


Besides, as he wishes to keep Sindarin distinct as a study subject, he strongly criticizes the search for analogies with primary world languages and inspirations (p. 427). He is right to emphasize that Sindarin is not a distortion of extant languages and has its own logic, but possibly goes too far.

Take for instance the aforementioned _bo Ceven_: _Ceven_ is capitalised, lacks an article, might be a proper noun. Now some of these are susceptible to resisting mutation in some registers of Welsh; is it not possible that we have something similar here? To be fair I must say that David Salo nonetheless uses a Greek parallel at least once to explain the contrast _diheno / gohenam_ in the Lord's Prayer in a very interesting manner.


The presentation is sometimes a bit annoying. For instance it is quite difficult to get at the first glance what is attested and what is not. True, the asterisk is duly used in (internal) diachronic study to mark reconstructions. Other signs are used in the glossaries to mark deduced and altered forms, but unfortunately they are not used in the main text, so one constantly has to search in the glossary to know. Certainly it can be done, but quickly becomes tedious. I understand that the author did not want to clutter his text with stars (it necessarily contains a large amount of reconstructions) but why did he not choose another more pleasant sign, like putting all attested instances in bold? This bit of additional rigour would have been really helpful to the reader. The book also lacks an index (even if the list of contents is detailed, it cannot be used in the same way); true, this tool is very long and

tiresome to finalize.


3. Interest of the content


Concerning the internal history, the major texts must have been published now, so we cannot expect major surprises. Well-known elements are given again, except that Noldorin is treated in a very special way, as I said above; according to the general outline of the book, this is the reconstruction of a

possible history rather than a thorough analysis of the possibilities Tolkien examined. It is based on the later scenario (after Sindarin became a native tongue of Beleriand and Thingol's ban was introduced), the old one from the time of the _Etymologies_ is not a part of it.


No surprise either in the section about the sounds and the writing, it simply summarizes our current knowledge. Tables would have been helpful for the _tengwar_ and runes, a question of space perhaps - but as they can be found back in the appendices of LR, it is not a problem. The use of the IPA is welcome for the description of the sounds, it helps much to make it clear.


The historical phonology is a very strong point of the book. We have been in great need of a global reconstruction of how Sindarin evolved from Primitive Quendian, and the forty pages of this chapter fulfill it very largely. The presentation is more or less chronological, quite abstract and synthetic. The

author uses a featural notation based on the Jakobsonian distinctive traits of phonemes, happily completed by a paraphrase for the readers to which it would be opaque, and accompanied with examples. An introduction discusses the advantages and limits of the presentation. I have been especially engrossed in that aspect of Sindarin for some time, and find this essay superb indeed. It

will be interesting to compare it with the etymologies propounded in Didier Willis' Sindarin Dictionary.


The morphophonology discusses consonant mutation and vowel affection, both as diachronic and synchronic processes. The account of mutations looks quite like the one on Ardalambion, but with more details on the historical processes involved. Some of its conclusions are rather tentative. There are more new elements in the presentation of the various kinds of vowel affection. There is finally a very original section on apophony (ablaut), its importance in


Common Eldarin and its inheritance in Sindarin - both Tolkien's and Salo's interest in Indo-European linguistics clearly surface here.


The study of the various parts of speech is also reminiscent of Ardalambion, but there are more details and it is intended for a readership more familiar with grammar and linguistics. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of reconstruction in some areas, especially the pronouns and the verbal system. The

latter is much like the one already known from Ardalambion; it takes however the new data of VT45 into account and treats the new forms revealed in it, notably the past tenses formed by apophony or by the ending _-as_. Again, as there is a fair deal of uncertainty in the domain of verbs, I would have liked to see the actually attested forms marked in some manner.


The detailed study of word formation is a second brilliant part of the book. Every aspect is treated: the inheritance of old Eldarin processes, suffixion, prefixion, the various kinds of compounds with the phonological alterations their elements undergo, in all their complexity. As far as I know

this topic had never been treated so extensively till now, and it was much needed. No doubt it will be very useful for the analysis of words (especially the ones which will appear in the publications to come), and for their creation for people who try to compose in Elvish. This part is completed by a brief

account of the lexical influences Sindarin underwent from foreign languages, mostly Quenya.


The syntax is small (twenty-five pages) if compared with the whole length of the book, partly because the data are not many anyway - Tolkien himself visibly worked much more on morphology and lexicology, following the Neogrammarian trend of his time (though there is an noticeable inclination

towards more syntax in later texts, especially _Quendi and Eldar_). The presentation is traditional: a substantial part of the syntax is actually treated in the study of the parts of speech, which sometimes compels one to browse through to find the information on one particular topic (the use of the articles for instance) - but it is also a matter of becoming familiar with the book. I would have expected a more modern treatment, on the other hand people used to traditional grammars will not be confused. There is a quite detailed account of noun phrases and then a discussion of the various kinds of sentences. David Salo considers a basic VS(O) structure for the verbal sentence with many possibilities of

topicalisation. I must say I was a bit disappointed not to find discussion of much debated points like the lenition in _guren bêd enni_ (VT41:11) or the famous _i sennui Panthael estathar aen_ and its many interpretations (with interesting possibilities to express modality or passive). On the other hand I

realise that such points are perhaps not best placed in a book intended to stand as a reference.


This is the end of the grammar, but there are many interesting elements in the appendices. First we have a full analysis of the Sindarin corpus; it interestingly includes examples found in the drafts of LR (though they are difficult to interpret). Then we have a long Sindarin-English glossary, a shorter English-Sindarin back glossary, and between an etymological classification of words by roots, naturally mostly based on the _Etymologies_ but more compressed, and altered to fit Tolkien's later conceptions; for instance the roots GAL and GIL of the Etym are replaced by ÑAL and ÑIL found in later writings (respectively XII:347 and X:388); a number of roots are reconstructed. Especially interesting is the list of Sindarin proper names that follows; it intends to list all names from _The Lord of the Rings_ and afterwards, with the source and an interpretation. This is again a welcome work that will be much used. Of the other tools I will mention the annotated bibliography, in which primary sources are given with a summary of their linguistic interest. The author also lists two known secondary works, namely Jim Allan's _An Introduction to Elvish_ and Ruth Noel's _The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth_, makes a critique of them (not too gently) and corrects many of their errors, of which a great deal come from their early date of publication, especially for the first.


4. Conclusion: which kind of public?


We have then a very complete book, a detailed analysis of Sindarin which shows a long and in-depth work. The mass of information is very impressive; nearly all points of the grammar are treated, in a way that will sum up our current knowledge about the language. As the reader will have guessed, my chief reservations are with the way data are presented. The book will be of no great help for an external study of Tolkien's creation, indeed it is not made for this.


I believe one of David Salo's problems was his readership. Books about Tolkien's languages are not numerous and cannot be, so he knew he would have to accommodate various categories of readers: people who want to discover one great constructed language of Tolkien's and await a primer; people who want to learn Elvish and use it in fan-fiction composition, and await a normalised version of the language; people who are already familiar with the domain and are eager to see theories dealing with Sindarin in all its complexity. (The same person can of course be interested in several ways, but the thought processes are quite distinct.) He implies this at the end of the preface: "I hope [this book] will furnish the necessary groundwork for future investigation into Sindarin. For those who wish to learn Sindarin, such errors as there may be should not affect their ability to read Sindarin texts or to construct their own" (p. xv). Often he succeeds in fulfilling these various needs; sometimes he is at risk to frustrate all his readers together.

Quite like Ardalambion on the Web, _A Gateway to Sindarin_ presents a personal vision of Tolkien's creation. Its point of view matches David Salo's contributions to Elvish linguistics as we have been able to see them: internist, reconstructionist, very concerned with clarity and consistency, much less with explaining Tolkien's role as a language maker. These are the limits of the book; once they are taken into account it is enjoyable. You just need to be aware of the author's point of view and to use this resource with discernment. Anyway, David Salo makes it clear in the preface that "this volume is not and cannot be the last or most accurate word on Sindarin" (p. xv). It is also the responsibility of the reader to do his part of the work and keep his critical sense.


Under that condition, will this book succeed in becoming a reference? I believe it has the potential to do so; no doubt it will be much used, and if you are interested in Sindarin it certainly deserves to stand on your bookshelf.


Bertrand Bellet