Quenya/Verbs

Neo-Quenya has 3 types of verbs. In the word list they can be recognized by the final letter of the stem:
Some special verbs can be found on a separate page.
A Quenya verb has 5 tenses:
The verbal forms (infinitive, participle, gerund) and the imperative are each discussed in a separate article.
Endings.
Quenya verb conjugation is rather special because it can have subject and object endings,
The verb is "hauta"- "stop", the first ending -"nyë" is a subject ending and means "I", the second ending -"l" is an object ending and means "you". So the translation is "I stop you".
In the form "hautalyen" object and subject are reversed, so it means "you stop me".
When only one ending is present it is always a subject ending:
So let's have a look at the different endings:
The other 2 persons are more complicated:
The 1st person plural has 3 different subject endings and no object endings. So when an object is in the 1st person plural it is always a separate pronoun (see ../Pronouns/).
The 3 subject endings are:
The 3rd person singular also has more than one ending:
In the past an ending -"rye" was theorized based on the possessive "-rya"; however this has not yet been attested, and we instead find "-sse" as well as inanimate "-ssa".
However, this is not all: there are also non-pronominal endings that are used when the subject is something other than a pronoun. In this case there can be no object ending, the object is thus always represented by a separate word or pronoun.
The plural non-pronominal ending is also used when the subject is in the dual or partitive plural:
In the third person singular there exist two alternative endings for -"sse"- that can express gender, though these seem to be limited to Qenya of the 1940s and earlier: -"ro"- for a male subject and -"re"- for a female subject:
It is interesting to note that in sentences where a free pronoun is present, which serves to emphasise the subject of the sentence, the presence of the free pronoun may allow a verb to stand without the corresponding ending:
More about this can be found on the page about personal pronouns.
Aorist Tense.
The easiest tense is the Aorist as it is formed by the verbal stem from the dictionary and the endings we discussed before.
So in fact all forms above are Aorists. It is used as an alternative present tense (see below), and so it isn't a past tense as its Greek namesake.
The formation of this tense can be seen in the next table. Only the non-pronominal forms are included as the others can be constructed by replacing the -"r" of the plural non-pronominal form with the right pronominal ending.
Note that the forms without an ending have a vowel change in the Primitive verbs and the U-stems.
Note that some verbs have a long vowel in the stem so their Aorists also contain a long vowel:
Present Tense.
This tense is also called the Continuative tense. The usage and its contrast with the Aorist Tense are explained below.
The major principle behind this tense is the central vowel-lengthening. The central vowel is the vowel in the final syllable of a primitive verb, or the vowel in the last syllable but one in an A-stem or U-stem verb. Of course this lengthening can only happen if the syllable isn't long by itself.
Following syllables are already long and cannot be lengthened:
Furthermore, the primitive and U-stems get an extra -"a" at the end of the stem and the final -"a" of the A-stems changes into -"ëa". So this gives:
With vowel lengthening:
Without vowel lengthening:
Another way of conjugating the present tense affecting certain verbs (coexistent with "-ëa") lengthens the form before the derivative suffix:
Usage of Aorist and Present tenses.
Most of the time both tenses can be used interchangeably. But there are a few cases in which one of them is clearly preferred:
The Aorist can be used to indicate an action in which the moment on which the action is performed is irrelevant:
The Aorist can indicate sudden change while the Present tense indicates that a condition is true for a certain length of time:
The Aorist can also be used to denote a custom or something recurring:
Future Tense.
Neo-Quenya has only one future tense, so it is used to indicate both near and distant future:
This tense can be recognized by the ending -"uva". The Primitive verbs simply add it, with the A-verbs it replaces the final -"a", and with the U-verbs the final -"u" changes -"uva" into -"úva":
The verb "quat"- "fill" is irregular as its Future Tense is "quantuva / quantuvar".
Past Tense.
The past tense has many irregularities, so a separate article is dedicated to it.
It is used to denote a past action that still continues or that has finished without consequences. So it can be translated by either a Simple Past or a Present Perfect:
Perfect Tense.
The Perfect Tense is used to express an action that has finished but still has some consequences, so it can be used for the English Present Perfect and Past Perfect:
The conjugation of verbs in this tense can be found on a separate page: ../Perfect Tense/.
Negation of verbs.
Neo-Quenya has two ways to negate a sentence:
(Note: "lá" is also used with the comparison of adjectives).
Conjugation of "ua"-.
To negate a verb we use the corresponding conjugated form of "ua"- followed by the infinitive of the original verb:
Although the 1st person singular pronoun "uan" is the most attested form used, it has been said that the other pronoun endings were regular.
Notice that the pronoun ending has shifted onto the verb "ua-" "to not be", away from "car-" "to make". It must also be noted that "ua-" is left in the aorist tense and "car-" is conjugated.
This is normally how sentences are constructed for negation, but in archaic or verse Quenya, "ua-" can be conjugated instead, with the following verb left in the aorist tense, as demonstrated by these following examples:
 "úne-" : Past Tense
 "uië-" : Perfect Tense
 "úva-" : Future Tense
With a modal verb, the negation is expressed by two consecutive infinitives:
The verb "ua"- is also used to negate a sentence that uses "ná":
Or alternately with the "ú-" prefix onto the adjective:
When a verb has an object ending (and thus also a subject ending) we never use "ua"- because it normally doesn't get object endings.
In this case the verb form is unchanged but preceded by the particle "lá":
The verb "ëa" is also always negated by using "lá":
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