Q. va prep. and pref. “(away) from” (Category: From, Away)
A preposition for “[away] from” appearing in some versions of the Átaremma prayer from the 1950s, in phrases like ono va úro aly’ eterúna me “but deliver us from evil” (VT43/9-11). In the final version of the prayer, it was replaced with the ablative suffix -llo (VT43/12). va- “away from” is mentioned in notes associated with the Ambidexters Sentence for the 1960s where it seems to function as a prefix (VT49/24).
Conceptual Development: ᴱQ. vā “gone forth, away” appeared in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s under the early root ᴱ√VAHA (QL/99). In the English-Qenya Dictionary of the 1920s, vá “away” was an adverb, interjection and adjective, but this entry was deleted (PE15/70). Elsewhere in the dictionary va was a preposition “with” in combination with ᴱQ. vesta- “marry”, as in vesta va “marry with (someone)”.
In the Early Qenya Grammar also from the 1920s, va was a preposition “from” in the phrase hwa·telpe ie-rautanéma ompa va húyo “his money had all been stolen from him” (PE14/54). In the 1930s and 40s it appeared as a prefix va- “away” in vahaiya or vahāya “far away” in various iterations of the Lament of Atalante (LR/47; SD/247, 310).
Neo-Quenya: For purposes of Neo-Quenya, I would assume va is a preposition or prefix, serving a similar function to adverb/prefix au “away (from)”, replacing prefixal au- in cases where va- is more euphonic. As a preposition I would assume it is only rarely used, being generally replaced with the ablative suffix -llo, but va can be preferable when the sense “from” is more abstract (stolen from him, delivered from evil) rather than describing actual motion or direction.
References ✧ VT43/20, 24; VT49/24
Glosses
Element In
Derivations
Phonetic Developments
| √awa > va- | [wā] > [βa] > [va] | ✧ VT49/24 |
ᴹQ. #va prep. “away” (Category: From, Away)
Reference ✧ SD/247 ✧ “away”
Element In
Cognates
ᴱQ. va prep. “from; with” (Category: From, Away)
References ✧ PE14/54; PE15/75
Glosses
Element In