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Prefixes
Prefixes are the affixes placed before the word's stem. Early researchers thought that prefixes were extremely rare or totally absent in Black Speech, like in other well-known agglutinative languages (e.g. Finnish and Turkish), but “Parma Eldalamberon” journal's issue #17 proved them wrong. There was stated that subject pronouns were prefixed to the verbs, so we can expect that there were some other prefixes too.
Prefixes in Nûrlâm may serve both as derivational and inflectional morphemes. Subjective enclitic personal pronouns which are also similar to prefixes are not listed here. However some other enclitic particles are counted as prefixes.
| Prefix | Etymology | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| am- | EL | makes relative pro-forms | il (time) ⇒ amil (when) |
| bhû- | HG | pre-; prepared action | gashn- (to tell) ⇒ bhûgashn- (to foretell, predict) |
| dro- | HG | pro-; motion forward, continuation | hon- (to look) ⇒ drohon- (prospect, explore, recon)1) |
| îm-2) | NL < Quenya “immo” | self-3) | shad- (to destroy) ⇒ shadurm (destruction) ⇒ îmshadurm (self-destruction) |
| kau- | HG | anti-, counter-; opposition, contrast, strong negation | mauhûrz (military) ⇒ kaumauhûrz (anti-war) |
| kru- | NL < LOS “krul” (“two”), “krut” (“back”, adv) | re-; repeating action or fallback to previous state | skât- (to come) ⇒ kruskât- (to return) |
| m(a)- | EL from many Quenya question words starting with “ma” | makes interrogative and dubitative pro-forms; sometimes before consonants ma- used instead | in (place) ⇒ min (where?) |
| mar- | LOS (LUG) | question particle, forms interrogative mood | Fimarkrampuzan? (Did you do it?) |
| nan- | NL < Quenya “nan-” (back) as in “nancar” (to undo) | dis-, un-; cancelling the action | kramp- (to do) ⇒ nankramp- (to undo, cancel) |
| nar- | AN < TK 4) | negative particle for all word classes | nîr (nice) ⇒ narnîr (not nice) |
| ri-5) | LOS (prep. “between”) | inter-; interrupting, preventing of action | gashn- (to tell) ⇒ rigashn- (to interrupt) |
| thu- | LOS (prep. “beyond”) | over-; enforcing particle | “thrâh-” (to advice) ⇒ “thuthrâh-” (to insist) |
Prefixes like kru- or ri- have functions similar to aspect of verb, but may be applied to other lexical categories, such as nouns.
