Átaremma i ëa han ëa provides a new example of the word order used in a relative phrase. Here we have subject + relative pronoun + verb + prepositional phrase. On the other hand, the wording i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar eä in Cirion’s Oath inverts the order of the verb and the prepositional phrase, placing the verb at the end (much like in a German relative phrase, but in Cirion’s Oath the verb eä is actually not absolutely final; there is an adverb tennoio "for ever" following it). Carrying the word order used in Cirion’s Oath over to the Lord’s Prayer would produce *Átaremma i han ëa ëa, the first ëa being a noun (Eä, the universe) and the second a verb "is, exists". Perhaps Cirion’s Oath displays the more normal word order, the Prayer using an alternative wording to avoid two ëa in sequence. In a highly inflected language like Quenya, the word order would typically be quite free anyway. It may be noted that the sole relative sentence in Namárië – the words tellumar, yassen tintilar i eleni, literally "domes, which-in twinkle the stars" (RGEO:66-67) – has the verb tintilar "twinkle" immediately following the relative pronoun ya "which" (here inflected for plural locative: yassen). This quote was from the "prose version" of Namárië in RGEO; the "poetic" version in LotR does not have the noun tellumar "domes" immediately in front of the relative pronoun, but still agrees that the verb follows immediately after the relative pronoun. This would be the same word order as in Átaremma i ëa… "our Father who is…" It would seem that Quenya does not have a fixed word order in relative sentences, but typically the verb may follow immediately after the relative pronoun, as in the phrases Átaremma i ëa and tellumar, yassen tintilar.
na aire esselya ·
hallowed be thy name,
The word na seems to be an optative particle (that is, a particle signaling that the sentence it occurs in should be taken as a wish rather than a declarative statement), aire "holy" (cf. aire María for "holy Mary" in the Hail Mary text), esselya "thy name" (sc. esse "name" + -lya "thy"). The whole sentence could be interpreted *"be holy thy name" with na as the imperative "be!" (LR:374 lists nâ2- as the stem of the verb "to be" in Quenya), and perhaps this was indeed the construction the early Eldar originally intended, but if this is the case, na later evolved beyond being a mere imperative "be!" In light of the two next examples (see below), I think that in terms of synchronic syntax, it is probably best to interpret aire esselya as a nominal sentence "holy [is] thy name" (we will see several more examples of such sentences in this text), this declarative sentence then being transformed into a wish or a prayer by supplying the particle na: "May your name [be] holy."
aranielya na tuluva ·
thy kingdom come,
aranielya "thy kingdom", sc. #aranie "kingdom" + -lya "thy", na optative particle denoting a wish, tuluva "shall come", verb tul- "come" + the future-tense ending -uva. Stylistic matters aside, the Quenya text reads literally something like "thy kingdom, wish-that [it] will come". Unlike the standard English text of the prayer, that simply expresses a wish that the kingdom may come without touching on time at all, the Quenya version makes it clear that the coming of the Kingdom of God is a future event – as indicated by the future-tense form tuluva. (Contrast the aorist tense employed in the translation of "thy will be done" below; this is not a prayer regarding a singular future event, but a prayer that the will of God always be done, irrespective of time.)
na care indómelya cemende tambe Erumande :
thy will be done, on earth as [it is] in heaven
na wishing-particle, care "does", aorist verb (with no explicit subject!), indólmelya "your will" (#indóme "will" + -lya "thy"), cemende "(as?) on earth". This is a hitherto unknown case or adverbial form. It could have much the same function as the well-known locative in -sse (that also occurs in the text before us, in the word lúmesse below). The basic word is cemen "earth", so the ending could be #-de (which form it could only have following words ending in -l, -r or as here -n; otherwise impossible consonant clusters would arise – or, if this suffix were added to words ending in a vowel, an equally impossible intervocalic d). It may be that the ending is actually #-nde, reduced to #-de when added to a word in -n. It could also be a kind of "comparative" case, indicating that cemende is being compared to Erumande (see below). In earlier "Qenya", an ending -ndon meaning "like" appears; it is possible that -nde is a later incarnation of it (see the entry cemende in the Lexical Commentary below for further discussion)[7]. tambe "as", evidently used when comparing with something not close to the speaker; contrast sív' later in the text, apparently meaning "as" when comparing to something that is in the proximity of the speaker (see the Lexical Commentary for further discussion of both words). Erumande "(as?) in heaven", a most peculiar form apparently including Eru "God"; see Lexical commentary. It evidently incorporates the same "locative" or "comparative" ending as in cemende, and since the latter is known to correspond to the nominative form cemen, the nominative of Erumande could likewise be #Eruman. Yet since the ending may also be #-nde, another possible nominative may be #Eruma[8].
7
In VT43, the ending -de is suggested to be an allomorph of the locative ending -sse, or its shorter version -se. Tolkien may seem to be toying with a system that has this ending appearing as -ze or -de following certain consonants, like -n and -l. This phonological development does not agree very well with the system he uses elsewhere, though: cemen + -se would be expected to yield cemesse rather than cemende.