Inverse Relay

While in almost all other cases ne en'i is contracted to n'i, the ayana deixis word does not contract the ne.

Because the time deixis already established that we are in the past tense, pas is not necessary. It's not ungrammatical, but it's stylistically non-standard.

There is much cultural significance surrounding the word iroyi. Discussion of this term and the associated cultural practices belongs in the Culture section of this site, but that document has not actually been written yet. :P Since there is no such discussion around the iroyim'da, Elliott would have had no way of knowing this particular word's significance. Even so, the rest of this text fits surprisingly well with Cresaean culture.

The -j- modifies the verb it binds to, in this case kénillev. If you wanted to say that the boy was able to try to see (a funny phrasing, but maybe what you want to say if it was previously unclear whether the boy was blind, or wounded), you would say arinjo kén'i.

Note that this means jejherídim can attached to certain adverbs, such as arin, so long as an epenthetic -o is added.

A minor, and undocumented, grammatical error: te cannot conjoin two independent clauses; you must use t'ves instead.

A more literal "fixing" of Elliott's Asha'ille would have been: Eisarvni ne énillevon done shola nyai'ol. However, a more fluent translation of He began to feel sad and melancholy should use chipal with its incipient meaning.

Also, note that when an -illev verb is shortened, it really wants an attached conjugation added, even if no subject change has happened since the last verb. While it's grammatical to say just én, for instance, it sounds funny, like something a foreigner would say.

Two things are non-standard — though completely grammatical — with Elliott's above translation. First, a one-word adverb (vel'en i) stylistically wants to precede the verb. Second, the parenthetical comment about the subject is more fluently translated as a description of the subject, either via egik or the more colloquial alunsa, used above in my version of the translation.

Presumably, Elliott's use of the pronoun ejhsa in place of the noun ejh, beloved, dear, was an accident on his part.

The word ssha is meant for direct quotations that do not end a sentence/utterance. The word ká'sshak ends such an embedded quotation. If the quotation ends the sentence, the word sshak is used instead. I didn't document this anywhere, however, so Elliott had no way of knowing this rule.

I assume that, in Elliott's translation where the girlfriend (or whatever) asks the boy why esni énillev, I am feeling, he actually meant for her to be asking the boy why he was feeling down. The ssha(k) introduces a direct quotation, and as such is relative to the speaker's perspective. So, she should have said esejh énillev, beloved is (you are) feeling.

The past tense marker on the verb, -p-, is not necessary here. While normal verbs' changing of tense does need to be "reset", the tense within a direct quotation is assumed to be in the present relative to the overall tense, and so doesn't actually change the default tense of the main narrative.

This last sentence is the one I'm least confident in translating; all the others were very straightforward, being essentially correct. This sentence, however, makes the most sense in context if I assume Elliott forgot to add a subject to the girl's quotation: Elliott's mirvenil..., I (or you, depending on context) should come..., probably meant to be mirvenil nom ('sa chiróm)..., they (the clouds) should come....

I believe this is the first case of embedded possesion: their house's darkness. Their house would be mlecim feilán; their darkness would be mlecim eseire; the house's darkness would be mlo feilán eseire. I had no documented case of combining possessives, so Elliott's way of handling it makes perfect sense.

But I think I'll coin a new way of doing things, in this case. A cumbersome but grammatical way of getting the point across will be mlecim feilán, mlo feilán eseire, literally their house, the house's darkness. The more fluent, "normal" phrasing will be mlecim feilán, mlunsa eseire, literally their house, its darkness. The ability for alun- words to be combined with the ml-ml is new to Asha'ille grammar.