Questions and Intonation in Na'vi

Original question text:

> A particularly auspicious new learner on the Discord server recently asked about vocal intonation in Na'vi and if it's mostly consistent with English. I was wondering if you would weigh in on that at all.
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> Based on the spoken dialogue in the film, it appears that Na'vi somewhat follows English cues like rising questions and exclamations (which may simply be due to the actors habits), but is there anything else we should know?
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> **Irayo nìli.**
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Original correspondence text:

> Always nice to hear about particularly auspicious new learners! 😀
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> The question of Na’vi intonation came up in the early stages of the language’s development. I broached the idea that the intonation patterns might in fact be “exotic,” in the sense that they would be very different from what most people are used to in familiar earth languages—say, for example, a falling rather than rising intonation for questions. But it was felt that the intonation patterns shouldn’t depart too far from what’s expected. That is, if a question is being asked, even though the audience doesn’t understand the language, they should at least be able to interpret it as a question from what they’re hearing. So you’re correct: the intonation patterns you hear in the film aren’t too different from what we would expect in English.
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> That said, we can go a little deeper into the matter.
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> First let’s look at English.
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> Three of the most common types of questions are:
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> Yes-No questions with inversion
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> Yes-No questions without inversion
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> WH questions
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> Examples of each:
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> “Are you planning to go?”
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> Here, the statement form “You are planning to go” has been changed to a question by inverting the subject and the be-verb: You are --> Are you. That marks it as a Yes-No question.
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> “You’re planning to go???”
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> You can do this in informal conversation only. The question form is identical to the statement form but has rising intonation.
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> “Who are you planning to go with?”
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> Here, the WH element, who, marks it as a question.
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> Now in #2, the only thing that marks it as a question is the rising intonation. So in this type of question, that intonation is obligatory.
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> In #3, the WH element is enough to tell you it’s a question, so rising intonation isn’t necessary. In fact, I think it’s quite common for WH questions not to use rising intonation. Check it out yourself. How would you say #3? Does your voice necessarily rise at the end? For me, I can pronounce the sentence in several ways, and in most of them, there’s no rising intonation.
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> 1. 1 is the somewhat odd one. The inversion by itself should be enough to tell you it’s a question. And yet I think such questions are usually accompanied by rising intonation, which is redundant. (Logically speaking, you don’t need two separate markers to indicate the same thing.) Can you think of a circumstance where you would say #1 without rising intonation? Maybe if someone didn’t get the question the first time, and you repeated it, somewhat testily, “What I said was, Are you planning to go?” I could say that with falling intonation, but it’s an unusual situation.
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> Turning to Na’vi . . .
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> 1. 3-type sentences work similarly to English WH-questions. The pe- element is enough to mark the utterance as a question. So rising intonation is optional.
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> **Nga kä hu pesu? Pol tok pesenget?** No rising intonation is necessary in these.
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> 1. 2 doesn’t exist in Na’vi. Yes-No Q’s must be marked by **Srake** \_\_\_ or \_\_\_ **srak**.
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> As for #1, inversion in Na’vi, needless to say, does not signal a question. **Pol tok fìtsenget** and **Tok pol fìtsenget** are both statements. But **Srake**/**srak** does indicate a question. Rising intonation with these kinds of questions is optional. (I should probably try to provide some spoken examples of **Srake**/**srak** questions where the intonation doesn’t rise.)
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> All the above was about questions. Regarding exclamations, it would seem the intonation patterns would be quite similar across languages, which would make Na'vi naturally follow more or less the same patterns English does. But I haven't looked into this area across different Earth languages.
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> Hope that clarifies things a bit.
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> PF
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*Originally received on April 15th, 2020*