Mixed mutation was a system first proposed by Davis Salo to explain some irregularities in the use of the genitive preposition en. In his book, Gateway to Sindarin, he described the effects of mixed mutation as that of a soft mutation followed by a nasal mutation (GS/79-80).
One interesting feature of Sindarin is that its nasal mutations are distinct from those of Welsh. In particular, the nasal mutations of p, t, c are ph, th, ch rather than voiceless nasals “mh, nh, ngh” as in Welsh. This is especially peculiar given that Sindarin mostly underwent the same medial phonetic developments as Welsh, whereby (for example) nt > nth > nnh (long voiceless nasal) > nn.
Nasal mutation is the second most common form of mutation in Sindarin. It is the result of a preceding nasal n, and its most common use is with the plural definite article in.
This entry skips a couple of small “bridge” entries which is why the part number jumps to 10.
Sindarin soft mutation is pervasive in the language and serves numerous functions: marking the direct object of a verb, the modified form of a noun following an article, the modified form of an adjective following a noun, etc. This entry primarily discusses the mutational process itself. The conditions under which mutations occur is addressed in other entries.
Sindarin is primarily a SVO language (subject-verb-object), with subject first, followed by the verb and then any objects of the verb. In many situations, Sindarin has a word order similar to English: the subject precedes the verb, prepositions precedes the qualified noun phrase, relative pronouns precedes the subordinate clause, etc. One major exception to this rule, however, is that Sindarin adjectives follow rather than precede their noun:
Tolkien described the basic Sindarin stress patterns in the The Lord of the Rings Appendix E (LotR/1116), and they are essentially the same as for Quenya (and Latin): stress falls on heavy syllable closest to the end of the word, except (a) it cannot fall on the last syllable of polysyllables and (b) cannot be further back than the third-to-last syllable. A syllable is “light” if has a short vowel and ends in no more than one consonant; it is “heavy” if it has a long vowel, a diphthong or ends in more than one consonant. Thus:
Sindarin’s consonant and vowel inventory is described in The Lord of the Rings Appendix E, at least indirectly (LotR/1113-1116). The Sindarin consonants of the 1950s-60s are almost the same as the Noldorin consonants of the 1930s appearing in the Comparative Tables of linguistic development from the 1930s (PE19/18-23), excluding only hw which in Noldorin was chw.
This entry is especially rough, since it is a high-level summary of basic grammar written before I’ve done any of the actual research. Take what is written here with some very large grains of salt. I will revisit this entry once the research in the more detailed entries is done.
The sound change [nl] > [ll] was noted by David Salo in his book, Gateway to Sindarin (GS/§4.158), on the basis of the names Mithrellas (UT/248, PM/222) and Finellach (PM/351). Neither name is glossed, but the first seems to be a combination of mithren and lass.
