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The fourth line of Aia María, Tolkien’s translation of the Ave Maria prayer. The first word is ar “and”. This is followed by a declarative statement. The second word aistana “blessed” is the predicate. The next two words i¹ yávë “the fruit” are the subject. As in the second line, there is no Quenya equivalent of the English word “is” in the final version of the prayer. Thus, ar aistana i yávë means “and blessed [is] the fruit”.

The next word functions as the subordinate clause: mónalyo “of thy womb”, a combination of móna “womb”, the second person singular possessive suffix -lya¹ and the genitive suffix -o. The final word Yésus is simply a Quenyarized form of “Jesus”.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

ar aistana i yávë móna-ly(a)-o Yésus = “*and blessed [is] the fruit womb-your-of Jesus”

Conceptual Development: In the second version, Tolkien considered but rejected a variant form are (II deleted) for ar “and”. The first two versions of the prayer used manna (I-II) for “blessed” instead of aistana (III-IV). Tolkien used several variations for “fruit”: yáva (I-II), yávë (III), yave (IV). In the first two versions of the prayer Tolkien used carva (I-II) for “womb” instead of móna (III-IV).

I	II	III	IV
ar	{are >>} ar	ar
manna		aistana
i
yáva		yávë	yave
carvalyo		mónalyo
Yésus