Chapter 11 Nouns and their world
Nouns and their phrases
shelu, a book, is the starting point. With serao before it, the book is old: serao shelu. A possessor comes first, and ha points to the one nearby: mia ha serao shelu, this old book of mine.
The noun closes the phrase. Under the modifier-first principle already familiar from the verb phrase, everything before it narrows, counts, locates, or describes the referent. A noun can also stand alone when context supplies the rest.
The basic pattern
The smallest descriptive noun phrase is:
[descriptor] [noun]
mioru thepalu means a beautiful garden. The quality comes first; thepalu identifies what carries it. More material can gather before the noun, but each addition must have a clear job. A long row of modifiers is grammatical and may still be unkind to working memory.
Noun phrases do more than describe objects. They refer to people, places, living beings, events, qualities, and relationships. Phi uses the same leftward structure across those kinds, while lexical meaning and context distinguish a parent from an old thing or a count from a colour.
The chapter ahead
The next sections begin with what Phi leaves unmarked: article status and, when context permits, number. They then add explicit plurality, optional classifiers, quantifiers, possession, and the quality-noun rule. The remaining sections tour the base vocabulary of colour, place, bodies, feelings, arts, and exchange.
The tour is not a demand to use every available word. It shows what the phrase can hold. Most conversations will need something closer to ha shelu than the entire shelf.