Chapter 11 Nouns and their world
The words of the arts
Phi's Art Nouveau pillar concerns deliberate form and sensuous material. Its arts vocabulary begins in sound and making: a music family, three instruments, one instrument part, and verbs for work done by hand and voice.
The music family
Music keeps one sound the way life does: meliho (sing), melira (song), meliphe (music). Around them stand sulai (musician), haoni (voice), shonuwa (sound), and telui (rhythm), with the registry's haoni welisha (voice-color) for timbre.
mia meliphe sheluo.
1SG music listen.
shia melira meliho.
3SG song sing.
meliphe siora loa.
music joy give.
The instruments
The three complete instruments are kuma (drum), phui (flute), and teli (bell). lina names the tensioned string of an instrument. The optional sound symbolism in kuma can recall a stroke opening into resonance, while phui begins on audible breath; these are whole-word mnemonics, not meanings hidden in their syllables. Playing an instrument uses ordinary wile (play):
sulai kuma wile.
musician drum play.
A bell may be struck or shaken, a drum keeps rhythm, and a flute carries an air stream across an opening. A source name can identify a particular instrument when the base words and its described parts do not.
Harmony
Concord has a verb of its own, and it is intransitive, because harmony is something voices do together rather than something done to them:
lo haoni lei.
PL voice harmony.
shemoli (harmonize, transitive) tunes one thing to another; koru (harmonious) describes the result; and sena (pattern) is telui's spatial sibling, repetition laid out in space rather than time.
The makers
The making verbs are carved, and each names a different hand: kealo (create) brings the new into being, pilewa (make) transforms material at hand, theko (craft) is skilled shaping, kire (shape) forms and also draws, selomi (weave) works threads, and its own entry extends it where every language eventually goes:
mia nophi selomi.
1SG story weave.
Every work these verbs produce is named by the rule you already know: a weaving, a shaping, a singing, each the event noun of its verb. Poem, painting, and sculpture receive no separate roots because each would name a container where Phi names an act. A poem is melira, song, because Phi's page is a score for the voice; the texts are written to be read aloud, and the language never forgets it.
What the making is for
shela (art) is the category. mioru means beautiful, and its quality noun supplies beauty without claiming that every work must pursue it. lunai (vision) names what guides a work. Celebration brings pharuki (celebrate), kela (rejoice), holia (festival), and rotiku (dance) into the same square.
sila holia thilonu.
community festival prepare.
sila mua holia rotiku.
community LOC festival dance.
maeli (quiet) supplies silence through the quality-noun rule. Silence can frame music, interrupt it, or be the work itself. The maker verbs keep attention on what people do, while melira, meliphe, and shela remain available when the made thing needs a name of its own.