Phi pamphlets — Part 3: Simultaneity: whau

Sequence puts one event before another. whau refuses to put either first. The clause it opens supplies a stretch of time, and whatever the main clause reports happened somewhere inside that stretch:

whau phao lumoi phelu moloi phelasi sheraki.

SIMUL parent lantern hold apprentice shelf search.

(While the parent holds the lantern, the apprentice searches the shelf.)

Neither event is earlier. Neither causes the other. The frame says only that the searching happened somewhere inside the holding, and it finishes at its own verb like every other frame in this pamphlet.

Aspect is free on both sides, and it is worth knowing what it adds rather than reaching for it by reflex. si on the framing verb says the event was already under way:

whau pheralu si lepa lo mia mua keritha to manolu.

SIMUL rain IPFV fall PL 1SG LOC workshop PST stay.

(While the rain was falling, we stayed in the workshop.)

Drop si and the sentence still means that the two overlapped. The imperfective adds that the rain had started before the staying did, which is often what English "while" implies and never what it states.

01whau over a clause, sui over a noun

The one confusion worth heading off early is with sui (DUR), which puts an event inside a span too, but takes a noun where whau takes a clause:

lo mia sui pheralu mua keritha to manolu.

PL 1SG DUR rain LOC workshop PST stay.

(We stayed in the workshop during the rain.)

Both sentences put the staying inside the rain. The difference shows when the framing event has its own actor. Feed sui an event and that event has to turn into a noun with an owner: sui phao lumoi phelu is during the parent's holding of the lantern, where the parent has stopped doing and started possessing. Feed the same thing to whau and the parent goes on holding a lantern. Reach for sui when the span is a thing or a stretch of weather, and for whau when somebody is doing the thing that holds the span open.

Practiceoverlap without order

For each item, build the sentence, and decide whether the span wants a clause or a noun.

While the child sleeps, the parent mends the wall.
Say that you walked during the night, with the night as a plain span.
While I was already reading, my friend arrived.

Answers: 1 whau lopia nulae phao moru shiroka. The sleeping has its own subject, so it wants a clause and whau. 2 mia sui shero to thalo. The night is a stretch, not somebody's deed, so sui over the noun is right and no relator is needed. 3 whau mia si theo melu to kamo. The imperfective on the framing verb is doing real work here, since the point is that the reading was already going when the arrival happened.