Workbook
Coordination in Phi
A practice companion to the manual
Two feelings arrive in one breath: mia shea nela lothea phaelo., I feel peace and love. Neither feeling outranks the other, neither causes the other; they stand side by side before the verb, joined by one small word. That is coordination, the grammar of standing together, and Phi does all of it with three conjunctions and one particle: nela for and, thona for but, sola for or, and we for the participant or action added alongside. Each one joins equals and adds exactly one relation, so a sentence can hold two things at once, neither ranked above the other.
Manual chapter 17 owns the doctrine; this pamphlet is the practice ground. The skills are two: building the joins at every level, word, phrase, and clause, and choosing the right joiner for the relation you actually mean, including the times the right joiner is a period and a discourse marker instead.
By the end of this pamphlet, you will be able to:
- Join words, phrases, and clauses of equal status with
nela, and give every list boundary its own joint - Set a claim against an expectation with
thonawhile keeping both claims asserted - Draw a fork with
sola, in plain statements and inside questions - Add a participant or an action alongside with
we, placed at the edge of what it adds - Choose between a conjunction inside one sentence and a discourse marker across two
- Keep and free of sequence and cause, and say those relations with their own words
This pamphlet assumes the sentence patterns in manual chapter 10. Chapter 17 is its home ground; the discourse markers belong to chapter 18, the clause relators to the adverbial-clauses pamphlet, we's position among the Slot 2 particles to the three-slots pamphlet, and nela between arithmetic operands to the counting pamphlet.
Say both. The grammar has room.