Part 6
The pattern: ro
The most famous cat in the grammar:
misheko ro nulae.
cat HAB sleep.
ro presents recurrence across separate occasions. Not this nap: the institution of napping. The particle steps back from any single moment and reports the shape a life keeps, and with it Phi says customs, practices, seasons of behavior, and everything a household would call the way things go.
01One occasion or many
si and ro divide territory that English often leaves to context, so the boundary deserves its own drill. si looks inside one occasion while it unfolds. ro looks across occasions and reports a pattern. The claims are different enough to picture:
lopia si wile.
child IPFV play.
lopia ro wile.
child HAB play.
The first sentence needs a game in progress somewhere. The second is true on a rainy afternoon with the child asleep, because a pattern goes on holding between its instances. Ask which claim you are making, one unfolding now, or many across time, and the particle chooses itself. A habit is a pattern by definition, so a habit takes ro, always.
02Patterns move through time too
A pattern can belong to the past or lie ahead, and tense does that work exactly as it does for single events:
mia to ro meliho.
1SG PST HAB sing.
lo mia so ro meliho.
PL 1SG FUT HAB sing.
The first is the custom of an earlier span of life. The second is an arrangement waiting to begin: rehearsals not yet started, a promise a choir makes to itself. Grammar this small can hold a former practice and a future one apart, and the verb stays whole through both.
Practicethe standing shape
- The elder rises habitually.
- The dog was swimming. One occasion, mid-flow.
- Every generation in one clause: the elder sang regularly in those days.
Answers: 1 wheo ro rihe. 2 lohau to si wishe. Past and in progress: the swim was underway at the story's moment. 3 wheo to ro meliho. The pattern itself is placed in the past, and the sentence mourns nothing; it remembers precisely.