Phi practice The three slots

Reading 3 of 13

Part 2

Slot 0: framing

Compare thia towe nai. (You are well.) with wa thia towe nai. (Are you well?). One small word changes the work of the whole utterance, so Slot 0 comes before the subject and before the clause it frames.

FormWork
no particleordinary declarative assertion
wayes/no question
nodirective, interpreted in context as a request or command
lurealis condition
lu heirrealis or counterfactual condition
suwish, hope, blessing, or prayer
pipolite stance

01Questions, directives, and wishes

pi wa thia towe nai.

POL Q 2SG well be.

(Are you well?)

pi no mia naphe.

POL IMP 1SG help.

(Please help me.)

su theula towe nai.

OPT UNIV well be.

(May all be well.)

wa identifies a yes/no question. no identifies a directive; context makes it a request or a command. pi marks politeness, which can cover goodwill or pressure with equal grammatical ease.

02Conditions come before consequences

The condition is its own sentence and precedes the consequence it modifies:

lu thia mia naphe. mia so thia whaline.

COND 2SG 1SG help. 1SG FUT 2SG thank.

(If you help me, I will thank you.)

For an unreal, imagined, or counterfactual condition, he follows lu:

lu he mia to naphe. shia to ma wepu.

COND IRR 1SG PST help. 3SG PST NEG go.

(If I had helped, although I did not, they would not have left.)

he occurs only in the fixed form lu he. Each clause still carries its own tense, aspect, and other Slot 1 choices.

03The licensed combinations

Phi documents two combinations of politeness with another Slot 0 frame: pi wa and pi no. Politeness comes first in both. lu he is the other fixed two-particle form. No other multiple Slot 0 sequence is licensed.

kona is not a Slot 0 particle. A vocative is an extra-clausal utterance with its own period:

kona melu. wa thia towe nai. (Friend. Are you well?)

Practiceone proposition, several frames

Begin with thia sulopa pharelo. (You cook soup.) Give it each requested frame.

  1. Ask whether the listener cooks soup.
  2. Direct the listener to cook soup.
  3. Make the cooking a condition, followed by mia seniku. (I smile.)
  4. Wish that the listener may cook soup.
  5. Make the question polite.
  6. Make the directive polite.

Answers: 1 wa thia sulopa pharelo. 2 no sulopa pharelo. 3 lu thia sulopa pharelo. mia seniku. 4 su thia sulopa pharelo. 5 pi wa thia sulopa pharelo. 6 pi no sulopa pharelo. The subject is normally omitted from the directive because the listener is its understood actor.