The stack

01Reading stacks

Read each sentence and name the occupied ranks.

1. mia to ki nila.
2. nophi to se kealo.
3. shia to si ke thalo.
4. pheralu so ho lepa.
5. mia lopia to ka ma nulae.
6. mia to si ke po ma nila.

Answers: 1 tense and aspect. 2 tense and voice. 3 tense, aspect, and evidentiality. 4 tense and evidentiality. 5 tense, voice, and negation. 6 tense, aspect, evidentiality, modality, and negation.

The sixth sentence means, "I infer that I was unable to see while the event was in progress." It is grammatical because each distinction belongs to the same seeing event. It is also dense. Phi permits the stack; it does not award a small medal for filling it.

02Building a stack

Begin with lopia nulae. (The child sleeps.) Add only what each step requests.

1. Place the sleeping in the past.
2. Present it as ongoing at that past reference point.
3. Mark the claim as inferred rather than directly perceived.
4. Instead infer that the child was not sleeping at that point.

Answers: 1 lopia to nulae. 2 lopia to si nulae. 3 lopia to si ke nulae. 4 lopia to si ke ma nulae. In the final sentence, ma remains last in the block and negates the sleeping predicate. The past, ongoing viewpoint, and inferential source remain part of the claim.

03Why fixed order matters

English distributes related meanings among auxiliaries, verb forms, adverbs, and context. Phi gives each particle a stable rank. The rule removes one parsing question: once the Slot 1 block begins, a listener knows the sequence in which its categories can arrive.

This is also modifier-first structure. The complete grammatical block comes before the manner and verb it modifies. A speaker may still choose two shorter clauses when a long stack becomes difficult to hear.

The example validator checks rank order and the one-per-rank rule. It can reject ma to, but it cannot decide whether an evidential is warranted or whether a dense clause suits the conversation. Those remain matters of meaning and judgement.