19tha
The message
Part IV teaches Phi to speak about speaking. The first tool is the pair tha … tho: put a whole sentence between them and it becomes a thing: something known, said, or felt. The opener announces that a thought is coming; the closer marks where it ends, so the main verb can arrive without colliding with the embedded one. Spoken parentheses. A message arrives:
SceneI
ne siora kau womu shua.siora milaro kolua.siora shane.siora tha ne sulae so shua tho shane.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| tha | tha | (opens an embedded statement) |
| tho | tho | (closes it) |
| milaro | mi · la · ro | message |
| shane | sha · ne | tell |
siora comes to the house carrying a message and tells it: sulae will come. Read the long sentence once while watching the brackets: siora … shane is the frame, and inside it sits ne sulae so shua, with its own future particle minding its own verb. The closer tho is not decoration; without it, two verbs would stand face to face with no way to tell whose sentence ended.
SceneII
lopia tha ne sulae so shua tho sano.phao tha ne sulae so shua tho we sano.lopia tha lo mia sulopa so pilewa tho haolu.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| haolu | ha · o · lu | speak, say |
Now the child knows that sulae will come; the parent also knows it; and the child says that we will make soup. The same embedded shape works with knowing, telling, and speaking, while each matrix verb keeps its own meaning.
SceneIII
phao sulopa pharelo.lopia lo noru kolua.wheo tha philo welao nai tho phaelo.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| phaelo | pha · e · lo | feel |
The parent cooks soup. The elder watches and feels that the day is good. Feeling takes an embedded thought exactly the way knowing does; Phi does not pretend the heart is grammatically different from the head.
SceneIV
ne sulae shua.sulaekia. wa siora tha mia so shua tho to shane.phaolia. siora to shane. lo mia tha thia so shua tho to sano.sulaewelao nai.
Did siora tell you I would come? They did. We knew you would come: the embedded clause keeps its own future even inside a past telling, because what siora said pointed forward when they said it. Time inside the brackets belongs to the bracketed thought.