Appendices
Appendix A: Glossary of Linguistic Terms
The technical vocabulary used in this manual, in plain language, with the Phi feature each term describes.
analytic language: A language in which words never change form: no conjugations, no declensions, no endings. All grammatical meaning comes from word order and separate particles. Phi is strictly analytic; a word learned once is learned whole.
aspect: How an action unfolds in time, as distinct from when it happens (tense). Phi's five aspects: perfective ki (completed whole), imperfective si (ongoing), inchoative pa (beginning), cessative te (ending), habitual ro (recurring).
causative: A construction meaning to make someone do something. Phi's ka: the causer becomes subject, the one caused to act becomes object (mia lopia ka nulae — I make the child sleep).
classifier: A word that names the kind of thing being counted. Phi's four: himo (people), lipha (living things), themo (objects), nophe (abstractions). Optional, and used as an act of acknowledgment.
complementizer: A word that turns a whole clause into a piece of another sentence. Phi's come in opener/closer pairs: mena…meno (that-clauses), wela…welo (embedded questions), shola…sholo (quotations). The closer is required because Phi's verb-final order would otherwise stack two verbs ambiguously.
copula: The verb to be linking a subject to a description. Phi's nai; the predicate comes before it (shelira phelora nai — the forest is beautiful).
demonstrative: A pointing word. Phi: ha (this, near) and ra (that, far).
evidentiality: Grammatical marking of how the speaker knows. Phi's optional set: hi (witnessed), ke (inferred), ti (told by others), ho (assumed). Unmarked speech implies direct experience.
gloss: The word-by-word annotation line under Phi examples. Grammatical elements are glossed in capitals using Leipzig-style abbreviations (below); content words in lowercase English.
head / head-directionality: The "head" is a phrase's core word (the noun in a noun phrase, the verb in a verb phrase); languages are classed by whether heads come before or after their dependents. Phi deliberately does not fit this binary; see modifier-first.
hiatus: Two adjacent vowels pronounced as separate syllables, with no glide or merger between them. Phi's foundational sound rule: au is always /a.u/, never a diphthong.
minimal pair: Two words differing by a single sound (hea/shea). Phi's coining policy forbids new minimal pairs within a word class, and requires natural opposites to be maximally dissimilar (lawe/kuri, left/right).
modifier-first: Phi's single organizing principle. Every element that modifies, specifies, or relates comes before what it affects: objects before verbs, adjectives before nouns, prepositions before their objects, clauses before their heads. "Announce, then deliver."
mood: The speech-act flavor of a sentence. Phi marks mood with Slot 0 particles: question wa, imperative no, conditional lu, optative su (wishes), politeness pi.
optative: The mood of wishes and blessings ("may all beings be well"). Phi's su, the workhorse of the Metta Sutta.
particle: A short, invariant grammatical word. In Phi, always a single CV syllable, assigned to one of three slots: sentence-frame (Slot 0), verb-phrase (Slot 1), word-level (Slot 2).
phonotactics: The rules for how sounds may combine. Phi's: open (C)CV syllables only, consonant-initial words, vowel-final everything, no three-vowel runs, no repeated syllable within a word.
pre-nominal relative clause: A relative clause placed before the noun it describes: [rena mia to nila] shelu — the [that I saw] book. Phi's relativizer rena opens the clause; the head noun itself closes it.
pro-drop / topic-drop: Omitting the subject when context makes it obvious. Phi allows it once a topic is established; it is never required.
quotative: Marking for directly quoted speech. Phi's shola…sholo frame preserves the speaker's exact words, including their original tense and pronouns.
reflexive / reciprocal: Action on oneself (miso: I see myself) versus on each other (wiso: we love each other).
SOV: Subject-Object-Verb order, Phi's sentence shape: context established, action delivered last.
tense: When an action happens relative to now. Phi: past to, future so, present unmarked.
transmutation: Phi's alternative to translation: rebuilding an idea from Phi's own concepts rather than mapping words across. See chapter 22.
vocative: The grammar of calling someone. Phi's kona, standing outside the sentence it introduces.
Leipzig-style abbreviations used in this manual
Grammatical category labels follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules and the standard extensions of the typological literature. One deliberate house convention, permitted by Leipzig rule 4: lexical function words (spatial prepositions, quantifiers) are also glossed in capitals (ABOVE, BETWEEN, MANY) so that every function word is visually distinct from content vocabulary in a gloss line. Interrogatives are glossed by meaning in lowercase (who, where, when).
Click or hover on a row for a longer explanation of that gloss.
| Abbr. | Phi | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
1SG/2SG/3SG mia (I), thia (you), and shia (they, singular, no gender) are the three personal pronouns. None changes with grammatical role; the same form serves as subject, object, or the object of a preposition. | mia, thia, shia | I / you / they-one |
1PL The plural marker lo before mia: we. The same pattern gives lo thia (you all) and lo shia (they, plural). | lo mia | we |
ABL From, a source: melu lue nitho shua is the friend comes from the north. | lue | from |
| ABST.CLF The classifier for abstract concepts: ideas, stories, emotions, and other things that cannot be touched but are still real. | nophe | abstraction classifier |
ALL To, the goal of motion, with arrival promised. Its counterpart wea (toward) makes no such promise. | kau | to (allative) |
ASSUM Marks that the speaker is assuming or supposing something rather than knowing it, one of Phi's four evidentials alongside hi (witnessed), ke (inferred), and ti (told). | ho | assumed |
CAUS The causative: the one who causes an action becomes the subject, and the original subject becomes the object. lopia nulae (the child sleeps) becomes mia lopia ka nulae (I make the child sleep). | ka | causative |
CESS The aspect for an action's ending: mia te shelomui is I stop understanding. | te | cessative |
CMPR The comparative marker, paired with sheo (than): toremoa sheo shiro mo raelu nai is the mountain is taller than the tree. | mo | comparative |
COND The realis conditional, announcing a real or likely if. Its irrealis counterpart, for a condition that did not or cannot hold, is the two-particle lu he. | lu | conditional |
| COORD And, the basic coordinating conjunction, joining words, phrases, or clauses of equal weight. | nela | and |
DAT To, for, marking the recipient or beneficiary of an action: mia wei thia loamira loa is I give you a gift. | wei | to, for (recipient) |
DECL.COMP Opens an embedded clause that reports the content of a statement rather than its exact words. It always closes with meno. | mena | that-clause (opener) |
DECL.COMP.CLOSE Closes a mena clause. Phi's verb-final order needs the closer; without it, the embedded verb and the main verb would sit side by side with no way to tell them apart. | meno | that-clause (closer) |
| DIR Marks that the speaker witnessed the event directly, through their own senses. | hi | witnessed |
| DISJ Or, the coordinating conjunction for alternatives. | sola | or |
FOC Marks emphatic focus on one element of the sentence: mia ko lothea shelomui singles out love, not other things, as what is understood. | ko | focus |
| FUT The future tense particle. Present tense carries no particle at all. | so | future |
HAB The aspect for a recurring or characteristic action, distinct from si (mid-flow, happening now): mia ro theo is I read regularly. | ro | habitual |
HUM.CLF The classifier for human beings. Counting people with himo is a small act of respect, setting them apart from objects: ta himo melu is one friend, counted as a person. | himo | people classifier |
| IMP The imperative marker, announcing a command or request. | no | imperative |
INCH The aspect for an action's beginning: mia pa shelomui is I begin to understand. | pa | inchoative |
| INFER Marks that the speaker reached the claim by inference from evidence, not by direct witness or report. | ke | inferred |
INT.COMP Opens an embedded yes/no question (I wonder whether). It always closes with welo. | wela | embedded question (opener) |
INT.COMP.CLOSE Closes a wela clause, marking where the embedded question ends so the main verb can follow without ambiguity. | welo | embedded question (closer) |
INTS The intensifier: very, truly. ru welao is very good. | ru | intensifier |
IPFV The aspect for action in progress, mid-flow, right now, distinct from ro (habitual). | si | imperfective |
IRR Paired with lu as lu he, an unreal or counterfactual conditional, for a condition that did not or cannot hold. | he | irrealis |
| LIFE.CLF The classifier for non-human living things: animals, plants, fungi, grouped by their shared vitality. | lipha | living-thing classifier |
LOC In, at, inside, marking where an action happens. It is never a motion endpoint itself; going toward a destination uses kau. | mua | in/at |
NEC Marks that an action is necessary or obligatory: mia na naphe is I must help. | na | necessity |
| NEG Negation. It always comes last in a stack of Slot 1 particles, after tense, aspect, voice, evidentiality, and modality. | ma | negation |
OPT Announces a wish, hope, or prayer: su sila towe nai is may the community be well. | su | optative |
ORD Marks that the numeral before a noun gives its position, not its quantity: nu ta lopia is the first child, not one child. | nu | ordinal |
PASS The passive voice, promoting the object of an action to subject: mia nophi kealo (I create the story) becomes nophi se kealo (the story is created). | se | passive |
PFV The aspect for completion at whatever point the tense sets as its reference: ki alone is have done, to ki is had done, so ki is will have done. | ki | perfective |
PL The plural marker for an unquantified noun. A numeral or quantifier already implies plurality, so lo never combines with one. | lo | plural |
POL Marks that the whole utterance is polite or respectful, and can combine with other Slot 0 particles: pi no lumani naphe is please help the family. | pi | politeness |
POT Marks possibility or ability: mia po shelomui is I can understand, or I am able to understand. | po | possibility (can/may) |
PROX/DIST ha (this, near) and ra (that, far), Phi's two demonstratives, marking distance from the speaker rather than gender or class. | ha, ra | this/that |
| PST The past tense particle. | to | past |
| Q Opens a sentence to announce a yes/no question, always sentence-initial. | wa | question |
QUOT.COMP Opens a direct quotation, preserving the speaker's exact words rather than their content. It always closes with sholo. | shola | quotation (opener) |
QUOT.COMP.CLOSE Closes a shola quotation, marking where the quoted words end so the verb of speaking or hearing can follow. | sholo | quotation (closer) |
REL Introduces a relative clause, which stands before the noun it describes: [rena mia to nila] shelu is the book that I saw. | rena | relativizer |
| REP Marks that the speaker received the information from someone else, rather than witnessing, inferring, or assuming it. | ti | reported |
RESTR Marks that a statement holds for the one thing named, and nothing else: only. It fences identity, who or which, never quantity; a count is stated exactly or with henoi. | li | only, restrictive |
| THING.CLF The classifier for inanimate objects, especially those made or used by hand: tools, containers, buildings, stones. | themo | object classifier |
VOC Marks direct address, standing outside the sentence it introduces: kona melu. mia ha nai is friend, I am here. | kona | vocative |