Part 4 · grammar — Chapter 14 · verbs time

The words of time

This chapter has given you time's grammar: to and so place a clause in the past or future, and the five aspects shape how an event sits there. It has not yet given you time's vocabulary: the words for morning, for winter, for how old you are. Phi has them, and they form a system worth seeing whole: a clock read from the sky, a calendar of natural units, and a handful of compositions where other languages coin.

The natural clock

Phi divides the day into eight stations of light:

These are ordinary nouns, and the ordinary prepositions locate you among them: sui (during), tei (until), mua (in, at).

mia sui kelua theo.
1SG DUR morning read.
(I read during the morning.)

lopia tei norawhi wile.
child UNTIL dusk play.
(The child plays until dusk.)

mia mua shero sheluo.
1SG LOC night listen.
(I listen in the night.)

Eight stations, and nothing finer. Phi has no hour, no minute, no second, and no word for the clock that counts them. The refusal is settled canon, and the argument is the same one behind the ternary numbers (the design case is in documents/psychological_violence_of_measurement.md): a minute is a unit no body can feel, invented so that time can be priced, compared, and raced against. The eight stations are what a person standing under the sky actually perceives, and they carry everything shared reference requires. Say you will meet at thaeso and both of you will be there. What is lost is the gradation that lets 9:47 shame 9:52, and that loss is the point.

The calendar

Above the day, the units are the ones the sky and the ground already keep: philo (day), phaeno (week), lunoa (month), meluna (season), torua (year), and for the long view noruwa (generation). The seasons are wirae (spring), keloi (summer), muero (autumn), shila (winter).

lo peloru mua wirae thuroa.
PL flower LOC spring grow.
(The flowers grow in spring.)

Counted time takes nophe, and the classifier is optional, as classifiers always are: ta nophe philo or ta philo (one day), wi nophe lunoa (two months).

mia sui wi philo thalo.
1SG DUR two day walk.
(I walk for two days.)

Every span, whatever its size, has thorui (beginning), kesho (middle), and lumae (end). At the small end of the scale sit shemu (moment) and tiroe (instant): a moment is brief but lived in, an instant has no width at all.

Yesterday, tomorrow, and the distance between

The near days compose from words you already know: ha philo (today), luera philo (yesterday), wireo philo (tomorrow). The primer's journal chapter dates its entries this way, and the compounds keep the tense system visible every time they are said.

For distances beyond a day, pheo and phoe do the work. Chapter 19 taught them as subordinators over clauses; they take counted time phrases the same way, standing where any preposition phrase stands, after the subject and before the object.

mia pheo wi philo so shua.
1SG POST two day FUT come.
(I will come in two days.)

melu phoe wi philo to kamo.
friend ANT two day PST arrive.
(The friend arrived two days ago.)

Notice what is missing: there is no separate word for "ago" and none for "in ... from now." The preposition gives the distance and the tense particle gives the direction: pheo with so looks forward from now, phoe with to looks back. Two small words agree, and English's special machinery turns out to be unnecessary.

Time as a thing, time as a place

luera (past), nomi (present), wireo (future), nosa (now), and thimu (time) are nouns. The tense particles place your clause in time; the nouns let time itself be what the clause is about.

wheo luera halemu.
elder past remember.
(The elder remembers the past.)

mia nosa thole.
1SG now practice.
(I practice now.)

The first sentence talks about time. The second stands in it. Phi keeps the two jobs in different word classes, so neither ever pretends to be the other.

The turning words

Five nouns cover repetition and change, each with carved territory. nuri (cycle) is the great return: the circle a season or a generation completes. telui (rhythm) is the pulse felt inside it, at the scale of breath, footfall, song. kaero (phase) is one segment of a turning cycle, the waxing moon. mosha (period) is a bounded span that need not return at all. nuwoe (stage) is a step on a path that goes somewhere: position in growth, not in return.

lo meluna nuri nai.
PL season cycle be.
(The seasons are a cycle.)

Age

Age is a count of years, and Phi says it with the ordinary possession sentence (mia lohau phelu, I have a dog): subject, the count, torua, and phelu (hold).

mia wi phoi ta shao torua phelu.
1SG two nine-group one three-group year hold.
(I hold twenty-one years. I am twenty-one.)

lopia ta shao wi torua phelu.
child one three-group two year hold.
(The child holds five years.)

English says you are your age; Phi says you carry it. The years are a count you hold, and next year you will hold one more. The classifier, optional as always, is nophe.

How often

Frequency needs no adverbs; a quantifier over moments already says it. The registry carries five: sheloi shemu (often, many moments), phina shemu (rarely, few moments), soli shemu (sometimes, some moments), theula thimu (always, all time), mawha thimu (never, no time). The pattern is productive (any quantifier may count shemu or claim thimu), and the phrase stands in the adverbial slot, after the subject.

mia sheloi shemu thalo.
1SG MANY moment walk.
(I walk often.)

lopia theula thimu wile.
child UNIV time play.
(The child always plays.)

The scale has two materials. Its middle counts shemu, moments, a number honestly vague. Its ends claim thimu, time entire, because "always" and "never" are claims about the whole of time, and Phi makes you say so.

The day, lived

The journal practice of chapter 23 runs on these words, and the honest journal of the evidentiality pamphlet already writes with them:

lopia sui philo to wile.
child DUR day PST play.
(The child played during the day.)

A dated page, a day located rather than clocked, a claim no larger than what was seen. That is Phi telling time.