Part 6: Choosing and combining

The four particles are simple alone. Fluency is the seams: the cases that sit between sources, the sentences that need an evidential and a negation, the stories whose evidence changes midway. This chapter is all seams.

Boundary cases, adjudicated

Serious speakers ask these sooner or later; here are the adjudications the system itself implies, each reasoned from the boundary rule: what did your senses actually meet?

Memory. You saw it yesterday; you claim it today. Still hi. Witnessing does not expire, only tense moves: mia suliwa to hi nila. (I saw the snake, myself, then.) If your memory has gone soft enough that you are reconstructing rather than recalling, you have crossed into ke, and the honest sentence says so.

Your own inner life. No particle is needed and none fits well: mia siora phaelo. (I feel joy.) You are not witnessing your joy across a gap; you are having it. First-person feeling is the one place where bare assertion is the most honest form.

Dreams. mia mua whemura suliwa to nila. (In my dream I saw a snake.) The dream frame does the epistemic work; inside it, dream-witnessing is witnessing. What you may not do is carry dream-knowledge out of the frame and mark it hi at the breakfast table.

Sound, smell, and the indirect senses. Hearing the rain is hi: the sound is the event's own body. Smelling smoke and claiming fire is ke: the smoke is a trace, however fresh. The nose witnesses smoke; the mind supplies fire.

Being told by a witness. Your source's certainty does not transfer. The child's hi is your ti, forever. Reliability can travel; witnesshood cannot.

Evidentials under negation

Negation follows the evidential in the stack, and the meaning follows the order; the evidence governs the denial:

shia to hi ma wepu.
3SG PST DIR NEG go.
(They did not leave — I was there; I watched them stay.)

shia to ti ma wepu.
3SG PST REP NEG go.
(They did not leave — so I am told.)

Witnessed absence is strong testimony; reported absence is only relayed. Drill the pair until the placement feels inevitable: the evidential is never negated; it locates the speaker, and the deed is what is denied.

Evidentials in questions

wa opens a question, and an evidential inside it does elegant work. It asks not just whether but how the answerer knows:

wa thia suliwa hi nila.
Q 2SG snake DIR see.
(Did you see the snake yourself?)

wa suliwa ti nai.
Q snake REP be.
(Is the snake a thing people are saying?)

The first is the household's verification move: the question the elder is really settling by walking to the well. The second asks about the chain itself. A question can request evidence-of-a-kind, and a good answer pays in the coin requested.

Switching sources mid-story

Real accounts braid sources, and the honest narrator re-marks at every switch. The child's summary at the end of the news chapter is the corpus's own masterclass:

mia suliwa hi nila. sulae ti sano. wheo ke sano. phao ho sano.
1SG snake DIR see. sulae REP know. elder INFER know. parent ASSUM know.
(I saw it myself. sulae knew by telling. The elder knew by signs. The parent knew by expectation.)

Four clauses, four sources, one true story. Note the discipline: the child does not average the household's knowledge into one confident claim. Each knowing keeps its own passport. Practice retelling any shared event this way (who knew, and how) and the particles will start arriving unbidden.

The fifth choice: silence

Omission is a marking too. The unmarked sentence says this needs no pedigree: table talk, shared sights, settled knowledge. A speaker who marks everything has misunderstood the system as thoroughly as one who marks nothing; constant hi is swagger, constant ho is hedging, and both drown the signal. The evidentials are salt, not water. The primer's household uses four in one chapter because that chapter is news; most chapters of a life are not.

Drill: the braided retelling

Yesterday: you watched the morning rain; thinoe told you the well path flooded; you found the garden gate open and concluded the dog had been through; and you expect sulae stayed home, as she does in rain. Tell the day in four sentences, one source each. One good version:

pheralu sui kelua to hi lepa.
rain DUR morning PST DIR fall.
(Rain fell in the morning — I watched it.)

phitura ruela to ti phialu howela.
well path PST REP water receive.
(The well path took water — thinoe told me.)

lohau thue thepalu to ke wepu. mia mua muila lohau ruela to nila.
dog THROUGH garden PST INFER go. 1SG LOC earth dog path PST see.
(The dog went through the garden — I infer; I saw his trail in the earth.)

sulae mua womu to ho manolu.
sulae LOC home PST ASSUM stay.
(sulae stayed home, I expect — she does, in rain.)

Four sentences, four honest debts, each paid in its own coin. That is the whole system, working.