Part 8: Common errors

Evidentiality has two kinds of failure, and only one of them is grammatical. The stack can be mis-ordered: the validator catches that kind. The mark can also be unearned (grammatical, fluent, and false) and no validator will ever catch it. This chapter drills both, with the second kind labeled precisely: not wrong, but claiming something else.

Error 1: the evidential out of order

Wrong:

*shia hi to wepu.
3SG DIR PST go.

Right:

shia to hi wepu.
3SG PST DIR go.
(They left — I saw them go.)

Tense before evidentiality, always: Tense > Aspect > Voice > Evidentiality > Modality > Negation. The temptation comes from English, which fronts its hedges ("apparently, they left"). Phi announces time first; the evidence is part of the verb's dress, not the sentence's opening.

Error 2: negating the evidence instead of the deed

Wrong (for the intended meaning):

*shia to ma hi wepu.
3SG PST NEG DIR go.

Negation stands last in the stack, closest to the verb. Placed before the evidential, the sentence is simply mis-ordered: there is no reading where ma denies your witnessing. To say "I did not see them leave," deny the seeing, in its own clause:

mia shia hi ma nila.
1SG 3SG DIR NEG see.
(I did not see them — and I was watching.)

mia shia ma nila.
1SG 3SG NEG see.
(I did not see them.)

The first, with hi, is testimony about an attentive absence; the second is a plain fact of non-perception. Both are honest; they answer different questions.

Error 3: double-sourcing a quotation

Says it twice:

sulae shola suliwa ti nai sholo to haolu.
sulae QUOT.COMP snake REP be QUOT.COMP.CLOSE PST speak.
(sulae said: "There is a snake — so I'm told.")

This sentence is perfectly grammatical, and that is the trap. Inside the quotation, ti belongs to sulae's words: she was marking her own secondhand knowledge, and quoting her preserves the mark. The error is producing this when you meant plain relay: wrapping your own ti claim in a quotation frame it never had. If nobody said those exact words, do not put them in the frame:

suliwa ti nai.
snake REP be.
(There is a snake — so I am told.)

Rule of thumb: shola…sholo copies evidentials; it never adds them. Your own distance from a fact is marked outside the frame or not at all.

Error 4: hi on an inference

Grammatical, but claiming something else:

suliwa to hi shua. mia ruela mua muila nila.
snake PST DIR come. 1SG path LOC earth see.
(A snake came — I witnessed it. I see the trail in the earth.)

The two sentences convict each other. If the trail is your evidence, you did not witness the coming; the honest first sentence wears ke. This is the most consequential error in the system because it is invisible to grammar: only your own audit catches it. The elder at the well is the standing model: trail seen, ke said.

Error 5: bare claims about other minds

Grammatical, but trespassing:

thia nuhe phaelo.
2SG sadness feel.
(You feel sadness.)

Phi will let you say it, and sometimes intimacy licenses it. But as a default it asserts access you do not have. The honest range, from Part 5: ke when their face is your evidence, ho when pattern is, the question wa when you are willing to be told. Reserve the bare form for what its bareness claims: knowledge that needs no defense.

Error 6: the fog of constant marking

Grammatical, and exhausting:

mia ho remo. sulopa ke sulae nai. mia sulopa ho nuola.
1SG ASSUM think. soup INFER warm be. 1SG soup ASSUM eat.
(I assume I think. The soup is warm, I infer. I will presumably eat it.)

Every mark is defensible; the paragraph is unlivable. Evidentials are for claims whose source is part of the message. Table talk, self-report, and the obvious go bare: the unmarked default is not a gap in the system but its resting state. If every sentence hedges, the hedges stop meaning; the listener who needs your one real ho will no longer hear it.

Error 7: inheriting a witness's certainty

Wrong (for the truth):

suliwa hi nai. lopia mia shane.
snake DIR be. child 1SG tell.

The second sentence refutes the first: if the child told you, your mark is ti, whatever the child's was. Witnesshood does not travel down the chain (Part 4's law). The correct pair keeps each speaker's debt separate: suliwa ti nai. lopia mia shane. The child's hi remains the child's to spend.

The audit habit

Notice the pattern across errors 4 through 7: the grammar held; the honesty slipped. This is why evidentiality is a practice, not a feature. The weekly journal audit (Part 7) is the maintenance schedule: the errors above are exactly what it is designed to find.