Part 4: The comma of address, the capital of a name

Two of English's silent marks guard people specifically: the vocative comma and the name's capital letter. Both already have their own doctrine (kona in manual ch21 §1, ne throughout the naming pamphlet) so this part is short, and only about what they are as punctuation.

The comma that keeps grandma off the menu

English grammarians teach the vocative comma with a famous warning about the difference between "Let's eat, grandma" and the version without the comma: a joke that works because the mark is silent and the sentence is ambiguous until typography rescues it. The joke cannot be built in Phi. Address is a word, kona, standing outside the sentence entirely, and no utterance exists in which the grandmother's role is settled by a mark nobody can hear:

kona wheo. no lo mia nuola.
VOC elder. IMP PL 1SG eat.
(Elder — let us eat.)

The call is its own little sentence with its own period; the invitation follows separately. Nothing to misplace, nothing to lose over a bad connection, no elder in danger. English's comma of address does its work only in writing; kona does it everywhere speech goes.

The capital you can hear

The other people-guarding mark is the capital letter, and the naming pamphlet, part 6, owns it: Phi has no capitals in any mode, and what capitals do for names, ne does aloud. As punctuation, note only the symmetry with everything in this pamphlet: English marks who is a name typographically and loses the marking in speech; Phi marks it with a syllable and cannot lose it anywhere:

mia thinoe nila.        mia ne thinoe nila.
1SG seed see.           1SG NAME thinoe see.
(I see a seed.)         (I see thinoe.)

Together at the door

The two marks stack the way English's stack: "sulae, welcome" wears a capital and a comma; Phi says both:

kona ne sulae. whelani.
VOC NAME sulae. welcome.
(sulae — welcome.)

Call announced, name announced, then the name, then the sentence. Every layer audible, every layer in the naming pamphlet's fixed order, and the English translation quietly needing two silent marks and a dash to keep up.

Drill: the unlosable address

Say each of these aloud, then say what its English translation must write silently:

1. kona lopia. wa thia wile.
2. kona ne siora. kia.
3. kona ni moli.

Answers: 1. a comma: Child, do you want to play? (plus the question mark wa already said). 2. a comma and would-be capital: siora — hello. 3. a comma at least, and English has no mark at all for what ni announces; some things Phi says, English cannot even draw.