The three slots

A practice companion to the manual

Phi's entire grammar is thirty-five small words that never change shape. Six frame the sentence, sixteen shape the verb, thirteen refine single words. Every one of them stands before what it affects, announcing its work in advance. The doctrine belongs to manual ch9, the backbone chapter, with ch14–16 owning the deep corners and the canon rulings settling the last open joints: one particle per rank, the causative seated with the voice particles, the restrictive fenced, the Slot 2 stack ordered. This pamphlet is the whole machine, drilled: the first place all of it stands together.

Two skills interleave throughout, as ever. The first is mechanical: sorting particles by slot at hearing speed, building and reading stacks without thought, placing every piece where the fixed orders put it. The second is the one Phi actually cares about: hearing what each added particle costs (the claim it makes, the accountability it takes on) until a fully dressed sentence reads not as complexity but as care, taken out loud, one syllable at a time.

By the end of this pamphlet, you will:

• Sort any particle into its slot by ear, and know each slot's unmarked default
• Build and read Slot 1 stacks at speaking pace, one per rank, negation always last
• Work the voice machinery: passives, causatives, se ka, ka na, and the denial of authorship ka ma
• Give li and bare ko their first workout: the fence and the pointing finger
• Nest a Slot 2 stack by the cline, and hear it as modifier-first one level down
• Read the interaction tables: what combines, what one-per-rank refuses, and which cells the corpus has honestly never needed

This pamphlet assumes the primer or manual Part I–III. It is a companion to ch9 above all, with ch14 (tense and aspect), ch15 (voice and possibility), ch16 (evidentiality), and the particle reference behind it, and the evidentiality, naming, and punctuation pamphlets as its siblings on single slots' territories.

Contents:

1. One machine, three scopes
2. Slot 0: framing
3. Slot 1: tense and aspect
4. Slot 1: voice (who acts)
5. Slot 1: evidence and modality
6. The stack
7. Slot 2: the nesting phrase
8. The interaction tables
9. One sentence, grown with care
10. Common errors
11. Exercises
12. Appendix: the complete inventory

Every particle says one thing, says it before, and never changes. The whole grammar fits in a pocket. The practice is reaching for the right piece.