Part 6: The stack

Everything from Parts 3–5 in one fixed line, at speed. The order is canon and has no exceptions:

Tense > Aspect > Voice > Evidentiality > Modality > Negation

One per rank; se ka the single pairing; ma always last, against the verb. The order runs from the world toward the speaker: first when it happened, then its shape in time, then who acted, then how I know, then what constrains, then (closest to the deed) whether it happened at all. Announce everything; deliver once.

Reading scales

The stack is learned the way musicians learn scales: read aloud until the ranks resolve at reading speed. Name every particle's rank as you go:

1. mia to ki nila.
2. nophi to se kealo.
3. shia to si ke thalo.
4. pheralu so ho lepa.
5. mia lopia to ka ma nulae.
6. mia to si ke po ma nila.

Answers: 1 tense-aspect. 2 tense-voice. 3 tense-aspect-evidential. 4 tense-evidential. 5 tense-voice-negation. 6 tense-aspect-evidential-modal-negation, the fullest stack the corpus ever needs, five ranks deep: I was not being able to see, as I infer. If line 6 resolved as fast as line 1, this part is done with you.

Building scales

Now the other direction. Start from lopia nulae. (the child sleeps) and add exactly what each line asks, one particle per step, each sliding into its rank:

1. …in the past.
2. …and the sleeping was mid-flow when you looked in.
3. …and you infer it (the lamp is out) rather than saw it.
4. …and deny the whole thing instead: the child was not sleeping, as you infer.

Answers: 1 lopia to nulae. 2 lopia to si nulae. 3 lopia to si ke nulae. 4 lopia to si ke ma nulae. Notice that step 4 changed nothing but the last position. Negation never reaches back into the stack; it stands at the door of the verb and says no to the deed, leaving every announcement (the time, the flow, your inference) intact and still claimed. You still infer; what you infer is an absence.

Why the order is this order

The temptation, forever, is English's: hedges out front ("probably, they left"), negation floating ("didn't used to"), tense buried in the verb. Phi files each claim by how much of it belongs to the world and how much to you, and makes the most speaker-owned claims stand closest to the verb, where the deed can answer them. The stack is not a memorized sequence; it is a worldview with positions. Learn it as the second, and you will never mis-order the first.

The validator's ear

Since the July audit, the validator checks every example's stack against this order and the one-per-rank rule mechanically: nine violations were found sleeping in four months of corpus, and none can enter again. Your own ear is the same tool, trained by these scales: a ma to should now sound to you the way a wrong note sounds, before you can say why.

Drill: repair shop

Each is mis-stacked. Fix it aloud, then name what was filed wrong:

1. mia ma to sheluo.
2. shia hi to wepu.
3. pheralu ho so shua.
4. mia lopia na ka wile.

Answers: 1 mia to ma sheluo. Negation had crept ahead of time. 2 shia to hi wepu. The witness-claim stood before the when; evidence is rank four, not rank one. 3 pheralu so ho shua. The assumption had swallowed the future. 4 mia lopia ka na wile. Voice precedes modality: first who was made to act, then what constrained the making. All four wrong forms are the ones an English-trained ear reaches for first; repairing them is how the order becomes reflex.