Part 10: Common errors

Particle-system errors split into two kinds: order errors the validator now catches, and honesty errors only you will. The first kind has a distinguished history: the July audit found nine order violations asleep in four months of validated corpus, including two in a published text. Every error below is real; several are the corpus's own former mistakes.

Error 1: the stack reversed

Wrong: mia ma to sheluo. Right: mia to ma sheluo.

The commonest error: negation creeping ahead of tense, because English says "did not" with the denial first. The order never bends: time, shape, actor, source, constraint, denial, deed. The validator refuses the reversal mechanically. Train the ear anyway: ma to should sound like a wrong note before you can say why.

Error 2: doubled ranks

Wrong: suliwa hi ti nai. Witnessed and told?

One per rank. Two sources are two sentences (suliwa ti nai. mia we suliwa ruela hi nila. — told, and I saw the trail besides); two modals are two clauses. The single pairing the rule admits is se ka, in that order, and nothing else. If your stack wants two of anything, your thought wants two sentences: let it have them.

Error 3: the smuggled present

Wrong: sholo haolu for "…they said."

A translation in the past tense means to on the Phi verb, the main-clause tense ruling. Dropping it doesn't make the sentence casual; it makes it present, and false. The mirror error also lives: adding to to a proverb-like truth that is not located in time at all. Tense is a claim; make it when it is true, and only then.

Error 4: misreading the bare sentence

Grammatical, and a misreading: treating mia thia sano. as claiming I witnessed.

An unmarked sentence claims no source (that is now canon), so bare sentences are not stealth testimony, and hedging every sentence to avoid "overclaiming" reproduces the fog (the evidentiality pamphlet, Error 6). The resting state is trustworthy. Spend evidentials where the source is the message; read bare sentences as what they are: plain assertion, plainly owned.

Error 5: the blurred carve

Wrong (for the meaning): misheko si nulae. The cat is asleep right now, mid-nap, said of a cat whose whole nature is sleep.

si is mid-flow; ro is the pattern. misheko ro nulae. is the truth the primer built a running joke on. The test is one question (inside one occasion, or standing back from many?), and it decides every case.

Error 6: the agentless dodge

Grammatical, but hiding: phialu to se ma loa. Said by the one who didn't do the watering.

se legitimately retires unknown or unimportant agents. Retiring yourself from your own deed is a different act wearing the same particle: Part 9's whole scene. No validator will ever catch this one; the evening question is the only tool. When the agent is you, the subject is mia.

Error 7: the fence misused

Wrong (for the language): li ta shao lipha powea. — "only three eggs."

li fences identity, never quantity: canon calls it a fence, not a sigh. The count is stated exactly, and if the true claim is insufficiency, henoi ma nai. says it without teaching the number to mourn. And we li never stack: a phrase carries one discourse relation; "also only" is two thoughts pretending to be one.

Error 8: the vocative filed as Slot 0

Wrong (as analysis, then as writing): treating kona as a frame particle, and writing kona melu wa thia towe nai. as one sentence.

kona stands outside the sentence entirely, its own utterance, its own period: kona melu. wa thia towe nai. Slot 0 frames what a sentence is; the vocative happens before any sentence begins. The tell is the period between them, which is not punctuation style but structure (the punctuation pamphlet, part 4).