19 · mena
Part IV teaches Phi to speak about speaking. The first tool is the pair mena … meno: put a whole sentence between them and it becomes a thing: something known, said, or felt. The opener announces that a thought is coming; the closer marks where it ends, so the main verb can arrive without colliding with the embedded one. Spoken parentheses. A message arrives:
I
ne siora kau womu shua.
siora shane.
siora mena ne sulae so shua meno shane.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| mena | me · na | (opens an embedded statement) |
| meno | me · no | (closes it) |
| shane | sha · ne | tell |
siora comes to the house and tells: tells that sulae will come. Read the long sentence slowly, watching the brackets: siora … shane is the frame, and inside it, whole and untouched, sits ne sulae so shua, with its own future particle minding its own verb. The closer meno is not decoration: without it, two verbs would stand face to face with no way to tell whose sentence ended.
II
lopia mena ne sulae so shua meno sano.
phao mena ne sulae so shua meno we sano.
lopia mena lo mia sulopa so pilewa meno haolu.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| haolu | ha · o · lu | speak, say |
Now the child knows that sulae will come; the parent also knows it; and the child says that we will make soup: the same embedded shape serving know, tell, and say alike. One pattern, every verb of the mind and mouth.
III
phao sulopa pilewa.
lopia lo noru kolua.
wheo mena philo welao nai meno phaelo.
| new word | say it | it means |
|---|---|---|
| phaelo | pha · e · lo | feel |
Preparations, and the elder, watching them, feels that the day is good. Feeling takes an embedded thought exactly the way knowing does; Phi does not pretend the heart is grammatically different from the head.
IV
ne sulae shua.
sulae: kia. wa siora mena mia so shua meno to shane.
phao: lia. siora to shane. lo mia mena thia so shua meno to sano.
sulae: welao nai.
Did siora tell you I would come? He told. We knew you would come: the embedded clause keeps its own little future even inside a past telling, because what siora said pointed forward when he said it. Time inside the brackets belongs to the bracketed thought.
You can now put a sentence inside a sentence, which is where language stops being a list of events and becomes a picture of minds. Read the chapter's longest line once more and feel the closer click shut like a well-made box.
The machinery, when you want it: complement clauses are the manual's Part V, chapter 19.