Muai - Grammar - Organizers

Muai - Grammar - Organizers
sonki hunti

Muai organizers correspond to some English conjunctions and punctuation marks.

__ tiu __ tiu __ (tui) : "tiu" is a generic word that can mean "and" or "or", similarly to the commas in "I like apples, bananas, oranges". It says that the sentence is valid for all joined concepts in some way, as a fact or as a hypothesis, additionally or alternatively. A list of terms separated by "tiu" can be explicitly (but not obligatorily) finished with a "tui"

.liai mieko timansi tiu tipanti tiu tiliemi.
She likes apples, bananas, oranges.

Muai organizers can be used together with the corresponding punctuation marks themselves, that are syntactically redundant, but help make the text visually clearer.

.liai mieko timansi, tiu tipanti, tiu tiliemi.
She likes apples, bananas, oranges.

As it's explained in other section, in Muai, commas also indicate a rest, a small interval of silence. An alternative is writing :tiu: when its colons indicate that "tiu" relates what comes before it to what comes after it.

.liai mieko timansi :tiu: tipanti :tiu: tiliemi :tui.
She likes apples, bananas, oranges.

liu __ liu __ liu __ (lui) (lifiu) : introduces a new topic, similarly to topic bullets. It can be used in coordination with the words lui (used to finish the topicalization and recall the whole list as an entity) and lifiu (that means "respectively")

.liu timansi liu tipanti lui hento sifiu liu lusiaki liu lulieli lui.
Apples and bananas [they] are respectively red and yellow [they are those].

Just like "tiu" can be written as :tiu:, "liu"can be written liu: (the first one) or :liu: as well:

.liu: timansi :liu: tipanti :lui hento sifiu liu: lusiaki :liu: lulieli lui.
Apples and bananas [they] are respectively red and yellow [they are those].

hiu : introduces a new sentence, after finishing the last one if existing; it's similarly to a period or a semicolon

.liai mieko timansi tiu tipanti tiu tiliemi hiu liu timansi liu tipanti lui hento sifiu liu lusiaki liu lulieli lui.

A natural punctuation with "hiu" would be a semicolon or a period.

hui : indicates the end of a speech; it's optional; when followed by a verb or a specifier, it has also the function of a noun meaning "all of this that I just spoke"

mui ... miu : more ... than

.mui tuohi miu fiehi miekou.
More men than women love.

.kioi mieko piu hituai pui tituai.
I like animals more than plants.

miu ... mui : less ... than

.miu tuohi mui fiehi mantou.
Less men than women feel.

.tiei piu kuomeu pui siokou.
You eat more than you play.

piu ... pui : those particles work like parenthesis that embrace expressions that occupy the syntactic function of a word

.piu tiai-fiehi tiu tieu kinti pui hento himanti.
(She and your kid) they are humans.
Your kid and her are humans.

You may want to write "piu{ __ }pui" or "piu: ____ :pui". That's fine!

niu ... nui : embraces foreign terms and proper names

.niu Margaret Thatcher nui hento fiehi.
Margaret Thatcher is a female.

You may want to use quotes together.

fiu : used to express that you have finished your phrase and you want an answer
fui : used to introduce an answer to the preceding "fiu"
siu : dialog dash
sui : marks the end of a dialog

Siu� Niu: Margaret Thatcher :nui hente tuohi.
Siu� Huai-nou. Hiu luei hente fiehi.

� Margaret Thatcher is a man.
� No. She's a woman.

kiu ... kui : interpose narrator comments; it differs from piu-pui because the kiu-kui embraced thing has no syntactic function in the surrounding sentence; kiu-kui is specially useful in dialogssiu Niu Margaret Thatcher nui hente tuohi.

Siu� Niu: Margaret Thatcher :nui.
Siu� Huai-nou. Kiu� liai hainfeu �kui. Hiu luei hente fiehi.

� Margaret Thatcher is a man.
� No. � he affirms � She's a woman.

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