Editing Kot Wawa (section)

== Rule #19 – ip and na ==

(V|P) (e|pi) (VP|NP) ip (VP|NP).(PV|PN) VP na VP.

If you are in a “pi”-phrase or an introduced object and you want to apply a word to the head word of the phrase that contains it, you can do so by first saying “ip”.


{| class="wikitable"
|-
| | mí li dòk e wás zùl lòn-kás ip-lòn-tóm.
| | “I describe a big bird that’s in the tree while I’m in the house.”
|| 
|-
|  | mí li dòk lòn-pi tóm pi zìk zùl ip lìli.
|  | “I talk in a very round little building.”
|  | 
|-
|  | mí li bàna e kíl mùt ip-dàu-pi ján nɔ̀ ip-lòn-pi tém zùn nì.
|  | “I’m giving a lot of fruit to that person today.”
|  | 
|}


A pre-verb, or pre-verbal noun, takes an entire verb phrase as its argument. If you want to apply a word to it instead of its argument, you can, by fixing the word with “na”.


{| class="wikitable"
|-
| | ján nɔ̀ li wìl-án bòn zùl.
| | “They want to be very good.”
|| 
|-
|  | ján nɔ̀ li wìl-án bòn na-zùl.
|  | “They really want to be good.”
|  | 
|}


One way to look at it is to see “e”, “pi” and “an” as opening brackets, and “ip”, and “na” as their corresponding closing brackets.

This grammatically allows a lot of nesting of phrases. However, if you or your listener find it hard to keep track of, you might want to break up your sentence instead.