Welcome back! We're in the home stretch now! This lesson will be a pretty thick one, but it'll all be worth it! Here we will go over the word "e" and its surrounding family, which will level up your Selsimicu abilities tenfold! Let's get right into it.
"e" is a Selsimicu particle which opens an argument clause. What's that mean? Simply put, it turns an entire sentence into a single part, which then acts as a noun for another outer sentence!
Think about an English sentence, something like "He saw a snake eating an elephant" or "I think aliens don't exist". What's happening there, exactly? Well, English is a bit complicated in this regard, but you can clearly see a structure emerging: "A snake (is) eating an elephant" and "Aliens don't exist" are both sentences in their own right, but they're being used as the objects of the major sentences "He saw X" and "I think X".
This is what e is for. You simply put it right behind the clause the moment it's about to start! Let's see an example, using "pinica" (think, believe, opine)
"I think that Selsians don't exist"
There it is! Notice how the bigger sentence is "asa X pinica" (i think that X), and the e is delineating the clause, "seselsijan mairuñ ken" (Selsians don't exist).
e clauses don't only have to be for the object. They can be the subject, or the compliment of a postposition! Here, let's see some examples and see if you get the gist!
"We know that humans have the ability to feel"
"It's super obvious that you love them!"
"I meow* because people get happy"
"People get happy when I meow*"
We'll get more into how you can work these out yourself later, but first, there's something else to discuss...
I told you this was a family for a reason! "en" is incredibly similar to e, except it opens a relative clause. What this means is that the resulting packaged sentence acts like an adjective, modifying whatever was before the en, like any other adjective! Keep in mind that, because this opens a whole sentence basically, it needs AT LEAST a new subject and new verb. You can take advantage of this!
"You hated the place where there wasn't water"
"It's in the house where it is" (well yeah it'd be weird if it wasn't)
"The flower you gave to me is really pretty"
"We will search for the obsidian that everyone wants!"
Hmm... those last two feel like they're missing something. Aren't "oto asa fej tepsu" and "nu'a piris" empty of an object? They are! And, in fact, we can't have that. We'll need some help from...
"ne" is used as a pronoun within relative clauses (with en), to refer to the thing the relative clause is attached to. This is mandatory for transitive verbs if the object of the clause's verb needs to exist. Let's fix our previous examples, and have some more.
"The flower you gave (it) to me is really pretty"
"We will search for the obsidian that everyone wants (it)!"
"That fish that the bird has probably isn't happy right now."
"You leave every network you don't like!"
And finally, "nen" is used in place of en to open a relative clause where the subject can be ommitted, because it's the same as the thing the relative clause is attached to. This means any instance of "X en ne..." that you think of can just be "X nen..."! How efficient! This and "e" itself are probably the most useful parts of this lesson. You'll find yourself using this constantly. Trust me.
"He's the guy that hits himself a bunch, right?"
"My friends that are really smart might think about coming."
"Where's the tall human that doesn't do any work?!?"
"You leave every network you don't like!"
While e and its family do accurately tell you where a clause begins, they don't tell you when a clause ends. And in an SOV language where said clauses are frequently sandwiched between the outer sentence rather than after it like in SVO English, it can get a bit complex. However, not to fear! Selsimicu's sentence structure helps tremendously here for figuring this stuff out.
The key component for figuring out when a clause ends and another continues is the verb slot. Every sentence has a verb slot, it's unskippable, and it's easily spotted. After a sentence's verb slot is finished, that's it. No object, for example, will go after the verb in one single sentence, so if you DO see Verb - Object, ANYWHERE, this can be key. Here's a swathe of examples, both with and without e clauses.
[S] Jurtu nen { [O] qiqintas [V] tepsu } [O] tosno [PP] asa fej [V] tepsu
"Jurtu, who gives out rubies, gives me obsidian"
[S] asa [O] luluqik [PP] oto twel [V] mir tepsu sucra
"I enjoy spinning knives with you"
[S] no'o [PP] e { [S] asa [PP] lofaws zer [V] zaf ken } tzun [TSP] leq [V] trum wañ
"She really hates that I'm not satisfied with the weather."
[S] asa [O] e { [S] twalto asan [V] jamu } [V] piris
(watch out! jamu piris in itself COULD be a Verb - Auxiliary pair, but if it was, one of the clauses would have no verb, and that can't be.)
"I want my spouse to be cute!"
[S] asa [PP] twalto asan fej [V] jamu piris
(case in point!)
"I want to be cute for my spouse!"
And that's about it on the "e" family! There's probably more we could talk about, but sentences with e will begin to show up in a lot of places, so you'll hopefully develop some intuition regardless! Plus, we have places to be...
Congratulations! You're now one step closer to learning Selsimicu! The next lessons are a lot more specialized. Let's go!