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Move evidentials off directly received speech across the corpus - #679

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Aug 1, 2026
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Move evidentials off directly received speech across the corpus#679
dcellison merged 1 commit into
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fix/evidential_speech_class

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Stacked on #678 because both regenerate the phonetic-neighbour baseline; retarget to main after #678 merges.

The class audit behind #678 found twelve corpus sites and one pamphlet drill where an evidential sat on a speech or hearing matrix the speaker received directly. The evidentiality pamphlet's own drill defines that placement as third-hand knowledge of the speech event itself. In eleven of the twelve, the derived English was already plain, "I hear," "we heard," "they say," "I am told," "you have been told," so the particles were invisible in translation: English hear and tell carry receipt-of-report in the verb, and the Phi marked the idiom's smell rather than a source claim. The manual's chapter 19 example and the evidentiality pamphlet's drills teach deliberate third-hand meaning and are untouched, as are all hi hea sites, which correctly assert direct perception of one's own hearing.

Nine sites drop the particle and change nothing else. The narrator heard talk of the custom (chapter 2), heard the landscaping plan and the weaver's trade with his own ears, was himself told the saying about age, and has heard the commonplace about unhappy company and the praise of the south said aloud (chapter 3). Dick hears his great-grandfather directly (chapter 5). Gibran's listeners were themselves told that work is a curse and life darkness, and the prophet asserts it to them plainly, as the English always did (On Work, two sites).

Three need more than deletion, flagged for review:

  • Chapter 3, the pollard rumour: Morris writes "the rumour that the trees were all pollards" with no "people say," and the inherited unit added a saying frame plus the misplaced particle. The unit now puts ti on the rumour's content itself, to ro ti kati, with the derived English "so the rumour goes." The existing note, "Rumour rides ti," becomes exactly true. This is the one deliberate restructure of a unit's shape.
  • Chapter 5, "though I am told it has not always been so": the inherited Phi had Dick reportedly telling, an active frame under the misplaced particle, where Morris has Dick being told. The unit now carries ti on the content, "But, so I am told, it was not always as it is now," which is the pamphlet's own pattern for exactly this sentence.
  • Chapter 3, "according to the authors": the frame lo lophae tha ... tho shane does Morris's attribution by itself; the derived English becomes "By the story-writers' telling," since "report" had been borrowing the particle's force.

The three-slots pamphlet's exercise 44 drilled rank order with "I had heard it, they say," mia to ti hea, a sentence this ruling makes incoherent, since a speaker's own hearing cannot be known to them by report. The drill becomes "The friend came, they say," melu to ti shua, same two ranks, same canon order, now marking someone else's event. Both new sentences and both restructured units were parser-tested standalone before entering the files.

Checks: validators 0 errors 0 warnings, the strict parser passes all five touched files, all six News from Nowhere source reconstructions remain exact, the baseline moves by the removed and relocated ti attestations and is committed, and the site builds.

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dcellison changed the base branch from fix/nfn_ch1_evidential to main August 1, 2026 00:34
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dcellison merged commit 2f742df into main Aug 1, 2026
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dcellison deleted the fix/evidential_speech_class branch August 1, 2026 00:37
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