Verb chains — want to, can, must

Taught in Lesson 17, after Lesson 16 found it missing.

The rule

Put the verbs one after another. Nothing goes between them.

There is no word for “to”. There is nothing to add and nothing to change — the verbs simply stand in a row.

Why nothing goes between them

Two nouns side by side already mean something in Amadunia: the second owns the first. That is why es and aur had to exist. Two verbs side by side meant nothing at all — the slot was empty. So the language could take it for free.

This is the opposite of the copula and the conjunction, and it is worth noticing: those two decisions added words because the slot was taken. This one adds nothing because the slot was open.

Tense and negation go at the front

Both attach to the first verb and cover the whole chain:

The full order is unchanged from every other rule in the language: no → suda/saufa → verb → verb → object.

Where no sits changes the meaning

Because no goes in front of what it denies, moving it moves the meaning. This falls out of the existing rule; nothing new is needed.

The last row read “She can stay away” until September 5, 2026 — a paraphrase with no negative in it at all, in the one table whose whole job is to show where the negative went. lai is to come, and no lai is not come, not stay away, which says something about intention the sentence does not.

The object comes last

After the final verb, as always:

Sources

Bare verb juxtaposition is what most of the world’s speakers do:

English to, Spanish a and de, French à and de are the minority pattern — and an unpredictable one. Which preposition follows which verb is pure memorisation in all of them, exactly the kind of exception the language exists to avoid.

Why no marker for “to”

Amadunia’s verb has one form. There is no infinitive to distinguish from anything else, so a marker would mark a difference the language does not have.

And every candidate collided anyway:

The two words this unlocks

lasim is written with s because the alphabet has no z. It is the one adaptation in the word.

Open questions

• A different subject — settled in subordination.md: Mi mau yu kula is a clause standing where an object stands, and needs no marker.

• Words that are both noun and verb. madad is glossed “help; to help”, so Mi mau madad is “I want help” or “I want to help”. The chain rule made this visible for the first time. A briefing now separates the two roots: madad has never been used in a sentence at all, so its decision costs nothing, while rabota stands in twenty places.

  The dictionary was audited on September 3, 2026 by reading glosses, and that audit said madad was the only case in all 300 roots. It was wrong, because it read the dictionary and not the sentences. rabota is glossed “work”, one noun, and is used both ways — Mi rabota sini is I work here, Kita finis rabota is we finish the work. The briefing counts the places and check.py recomputes them; this page said “13 places and 6” over its own wider scope until September 5, 2026, and two pages counting one word over two scopes with nothing recomputing either is how the briefing came to print a total no method produces. It reproduces the madad problem exactly: Ta suda lasim rabota is both “she had to work” and “she had to have work.” Two others looked like cases and are not: bisa (“can, to be able”) and lasim (“must, to have to”) are one modal verb under two English glosses, not a noun beside a verb.

  So the open question covers two roots, not one, and the second is a core A1 word standing in twenty places. Nothing here decides it. madad is treated as a verb by check.py, which keeps it out of the early lessons rather than letting one answer by accident. rabota cannot be treated as either, because the course already needs both readings at once: Lesson 08 needs the verb (Mi rabota sini, I work here) and Lesson 10 needs the noun (Mi suru rabota, literally I do work). The two readings conflict inside the course, so the check names it as pending instead of picking a side.

  What each answer costs, measured rather than guessed. Read as a verb, one site breaks: Lesson 10’s Mi suru rabota, where the lesson’s own gloss says “literally: I do work” and the word is plainly an object. Read as the noun the dictionary already calls it, ten sites break — every Mi rabota sini in the lessons, the grammar files and the phrasebook, each needing an es that would make it “I am work”. A third thing only a reader can judge: naiti rabota baru, to find new work, puts an adjective on it, and only a noun takes one. The cheaper repair is not the same as the right answer, and nothing here makes the choice.

  So the open question is not a review of many entries but a decision about one word — and behind it, whether a root may ever hold both jobs. Every root added since has been given one job only.