Scope and complex sentences

9.1 The context carried by a clause

A complete interpretation depends on the proposition, epistemic center, background information, reference time, and evidence route. In technical work these can be represented as bₛ,ₜ(H given K), where s is the assessor and t is the assessment time.

Natural conversation inherits much of this context. A speaker need not pronounce every subscript. Explicit context declarations resolve ambiguity: loyt Rivke names a source, an attributed voice frame changes the speaking voice, and in dos model M names a model. Time expressions set the event time or, when specified, the assessment time. Changing one of these can change the proposition being evaluated.

9.2 Paragraph scope and extended blocks

Core. A context frame opened by nem, tsit, tsit-iber, boy-mod, bild, or volt normally lasts until the end of the current logical paragraph. Sentence punctuation alone does not close these frames. An ordinary freg is the exception: its terminal ? closes the question immediately, restoring its parent context. Oys closes the innermost still-open frame. Paragraph end expires all remaining local frames from the inside outward.

Question boundaries are scoped. A question ends at its own terminal question mark, not at a question mark inside a quoted or displayed child. For example, Freg vos meynt tsit [regnt es?] oys? asks what the displayed question means: the inner ? belongs to tsit, its oys closes that display, and the final ? closes freg. Conversely, Tsit [Freg regnt es?] oys. displays a question: the question ends at ?, but oys still closes tsit. A question mark without an active question frame does not pop a quotation or supposition. Bare brackets in Freg [regnt es?] only show grouping; they introduce no child frame and the question closes at ?.

A completed question also closes any still-contained local child frames; nothing inside it can outlive it. Quoted content must be delimited so that its punctuation can be distinguished from the outer question's boundary. For a sequence of independent questions, repeat freg for each one. To keep one inquiry frame open across question boundaries, use freg lang … oys.

An explicit extension. Place lang / לאַנג, from the Yiddish word “long”, immediately after the opening operator and before its source or model label: Nem lang …, Boy-mod lang M …, Tsit-iber lang Scott Aleksander …, Freg lang …. This frame survives paragraph boundaries and, for freg lang, question boundaries until its own oys. Brackets may expose its extent: operator lang [ … ] oys. Their closing bracket accompanies the closer; it is not an extra second closure. For an ordinary question, the bracket can instead follow its terminal ?, with no oys. A bare operator [ … ] oys is a locally bracketed frame, with no permission to cross paragraph boundaries.

Stack discipline. An ordinary frame opened inside a lang frame expires at its normal boundary: the terminal ? for freg, or paragraph end for other context frames. Closure restores the parent. A new lang frame may open at the root or inside another lang frame; close any ordinary frames above that level first. This restriction prevents an extended child from retaining assumptions whose question-scoped or paragraph-scoped parent has expired. To extend an entire chain, explicitly introduce its enclosing frames as lang from the start. Oys always closes the current innermost frame, never an arbitrarily selected ancestor. An extra oys after an already expired root frame is an error.

What a paragraph boundary is. In ordinary prose, it is an authorial paragraph break, normally a blank line. Automatic line wrapping, screen width, a page break, and a Markdown hard line break within the same paragraph do not count. Each ordinary list item is an independent scope container; a local frame does not leak into the next item. Nested displays inside an item or paragraph have their own indicated containers. A short act ending at a sentence boundary closes its children too: no frame outlives its containing act.

Parallel-script examples, glosses, source quotations, and editorial commentary are separate presentation streams. A blank line between “Latin,” “Hebrew,” and “Gloss” is not an extra boundary inside the sentence being illustrated. In an aligned translation, each identified Yuddish paragraph is its own paragraph, regardless of the intervening English and notes. Authors must preserve logical paragraph boundaries when reformatting a Version 0 text. Displaying a whole example in a code block does not erase the paragraph breaks shown inside that example.

Speech. A spoken paragraph is a completed discourse unit, signaled by final intonation followed by a deliberate pause and fresh onset. An actual handover to another speaker ends the local paragraph; a cough, hesitation, or backchannel does not automatically do so. There is no duration threshold in seconds. An ordinary spoken question ends at its completed interrogative contour; rising pitch alone inside an unfinished question is not a boundary. When extended question scope is intended, announce freg lang and end it with oys. For other context frames, explicit oys can clarify a boundary. A trailing oys after an already completed ordinary question cannot close that question again. An extended frame belongs to its speaker's discourse: a listener's interruption does not adopt that frame. A speaker resuming an interrupted extended frame should restate its source or premise when it is no longer clear. The exact prosody needs listening tests; the intended scope rule is already adopted.

Boundary effects. Expiration removes the frame's assumptions, voice shift, figurative mapping, and local interpretation defaults. It restores the parent context; it does not assert the expired premises, retract a recorded update, erase a name from memory, or make something heard unknown. A later reference to a model can name it, but reusing its premises as active suppositions requires reopening the frame. Reference by zelb is narrower: it resets at every sentence, not just every paragraph.

Shared context is not shared probability. A frame can carry a model, speaking voice, reference time, and named standard. Each assertion still pronounces its EF and evidential and assesses its own proposition. Moving into or out of a frame does not copy a previous numerical value, combine claims into a conjunction, or automatically count a new piece of evidence.

End of a document. Ordinary local frames expire at its final paragraph boundary. Extended frames must be explicitly closed; truncation is not a successful oys. A translation may declare the source voice at document level in document metadata. That voice is then the root of its Yuddish stream and lasts for the work; local frames still expire normally. Such a declaration is equivalent to a deliberately delimited outer voice block, not one EF assertion about the whole work.

Explicit early closers remain legal. For example, Nem ikh gleyb tsit [dos likht brent] oys. Ikh ef⁺²=pon freylekh vern. Oys. closes the displayed belief before the conditional prediction and closes the supposition before paragraph end. The condition concerns having the belief, not merely the light being on.

9.3 Coordination

Two assertions with separate commitments each require EF:

Dos likht ef⁺⁶=zen brenen, un dos tir ef⁺²=zog ofn zayn.

“The light is on (+6, seen), and the door is open (+2, reported).”

A single strength may apply to an explicitly packaged conjunction H and Q. It then evaluates the conjunction, not each conjunct separately. If P(H) = P(Q) = 0.8, P(H and Q) is not automatically 0.8 and is 0.64 under independence. Do not copy the bit value mechanically across joined clauses.

Within one predicate, conjunction need not create a second assertion: “red and round” can be a single conjunctive predicate. Its EF value concerns that combined property. The intended scope should be stated in ambiguous technical cases.

9.4 Complement and relative clauses

An asserted subordinate clause gets its own epistemic complex. An unasserted displayed complement may instead use tsit. The subordinate pattern places the subject before EF after the complementizer; it does not import a blanket German-style verb-final rule:

Ikh ef-av=zikh visn, az filn ef-av=pon ratsyonal zayn.

The matrix concerns the narrator's epistemic state; the embedded clause evaluates the content. The translation's literary use of “know” should be read through its finite EF marking rather than as a claim to infallibility.

A nonrestrictive relative clause that adds information is an assertion and needs EF. A restrictive relative can be treated as part of an identifying description, but if it contains a finite real-world claim presented as established, the careful style marks it too. Technical writers can use nonfinite descriptions or named hypotheses to avoid tangled relative-clause scope. Nominalizing a claim is not a legitimate way to hide a controversial presupposition.

9.5 Quantifiers and existence

Words such as al “all,” yed “every,” epes “something,” and keyn remain available. Their scope belongs inside the proposition assessed by EF. A high credence that every swan in a stated population is white differs from a high average probability for a randomly selected swan.

Named objects in hypotheses do not automatically acquire existential commitments. A hypothetical goblin can occur under nem; a fictional goblin under boy-mod. An assertion that a goblin exists requires EF about that existence claim. The full essay exploits this difference between representing a belief and endorsing its object.

9.6 Presuppositions and repair

Proposed practice. When a question presupposes something disputed, the respondent may use halt on that premise, then ask a corrected question with freg. “When did the AI become conscious?” should not force the answerer to accept that it did.

The same discipline applies to emotional framing, category labels, and definite descriptions. Yuddish exposes some epistemic commitments by grammar, but pragmatic presuppositions still need attention. A language can support repairs without mechanically detecting every loaded question.