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Reason Indicators

This category includes the following particles:

The term རྒྱུ་མཚན། literally means the “signifier of the cause”, reflected in English by “because”, but having a broader meaning than we immediately think of in terms of reasons.

In its general sense, it is meant to connect with the verb of the sentence (i.e. an indication of change) and describe what other than the agent caused that change (e.g. another verb).

In this way, the reason something happened can be (respectively):

However, there are also reasons based on the nature of phenomena rather than their causation. In these cases, neither the reason nor its conclusion have to be verbs and are usually affixed to an Negation or Existence Particle (དགག་སྒྲ། སྒྲུབ་སྒྲ།), e.g. ཡིན། མིན། ཡོད། མེད།; this is very common in debate. Since these are not sequential they will not use the ནས་སྒྲ། or the དང་སྒྲ།.

As such, reason statements can have many constructions, for example:

This last example is not explicitly listed as a Reason Indicator, since it is an actual Seventh Case time marker. However, the meaning applies similar to the དང་སྒྲ། usage in this context. Similarly, the conditional ན་སྒྲ། are only a reason in a looser sense and can be further distinguished through:

The ཕྱིར་སྒྲ། should not be confused with the Fourth Case usage, the rule of thumb is:

However, it would remain a Reason Indicator even if restructured as:

Moreover, the Reason Indicator ཕྱིར་སྒྲ། will usually link up with a Continuative Particle (ལྷག་བཅས།) particle to clearly mark what it is a reason for:

Up a level: Grammar particles