I noticed a typo is something I wrote (image that!). *If* pu is a loan word, is means "an uncarved block" as described in the the popular philosophy book the Tao of Pooh.
Hm.. So what would a.. less disturbing wording be? A tawa construction, as in mi tawa e ilo kipisi lon pan?
Well, this isn't lojban, so a "real" toki ponist wouldn't worry about the fine shades of meaning of this construction vs highly similar ones. That said...
This means "I moved the knife on the bread." I image a back and forth sawing motion on top of the bread, but not necessarily entering it.
"mi tawa e ilo kipisi lon insa pan" -- Okay now we're sawing through the bread.
And if we don't mind toki nasa, we can use this, which opens up the end sentence prep slot for other use
"mi tawa lon insa pan e ilo kipisi." I do such things to a knife such that the knife is characterized by moving inside the bread.
Makes me wonder when/if jan Sonja's going to publish her book.. Off topic, but is anyone else getting the feeling it won't come out until jan Kipo and jan Mato perfect the grammar?
Well, we don't have the alternate reality available for ready comparison, but it seems that jan Sonja absence had the positive effect of stabilizing the language, a good thing for learners, but the negative effect of being a drag on community building.
There is enough community generated corpus text that any amateur linguist can write reference grammar (or some variation of that) to show how tp turned out. What the fans can't easily do is know for sure what the designers intentions were, or issues a Version 2. Not that I want a version 2, languages are kind of like standards of measure (miles and kilometers), their users aren't served well if they change too fast.
Okay, so then how would one express concepts such as life/ tolive, "few" without resorting to "a little," and discuss relative speed?
At least two approaches. One, imagine you are an islander with an impoverished sense of number, color, formal logic, etc. "You saw a fish as big as a cat." Not, "You saw a fish about 10 lbs"
jan lili li pilin e ni: tenpo kama ale la ona jan li ken moli ala. Young bucks think they can live forever.
mi lukin e soweli. nanpa soweli li sama nanpa luka mi. I saw a few deer. (I saw animals. The animals number is like the number of my fingers)
mi lukin e soweli. sowli li ken lon tomo mi. I saw animals. They could have fit in my house. (i.e. there were only a few)
The other approach is, "Hey, I'm a software developer in Arlington, who did go to school, who does know how to use numbers, who thinks to hide a distinction is to in a small way to tell a lie." Then proceed to extend the language (without changing the grammar or basic vocabulary) to deal with numbers, scales, missing
* jan lili li pilin e ni: tenpo kama ale la ona jan li moku pi pan.
jan lili li pilin e ni: tenpo kama ale la ona jan li moku pi pan pona. (now grammatically correct under current rules, but the pona is just filling a grammatically required blank)
This example sentence uses direct object incorporation into the verb and assumes you've heard the phrase "bread is the staff of life" It would really work better if there was a distinct particle instead of "pi" Because the pan is a part of the intransitive verb phrase, it's a message that this is a like a compound word and means something more specific than a man eating bread at the table.
mi lukin e soweli LWW nanpa. nanpa li ni anu suli wan anu lili wan. I saw 7+/-1 deer.
That example doesn't really break any rules, but it isn't what an unschooled islander would say.