Yeah, I think it's pretty too; and if laso is grue then we can also say 'laso pi lipu kasi' or 'laso pi akesi Ikuwana' or 'laso pi kiwen Jade' and so on.janMato wrote:Exactly! Just for me, on an aesthetic level, leaf color is more concrete and sounds prettier than the abstract "green".
I am not sure what NSM stands for. Pray tell?janKipo wrote:I note in passing that the green example is very like the "definitions" in NSM and so may be a step toward another kind of idiom structure.
Speaking for myself, when I say these sentences in English they aren't unusual individually, but I would rearrange them so that the sentence about trees growing somewhere comes first and change it to use 'its color'. You're right about the 'kasi' being unnecessary here ('kule pi ona kasi' versus 'kule one').That is the order I think I am most used to in English writing. I think a lot of people are pretty tolerant of people being indirect and starting with a peripheral subject and taking their sweet time to get to a point, so long as they do in fact finish their thought eventually.janMato wrote:But because I lack subordinate clauses, I can't easily introduce my discussion of evergreen trees without it seeming like I've gone off on a tangent.
kasi suli li suli lon ma lete. mi pana e kule tawa lipu pi tomo mi kepeken kule ona.
There is a tree that grows in the north lands. I'm painting my house using its color.
I was thinking that maybe '...kepeken kule pi (or sama?) kule ona' might work too.
Using similar sentences in the order you provided but with a cataphoric 'ni', the corresponding English translation has a cataphoric "this" which I pronounce with a marked intonation on each word in the phrase, like so:
I am painting my house using the color of this tree. It is a tree in the north lands.
mi pana e kule tawa lipu pi tomo mi kepeken kule pi kasi suli ni. ona kasi li suli lon ma lete.
Note: I am guessing I could say 'kule kule pi kasi suli ni' but I think the paint is pretty much implied. I am not sure I couldn't just say 'mi pana e kule pi kasi suli ni tawa lipu pi tomo mi' either. I guess I would agree with you though, the order typical of tp makes it read pretty much like a tangent. I might finish it off with something like, "I like its color." kule ona li pona tawa mi. Though, if I said that, I might still come off as sort of ditzy. 'kule pi ona kasi' is not something I would really expect to see ever, I guess.
Which brings me to another thing: 'ni' being used deictically and cataphorically. This is a lot like the English usage, but I see no reason that it has to be the only way we can do it in toki pona. For instance:
jan Bobo li unpa e meli mi. ona li ike tawa mi tan ni.
Bob did my girl. I hate him because of that.
I am not really a fan of the use of a colon after 'tan ni' because I don't see it as necessary. There is also another possibility: jan Mato's modifying of 'ona' makes 'ona' much more useful overall in my opinion, and I suppose it's even more useful for writing tp because this use of 'ona' to refer to a clausal antecedent is transparent so long as you're careful (replace 'ni' in the last example with 'ona' or 'ona toki'; the corresponding English translation would probably be 'it' and it works!)
jan Bobo li unpa e meli mi. ona li ike tawa mi tan ona.
Bob did my girl. I hate him because of it.