• No green
I find it strange that a language so focused on nature doesn’t have a word for “green” as primary. I mean, plants and all. As people who are into color theory will know, what color is “primary” is determined culturally.
According to the Berlin-Kay hypothesis on color names in languages (a problematic theory; see http://j.mp/dHQsAd , p. 87–94), languages first develop black & white (or rather, “dark” and “light”); then red; then either yellow or green; then yellow and green; and only then blue, brown & others. So the lack of green is where TP breaks the pattern.
I think a simple way of changing this would be to expand “laso” to cover both green and blue, like in Japanese and Korean and other Asian languages. Just like in Japanese “ao” can be used both for the color of sky and of leaves and you use “midori” if you want to refer specifically to that of leaves, TP could let “laso” be a generic term for green and blue and cyan, with “laso jelo” specifically green.
• No null subject
I understand TP is especially indebted to English through Tok Pisin, but still I was surprised that a minimalist language would opt for no-null subject, like English and unlike Spanish, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian &c. &c. (Is Tok Pisin no-null?)
ni li ike tawa mi! It might be because my native language is null-subj, but I keep wanting to just let it implicit:tenpo pini la mi lape. mi kama lape ala. mi telo e mi kepeken telo lete. tenpo ni la mi moku e kili. mi pilin pona.
• No reduplicationtenpo pini la mi lape. kama lape ala. telo e mi kepeken telo lete. tenpo ni la moku e kili. pilin pona.
I really expected toki pona to have plurals and intensifiers through reduplication instead of a grammar word like “mute”. Ok, it puts new phonological complications in the game (to minimize ambiguity no words should be half of another word like “ma” and “mama”); but it’s, like, the cutest thing ever.
jan jan li kama.
ona li tawa ma ma.
waso li tawa sewi sewi lon kon.