toki ante mi (ki, ku, lu, ta)

[janJamen]

toki! ni li e toki open mi pi ma ni. mi li pilin wawa lili li pilin monsuta lili tawa sitelen e ni. tan ala e ni la mi sitelen e ni:

Shortly after I began my study of toki pona, I began reading these forums and coming up with some of my own ideas (I also began subscribing to ideas presented by others on this forum) on a "toki ante", or tweaks to the language. I'll cut right to the chase to the ones I feel the most important:

lu: I use this word in much the same way as nimi li, however I use it to a separate third person subject from verbs without an object (what would be called in English an intransitive verb). Examples:

ona lu moli ma ni. (She died here.)
jan ali lu pilin sama. (All men think alike.)
mama suli meli lu pini awen li open e tawa tomo. (The grandmother stopped waiting and started the car.)

ki/ku: these I use in a way that had been suggested for nimi pu, that is to enable one to describe things based on what they do, rather than based on what they are. Ki is followed by a verb with a direct object, while ku is to ki what lu is to li (see above). Examples:

jan ki moku ala e soweli. (Vegetarian.) (person that eats not (e) meat)
nanpa ku tu ala. (Prime number.) (number that divides not)
o pakala ala e luka ki pana e moku tawa sina. (Don't bite (destroy) the hand that feeds you.)

NOTE: ki could also be used to start a description of something done by something else (I can't think of a better way to say that). For example:

o kute e nimi ki mi toki. (Listen to the words that I said.)

ta: as mentioned by jan Kewen in the post that I linked to above, this is just a change from nimi tawa to nimi ta. It's purely aesthetic and I like it.

Furthermore, I had some ideas about the words for animals and how they could be used to mean different things, and having a word that signifies all animals, then using waso for example to describe that animal.

mi wile e ni: toki mi lu pona ta sina mute.

Adiaux!

[janMato]

ona lu moli ma ni. (She died here.)
ona meli lu moli lon ma ni.

The lack of a relative clause (or any clause that works like relative clause) is a real pain. I've read that some hyper polyglots study relative clauses first because it allows the to economize on vocab study. In Piraha they do with out relative clauses, but they have a well developed verbal paradigm and probably many other things going on to compensate. And Piraha has a full vocab with 1000s of words.

As for transitive/intransitive distinctions, I'm not sure what verbal trick would be the most valuable if I had to pick among the options- tense marking, person marking, marking for perfect/imperfect. Personally, in the realm of fake langauges I think it would be most useful to require people to think about irrealis for all verbs because then people would have to think about if what they are talking about is factual, actual or possible, which would be a good cognitive habit.

[janJamen]

As for transitive/intransitive distinctions, I'm not sure what verbal trick would be the most valuable if I had to pick among the options- tense marking, person marking, marking for perfect/imperfect. Personally, in the realm of fake langauges I think it would be most useful to require people to think about irrealis for all verbs because then people would have to think about if what they are talking about is factual, actual or possible, which would be a good cognitive habit.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you suggesting the use of lu to mark an irrealis mood? Or are you just thinking out loud?

[janKipo]

toki! ni li e toki open mi pi ma ni. mi li pilin wawa lili li pilin monsuta lili tawa sitelen e ni. tan ala e ni la mi sitelen e ni:

ni li [no e] tawa sitelen ni [e only before actual direct object of main verb, not in nominalizations, so] tan ala ni "not because of this"

Shortly after I began my study of toki pona, I began reading these forums and coming up with some of my own ideas (I also began subscribing to ideas presented by others on this forum) on a "toki ante", or tweaks to the language. I'll cut right to the chase to the ones I feel the most important:

lu: I use this word in much the same way as nimi li, however I use it to a separate third person subject from verbs without an object (what would be called in English an intransitive verb). Examples:

nimi 'li' I just don't see the point of this one -- what is special about these, which would normally be considered the usual things? The examples suggest no improvements over the same with li instead.

ona lu moli ma ni. (She died here.)
jan ali lu pilin sama. (All men think alike.)
mama suli meli lu pini awen li open e tawa tomo. (The grandmother stopped waiting and started the car.)

ki/ku: these I use in a way that had been suggested for nimi pu, that is to enable one to describe things based on what they do, rather than based on what they are. Ki is followed by a verb with a direct object, while ku is to ki what lu is to li (see above). Examples:

Yes, there are advantages to having relative clauses, but tp, like many other relatively primitive (in some sense) languages, does without, at a relatively small cost. The cost of adding such clauses is rather high in terms of the complications of the grammar (though maybe not of the semantics). Again, the i-u distinction seems pointless. As for the examples, they can be done with pi but are even less easy to read that way. The usual tp way is clearer, if more wordy: jan li moku ala e soweli, nanpa pi tu ala [though this still looks like a number which is not 2 - tu as a verb is usually transitive], luka pi pana moku pi tawa sina [the last pi is needed in any case].

jan ki moku ala e soweli. (Vegetarian.) (person that eats not (e) meat)
nanpa ku tu ala. (Prime number.) (number that divides not)
o pakala ala e luka ki pana e moku tawa sina. (Don't bite (destroy) the hand that feeds you.)

NOTE: ki could also be used to start a description of something done by something else (I can't think of a better way to say that). For example:

o kute e nimi ki mi toki. (Listen to the words that I said.)

This is more radical, since the antecedent is now the (unmentioned) object of the subordinate predicate. I would just say o kute e toki mi.

ta: as mentioned by jan Kewen in the post that I linked to above, this is just a change from nimi tawa to nimi ta. It's purely aesthetic and I like it.

Furthermore, I had some ideas about the words for animals and how they could be used to mean different things, and having a word that signifies all animals, then using waso for example to describe that animal.

mi wile e ni: toki mi lu pona ta sina mute.

Adiaux!

A miss, I think. soweli is used, as you did above, for animals in general. Usual comment about what follows nimi.

[jan Kewen]

the main difference between what i wrote and what you wrote is the ki/ku distinction and that i use ke.
i like the distinction if it is meant for one's own conlang or something, but if the goal is for simplicity it is rather pointless.

I say that because the transitivity is already marked with li/lu so its redundant.basically with your system ki/ku have to agree with li/lu. Kinda cool though.

[janMato]

re: janJamen

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you suggesting the use of lu to mark an irrealis mood? Or are you just thinking out loud?

I have complicated thoughts about toki pona reform. I think people should be encouraged to make toki pona derivatives, there have been dozens to date, they generally don't lead to community splits a la Esperanto/Ido/etc. I don't intend to adopt toki pona innovations that aren't backward compatible. Switching to a obligatory transivity marker would make half of the existing toki pona ungrammatical. I do think there are areas of toki pona where innovation is backwards compatible-- semantic expansion of the existing words, the pi phrase following a verb and before the "e" is legal but currently not used for anything, pronoun phrases, modified ni, and so on.

As for irrealis markers on verbs, I think they are a good feature for a conlang. To retrofit such into toki pona & stay compatible, we'd have to assign some additional meanings to existing words and probably put them in a la fragment or in the place of a model (between li and the verb). If I ever have a bout of leisure, I plan to write a small conlang and it's a feature I hope to use.

[Kuti]

The core idea of toki pona is simplicity. People always complain about words having too much meanings and you want to add more ?

[janMato]

The core idea of toki pona is simplicity. People always complain about words having too much meanings and you want to add more ?

Semantic expansion of existing words is going on already. When you get to a concept that has never been expressed before in toki pona and isn't semantically close to something already in toki pona, you can use syntax, discourse, or expand an existing word (or just cheat entirely and use a proper modifier). Syntax and discourse are expensive, proper modifiers are plain cheating. So antidisestablishmentarianism (the stand of people who want the church and gov't to be closely related to each other)-- would be some sort of nasin, or using discourse:

nasin li ni: jan li wile e ni: kulupu sewi li awen poka kulupu pi jan lawa.

This is too long to repeat very often, so in a hypothetical conversation it would condense to something like nasin pi kulupu pi sewi en lawa, and if that was too long, it would drop to something like nasin soweli (sort of the way Republicans are elephants and Democrats are donkeys in US English), thus expanding soweli's range.

[Kuti]

Toki Pona reduces communication to its most basic units […] all these concepts go back to the same fundamental idea, and that is why they are united under one Toki Pona word.

Because of this, as a speaker, you rely a lot on context to interpret what is going on. You become connected to the world around you. Instead of detaching yourself from the direct experience of life with abstract and complex concepts, you learn to listen to people and directly connect to your surroundings.

antidisestablishmentarianism

nasin li ni: jan li wile e ni: kulupu sewi li awen poka kulupu pi jan lawa.

It is long and ununderstandable in both languages. If it's too long, it must be complex.
toki suli li ike.