Toki Pona Forums

sunlin wrote:Oh cool! Let me know if I'm parsing these sentences into your notation correctly:

1. ona li tomo-tawa mi. "It is my car."
2. ona li tomo, tawa mi. "It is a house to me."

toki!

Great! Thanks for participating. It helps me testing my idea.

So, in your first sentence, there's a hiphen missing:

ona li tomo-tawa-mi.

In the second sentence "tawa" is a preposition and therefore combines with "mi" with a plus-sign:

ona li tomo tawa+mi.

There is no comma necessary when introducing a prepositional phrase. But commas are due if you add other prepositional phrases:
(Edit: commas seem at least thinkable if you add other prepositional phrases)

ona li tomo tawa+mi, tawa+sina, tawa+jan-ale.

The only sentence I can find right now in Pu with more than one prepositional phrase is "sewi li lon ala, lon ale."
(Edit: "sewi li lon ala, li lon ale.")

mi tawa.

Oh, nice one. Any clue what ‘sewi li lon ala, lon ali’ is supposed to me (where is it in pu?) It looks to me suspiciously like an eroded version of ‘sewi li lon ala li lon ali’ or, maybe ‘li lon ala en lon ali’. Straight out it would mean that from every place, God is nowhere, which seems unlikely given the theological orientation of the book.

janTepanNetaPelin wrote:There is no comma necessary when introducing a prepositional phrase. But commas are due if you add other prepositional phrases:

ona li tomo tawa+mi, tawa+sina, tawa+jan-ale.

The only sentence I can find right now in Pu with more than one prepositional phrase is "sewi li lon ala, lon ale."

janKipo wrote:Oh, nice one. Any clue what ‘sewi li lon ala, lon ali’ is supposed to me (where is it in pu?) It looks to me suspiciously like an eroded version of ‘sewi li lon ala li lon ali’ or, maybe ‘li lon ala en lon ali’. Straight out it would mean that from every place, God is nowhere, which seems unlikely given the theological orientation of the book.

That makes sense. Ok I think I get ' - , + now.

jan Tepan o,
Are there any words that take : other than nanpa, wan, tu, and proper names?
I know prepositions do not (so it's tomo-tawa not tomo:tawa).

Is the example from Famous Quotations (pu, 80)? At least in the kindle version I have there is indeed a second li (and a comma).
4. sewi li lon ala, li lon ale.
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity. (Alfred Jarry)

I think I found another example of multiple prepositions in Lesson 8 (pu, 34):
mi pana e kala tawa ona lon tomo

My guess for the parsing output:
mi ' pana e kala tawa+ona, lon+tomo

Well, the comma is pointless and annoying, but I think you have the local punctuation down.

sunlin wrote:That makes sense. Ok I think I get ' - , + now.

jan Tepan o,
Are there any words that take : other than nanpa, wan, tu, and proper names?
I know prepositions do not (so it's tomo-tawa not tomo:tawa).

Is the example from Famous Quotations (pu, 80)? At least in the kindle version I have there is indeed a second li (and a comma).
4. sewi li lon ala, li lon ale.
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity. (Alfred Jarry)

I think I found another example of multiple prepositions in Lesson 8 (pu, 34):
mi pana e kala tawa ona lon tomo

My guess for the parsing output:
mi ' pana e kala tawa+ona, lon+tomo

You parsed "mi ' pana e kala tawa+ona" correctly, great!

Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I just double-checked in Pu, and you're right, that famous quotation has a second "li". Thanks also for spotting an example with two prepositional phrases.

I wrote "a comma is due". That was too strict. I should have written (at that point in time) "a comma is possible". Now even that statement is questionable, since the only example with two PPs doesn't have a comma. Good catch!

I'm not aware of other instances of ":".

janTepanNetaPelin wrote:In many cases, the official book eliminates commas (between li-phrases, e-phrases), but not always. For clarity, I keep them in the didactical punctuation.

ona li lili li lete.
→ ona li lili, li lete.

toki!

What's that good for?

janTepanNetaPelin wrote:toki!

For didactical purposes, specifically in order to illustrate Toki Pona sentence structures, I'm using the following punctuation:

https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona/ ... -poka-nimi

If you would like your sentence to be analyzed, please post it in this thread.

toki!

To be honest, I find your github texts confusing. Wouldn't it be better to split the different languages (English, Esperanto) into separate files?

Mostly I don't see any in your experimental punctuation. What should a comma before or after a separator (left, la,...) be good for?

Some of your rules are contrary to the rules practiced.