Progressive enhancement in toki pona

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janMato
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Progressive enhancement in toki pona

Post by janMato »

This is an idea from javascriptand a comment I think jan Josan made (but I can't find a link to it) about how toki pona is slowly becoming more difficult for beginners to the point where an especially long and clever toki pona sentence would bemuse a beginner. In the javascript world, the JavaScript language is understood perfectly by some browsers and poorly by others. JavaScript written with graceful degradation and progressive enhancement in mind, still provides some value even to browsers that can't cope with complex javascript, or in some cases when JavaScript just isn't available at all.

The beginner in toki pona is unlikely to have a large vocabulary of memorized modifiers, may not see how anaphora link up, and when missing grammatical devices are being simulated, they may not recognize what grammatical device is being simulated.

Long modifier chains.
If you strip out the modifiers, a sentence should make some sense.

jan sewi Nintu li telo e sijelo ona li len e len pona lukin. (Gilgamesh)
jan li telo e sijelo li len e len.

Sentences linked by anaphora
If the other sentences disappear, the remaining ones should make sense.
soweli pi uta waso li lon ma Oselija. sijelo ona li jo e linja mute sama sijelo soweli. uta ona li sama uta waso. (jan Ote)

This paragraph degrades well when the anaphora are dropped (as if they would be if they were misunderstood)
soweli li lon ma. OK
sijelo li jo e linja sama sijelo. OK, but dropping a possessive modifier makes this less understandable in a way that dropping ordinary modifiers didn't.
uta li sama uta. Same issue as above sentence. Dropping possessive modifiers is more damaging than dropping descriptive ones.

Here is an sentence that degrades poorly if the anaphora are not understood (simulated by dropping the anaphora and modifiers)
ona li utala e jan la jan ni li pilin ike mute mute (jan Ote)
* li utala e jan la jan li pilin. Dropping adverbial modifiers breaks the sentence in a way that dropping noun modifiers doesn't. Also, the sentence is unintelligible unless the other sentence is available and the reader can accurately match up the ona to what ever it refers to.

Clever Constructions
mi li lukin kama jo e lipu mute. I intend to come to have a book.
* mi li lukin e lipu. I see a page. This degrades poorly.

... I'm drawing a blank on the other 'clever' constructions, there are more I just can't think of them. In general, a clever construction is when we are using syntactically valid toki pona to simulate things like evidentials, topicality, passives, reflexives, detransitivation, tense, aspect, inalienable possession, clauses (complex e ni/e X ni chains) etc. I suspect some clever constructions degrade well and some degrade poorly.

Metaphor
This especially applies to prepositions and abstractions.
mi toki kepeken Inli
mi toki lon Inli.


When the above degrade, it is the preposition that drops out.

* mi toki - Inli. I'm talking and this somehow involves English.

I think that metaphorical prepositions degrade fairly well, at least in this sentence.
janKipo
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Re: Progressive enhancement in toki pona

Post by janKipo »

This looks like a useful start on a grammar that goes beyond Bije's. We start with the understandable basics and then discuss how to expand them in various ways. Probably a good idea. This also a warning to us who write things to newbies:KISS.
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jan Josan
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Re: Progressive enhancement in toki pona

Post by jan Josan »

Nice analysis. I'd like to see the sentence diagramming this would produce.
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