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I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 3:32 am
by jan_Lope
toki!

I'm updating the Toki Pona lessons of my website: http://rowa.giso.de/languages/toki-pona ... essons.php
Notes, comments, suggestions for improvement are welcome.

I like to improve my lessons with texts. That's why I'm looking for good text examples. Can someone help me?

Thanks.

tenpo pini la mi pali e lipu mi pi toki pona.
tenpo ni la mi pona e lipu ni.
sina ken pona kin e ni.

pona!

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 3:41 pm
by janKipo
Note. Some of these flaws may go back to Pije, whose revisions were not quite as advertised.

Pronunciation: using 'more' is probably bad for English, where 'or' reglarly gets odd pronunciation. 'toe' is probably safwer. But the boundaries are so fluid here that it probably doesn't matter as long as /o/ doesn't slide into /a/ or /a/ into /e/.


ambiguity. Strictly speaking, tp words are not ambiguous; they are vague. The fact that they can be precided in various ways in different contexts or that they correspond to several different words in English (or whatever) doen't make them ambiguous, as long as here is a coherent (very broad, perhaps) meaning that covers all the cases. But the point here is comparative, so it is true that one tp word covers a large number of English (etc.) words and that is the point.

Verb (I won't mutter about the constant use-mention muddles throughout. I just accept that this kind of messiness is standard among tpers (and pretty much conlangers generally) and drop a reminder in from time to time. E.g.: “Because toki pona lacks 'to be', the exact meaning is lost. 'moku' in this sentence ...” ) It isn't by the way, the lack of the verb “to be” but the lack of a distinctive mark for noun use and verb use (and adjectival use, since 'mi moku' could mean “I am edible” as well). But none of that is at issue here; it is enough to warn of the variety of readings possible, which you do. (Why is the lack of tense markers ambiguity and of number vagueness?) We can argue about whether 'li' separate subject and verb or starts the predicate (but is dropped after 'mi' and 'sina' standing alone). Sorry I keep getting off on techy details, but it is better not to commit to early on these issues, as “separates” does, since it makes it hard to explain compound sentences later, where it doesn't do that.

DO. “whatever is getting action done on itself” is not at all clear, since it suggests DO's cooperation (which is rare) and covers things like the objects of prepositions, which aren't DOs.
(I admit, I couldn't figure out why 'wile' was singled out for special treatment nor why 'wile verb' was brought in before introduced formally, until I saw the bit about placing DO relative to infinitive (as it were) and remembered you were working this for German more than English.)

Compound Sentences. There are actually three ways (at least, we skip over 'anu' which isn't well worked out) to do this. You omit 'Subj en Subj Pred' (and similarly with conjoined prepositions and prepositional objects). I suppose these are dealt with separately even though they are grammatically the same (or many of them are). It's arguable whether it is easier to stick 'li' in front of each predicate except when preceded by 'mi' or 'sina' alone or to have it always there but dropped in the exceptional cases.

Adjectives. Mainly about idioms, which is a good way in. Verbs are often used as adjectives – with regular shifts in meaning (worth noting?) . Nouns are, too, although no mention is made of this before they are so used. There is no upper limit to the number of modifiers in a noun phrase, though, in practice fewer is better. And the terminal positions of 'mute', 'ni' and personal pronouns is part of a more general pattern of adjective order (and notice, these three cases can shift among themselves, with varying meanings).

Adverbs No number restriction here either, but they tend to be fewer than nouns.

'nasa' as a verb, with regular shift in meaning. Example should probably wait until explained.

Prepositions. Why introduced as verb? I see the old “do something to” line is at work again (see earlier). Going to a house affects the house at least as much as looking at something affects it. 'tawa' is just a preposition, so its object behaves differently in the sentence from that of a (transitive) verb. Probably should talk about sentential prepositional phrases before using them out of the blue. The problem with those terminal PP is quite general, not confined to 'wile' and 'lon' – as would have been brought up if the PPs had been discussed already. The expansion move is a good one to teach, as it is almost always helpful when muddles occur. 'kepeken' is just another perposition, and behave just like 'lon' and 'tawa'. The use of 'tawa' (and other prepositions less often) as transitive verbs is just part of a regular process that covers nouns and adjectives as well and could be dealt with all at once, rather than several times over. 'tawa' isn't often used a preposition, it is a preposition, but is often used as a verb and an adjective and occasionally a noun. That's just how tp works. And so we get back to the terminal PP problem with 'tawa', the most common offender. Again, one warning should server for all here. (While you're running trough cases of 'tawa', you might throw in one like 'mi tawa tomo e poki' “I moved the box to the house”.)
'kama' (Infinitive) doesn't really need its own section if modals have been discussed already (as they have not yet), since it is not special except in its wide use.

Spatial nouns. Don't confuse 'poka' preposition “with” with 'poka' noun “side” by saying 'mi moku poka jan pona mi' means “I ate beside my friend” rather than “with him”; the former is 'lon poka pi jan pona mi' (which, amazingly, you can't say yet). The confusion encourages the already notable pressure to make all the spatial words prepositions (which will happen eventually, but needs to be prepared for).

Negation. 'jan ala li toki' is unambiguous, 'jan li toki ala' is ambiguous: it also means “Someone is silent”.
Note, 'ala' alone is also a good “No” answer.

Unofficial words. Some discussion of how to tpize names is probably in order, since people do want to do it and do not (given some of the products) have a clue.

Addressing. This restriction on commas does not seem to hold. It is often omitted (or worse) with vocatives. It is regularly used, by some folks with 'la' and occasionally to set off terminal PPs and to clarify other messy constructions. The worse mentioned above is the collapse of vocative + imperative into a single 'o', which is cute but doesn't correspond to speech (while the comma does). It also gets confused with the optative (hortative), if that is done simply by replacing 'li' with 'o' (as opposed to the old form that just put 'o' in front of a regular sentence). This whole area, which was in fairly decent shape a while back, is now a mess due to unthought-through changes arbitrarily introduced (apparently).

'sin' has regularly come to mean “new” in a different sense than was originally intended, apparently. I don't think that can be undone (nor should it be, since we need it). It is never used in the sense of “more”.

Compound nouns. This description of 'pi' makes virtually no sense. Most importantly, there is no requirement that the second chunk be a noun+ adjective; it can equally well be an adjective +adverb or a PP or any other sort of complex modifier. See your own examples with 'ala'.
As a result, some of your common mistakes are not mistakes at all. 'jan pi wawa pi pona mute li kama' “A person of very good strength came” is quite correct, and very different from either 'jan pi wawa pona mute li kama' “A person of many good strengths came” or “Many people of good strength came” or 'jan wawa pona mute li kama' “Many many goodly strong people came”. (It occurs to me that you have never really laid out the way that modification works in tp).
Using 'pi' or simple modification for “about” went out long ago, though seems to be coming back (maybe because of this book and Pije's) I suppose what you want to prevent is 'toki pi jan' although that is not clear.

'anu' can be used to make assertions as well as ask questions. Apparently the only difference is in the punctuation. It can also be used between NPs in subjects and objects, both direct and prepositional, and, apparently, between sentences (though just how to punctuate that is not clear – it mainly seems to be like 'taso') and presumably between predicates and verbs and modifiers, though these are trickier.

'en' can't be used between sentences, true, but it can be used between prepositional (but not direct) objects as well as subjects and between modifiers (with required 'pi', of course). All of this is about transformational 'en', the result of collapsing two sentences into one (as are also the earlier compound sentences). None of this applies to mixture “and” which is generated lexically: “That ball is red and blue” is 'sike ni li loje en laso', 'li loje li laso' would simply be false. And so on for other cases.

'taso' is also a limited scope preposition: “except” which is pretty much restricted, so far as I can see, to modifying group nouns: 'ali (pi) taso jan San' “Everybody except John” and the like. I don't quite see the distinction between the adjective and adverb uses here – 'taso' is like 'kin' and can be stuck on anywhere to make a logically complex claim (“this and nothing else”). There is another adjectival use, to mean “alone, solitary” which is more remote from the central notion here.

'kin' goes after the stressed word, to mark and addition or correction. So, “I went too” is, in context. 'mi kin li tawa' (English – and German? – are sloppy with “too” and “only” and the like) 'mi tawa kin' says either that I did something different or more in going, neither of which is correct.

I skip my rant about 'pilin pona', which ought to be 'pona pilin'. Just note that, except for 'pona' and 'ike', other feelings – like cold, say, are adj+'pilin'.

Colors.
I see that both your description of 'en' and of 'pi' go away in the practical situation of a red and blue shirt. Maybe you shouldn't have said the restrictive things you did originally.

'sitelen' 'sitelen tawa … li kin pona' makes no sense, what would stressing 'li' do? I assume the 'kin' goes just before the 'li', at the end of the NP.

'ko' isn't used much but one should't dismiss it so casually, since it includes gelatin, flour, glue, and countless other things no one has yet had occasion to talk about in tp. And it's a great verb for “to squash”.

'uta e' is used for “kiss”

or 'mi wile pilin e selo mi” “I need to/want to scratch.”

Numbers. 'mute' and 'ali' are a terrible idea for specific values. Either give up big numbers or do the job right. These don't help at all.

Well, “only pronouns after” if 'ni' is counted as a pronoun – and 'ali' and 'ala', of course.
'jan mute kin' also 'jan pi mute mute' (and, in the works 'jan mute mute mute' but let that slide.)

'weka' is an adjective meaning “away, far” and so on. The other meanings follow automatically. This presentation is basically backwards.

'la'. If you think 'ken la' is hard (it does mean “possible” after all), try 'kin la' “moreover, however”.

You don't do superlatives as promised (Yes, it is obvious, but...) note also the occasional use of say 'pona ali' for “best”.

I didn't look at the texts to closely, but just in skimming I saw most of the things I notice earlier in the text and accidentally stopped on 'waso li ken ala lukin la ona li kin ken jo e kili', presumably 'ona kin li'.

Ah, just found a more complete guide to tpization.

The confusion among place names, people names and language names persists. It would be good to either deal with each separately or agree on where to get the common word for all.

The English to tp section is as useless as usual – the next project, perhaps.

Still, this is in many ways better than pu and occasionally even improves on Pije. Thanks.

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 3:42 pm
by janKipo
Note. Some of these flaws may go back to Pije, whose revisions were not quite as advertised.

Pronunciation: using 'more' is probably bad for English, where 'or' reglarly gets odd pronunciation. 'toe' is probably safer. But the boundaries are so fluid here that it probably doesn't matter as long as /o/ doesn't slide into /a/ or /a/ into /e/.


ambiguity. Strictly speaking, tp words are not ambiguous; they are vague. The fact that they can be precided in various ways in different contexts or that they correspond to several different words in English (or whatever) doen't make them ambiguous, as long as here is a coherent (very broad, perhaps) meaning that covers all the cases. But the point here is comparative, so it is true that one tp word covers a large number of English (etc.) words and that is the point.

Verb (I won't mutter about the constant use-mention muddles throughout. I just accept that this kind of messiness is standard among tpers (and pretty much conlangers generally) and drop a reminder in from time to time. E.g.: “Because toki pona lacks 'to be', the exact meaning is lost. 'moku' in this sentence ...” ) It isn't by the way, the lack of the verb “to be” but the lack of a distinctive mark for noun use and verb use (and adjectival use, since 'mi moku' could mean “I am edible” as well). But none of that is at issue here; it is enough to warn of the variety of readings possible, which you do. (Why is the lack of tense markers ambiguity and of number vagueness?) We can argue about whether 'li' separate subject and verb or starts the predicate (but is dropped after 'mi' and 'sina' standing alone). Sorry I keep getting off on techy details, but it is better not to commit to early on these issues, as “separates” does, since it makes it hard to explain compound sentences later, where it doesn't do that.

DO. “whatever is getting action done on itself” is not at all clear, since it suggests DO's cooperation (which is rare) and covers things like the objects of prepositions, which aren't DOs.
(I admit, I couldn't figure out why 'wile' was singled out for special treatment nor why 'wile verb' was brought in before introduced formally, until I saw the bit about placing DO relative to infinitive (as it were) and remembered you were working this for German more than English.)

Compound Sentences. There are actually three ways (at least, we skip over 'anu' which isn't well worked out) to do this. You omit 'Subj en Subj Pred' (and similarly with conjoined prepositions and prepositional objects). I suppose these are dealt with separately even though they are grammatically the same (or many of them are). It's arguable whether it is easier to stick 'li' in front of each predicate except when preceded by 'mi' or 'sina' alone or to have it always there but dropped in the exceptional cases.

Adjectives. Mainly about idioms, which is a good way in. Verbs are often used as adjectives – with regular shifts in meaning (worth noting?) . Nouns are, too, although no mention is made of this before they are so used. There is no upper limit to the number of modifiers in a noun phrase, though, in practice fewer is better. And the terminal positions of 'mute', 'ni' and personal pronouns is part of a more general pattern of adjective order (and notice, these three cases can shift among themselves, with varying meanings).

Adverbs No number restriction here either, but they tend to be fewer than nouns.

'nasa' as a verb, with regular shift in meaning. Example should probably wait until explained.

Prepositions. Why introduced as verb? I see the old “do something to” line is at work again (see earlier). Going to a house affects the house at least as much as looking at something affects it. 'tawa' is just a preposition, so its object behaves differently in the sentence from that of a (transitive) verb. Probably should talk about sentential prepositional phrases before using them out of the blue. The problem with those terminal PP is quite general, not confined to 'wile' and 'lon' – as would have been brought up if the PPs had been discussed already. The expansion move is a good one to teach, as it is almost always helpful when muddles occur. 'kepeken' is just another perposition, and behave just like 'lon' and 'tawa'. The use of 'tawa' (and other prepositions less often) as transitive verbs is just part of a regular process that covers nouns and adjectives as well and could be dealt with all at once, rather than several times over. 'tawa' isn't often used a preposition, it is a preposition, but is often used as a verb and an adjective and occasionally a noun. That's just how tp works. And so we get back to the terminal PP problem with 'tawa', the most common offender. Again, one warning should server for all here. (While you're running trough cases of 'tawa', you might throw in one like 'mi tawa tomo e poki' “I moved the box to the house”.)
'kama' (Infinitive) doesn't really need its own section if modals have been discussed already (as they have not yet), since it is not special except in its wide use.

Spatial nouns. Don't confuse 'poka' preposition “with” with 'poka' noun “side” by saying 'mi moku poka jan pona mi' means “I ate beside my friend” rather than “with him”; the former is 'lon poka pi jan pona mi' (which, amazingly, you can't say yet). The confusion encourages the already notable pressure to make all the spatial words prepositions (which will happen eventually, but needs to be prepared for).

Negation. 'jan ala li toki' is unambiguous, 'jan li toki ala' is ambiguous: it also means “Someone is silent”.
Note, 'ala' alone is also a good “No” answer.

Unofficial words. Some discussion of how to tpize names is probably in order, since people do want to do it and do not (given some of the products) have a clue.

Addressing. This restriction on commas does not seem to hold. It is often omitted (or worse) with vocatives. It is regularly used, by some folks with 'la' and occasionally to set off terminal PPs and to clarify other messy constructions. The worse mentioned above is the collapse of vocative + imperative into a single 'o', which is cute but doesn't correspond to speech (while the comma does). It also gets confused with the optative (hortative), if that is done simply by replacing 'li' with 'o' (as opposed to the old form that just put 'o' in front of a regular sentence). This whole area, which was in fairly decent shape a while back, is now a mess due to unthought-through changes arbitrarily introduced (apparently).

'sin' has regularly come to mean “new” in a different sense than was originally intended, apparently. I don't think that can be undone (nor should it be, since we need it). It is never used in the sense of “more”.

Compound nouns. This description of 'pi' makes virtually no sense. Most importantly, there is no requirement that the second chunk be a noun+ adjective; it can equally well be an adjective +adverb or a PP or any other sort of complex modifier. See your own examples with 'ala'.
As a result, some of your common mistakes are not mistakes at all. 'jan pi wawa pi pona mute li kama' “A person of very good strength came” is quite correct, and very different from either 'jan pi wawa pona mute li kama' “A person of many good strengths came” or “Many people of good strength came” or 'jan wawa pona mute li kama' “Many many goodly strong people came”. (It occurs to me that you have never really laid out the way that modification works in tp).
Using 'pi' or simple modification for “about” went out long ago, though seems to be coming back (maybe because of this book and Pije's) I suppose what you want to prevent is 'toki pi jan' although that is not clear.

'anu' can be used to make assertions as well as ask questions. Apparently the only difference is in the punctuation. It can also be used between NPs in subjects and objects, both direct and prepositional, and, apparently, between sentences (though just how to punctuate that is not clear – it mainly seems to be like 'taso') and presumably between predicates and verbs and modifiers, though these are trickier.

'en' can't be used between sentences, true, but it can be used between prepositional (but not direct) objects as well as subjects and between modifiers (with required 'pi', of course). All of this is about transformational 'en', the result of collapsing two sentences into one (as are also the earlier compound sentences). None of this applies to mixture “and” which is generated lexically: “That ball is red and blue” is 'sike ni li loje en laso', 'li loje li laso' would simply be false. And so on for other cases.

'taso' is also a limited scope preposition: “except” which is pretty much restricted, so far as I can see, to modifying group nouns: 'ali (pi) taso jan San' “Everybody except John” and the like. I don't quite see the distinction between the adjective and adverb uses here – 'taso' is like 'kin' and can be stuck on anywhere to make a logically complex claim (“this and nothing else”). There is another adjectival use, to mean “alone, solitary” which is more remote from the central notion here.

'kin' goes after the stressed word, to mark and addition or correction. So, “I went too” is, in context. 'mi kin li tawa' (English – and German? – are sloppy with “too” and “only” and the like) 'mi tawa kin' says either that I did something different or more in going, neither of which is correct.

I skip my rant about 'pilin pona', which ought to be 'pona pilin'. Just note that, except for 'pona' and 'ike', other feelings – like cold, say, are adj+'pilin'.

Colors.
I see that both your description of 'en' and of 'pi' go away in the practical situation of a red and blue shirt. Maybe you shouldn't have said the restrictive things you did originally.

'sitelen' 'sitelen tawa … li kin pona' makes no sense, what would stressing 'li' do? I assume the 'kin' goes just before the 'li', at the end of the NP.

'ko' isn't used much but one should't dismiss it so casually, since it includes gelatin, flour, glue, and countless other things no one has yet had occasion to talk about in tp. And it's a great verb for “to squash”.

'uta e' is used for “kiss”

or 'mi wile pilin e selo mi” “I need to/want to scratch.”

Numbers. 'mute' and 'ali' are a terrible idea for specific values. Either give up big numbers or do the job right. These don't help at all.

Well, “only pronouns after” if 'ni' is counted as a pronoun – and 'ali' and 'ala', of course.
'jan mute kin' also 'jan pi mute mute' (and, in the works 'jan mute mute mute' but let that slide.)

'weka' is an adjective meaning “away, far” and so on. The other meanings follow automatically. This presentation is basically backwards.

'la'. If you think 'ken la' is hard (it does mean “possible” after all), try 'kin la' “moreover, however”.

You don't do superlatives as promised (Yes, it is obvious, but...) note also the occasional use of say 'pona ali' for “best”.

I didn't look at the texts to closely, but just in skimming I saw most of the things I notice earlier in the text and accidentally stopped on 'waso li ken ala lukin la ona li kin ken jo e kili', presumably 'ona kin li'.

Ah, just found a more complete guide to tpization.

The confusion among place names, people names and language names persists. It would be good to either deal with each separately or agree on where to get the common word for all.

The English to tp section is as useless as usual – the next project, perhaps.

Still, this is in many ways better than pu and occasionally even improves on Pije. Thanks.

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 2:40 pm
by jan_Lope
jan Kipo o, toki!

Many thanks for your comments. But can you write what you mean a littel more clearly?

For example:
The English to tp section is as useless as usual – the next project, perhaps.
This sentences is useles because you didn't write why.

Can you write in this way? On the page ... is this mistake ... Please correct it to this ...

I have no time to read a lot of nested subordinate clauses, vague hints, ...
Still, this is in many ways better than pu and occasionally even improves on Pije. Thanks.
This is clear. ;-)

Thanks

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 1:57 pm
by janKipo
Sorry. As I reread my comments, I see that my complaints are generally more about attitude and approach than about specifics, and that, of course, goes back to Pije. And these complaints arise from a difference is heuristics, I suppose. Loosely, Pije (and Sonja) prefer to take up each case separately and hope that the student will eventually get the pattern. The result is that they say the same thing over and over (well, Pije does; Sonja usually doesn't take up a second case) and never gives the generalization. I prefer to give the generalization first and discuss the special cases as the need arises. I don't know which approach is better (and suspect that it depends a lot on the student), but about the third time I am told how a preposition works (just like all the other ones), I blow up. Along with that goes a preference for thinking about grammar in a broader context, not merely stringing words together, but building structures. So, for example, I would put compound sentences in the context of collapsing two otherwise identical sentences into one with their differences set out -- and thus deal with multiple 'li's and 'e's along with most 'en's. Similarly, I would think of modification in the context of description and so 'pi' in terms of converted predicates (Sonja and Pije sorta do this but make nothing of it -- except to retain the odd 'ni li pi mi' case). Similarly, the conversion of anything not a transitive verb into a transitive verb and modals and prepositions, and so.

To the specific problem you mention, the tp->Eng section does not provide any translations but merely points to places to go (usually "vocabulary", which means searching the whole 120+ words). This is true of Pije and pu as well, and everything else, except the excel spreadsheet from ages ago. It is really annoying to newbies and oldbies alike. I admit that the sorting out of the vocabulary into various groups helps some, but hardly covers the need (as witness the "How do yous say ,,,,?" mail and the really bad attempts to solve old problems.

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 5:17 pm
by jan_Lope
Jan Kipo o, toki!
Thanks for you notes.

Several years ago I translated jan Pije's lessons to German an put the English and German version in a layout with latex. My aim was to learn Toki Pona. For me jan Pije's lessons were the best lessons in this time.
Later I had no time for Toki Pona. Now I have more time.

Last year I read a book about artificial intelligence with a section about Definite Clause Grammar of the computer language Prolog. The DCG examples in this or other books covers only small parts of a language because langugages are complex. My idea was to decribe a whole language with DCG and Prolog rules. But the problem was: I'm not a genius! And I remember Toki Pona.

One year ago I start to learn Prolog in my walking holidays. Later I've start to learn DCG of Prolog and to write DCG rules for the lessons on my website.

It was clear to me that in the moment I publish these rules I'll get a lot of suggestions to make these or that better. But my aim is not to improve Toki Pona. My aim is to decribe the "official" Toki Pona of the moment with DCG rules. Maybe these rules can be the fundamentals for improving Toki Pona.

As a side effect I have to improve the lessons of my website because I need clear grammar rules to put these in DCG. But these lessons are not my main emphasis. (At the moment) I have not time to make the lessons didactic perfect. Keep in mind I have to care for the German and English lesson and the DCG rules (English is not my mother tongue - sorry for my mistakes in English). Sorry, but I can't improve the lessons in a better didactic way at the moment.

But the title of this topic is "I'm uptating ...". It is a longer process ...

pona!

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 3:36 am
by jan_Lope
'sitelen' 'sitelen tawa … li kin pona' makes no sense, what would stressing 'li' do? I assume the 'kin' goes just before the 'li', at the end of the NP.
" ... li kin ... " is possible. Remember Toki Pona has no word for "be". "kin" as an adverb can stress the hidden "be" here.

My wish for a new word in Toki Pona is a word for "be". A lot of sentence have several variants in meaning. With a "be" we can avoid many of them.

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 6:31 pm
by janKipo
The problem with describing the "official" tp is that there is no such thing. There is no tp organization, so no certification and the like. We have (at least) Pije, which is a rather conservative language, ignoring several changes that have been widely adopted, and my version, which is not spelled out, but reflects the fairly current practices of the best users (all of this my judgments, of course). And there is Sonja's version, which she claims only to be how she uses tp, so not prescriptive, but still very influential. The differences among these in practice are fairly minor, but tend to be trigger points. The differences in describing the same things seem to be more marked and also more likely to influence your grammar, so that even when all agree in practice, the prospective use of the rules give very different results. There are several sketch grammars around which incorporate various versions of rules to give pretty much the same language (there is less confusion about what is grammatical -- or even how it is built up -- than about what it means).

'li kin' is possible in that a grammar could be written to include it, but no present one does. As for adding a copula (which I gather is what you want), I don't see the use exactly. So 'mi moku' could be divided into "I eat" and other meanings. But "I am food" and "I am edible" would still collapse (not too bad in this case, but others might be worse. I think it would be more handy if there were a way to tell whether a word were functioning as a verb, noun or adjective/adverb, which is the heart of the problem. When I go into jan nasa mode, one place I go is to Giannhs Kenanidhs' dama dawa, which has precisely that as suffix (more or less), and I come away with an optional /-p, -t, -k/ for words when the syntactic muddle gets too thick.

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 4:25 am
by jan_Lope
The problem with describing the "official" tp is that there is no such thing. There is no tp organization, so no certification and the like.
But there are several Toki Pona lessons. I try to consider these.
We have (at least) Pije, which is a rather conservative language, ignoring several changes that have been widely adopted, and my version, which is not spelled out, but reflects the fairly current practices of the best users (all of this my judgments, of course).
Yes, it is your point of view. Toki Pona beginners can be very confused by texts which don't fit to the rules of the lessons. Maybe they give up and the "best" users are among themselves.

Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons an I'm looking for good text examples

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:39 am
by janKipo
Well, how good a potential tper who doesn't go on with the language might have been is a useless question; we have to work with the ones who stick with it. Happily, there are plenty of those. As for the varieties of tp, they are mainly not that different. The different 'pi' rules, for example, all agree in most cases; they just describe those cases differently (the exceptions -- if they still occur -- are the predicate possessive, Pije's 'kili li pi mi', and 'pi' with modifier PPs, which neither Pije nor Sonja seem to either discuss or exemplify). The various idioms for "talk about" and "speak in [language]" and a few others can generally be treated as just dialectal variants (I am trying to do more of "you don't need" than "don't" and "the usual pattern is" rather than "do it thus").
I suppose I ought to do a set of lessons just to get standing along side Sonja and Pije to be considered when someone is making up a descriptive grammar. Alas, as I know from earlier forays into textbook writing, this is not my skill at all. I write very precise, but totally unreadable and unusable, texts. I would be better at critiquing someone else's into what I would have done. But the various someone elses that I have done that for have not heeded my advice or have vigorously rejected it. I hope you are more open in the long run.
Incidentally, I am today starting another little sketch of a part of a formal grammar of tp. It is largely transformational, but I do try to discuss the descriptive results. One thing I noticed that is relevant to your grammar is about the tails of NPs: in deep structure, once one of quantity (mute, lili, ali, ala), possessive (especially pronouns), and deixis ('ni', maybe some others) occurs, only the remaining members of this triad can occur. But, on the surface level (so, in your descriptions), if there are 'pi' modifiers, especially long or complex ones, these later members may be moved forward to the head or at least the last continuous piece before the 'pi's. For example, 'jan pona pi alasa pi waso telo mi mute' in the sense of "Many of my duck-hunting friends" appears as 'jan pona mi mute pi alasa pi waso telo', in defiance of the usual ordering rules (or, maybe, in accord with a different rule about restrictive relative clauses or some such thing).