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

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

Post by jan_Lope »

janTepanNetaPelin wrote: Buth why is a comma recommended? In the sentence "mi moku, kepeken ilo moku" it seems you're putting two sentences together "mi moku" and "mi kepeken ilo moku." If this is your intention, you could simply say "mi moku li kepeken ilo moku." (i.e. without comma).
jan TepanNetaPelin o, toki!

My intention is to mark a preposition. Please see this sentence:

mi pana e tomo tawa sina.

If "tawa" is used as an adjective, then this sentence says "I gave your car." If it is used as a preposition, though, it could mean, "I gave the house to you." A comma as a marker make is clear:

mi pana e tomo, tawa sina. ("I gave the house to you.")

A comma as separator terminate the phrase before. So "tawa" can't be an adjective of "tomo". "tawa" can only be a preposition and start the prepositional object here.

In other languages commas have different functions as in Toki Pona. Remember Toki Pona has no subordinate clauses. There is no pressure to use commas for putting two sentences together.
pona!
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by janKipo »

Nice to have conservative support. Now, to generalize, ...
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

jan_Lope wrote: In other languages commas have different functions as in Toki Pona.
jan Lope o,

Thanks for your explanation. This way of using a comma is very weird to me. We could use any other seperator, like a dash:

"mi pana e tomo - tawa sina." (I give the house to you.)
"mi pana e tomo tawa sina." (I give your car.)

You might also try to use a hiphen in combination with modifiers instead:

"mi pana e tomo tawa sina." (I give the house to you.)
"mi pana e tomo-tawa-sina." (I give your car.)
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by janKipo »

Mato at least uses hyphens for idioms, maybe for all complex NPs. But only in analysis, I think, not in text.
I would use commas more generously: before modifiers added to phrases ending in 'pi' phrases and after 'la' for left grouped conditions, as well as before PPs.
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by jan_Lope »

janTepanNetaPelin wrote: We could use any other seperator, like a dash:
You might also try to use a hiphen in combination with modifiers instead:
Please think punctuation marks are different in any languages. In German a long dash with spaces are used to connect sentences. A short dash is used to connect words. Both are not useful to mark a preposition in Toki Pona I think. In Toki Pona the comma is a separator like "li", "e", "pi", "la", ".", "!" and "?". These separators end the coequal phrase before. So a comma end a phrase before, for example a noun with adjectives.

Although the use of commas are define only after a "o", some people use it together with other separators in a funny way. For example before or after "la" or after "taso" at the beginning of a sentence. (You can recognize English speaker at the comma after "taso" at the beginning of a sentence.) These uses of commas are complete useless for me. But a comma before a preposition is very useful for me.
pona!
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

jan_Lope wrote: Please think punctuation marks are different in any languages. In German a long dash with spaces are used to connect sentences. A short dash is used to connect words. Both are not useful to mark a preposition in Toki Pona I think. In Toki Pona the comma is a separator like "li", "e", "pi", "la", ".", "!" and "?". These separators end the coequal phrase before. So a comma end a phrase before, for example a noun with adjectives.

Although the use of commas are define only after a "o", some people use it together with other separators in a funny way. For example before or after "la" or after "taso" at the beginning of a sentence. (You can recognize English speaker at the comma after "taso" at the beginning of a sentence.) These uses of commas are complete useless for me. But a comma before a preposition is very useful for me.
There seems to be a misunderstanding. I used hyphens/short dashes in order to connect nouns and adjectives as in "tomo-tawa" ("car") when I didn't use any sort of interpunctuation at all for prepositions in "tomo tawa sina" ("house to you").

(By the way, in sitelen pona we also write adjectives differenctly, so "tomo-tawa" ("car") are combined into one sitelen pona, whereas "tomo tawa ..." ("house to ...") are written as two sitelen pona.)

If you use commas exclusively for ending a phrase before a preposition, then your approach should work, of course.
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by jan_Lope »

janTepanNetaPelin wrote: There seems to be a misunderstanding. I used hyphens/short dashes in order to connect nouns and adjectives as in "tomo-tawa" ("car") when I didn't use any sort of interpunctuation at all for prepositions in "tomo tawa sina" ("house to you").

(By the way, in sitelen pona we also write adjectives differenctly, so "tomo-tawa" ("car") are combined into one sitelen pona, whereas "tomo tawa ..." ("house to ...") are written as two sitelen pona.)

If you use commas exclusively for ending a phrase before a preposition, then your approach should work, of course.
I know what you mean. Commas are mainly for subordinate clauses and not for word marks in other languages. But, commas are not only used for this. For example you can use commas for enumerations in other languages as well. Maybe you can use hyphens or dashes instead of commas to mark a preposition. But, Toki Pona have to be as much simple as possible. Hyphens and dashes are new signs for Toki Pona. This is not a good idea I think.

As I wrote commas are not useful together with other separators like "li", "e", "pi", "la", ".", "!" and "?". There is an exception, for example:

ona li, lon seme?

Here is "lon" a preposition and it is recommend to put a comma before. After "li" is normally a verb. But, there is no "be" in Toki Pona. (My wish is a "be" in Toki Pona.) My DCG scripts put "verb_be" instead of the missing "be". The parse tree does not show the commas. "np" means noun phrase. "vp" means verb phrase. Here is a special verb phrase "vp_where".

Code: Select all

?- check_grammar(P).
|: ona li, lon seme?
P = s(interrogative(question(where(
       np(pronoun(ona), li), 
       vp_where(verb_be, preposition(lon), question_word(seme))
      ))), ?) 
BTW: I' ve updated my lessons again with more texts examples. Thanks to the nice jan Mali (Aetherstar).
http://rowa.giso.de/languages/toki-pona ... 0000000000
pona!
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by janKipo »

While I generally agree with Lope on commas (and, indeed, would suggest several further uses), the case of 'ona li, lon seme' is just perverse, although a consequence of his narrow rules. What follows 'li' need not be a verb but can be of any class, as many of Lope's own examples show (of course, you can call whatever comes after 'li' a verb, just as he calls whatever comes after 'pi' a noun, but that doesn't help much -- except with the sentence negation rule). His solution of adding a null word for "be" is unnecessary and bad style, against the history of tp and very SAE (all negative evaluations). The comma there is also unnecessary, since this is not a terminal PP, but the predicate head (and there is no preceding NP even).
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by jan_Lope »

I've updated my lesson "Basic Sentence" (the missing "to be"). I hope it is much clearer now for English and German speaker why after "li" can follow not only a verb. It can follow a noun or an adjectiv also.

http://rowa.giso.de/languages/toki-pona ... 0000000000
Last edited by jan_Lope on Fri Feb 12, 2016 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
pona!
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Re: I'm updating my Toki Pona lessons and I'm looking for good text examples

Post by janKipo »

There is no missing verb "to be" in tp, except in comparison to other languages like English and German. In tp, nouns and adjectives and prepositions can all serve as the head of the predicate as well as verbs. Lope seems to feel ther has to be something there to hang something on (I'm not clear just what), but, in fact, tp works just fine -- like countless other 'be'-less languages: Chinese and classical Greek for a major pair. I think talking about "missing 'be'" is more likely to create problems than to solve them. Note btw that his lesson only muddles things more, since, having used the phantom copula to distinguish a verbal from a nominal use, he turns around and use 'be' in the verbal cases as well.
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