nasin toki pi toki pona

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janKipo
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKipo »

But, of course, you can use a 'la' phrase within a 'la' phrase, if you want (though it is clearer what is meant with a 'la' phrases in the sentence after the 'la' phrase). Lope's grammar is linear, which keeps him from seeing many features of tp. He also has built the punctuation into his grammar, which may not be a bad idea (see the case of 'anu'), but his rules are very restrictive on the one hand but don't cover important cases on the other.
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janTepanNetaPelin
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

o jan pi toki pona,

I rewrote my Toki Pona grammar written in Toki Pona (and Esperanto). Comments are welcome.
The main goal was to create a set of terms in Toki Pona itself in order to describe the language:

nimi kalama - onomatopoeia
nimi ilo - particle
nimi ijo - content word / root word
nimi suli - verb
nimi sinpin - auxilary verb
nimi monsi - adjective/adverb
nimi insa - preposition
nimi lawa - noun
nimi lawa lon - location noun
nimi nanpa - numeral

A secondary goal was for me to describe things to avoid in Toki Pona.

Enjoy!

https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona
jan Tepan
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.
janKipo
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKipo »

Having tried to write a bit of a tp textbook in tp (with parallel English), I know how hard this is and I congratulate Tepan on his effort. However, since he has allied himself with Lope in the most conservative wing of the community, I must note places where other possibilities exist in well-documented tp. I will note at the beginning, however, that in a world stuffed with item-and-arrangement, linear BNF grammars, it is pleasant to see a fairly consistent item-and-process , transformational, approach, even if the moves are sometimes a bit unconvincing.
nimi kalama
I don't understand the inclusion of unofficial tp words (proper adjective) among nimi kalama nor the general rule that in phrases nimi kalama come after 'pi nimi' (and in quotes, though he does not say that, only shows it). He gives no examples with 'mu' or 'a'. On the other hand, his explanation of the use of unofficial words, 'xY' as derived from 'x pi nimi 'Y'' seems essentially correct (I would have said ultimately from the baptism even 'jan li nimi 'Y' e x', but that is detail).
nimi ilo
I would have restricted 'nimi ijo' to nouns and used 'nimi suli' or 'nimi sona; for the more general content words. But 'nimi ilo' is good (aside from easy typos).
nimi 'pi'
'nimi lawa' for nouns or noun phrases (and adjectives? "substantives" is not a common word in grammar). But, of course, the 'pi' remarks don't live up to it. The next step. which has 'jan pi pona' as a proper, though rapidly vanishing, tp expression. goes beyond conservative into cloud-cuckooland, though I do see how it might have arisen from a slightly skewed rule. And so, no mention is made of the requiement that 'pi' must be followed by at least two words. Very unconservative.
nimi 'li'
'nimi suli' for verbs is OK. though theologically odd, 'nimi pali' seems more natural. The 'mi' and 'sina' exceptions for 'li' are put in the best way. Not sure why the bit about "Yes" and "No" is in the 'li' section (nor where 'pona' comes in).
nimi 'e'
Not sure why verbalization of nouns (or substantives) comes in the 'e' section, but an explanation of the meaning of the shift would be useful, wherever it occurs. 'nimi sinpin' for preverb is OK, but leaves preposition without their usual name. The second 'la' phrases of the is screwed up by Tepan's (or at least Lope's) rules. I would say 'sinpin pi nimi suli pi poka nimi 'e'' and Lope would have (I think -- if he would allow it at all) 'sinpin pi nimi suli lon poka pi nimi 'pi''. I'm not sure just what the point of deopping 'kama' here is, since I don't know any reason for it to be there in the first place. (Well, suddenly I do, looking back at the verbalization, which is, it turns out, only allowing noun and adjective predicates. 'kama' is now needed to explain regular verbalization, i.e., causatives. As such, it does a good job, for the most part, but, of course, causatives were needed already to make 'kama' into one, so we are in a closed loop here.) Dropping direct objects needs to be mentioned somewhere and this seems as good a place as any, though I like to drop the DO that is the same as the verb, so 'moku e moku'. I guess 'ijo' is an easier general rule.
nimi 'o'
I'm not sure of the need to always have 'sina' before 'o' originally, though it does provide a differentiation between imperatives and optatives. The origin of hales is equally questionable. And the ones for common fragments just seem wrong, especially since only impeatives seem contemplatd here.
nimi 'en'
Also can't use 'en' between sentences (and you can use 'en' inside 'li' and 'e' phrases).
nimi 'anu'
Somehow, I think there is more to be said about 'anu' than 'anu seme?' In particular, something about 'anu' as a question word in its own right as oposed to (but not grammatically distinct from) its used in statements. And its use between sentences. And its (undiscussed) use between predicates.
nimi 'la'
The move from final PPs to initial 'la' phrases is important, the only easy rearrangement of the order of elements in tp grammar. Nice to see it get prominence. Ditto, the loss of at least 'lon' in the shift (maybe others? Tepan seems to have used them). The third case, dropping 'lon ni:' seems to me less convincing, given that we are assuming we already have final PPs and it does not fit the actual pattern of 'S la S' well. Speaking of which, there is nothing here about conditional sentences, a major 'la' use (nor about most other 'la' uses, for that matter. the final bit about 'taso' doesn't make much sense : the first two items would never occur and, even if they did, would not explain the final upshot.
nimi ijo
nimi suli
As noted, I am not fond of these names, but is nice to have something for these concepts. I suppose that a verb is the most important word in a sentence because there are sentences without nouns (and, "verb" means "word" in Latin?). Note: these are names for grammatical functions, not word classes. None of the listed verbs is a Verb. It would be useful to have different words for these two concepts, but Tepan never (in any clear way) talks about word classes, except content words (nimi ijo) and particles (nimi ilo).
nimi sinpin
I suppose, if verbs are the most important things, then what goes before them get the preposed honors, the the Esperanto is more useful here (and generally) since it says a bit about function. I think the apparent rule he lays down for dropping preverbs only works for 'wile jo' and would not work with other preverbs or other verbs. In addition, this does not note that the scope of the preverb is, in fact, the whole predicate, not merely the verb; that is, it takes in the object and the final PPs as well.
nimi monsi
No problems
nimi insa
Not a strictly grammatical definition, since the examples uses 'tawa' (a POS Presposition) as a verb. Nothing is said about the peculiarities of prepositions (they take their "objects" without 'e'), only that they can be used without objects -- at least some can (cases with 'tan' haven't occurred). No mention here of 'poka' (I think Tepan is committed to that always being 'lon poka x') or 'taso'. But he doesn't generally give lists of all the words that belong to a class, usually -- but probably not here -- because so many things shift in and out of classes.
nimi lawa
Now apparently just nouns, apparently as the heads of noun phrases. It's not clear how they are simpler than verbs. The most complex rules seem to apply to them ('pi' for example).
nimi lawa pi pona weka
I'm not sure I understand this. It appears to be, first, an explanation of how an adjective can be used as a noun for a thing having that property, skipping over the question of whether what was given as an adjective was or not. In particular, 'suno' is arguably a Noun already, so inherently a noun, as is 'mama'; 'lukin' is a Verb and 'lukin' as a noun never seems to mean "eyeglasses". The explanation for the fact that a Verb also functions as a noun to name the class of things which are its DOs is rather complex, going through several stages, including the Verb as adverb to get there, but it may have some deep significance (I doubt it, but it is possible. Still why not mention that 'ijo suno' comes from 'ijo sama suno' or so, if you are chasing these derivations down?)
nim lawa lon
A useful class to look at, but a list would be helpful. And, of course, they are not like prepositions since they take not simple NPs but possessive ones (i.e. with 'pi' if more than one word). Parts of the next few sections are a mystery to me. I don't see the relation between being on the iside of something and being its insides. I can be inside a school, but its insides are all around me, not me. But I may be missing the point, since it is not explained, except as a grammatical move that seems to me illegitimate, as, indeedm are some of the starting points ('open', 'weka', and certainly 'taso' do not seem to me to be locational words to begin with). There may be something here, but the examples are so inherently unlikely that I don't get them -- or maybe just so radically novel, that I am ot prepared to receive them.
toki ike
Since much of what has gone before is in fairly clear violation of pu, talking about language which goes agains pu is probably not the best move here. And certainly calling it bad or, perhaps, complicated or unclear seems strange in the context of what has gone on so far.
toki walo
Dittolexy isn't in tp yet very much and is certainly not in pu. But he gives two different cases as one. 'pona pona' for 'pona mute' is a know dialect, 'tawa tawa' is just redundant (though using 'tawa' again after a long modifier/DO is clearly OK). Not sure why this is white? Bad, but not too?
toki pimeja
This seems just to want to eliminate preverbs or maybe to add them according to some obscure plan. Thus, 'open' is apparently an adjective so to open a door requires transitive 'kama' (not even merely transitive 'open') (the arrows are unclear as to interpretation). Similarly, apparently, if we mean the adjectival sense of 'moku' we should insert 'pona' in front. This is all nice for clarification, if it is needed, but it rarely is (I hope) and failure to follow these paraphrases is hardly grounds for calling thing bad. (I won't even comment further on the use of 'pi' as a verb in the last example, for all it has its point at a deep level).
toki pi wan wan
This seems to be a brief attempt to say something about restrictive relative clauses in the form of rejecting a proposal that no one actually made because it generated too many problems immediately. The solution is just theone already in place. But there is no discussion of the purpose of all the fuss.
toki pakala
What, worse than before? Yes, using 'e' with 'kepeken' is an archaic dialect but not a disaster. Using 'anpa' as an adverb is just standard tp, not even a goof -- and not equivalent to (or even implying) using 'anpa' as DO. Omitting a noun before an unofficial word is always wrong and probably is a disaster in some sense. And 'tawa ala tawa ma tomo Lantan' is a perfectly OK question form (it operates on the verb -- first word after 'li' -- not on content).
toki nasa
These seem to be stylistic comments, not grammatical at all. And, yes, if the intervening phrases get too long it is useful to put NP terminators (numbers, possessives,'ni') back toward the front (just before the 'pi's start, usually). But you have to be aware that, which this eliminates some ambiguities and unclarities, it creates others. So, use with caution, but as often as possible. Though he doesn't talk about it, Tepan does have some sense of the proper order of adjectives and so, a specification clearly comes before a location. On the other hand, adverbs applied to prepositions don't seem to affect their prepositionness, so 'tawa pona tomo' is quite OK, as is, indeed, 'tawa noka tomo', which is even messier. On the other hand, the rule that the sentential PPs come after the DOs is absolute (well, maybe if the DOs carry PPs with them, these would come before the second DO), so this is really illegitimate, not merely strange. I think the preposition with 'poka' in the sense of "near" is 'tawa' but that example seems right ('poka e x' would seem to mean "attract x"). The last case is unclear because it does not show whether the 'pali' is a verb or a nou; in the v
former case, the 'pi' is usually wrong (but there are situations, ...), in the latter case, the 'pi' is required. The absolute final example is just badly translated into Eo.
toki mu
More of same, so far as I can see. Yes, location nouns are not prepositions (yet, and the pressure is falling), as you have said before. But 'poka' is an preposition. so some of the examples don't work (though only make sense with 'poka' as an adjective "near", which is different from the apparent topic). And, surprise!, Tepan doesn't like 'mu' used as a verb (nor, I assume, as a noun).
toki namako
Nor does he like, apparently, some of the new words, although some of the ones he rejects (ale, a, oko) are as old or older than the ones he would substitute. I don't think 'akesi can do the work of 'monsuta' nor 'kin' of 'a' (though whether we need 'a' at all -- or 'mu' -- is another question). 'apeja' never got very far and we are the better for that, but 'kipisi' and 'namako' seem to have found a place.
janKulisa
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKulisa »

janKipo wrote:'nimi suli' for verbs is OK. though theologically odd, 'nimi pali' seems more natural.
ni li sona pi jan sewi tan seme? ken la sina jan sewi pi toki pona? :P
sike lawa ni
li ike tawa mi
janKipo
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKipo »

ala. mi kepeken e nimi Inli "theological" tawa ni: jan li kama namako tan toki. taso lon li pali e ala.
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janTepanNetaPelin
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

janTepanNetaPelin wrote: nimi suli - verb
...
nimi monsi - adjective/adverb
nimi insa - preposition
Update: I added transitive verbs ("nimi suli wawa") and changed the name of prepositions, i.e. from "nimi insa" to "nimi monsi wawa".

Bye!
Last edited by janTepanNetaPelin on Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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.
janKipo
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKipo »

This is fairly incoherent. Why are transitive verbs classified as adjectives or following words, rather than as verb? Why are preposition called following words?
Ah, but it is a typo. He actually calls transitive verbs 'nimi suli wawa', which makes sense.
He has expanded on his dislike of new words a bit, but no surprises and no reason to stop using words you already find handy.
He has added a fairly decent section on pronunciation, which only covers general phonetic features and may go too far in allowing that sound become both voiced and fricative. But maybe not, too. I am surprised he seems comfortable with these deviations from the standards.
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janTepanNetaPelin
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

jan pi toki pona o,

mi sitelen e pini pi lipu mi: nimi ona li "nasin toki pi toki pona".
(I wrote the end of my Toki Pona grammar.)

toki open: hints for clarity
toki namako: language add-ons
toki ike: wrong Toki Pona
toki apeja: deliberately wrong Toki Pona
toki kipisi: incomplete Toki Pona
toki monsuta: Toki Pona sentences with wrong word order
toki mu: Toki Pona with words of wrong part-of-speech

https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona#toki-open
Enjoy! :)

jan Tepan
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.
janKipo
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKipo »

Nice to know what he meant. I disagree with his characterizations generally, of course, though some of his stylistic remarks are useful.
janKulisa
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Re: nasin toki pi toki pona

Post by janKulisa »

janTepanNetaPelin wrote:
janTepanNetaPelin wrote: nimi suli - verb
...
nimi monsi - adjective/adverb
nimi insa - preposition
Update: I added transitive verbs ("nimi monsi wawa") and changed the name of prepositions, i.e. from "nimi insa" to "nimi monsi wawa".

Bye!
Ha, I believe there is a typo here; you have both transitive verbs and prepositions being called "nimi monsi wawa". Might want to correct that. And neither of those seem very "monsi" to me...
sike lawa ni
li ike tawa mi
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