Stúlkan sem starir á hafið. meli pu lukin e telo suli

[janMato]

WARNING: This has off-label uses of "pu" (essentially using pu as pi followed by a verb phrase instead of noun phrase). As of the moment, no one knows what pu really means, although the various "pu is a comma" stories have the air of off-record discussions with Sonja.

Stúlkan sem starir á hafið
meli pu lukin e telo suli
Lag og texti: Bubbi Morthens
kalama musi en nimi li tan jan Bubbi Morthens pi ma Islan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LkGR1Aa4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fVw8EV12Gg

Ég kom í þorpið kvöld eitt um sumar
klukkan tólf í miðnætursól
Ég fékk herbergi upp á verbúð, það virtist í lagi
með vask, borði og stól.

I came to the town one evening in summer,
12 midnight in the midnight sun,
I took a room in a fisherman's hut, it seemed okay
with sink, table and chair

tempo pini pi tempo seli la mi kama tawa tomo mute,
tempo li luka luka tu li tempo pi suno pi tempo ale,
mi kama jo e tomo lape lon tomo pi jan pi alasa kala. tomo ni li pona tawa mi.
tomo ni li jo e poki pu telo e supa pu moku e supa pu awen pi monsi sijelo

Um morguninn gekk ég út á götuna að skoða
sá gömul vélhræ liggja út á lóð.
Ég sá hús sem áttu sögu og sum voru að deyja
það seytlaði úr gluggunum blóð.

About morning I got out to the road to see
one old wreck laying out on the yard.
I saw a house which had stories about some that died,
The windows trickled with blood.

tempo suno sin la mi tawa lon nasin,
mi lukin e tawa telo ike lon ma pi tomo lili ni.
mi lukin e tomo pu jo toki pi jan moli.
lupa tomo li jo e telo loje pi jan moli. telo ni li tawa anpa

Það er stelpa sem starir á hafið
stjörf með augun mött.
Hún stendur öll kvöld og starir á hafið
stóreyg, dálítið fött.

meli pu lukin e telo suli,
ona li sama e kasi suli. ona li jo oko pu suno ala,
tempo pimeja ale la meli li lon noka. meli li lukin e telo suli,
kepkeen oko suli mute, kepeken oko suli lili.

There is a girl who stares at the sea,
Rigid, with unshining eyes,
She stands all evening and stares at the sea,
Her bulging eyes, protruding eyes.

Ég sá hana dansa með döpur græn augu
dansa líkt og hún væri ekki hér.
Hún virtist líða um í sínum lokaða heimi
læstum fyrir mér og þér.

I saw her dancing with sad green eyes,
Dancing like she wasn't here
See seemed to float about in her closed up world,
locked from me and you

mi lukin e meli ni pu tawa musi: meli li jo e oko pu pilin ike
ona meli li tawa musi sama kon jan,
one meli li tawa kon sewi ma lon ma open ala pi ona meli,
ma ona li open ala tawa mi tawa sina

Hver hún var vissi ég ekki en alla ég spurði
sem áttu leið þar hjá.
Þar til mér var sagt að einn svartan vetur
hefði sjórinn tekið manninn henni frá.

I was not sure who she was, despite asking everyone
who was passing by
They told me that (with) one black wind
the sea had taken her man from her

mi sona ala e ni: meli ona li seme. taso mi toki e ni
tawa jan ale pu tawa poki mi:
ona mute li toki e ni tawa mi:
pini la telo suli li kama jo li awen jo e meji ona.

Þetta er stelpan sem starir á hafið
stjörf með augun mött.
Hún stendur öll kvöld og starir á hafið
stóreyg, dálítið fött.

Þessi starandi augu, haustgræn sem hafið
ég horfði ofan í djúpið eitt kvöld.
Þau spegluðu eitthvað sem aðeins hafið skildi
angurvært, tælandi og köld.

These staring eyes, authumn-green like the sea,
I watched down in the depth one evening,
They reflect something that only the sea understood
sad, untrue and cold

oko meli pu lukin li sama e telo suli pi kule laso.
pini pi tempo suno la mi lukin anpa tawa anpa pi telo suli
telo li pana e tu sama. telo taso li sona e tu ni.
telo li pilin ike li lon ala li lete mute

Uppi á hamrinum stóð hún og starði yfir fjörðinn
stundum kraup hún hvönninni í.
Þar teygaði hún vindinn og villt augun grétu
meðan vonin hvarf henni á ný.

Up on a clif she stood and stared over the bay
sometimes she kneeled among the Angelica,
There she gulped the wind and lost eyes in tears,
while her hopes disappeared again

meli li lon ma nena li lukin e telo suli poki,
tempo lili la meli li noka anpa lon kasi pi pilin ala,
meli li moku e kon tawa. meli li lukin ken ala tan oko pu anpa e telo,
tu la wile meli li weka li lon ala

Þetta sumar var fallegt, ég fékk nóg að vinna
það fiskaðist og tíðin var góð.
En ég stóð og hugsaði og starði út um glugga
um stelpuna sem var talin óð.

This summer was beatufiul, I took enough from work,
The fishing and weather was good.
But I stood thinking and staring out the window
at the woman who was believe to be mad

tempo pi suno mute ni li pona. mi kama jo e mani mute tan pali
pali kala pu jo en pana pi laso sule li pona
taso mi lon noka mi. mi pilin. mi li lukin e meli ni kepeken lupa tomo.
jan mute li pilin e ni: ken la meli li nasa

Eina nótt hrökk ég upp í skelfingu og skildi
hvað skreið um í hjarta mér.
Það sem virtist í fyrstu bara forvitni hjartans
hafði fundið ástina hér.

One night I jumped up in terror and understdood
what crawled about in my heart.
That which seemed at first just a curious heart
had found true love here,

tempo pimeja la mi tawa sewi kepeken monsuto
mi sona e ni: tempo pini la mi wile sona taso e ni: seme li meli.
tempo ni la mi olin e kon meli

Í stelpu sem starir á hafið
stjörf með augun mött.
Hún stendur öll kvöld og starir á hafið
stóreyg, dáldið fött.

Daginn eftir fór ég með fyrsta bílnum
sem flutti mig suður á leið.
Ég leit aldrei til baka, ég bölvaði í hljóði
og í brjóstinu var eitthvað sem sveið.

The day after I went with the first car
which carried me south on the road
I never went back, I cursed in silence
and smiling was something which burned

tempo suno kama la mi tawa kepeken tomo tawa wan
tomo tawa li tawa e mi tawa suno lon nasin
mi tawa ala tawa tomo mute ni. mi toki jaki kepeken ala nimi,
sinpin pi sike kipisi li pilin ike tawa mi sama seli,

Er ég les það í blaði að bátur hafi farist
þá birtist mynd í huga mér.
Þar sem hún stendur og starir á hafið
starir þar til birtu þver.

I am reading it in the paper that a boat has gone
Then an picture came to mind,
Where she stood and stared at the sea
Staring til break of dawn

mi lukin sona e toki ni lon sin lipu, tawa telo li anpa
tempo ni la mi pilin e sitelin ni:
meli li lon noka sama. meli li lukin e telo suli
tempo li tawa tempo pu sewi suno la meli li lon noka

[janKipo]

Vanished again; this time I blame the new browser that does not keep login status. Well, suffice to say, the 'pu' works as a relative clause but there is no reason to do it that way. In the first stanza it seems to be used differently, since we have things like wet boxes and an edible boards. Otherwise just miscellaneous comments about word order, missing 'e's, extra 'ona's and the like.

[janMato]

Vanished again; this time I blame the new browser that does not keep login status. Well, suffice to say, the 'pu' works as a relative clause but there is no reason to do it that way. In the first stanza it seems to be used differently, since we have things like wet boxes and an edible boards. Otherwise just miscellaneous comments about word order, missing 'e's, extra 'ona's and the like.

Well, if we're on the topic of what syntax in TP is extra, I'd say vocatives, interjections. I suppose one could get by without things that look like recursion, the "e ni" constructions, but like removing words, at each pass some things would get more verbose and more repetitious, or just not quite equivalent. I suppose "la" could be expressed alternatively, too.

tempo pini la mi lukin e soweli. vs
mi lukin e soweli. tempo lukin mi li pini. Longer and shifts emphasis... stuff that is in a sentence gets less emphasis. So splitting stuff into multiple sentences makes it harder to identify the topic.

jan o! vs mi wile e ni: mi en sina li toki!
a a a! vs mi pana e kalama pi pilin pona.

mi lukin e ni: meli li lawa e tomo tawa. vs. mi lukin e meli. meli li lawa e tomo tawa.

mi lukin e ni: meli en soweli li lawa e tomo tawa e ni: soweli li lawa e tomo tawa telo. I saw a woman driving around with her poodle and a squirrel boating around.
vs
mi lukin e meli e soweli e soweli. meli en soweli li lawa e tomo tawa. soweli li lawa e tomo tawa telo. I saw a woman and a animal and a animal. The woman and the animal is driving the car. The animal is driving the boat around.

Without "e ni", the anaphora are harder to connect, the sentence is longer and has a wider range of ambiguous intepretations.

...since we have things like wet boxes and an edible board...

Well, it's hard to say who might be right about a non-standard community invovation, but this is "boxes of washing, washing box", or at worst "boxes that wash", "eating table, table of eating" or "tables that eat"

[janKipo]

tp doesn't seem to mind verbosity that much -- nor repetition. I suppose there is a lot of time in Laoziana.

Vocatives and interjections are pretty much unavoidable, but they need not be restricted by (nor described in) grammar -- they will just happen and we will understand them as best we can. They are prelinguistic in a number of senses.

Nor do I suppose anybody wants to get rid of 'la,' at least with non-sentential content.

The two about seeing a woman driving a car say slightly different things. On the next one, it is not clear what driving (or governing or directing or...) a sentence means ('e' goes with 'lawa,' not 'lukin' if at all). Second choice doesn't quite say what the first aims at (but doesn't say), but I am not sure the first aim is actually something one wants to say. I suspect the problem is another about scope of 'ni', which is always around.

Well, if 'pu' is a relative pronoun, we have, at best, a box which washes, a board that eats and another board that does something to a backside -- I'm not sure what.

[janMato]

tp doesn't seem to mind verbosity that much -- nor repetition. I suppose there is a lot of time in Laoziana.

Paraphrasing lojban-- you can get infinite simplicity at the cost of infinite verbosity. Ref.

Well, if 'pu' is a relative pronoun, we have, at best, a box which washes, a board that eats and another board that does something to a backside -- I'm not sure what.

Like I said, in this sample text, I was using "pu" as sort of a "pi" that would be followed by something closer to a verbal adjective. The English word "who" implies agency as well as the vaguer sense of further restriction/modification.

Hmm. If the modified thing isn't an agent, then it could only be interpreted in the passive.

standing committee-- the committee is an agent
eating apples-- some agent will be eating the apples Ref. What's the difference between eating apples and cooking apples?

No agent
a box that is washed in.
ni li poki telo. This is a water box. (stative sense of telo)
ni li poki tawa ni : jan li telo e ijo. This is a box for this, a person washes things. Now has explicit agent and object.
ni li poki telo tawa ijo. This is a washy box for things.
ni li poki pu telo e ijo. This is a box of washing things.

With Agent
ni li jan lape. This is a sleepy man.
ni li jan pu lape. This is a sleeping man.

Modification is a slippery thing. I remember an example by Lakoff "the apple juice seat", which could variously mean the chair the color of apple juice, the chair of the customer who ordered orange juice, etc.

When a word is a modifier, are there any bounds to what relationship the reader could infer?

telo loje. Water with the qualities of redness.
telo jan. Person owns the water.
telo moku. Water is for drinking.
telo moli. Water causes death.

Modifiers (both bare, "pi" and proposed "pu") all put a heavy burden on the reader to decide which sense makes sense.

[janKipo]

Glad you like one of my bonier mots (actually, I don't know who said it first: me JCB, someone else)
Well, now I've lost all track of this 'pu'. (happily, I might add).
If it is just 'pi', use 'pi'. If it is something else, pick that and explain it. At least explain what each experiment is about.

I don't think there is a limit on the relations 'pi' can cover, but some strain plausibility a lot.

[janMato]

Glad you like one of my bonier mots (actually, I don't know who said it first: me, JCB, someone else)
Well, now I've lost all track of this 'pu'. (happily, I might add).
If it is just 'pi', use 'pi'. If it is something else, pick that and explain it. At least explain what each experiment is about.

I don't think there is a limit on the relations 'pi' can cover, but some strain plausibility a lot.

Okay, back to the beginning. If "pu" is like a comma (and I have no idea why this showed up on the web unless Sonja said it-- it is completely out of left field. Who would look at pu and think it means "comma"?), then presumably it must be interesting-- separating items in a list is not interesting, dramatic pauses are not interesting, etc. Commas do get used in English when dropping "that", which means it is some sort of dependent clause. Clauses act like modifiers in that they restrict the set of objects under consideration and in some languages what we call a relative clause doesn't exist and the closest they have are verbal adjectives.

My current mental model of "pi" is that it introduces a new noun with adjectives and that noun with adjectives modifies the head noun. If there is a "noun"-ey adjective, why not a verbal adjective?

n1 a1 pi (n2 a2), where n1 is modified by a1 and n1 is modified by (n2 a2). The various modifiers are trying to nail down the salient features of the head noun. pi is all about the stative salient features. When you need a feature that covers how it behaves, we're stuck with more sentences (which is a perfectly fine writing style--it worked for Hemingway).
n1 a2 pu (v1 (a2) (e n1)), where (v1 (a2) (e n1)) is the salient action that describes the head noun. When n1 looks like an agent, then n1 is the implied agent. When n1 is inanimate or doesn't look like an agent then the only sense that makes sense is a passive one.

You said "poki pu telo" could only mean boxes that wash, I said, no it could only mean (in the context of a world of inanimate objects who don't act on their own) "boxes for washing (by someone)"

The similar English example is "I grow only eating apples." Clearly apples don't eat, so the apples are for being eaten by some one. If you've been reading too much lojban, the sense of the-attack-of-the-killer apples will come to mind.

This sort of ambiguity in what relationship a modifier represents is why natural languages have verbal adjectives, relative clauses and the like. Imho, it's all about deciding what to throw out from natural languages--what is entirely unnecessary complexity (arbitrary noun classes-- i.e. gender), what makes thinks simpler in the long run (anaphora that agrees with the antecedent), what saves words, what reduces ambiguity (modifiers of pronouns)

pu (as I'm experimenting with) definately make the language more complex, but it does so in the same ways prep phrases that modify subjects and other nouns in prep phrases do, i.e. they make the sentence diagram tree much deeper. I think that the shallow tree style is very interesting because it might be animal intelligible, but I think the deep tree style is inevitable because working with deep trees is something we do effortlessly (up to a point).

tempo kama la mi wile moku e len lawa mi. tempo ni la jan Sonja li toki e ante. (fancy inter-sentence co-ordination, "in the coming time, I eat my hat. if in this time Sonja says otherwise." ni almost demands to be used with another word to resolve the antecedent.)

btw, would this be legal?
len pi lawa mi - my hat

pi has 2 words following it, but one is just a possessive marker. It seems like cheating.

[jan Josan]

btw, would this be legal?
len pi lawa mi - my hat

pi has 2 words following it, but one is just a possessive marker. It seems like cheating.

Yes, because it differentiates it from 'len lawa mi" which could be 'my flag' or some such.

I think I can see where you are going with this 'pu' now but it beyond my ability to contribute at this point.