kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

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janMato
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janMato »

Biology = sona pi ijo unpa. Knowledge of things that reproduce. May accidentally include crystals and self replicating robots.

And no one has translated this yet? What a shame. I'll try.

"These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into :"

nimi ike ni li sama e nimi pi jan sona "Franz Kuhn". jan li toki e ni: lipu mute sona pi Sonko li jo e nimi ni : "esun sewi pi sona pona" lipu jo e nimi ni: soweli li tu tawa ni:

(a) those that belong to the emperor;
jan lawa li jo e soweli ni

(b) embalmed ones;
soweli ni li moli awen

(c) those that are trained;
soweli ni li sona pini

(d) suckling pigs;
soweli ni li moku li soweli pi moku mute

(e) mermaids;
soweli ni li jan kala pi telo suli

(f) fabulous ones;
soweli ni li lon lipu mute pi nimi musi

(g) stray dogs;
soweli tomo ni li jo ala e tomo

(h) those that are included in this classification;
soweli ni li lon ni ala.

(i) those that tremble as if they were mad;
soweli ni li tawa sama soweli nasin

(j) innumerable ones;
soweli ni li nanpa e nanpa pi pini ala

(k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush;
soweli ni li ni: sina li ken sitelen kepeken linja lawa pi soweli pi ma telo ala.

(l) etcetera;
soweli ni li pu pu pu pu pu

(m) those that have just broken the flower vase;
soweli ni li ni: soweli li pakala e poki tawa kasi kule pi kasi unpa

(n) those that at a distance resemble flies.
soweli ni li ni: soweli li sama e kili lon ma ante mute mute mute.
janKipo
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janKipo »

janMato wrote:Biology = sona pi ijo unpa. Knowledge of things that reproduce. May accidentally include crystals and self replicating robots.
'unpa' probably doesn't mean "reproduce" or anything as general as that. But I await later words on this.
And no one has translated this yet? What a shame. I'll try.

"These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into :"

nimi ike ni li sama e nimi pi jan sona "Franz Kuhn". jan li toki e ni: lipu mute sona pi Sonko li jo e nimi ni : "esun sewi pi sona pona" lipu jo e nimi ni: soweli li tu tawa ni:

Not sure whether 'tu' "divide" can be intransitive

(a) those that belong to the emperor;
jan lawa li jo e soweli ni

(b) embalmed ones;
soweli ni li moli awen
"Permanently dead," aside from being obvious, is probably not the same as "embalmed"
(c) those that are trained;
soweli ni li sona pini

(d) suckling pigs;
soweli ni li moku li soweli pi moku mute

(e) mermaids;
soweli ni li jan kala pi telo suli

(f) fabulous ones;
soweli ni li lon lipu mute pi nimi musi

(g) stray dogs;
soweli tomo ni li jo ala e tomo

(h) those that are included in this classification;
soweli ni li lon ni ala.

(i) those that tremble as if they were mad;
soweli ni li tawa sama soweli nasin

(j) innumerable ones;
soweli ni li nanpa e nanpa pi pini ala

(k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush;
soweli ni li ni: sina li ken sitelen kepeken linja lawa pi soweli pi ma telo ala.

(l) etcetera;
soweli ni li pu pu pu pu pu

(m) those that have just broken the flower vase;
soweli ni li ni: soweli li pakala e poki tawa kasi kule pi kasi unpa

(n) those that at a distance resemble flies.
soweli ni li ni: soweli li sama e kili lon ma ante mute mute mute.
Not super, but a beginning.
d. That they eat or even eat a lot seems less important than what they eat and that they are eaten,
i 'nasa', not 'nasin'
j pigs don't enumerate, but are enumerated and no one enumerates to infinity
k grammar? 'linja lawa'? not sure where it fits in or how.
l. let's see what happens with 'pu' first.
m what does 'kasi unpa' add? possible 'wan unpa kule kasi'
n probably 'pipi' for 'kili' and 'ma weka' for 'ma ante'
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jan Josan
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by jan Josan »

Noble effort on a challenging text. The hardest thing for me to figure out in a translation like this is, how to deal with something like a list of nouns. If the translations were simple enough, it wouldn't be a problem:

kulupu mama mi li jo e:
1. mama mije
2. mama meli
3. meli sama mi
4. mi


In the translation here we need all our toki pona tricks to give anything close to the full original meaning, which requires full sentences (er, paragraphs) and a reorganization on some level. Although you seem to have found the best solution possible, I'm having trouble with the "soweli ni" approach, since I'm not sure what the "ni" is referring back to, other than the letter before the category. (Perhaps this is bleeding into your other discussion today on pronouns-- trying to use 'ona' in every category also seems to fail) I also seem to want to use "soweli pi..." in various ways, many of which violate fundamental rules (for example: "a. soweli pi jan lawa" <pi as possessive> or "n. soweli pi poka ala lukin sama pipi" <pi as an excuse to pile on modifiers). And ultimately, we have a particularly hard challenge because Borges is intentionally playing with language in a way that exacerbates any notion of a list of equivalences, and challenges readers in their native tongue. How much license to adjust and simplify, in order to retain the original message and humor? how far can it be reduced? How much semi-grammatical tp can we use to translate the flavor of the original? So not to correct yours, but rather to steal from it and then try using a different approach:

"...toki ike ni li sama lili e toki pi jan sona Panso Kune. Ona li toki e toki awen Sonko pi nimi "esun sewi pi sona pona." toki awen ni li kulupu e soweli lon kulupu ni:
a) soweli lon tomo lawa
b) selo awen pi soweli moli
c) ken pali
d) sowli lili moli
e) jan kala
(when I read this in your list I laughed because you had just used this in topic:"transparent nouns" as an example of the possibly inscrutable--and yet here it is pretty clearly perfect)
f) soweli namako
g) soweli tomo pi tomo weka (or- soweli tomo lon ma)
h) soweli lon kulupu ni
i) soweli li tawa sama pilin monsuta
(I'm starting to like this word)
j) lon kulupu pi nanpa suli
k) jan li sitelen e soweli kepeken ilo linja pona.
m) soweli li pakala e poki pi kasi kule.
n) lon poka ala la, ona li lukin sama pipi.
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janMato »

jan Josan wrote:How much license to adjust and simplify, in order to retain the original message and humor? how far can it be reduced?
imho, tp works quite well when there is lots of para-linguistic evidence. If there is a glass of red wine and a banana on the table, I can say mi moku e loje e jelo. Tp is just filling in a few gaps in the interlocutor knowelege. When convening entirely novel sentences (which is a perfectly plausible situation, such as an educational encyclopedia or an absurdist joke), all of a sudden the interlocutor has very, very little information and we're expected to provide almost all information. jan kala prompts mermaid, but if we were talking about the animals of Pandora (made up planet in the movie Avatar), jan kala would be highly uninformative.
jan Josan wrote:How much semi-grammatical tp can we use to translate the flavor of the original?
The semi-grammatical part worries me too, especially with respect to definitions (in general.) For example, an English known often translates quite well to an toki pona prep phrase, but it isn't usable as a subject.

the unemployed = jan kepeken ala pali

* jan kepeken ala pali li pilin ike. (Illegal, Can't re-use phrase here)
jan pi ala pali li pilin ike. (Legal, but loses information, and seemingly to unnecessarily make the phrase more vague)
ona li olin e jan kepken ala pali (Seems like a legal form, but the strict translation would be that she does not use work to love the man.)

I'll hafta weigh in on this one again later today
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janKipo »

? Not sure of your point at the moment.
Yes, context often simplifies what you have to say (its in the conventions somewhere, though I forget the exact wording).
Why is "unemployed" 'jan (pi) kepeken ala pali' Straight off (without the 'pi') it means a working not useful man, a hired hack, I suppose. Why not just 'jan pi pali ala'? I suppose this could be retired as well. What does "can't re-use phrase" mean? No phrase is reused. But there is the running question about prep phrases modifying nouns.
"man of working nothing"? ? I suppose this is "unempjoyed" again, but it seems an odd way to put it. And what information is lost?
Yes the last does mean just what you say (why the 'pi' for pps modifying nouns -- or commas to set off final pps). So the issue is about pps after nouns some how, but doesn't seem to fit the actual question in tp. Nor answer the question why use this phrase for "unemployed."
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:? Not sure of your point at the moment. Why is "unemployed" 'jan (pi) kepeken ala pali'
Oops. My bad, I made a bad calque. Man without work.
jan pi pali ala. Doesn't illustrate what I was try to illustrate anymore.

Maybe "computer users" would be a better example. Head noun is "man", salient feature "uses computer"
jan kepeken ilo pi nanpa mute


(imho) Legitimate looking sentence fragment, typical sort of fragment I see in english to tp definitions. It is usable after the "li", but not before.
mi lukin e jan kepeken ilo pi nanpa mute. I see the computer user.
* jan kepeken ilo pi nanpa mute li lukin e mi. The computer user sees me.
janKipo wrote:What does "can't re-use phrase" mean? No phrase is reused.
Maybe this is a issue of dictionary-making. What makes for a good dictionary entry for a pedagogical tp dictionary. If one is trying to say, "foobar saw me" and the dictionary says foobar in toki pona is rendered as full sentence or a prepositional phrase or the like, then we can't use that to plug anything into "x li lukin e mi". (because prep phrases and sentences can't go there)
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janMato »

jan Josan wrote: Although you seem to have found the best solution possible, I'm having trouble with the "soweli ni" approach, since I'm not sure what the "ni" is referring back to, other than the letter before the category.
I was looking for something like, "these animals", as in "these piggies went to the market, these piggies stayed home, ..." etc
jan Josan wrote: I also seem to want to use "soweli pi..." in various ways, many of which violate fundamental rules (for example: "a. soweli pi jan lawa" <pi as possessive>
* soweli pi mi != my animal.

But...
soweli pi mi mute ... looks fine to me, still means "my animals" How else could we say it?
soweli mi mute ... My numerous animals.

And in whole sentences
mi lukin e soweli pi mi mute. I saw our animals.
mi lukin e soweli mi mute. I saw my numerous animals.

potential alternatives sound unnecessary.
mi lukin e soweli ni : mi mute jo e soweli
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janKipo »

The problem comes down to this now: 'mi lukin e jan kepeken ilo pi nanpa mute' doesn't mean "I saw a computer (lousy idiom, by the way) user;" it means "I saw a man by means of a computer," that is, I used the computer to see the man. So, there is no difference between the subject and object (or complement, come to that) place with respect to prep phrases modifying nouns. They are either forbidden both places (apparently the current situation) or they allowed in both. The difference is that at the end of the sentences, a noun phase may run into a PP modifying the verb, which is not separated off in any way and so can be taken for a part of the modification of that noun phrase. The matter is actually somewhat worse in that ordinary modifications of that final NP may be taken a PP (and conversely): 'jan li pana e sitelen tawa mi' "A guy gave me a picture"/"A guide showed my movie". Hence the double-barreled suggestion that final verb-modifying PPs be set off by commas (a minor matter of punctuation style, not a change in the grammar) and that PP modifying nouns use 'pi' (a double grammatical change -- or maybe only one).

BTW, somewhere in ancient history, 'pi' was proposed and used as the verb "to have," maybe even with just complements rather than objects.
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:The problem comes down to this now: 'mi lukin e jan kepeken ilo pi nanpa mute' doesn't mean "I saw a computer (lousy idiom, by the way) user;" it means "I saw a man by means of a computer," that is, I used the computer to see the man.
Only? I've been using a rule of thumb that if there's two+ interpretations, it's readers choice-- same story as little pretty girls' school, same as the way even single words are resolved, (e.g. sona to know/to understand)
janKipo wrote: So, there is no difference between the subject and object (or complement, come to that) place with respect to prep phrases modifying nouns.
True if prepositions can only modify the sense of the verb and not preceding nouns.
janKipo wrote:Hence the double-barreled suggestion that final verb-modifying PPs be set off by commas (a minor matter of punctuation style, not a change in the grammar) and that PP modifying nouns use 'pi' (a double grammatical change -- or maybe only one).
[I wrote about using "pi" before prep phrases elsewhere today, so I'll skip that]

So commas, as in,
mi lukin e jan kepeken ilo pin nanpa mute (computer users)
vs
mi lukin e jan, kepeken ilo pin nanpa mute. (by means of a computer) Commas are too subtle and hard to hear, imho.

Here two more, radical possibilities, if we could put prep phrases right after what they're modifying.
mi lukin kepeken ilo pin nanpa mute e jan. I with-a-computer-ly saw the guy.
or a fragment in the adverbial place
kepeken ilo pin nanpa mute la mi lukin e jan. With a computer-ly, I saw the guy.
or right after the noun in the nominative place
mi kepeken ilo pin nanpa mute lukin e jan. I with a computer saw the guy.

It would probably be difficult to determine if the above are necessary community innovations because moving prep phrases around is a feature of tp learners mother tongue. By necessary, I mean, like if you tried to create a language without verbs, people would consistently misuse the remaining words as verbs.
janKipo wrote:BTW, somewhere in ancient history, 'pi' was proposed and used as the verb "to have," maybe even with just complements rather than objects.
Well, we have "jo" and it we could use it like a preposition.

I see the computer users.
mi lukin e jan jo ilo pi nanpa mute.

Has the same problem in terms of ambiguity, but it does have a different semantic space (more of possession and less of instrumental)
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Re: kulupu nimi "sona 'Piloloki'" li pona ala pona?

Post by janKipo »

I seem to have dealt with this already today at another site overtly devoted to still another totally different subject. The upshot of my remarks there is that, since PPs modifying NPs is officially illegal but regularly used, we need either crack down on the illegal use (which seems a hopeless task) or change something to make it legal. I suggest some possible changes and also look for ways to reduce the ambiguities inherent in allowing the construction.

Your radical suggestions are -- like PPs modifying NPs -- already present on the surface in tp, but don't occur in the official parsing, so they come under the dame "change the rule" guidelines as the original cases. I admit, I don';t like the PP next to verb pattern, since I think the verb is already often too far from its object and the end of sentence place generally works pretty well (problems with PPs on NPs aside).

'jo' can, of course, be a preposition in tp, though I don't think it has happened yet, explicitly.
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