o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

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janMato
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by janMato »

jan Ote wrote:
janMato wrote:When someone dies and is literally put in the ground, they went to the land of the dead metaphorically-- which usually is a paradise or some inexplicable state of being.
Here and now. But it is only your (and mine) modern interpretation of this expression. If I would like to translate the full text of the Bible, the Odyssey or the Epic of Gilgamesh (tablet 12), or ..., then there is the land of the dead there, and it is a real place. Not a metaphorical one. The expresion itself doesn't indicate whether "the land of the dead" is a real place or is it a language metaphor, not having a literal meaning, a heritage from ancient times and ancient opinions. Nor a sentence with this expression, like "ona li tawa ma pi jan moli" (Orpheus, Baldur, Enkidu, Ulisses, Chufu, Priam, or jan pona mi?). We have no language means to tell. We can't have and shouldn't have, that's why I'm against attempts to distinguish "spatial" and "metaphorical" land of the dead in toki pona.
Just speaking of stylistic preferences, where do you stand on phrases such
1. (?) mi pali poka jan pona mi. I work next to my friend. [According to the classic wordlist, poka is a prep, so this is ok]
2. (?) mi pali lon poka jan pona mi. I work next to my friend. [By the classic word list, this valid, but specifies a place twice]
3. (?) mi pali sike tomo mi. I work around my house. [According to the classic wordlist, sike is not a prep, so this isn't okay]
4. mi pali lon sike tomo mi. I work around my house.

With any incompletely specified language, there will be small things that are suggestive of a pattern. There seems to be pattern that spatial things require "lon + physical place". Either they should be consistent (one way or the other but not both), and if they are both, then we have an semantic gap, where we have 2 constructions, the "lon + prep" meaning something concrete, and the bare "preposition' meaning, something, maybe the metaphorical sense-- and if something is a metaphor or not depends on belief, so the construction would be some sort of evidential. Someone that literally believes something would use the lon + prep.
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by janKipo »

1. Sorry, been seeing a mass of 'li'less sentences lately and hypercorrected (I think I do remember with 'mi' though).
2. 'wile lawa' "Have to by law" or some such, an adverb to distinguish the various 'wile'. Similarly below. All highly ambiguous and not in the books.
'tan ni:' belongs on the previous lin, which should have, if you insist a 'tawa mi.'
3. I know you don't agree, but this is "I hope you will stay" which seems to be the purport of the English question.
7. Not ideal, but I'm not sure about the alternatives "happens by the nature of the situation" (see 'wile lawa' "required by law" above) Maybe something in the 'la' slot?

No preps involved here, just 'lon' as a modifier (and hence the source of many an ambiguity). Note btw that 'kama' does not take an NP complement, so 'kama ma' means "becomes earth." another useful euphemism.
'kama lon' is a bit hard to deal with, since 'kama' suggests motion and 'lon' denies it -- where did the zombies come in?
'tawa lon' has the same problems in theory but now we know that it just means "travelled around in"
'kon sewi pi jan moli li tawa lon sewi. The person's soul (literally) rose in to the sky. Not really: 'tawa sewi' would do and maybe even 'sewi' alone. Your is "wandered around on high"

What Ote said

'poka' as a prep has a metaphorical sense only because it basically a noun meaning "side"; 'lon' as a prep doesn't have a metaphorical sense because it is basically a prep.

'lon poka' (and all the other 'lon' body-defined spaces) are strictly prep + noun (PP) but it seems that folks leave off the 'pi' that is needed for long descriptions of whose side subj is by. 1. just says I work with my friend but not necessarily in proximity to him. This is not stylistics.
As you say, this is not OK (for the meaning provided -- and the other doesn't make a lot of sense). 'sike' is not a prep so far( its a noun at home and some nouns have become preps). I'm not sure but I think the sense could be achieved with 'pali lon sike (pi) tomo mi, as you suggest.
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jan Ote
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by jan Ote »

'poka' and 'lon poka'
janMato wrote:1. (?) mi pali poka jan pona mi. I work next to my friend. [According to the classic wordlist, poka is a prep, so this is ok]
2. (?) mi pali lon poka pi jan pona mi. I work next to my friend. [By the classic word list, this valid, but specifies a place twice]
Both sentences are ok, but have different translations. And no, the second one does not specify a place twice.
1. 'poka' as a preposition, means - NOTA BENE - "with", "in the accompaniment of"
mi pali poka jan pona mi. = I work with my friend. (We work together.)
2. 'poka' as a noun, means "side", "flank"
jan pona mi li pali lon poka mi. = My friend works at side-of-me. He works beside me.
mi li pali lon poka pi jan pona mi. = I work at side-of-(my friend). I work next to him.
cf:
pipi li moku lon insa kasi. = Bug eats at inside-of-flower.
The sentence is "metaphorical" not because presence or absence of 'lon' makes or makes not metaphorical senses... This is a specific case of "with" ("metaphorical" meaning 'at side of') vs. "beside, next to". The expression 'poka mi' is used for "with me", while 'lon poka mi' for "at my side, close to me". Difficult, indeed. It was the most confusing thing when I was learning toki pona. Still is.
janMato wrote:3. (?) mi pali sike tomo mi. I work around my house. [According to the classic wordlist, sike is not a prep, so this isn't okay]
4. mi pali lon sike tomo mi. I work around my house.
Both are strange and rather not correct for me.

I think that this all is a result of misunderstanding from your disscussion with jan Kipo, where you talked about 'poka'. But this is a specific case, also because of:
jan Pije. [url=http://bknight0.myweb.uga.edu/toki/lesson/lesson7.html]Lesson 7[/url] wrote:anpa, insa, monsi, and sewi
Although you might be tempted to use these words as prepositions, they are actually nouns. You have to use another preposition along with these words.
Here are some examples.
 ona li lon sewi mi. -- "He is in my above." He is above me.
 pipi li lon anpa mi. -- The bug is underneath me.
 moku li lon insa mi. -- Food is inside me.
 len li lon monsi mi. -- Clothes are behind me.
So you see, these words as used here are nouns, and mi is a possessive pronoun meaning "my". So sewi mi means something like "my above" or "the area that is above me". And since these words are merely nouns, you must still have a verb; in the above examples, lon is acting as the verb. Don't forget to include a verb!

Since these words aren't prepositions, they are free for other uses, just like any other noun/adjective/verb:
[...]

poka
poka is rather unique in that it can act both as a noun/adjective and also as a preposition.
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jan Ote
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by jan Ote »

janKipo wrote:2. 'wile lawa' "Have to by law" or some such, an adverb to distinguish the various 'wile'. Similarly below. All highly ambiguous and not in the books.
True. The best version I can think is a direct one:
jan lawa li wile e ni: mi tawa...
janKipo wrote:'tan ni:' belongs on the previous lin, which should have, if you insist a 'tawa mi.'
But there is "tan ni la" at the beginning. As you said, instead of this "tan ni la", there should be "tan ni:" at the end of previous sentence, or else it would be an inverted implication.
janKipo wrote:3. I know you don't agree, but this is "I hope you will stay" which seems to be the purport of the English question.
Yes, I don't agree
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1176&start=70
Moreover, it has the identical syntax you used for fiat lux ("o suno li lon"), if I remember correctly, but now it's only a hope, not a performative mode. I would never ever see any 'hope mode' in "o sina awen" if you wouldn't say there is one; and -sorry- still can't see it.
janKipo wrote:'kama lon' is a bit hard to deal with, since 'kama' suggests motion and 'lon' denies it -- where did the zombies come in?
My English knowledge is apparently very poor. I still don't understand why 'lon' has been used inside of 'kama lon moli'. I can understand
ona li kama sona = He learns (becomes wise).
ona li kama lon = He appears (becomes existent).
ona li kama moli = He dies (becomes dead).
But what function does have 'lon' inserted into 'kama moli'?

jan li kama moli la ona li tawa ma pi jan moli
 When a person dies, he goes to the land of the dead.
janKipo
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by janKipo »

Your version is certainly less problematic, but I keep trying to sort these things out (scratch another suggestion?)
To be honest, I did get into the inverted implication in my head and only saw the correct way after you made the point.
Well, I suppose we'll always disagree about this and the usage is vague enough to cause some worries. Here I take it as an optative, not a performative (although 'o suno li lon' could be optative, too, but effective because it is God's wish). The only other way I can see to get this effect is the long 'mi wile e ni' and that is open to a variety of interpretations, too.
'kama lon' is here another part of the attempt to deal with the varieties of 'wile' 'ken' and now 'kama', in this case the "from the nature of the case mode." It clearly is not very successful at this goal. I don't see a clear alternative: 'kama 'la' "it happens that" (more or less) is too easy to confuse with the future tense and nothing else seems to give the right spin.
The classic word list is inaccurate to the extent that it does not always recognize the range of possible uses of some words: basically, just about any word can be used just about anywhere. Initial assignments to POS serves at best to indicate what the word will mean outside its home base (see that thread -- which already needs some corrections). I have noted that I think one development of tp is likely to be that the 'lon' + body part construction will collapse to the body part alone as prep; the intermediate step of taiing the body part as part of the prep, rather than a separate noun, is already well under way. The separate use of 'poka' is a problem for this move, however, so it will be interesting to see what happens (revival of 'kan'?)
'lon sike (pi) tomo mi' is (not officially without the 'pi') well formed. That it means what Mato intends is a matter of convention, but his intention seems a reasonable place to go.
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by Mako »

tempo pimeja pini la mi tawa tomo tan kulupu pi kama sona pi nasin sewi lon poka telo suli mi la mi wile sitelen e sin lon nimi ni. taso monsuta li moku e nimi mi. tempo suno ni mi alasa pali kin e nimi sama.
(Yes, I support "alasa" as "to hunt for, to try")

1. I was wrong to use "awen anu seme" rather than "awen ala awen". It really is a yes/no question.
2. "wile lawa" "will governmently" - possible, but I don't favor it, without additional discussion. "lawa li wile e ni: mi tawa weka mute" seems right for the meaning of this song.
3. I like "mi toki e nimi ni: 'mi tawa' la mi pilin ike mute" for "How I hate to say good-bye". It doesn't have quite the same force as "How I hate", but that mellowing seems characteristically TP.
4. I prefer the translation "jan li toki e ni: mute lili pi mi mute li kama moli" for "Some of us, they say, are bound to die" for two reason. Firstly, "jan" reflects the ambiguity of "they say" (I'm not convinced "they" is the military or people in general). Secondly, I read "mute lili pi mi li kama moli" as "some of me (i.e., some part of me, be it an arm or poisoning of the soul) is going to die".
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by janKipo »

A natural use of monsuta! Problem with 'lon poka telo suli': it lawfully modifies 'tawa', so describes the route one took to get home (or some such thing). I take it it is meant to modify 'kulupu' (or maybe 'kama sona' or even nasin sewi') This is still a disputed point, but I think that, if it is to modify some noun, it needs 'pi'.
'alasa' need some rulings' but its use for 'try' is one of the contestants.
1. The two are given as equivalent (as far as I can figure) but the do seem to call for different answers: 'awen' or 'weka' rather than 'awen or 'ala'.
2. Yours is less controversial but longer -- and less ambiguous, too.
3. I'm not sure tp is mellowing (though that would be nice) but I am also unsure just what the missing bit is (I agree that something is missing) or how to say it. It may just be an 'a'.
4. I've lost track of what translation you are comparing this with. 'ona' in this use is etymologically OK, but tp usage seems to go both ways. You are probably right to use 'jan' and keep 'ona' only for anaphora. 'mute lili pi mi li..." is not grammatical, since 'pi requires two words after it. Is there a typo (well, a screw-up) in the earlier, so that the 'mute' was left off?
Found what I take to be the source and it does have 'mi mute'.
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by Mako »

janKipo wrote:A natural use of monsuta! Problem with 'lon poka telo suli': it lawfully modifies 'tawa', so describes the route one took to get home (or some such thing). I take it it is meant to modify 'kulupu' (or maybe 'kama sona' or even nasin sewi') This is still a disputed point, but I think that, if it is to modify some noun, it needs 'pi'.
'alasa' need some rulings' but its use for 'try' is one of the contestants.
1. The two are given as equivalent (as far as I can figure) but the do seem to call for different answers: 'awen' or 'weka' rather than 'awen or 'ala'.
2. Yours is less controversial but longer -- and less ambiguous, too.
3. I'm not sure tp is mellowing (though that would be nice) but I am also unsure just what the missing bit is (I agree that something is missing) or how to say it. It may just be an 'a'.
4. I've lost track of what translation you are comparing this with. 'ona' in this use is etymologically OK, but tp usage seems to go both ways. You are probably right to use 'jan' and keep 'ona' only for anaphora. 'mute lili pi mi li..." is not grammatical, since 'pi requires two words after it. Is there a typo (well, a screw-up) in the earlier, so that the 'mute' was left off?
Found what I take to be the source and it does have 'mi mute'.
I meant "Bible study group on the lakeshore beach" by "kulupu pi kama sona pi nasin mi [li] lon poka telo suli".
"mi" by itself is "me or us", but I suppose the two-word rule of "pi" is there prevent "X pi X pi X pi X" constructions, where X = 1 word.
I was using "monsuta" in the sense of "pipi lon insa ilo wawa mi". mi ken ala lukim e ona. I suppose it could be used for "computer virus" (which I did not have).
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by janKipo »

Your suggested 'li' insert would definitely be wrong; it would put 'lon poka' parallel to 'tawa' and leave you on the beach. Bible study (if meant literally -- I remember many where the Bible was not much in evidence) would be something like 'kama sona pi lipu sewi' (or even 'lipu Pipila' or some such).
In a sense the 'pi' rule is there to prevent multiple 'pi's, but the simplest explanation is that the notion of a right grouping cluster (what 'pi' marks off) makes no sense for a cluster of one element (indeed, "cluster" in this sense doesn't make much sense outside of mathematics).
That seems like a reasonable use of 'monsuta', maybe. The remark was in recognition of its being the very rare use of the word outside of constructed examples. I like the idea of 'pipi' for microorganisms (my keyword for it is "bug") but I wonder about it use in this metaphorical way -- not that I have a better suggestion.
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Re: o jan olin mi sina wile awen anu seme

Post by janMato »

re: counting words after pi

juxtaposition/modification
a b is always right-- not controversial

universal relationships
a pi b, in my mind, means a has a universal relation with b. But a b means that too! Juxtaposition (words next to each other) and pi constructions are closely related. This is fairly uncontroversially wrong.

starts a new phrase modifying the previous with a noun at the heads and modifiers afterwards
a b pi c d, is alway right. not controversial.

a pi c d as a whole modifies another word or phrase.
a pi b pi c d = (a (b (c d)), and imho is valid. The middle pi phrases however are followed only by one word. The tail must still be two words.

Now moving into the land of "jan nasa li wile ante e toki pona"

pi overlays. Sometimes a phrase that represents 1 thing in the real world has a prepositional modifier, e.g. lake, telo suli lon insa ma. When used as an object, it looks good. When used as a subject, it get complicated:

jan lawa li weka e telo suli lon insa ma. The government drained the swamp.
*/? telo suli lon insa ma li tawa tawa. The lake rippled. Prep phrases are not allowed before the "li".
telo suli li tawa tawa lon insa ma. This is okay, but it splits the the phrase. Splitting phrases makes sentences harder to read.
telo suli pi insa ma li tawa tawa. This is a pi overlay. This is syntactically correct, not controversial. But some information is lost. pi is less specific than lon.
telo suli pi lon insa ma li tawa tawa. This idea is from jan Kipo, which has some merits, but so far no one has started using it.
*/? telo suli pi ma li kama ala. The aquifer dried up. Many set phrases containing prepositions have only one word after the preposition and when the preposition is dropped, the sense is change too much. telo suli ma li kama ala, in my opinion isn't really the same thing, it would be closer to "the mud dried up" The effect is more pronounced when the phrase is something well established.
telo suli pi ma ijo li kama ala. Grammatical, but now we have a place holder modifier. This makes the language harder to learn.

li pi as a verb
Official, but not in widespread use, violates something deep rule about mixing content and function words or because this just lacks any parallelism to the other valid constructions. This construction wouldn't necessarily have 2 words after pi.
moku li pi mi. I have food.

In my opinion, mi jo e moku is preferable, or moku li lon poka mi, if you prefer to calque languages that use spatial nearness to indicate possession.
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