Just speaking of stylistic preferences, where do you stand on phrases suchjan Ote wrote: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.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.
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.