Showing necessity or obligation in Toki Pona

[jansasin]

What is the most commonly used way to show necessity or obligation using Toki Pona? The answer I keep finding is to use wile, however, "I want to clean the house" and "I need to clean the house" are two completely different things. Let me know how you would personally translate these two sentences.
Thank you kindly,
-Jan Sasin

[janMato]

The best solutions so far involve using the logical operators in toki pona.

Here are the relevant threads

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1373&start=0

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1910&p=10452

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1921&start=0&p=10478

I've been trying to think up a concrete or metaphorical approach (in the sense of simulating superlatives by saying something about tall mountains) but nothing comes to mind. In English, the metaphor is something like iron-- "He rose through the ranks with iron determination, (he knew he must succeed)"

[janKipo]

But the negation trick doesn't help, since 'ken' is as vague or ambiguous (take your pick) as 'wile'. I still prefer the adverbial approach, or, even better, the rwrite that makes it clear the source of the necessity or freedom.

[jan-ante]

But the negation trick doesn't help, since 'ken' is as vague or ambiguous (take your pick) as 'wile'.

it is apparently less vague or ambiguous. just compare how many topics discuss wile or ken (if any) on this forum

I still prefer the adverbial approach, or, even better, the rwrite that makes it clear the source of the necessity or freedom.

well, probably the intuitionism/constructivism is your way in logic and language for now. it is probably the way of Sonja but she unlikely understands this

[janKipo]

Gee, I don't think of myself as an intuitionist/constructivist, certainly not in approving certain logical systems (I'm also nit an analytic implicationist nor a relevantist, though I worked with all these systems to one end or another).
The apparent lack of ambiguity with 'ken', come (I think) from the lack of different words in English. When you consider the matter, there are as many different kinds of abilities -- or disabilities -- as there are necessities; they just take longer to come to light. Of course, 'ken' by itself appears to say no force of any kind runs counter, but a few moments thinking about various cases of "can" will show that often only forces of certain sorts are highlighted, while others left to the background.

[jansasin]

I agree on the semantic vagueness of ken, but I'm still unsure of a way to express these concepts of ability/disability and necessity. Could someone give me an example of using adverbial phrases to form a structure like this, or possibly a way to rewrite a sentence to express these ideas?

[janMato]

Um, I thought we did. Here's some examples, tell me what doesn't make sense.

mi wile ala tawa taso mi ken ala tawa ala. I don't want to go, but I can't not go, i.e. it's unavoidable for some reason.

mi wile ala pali. taso mi pali ala la pali mi li weka. tan ni la mi pali. I don't want to work. But if I don't work, I lose my job. Because of that, I am working.

sina wile moku e kasi. taso kasi li ike tawa sina li kama e kon monsi. taso sina moku ala e kasi la tenpo lili la sina ken moli li kama ike sijelo. moli li ike kin. tan ni la sina wile moku e kasi.

You "want/should" eat your veggies. But you don't like veggies and they make you fart. If you don't eat your veggies, in a short while, you could die or get sick. Death is bad. So you should eat your veggies.

[jansasin]

No that makes sense; I must have not seen the example you gave. Sorry!
Also, this is probably going to be the method that I will use from now on.

[janKipo]

Not close to what I had in mind, but perhaps these work. You do have to read the whole thing before you get the idea of the individual occurrences of 'wile', though. I was thinking more in terms of either 'wile sijelo' for bodily requirements, 'wile pilin' for wants, 'wile kulupu' for traditional requirements, and so on. Or. at least, 'wile insa' for wants and 'wile selo' for external constraints. Of course that leads to other sorts of ambiguities -- how far does the modifier on 'wile' go and when does the verb complement begin? I think that the tp solution is to be explicit about whose want it is that is driving you or against what penalties are you reacting. So more like the last bit in Mato's section.

[jansasin]

According to this post viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1921 , Sonja's idea was that if you "must" do something, someone or something wants you to do it. Thus "I must eat" would be "jan li wile e ni: mi moku" (i.e. my wife wants me to eat) or "ijo li wile e ni: mi moku" (i.e. my stomach wants me to eat).