jan Lope o!
I'm starting to get your perspective on the grammar of toki pona. As your lessons are actually based on Pije's old lessons, with a similar terminology, you had to adapt them to Sonja's new decisions and grammar, and interpret them as still being part of the old way of viewing toki pona's grammar, leading to those errors I'm actually not tired of appointing.
For example, in lesson 6, Sonja clearly mentions an adjective can be used to modify a verb. Apparently (influenced by Pije's lessons or native language grammar) you take it in this case to be an adverb. When she first defined "adjective", she hadn't presented the verbs yet, so it wouldn't make sense to say, while defining them, they
also modify verbs (and adjectives, for instance, as stated later), but they do and that's explicit in her text.
In the examples you've given, the prepositions are on a position we had earlier learned to be of verbs. But "tan" is not a verb here, instead it's "being used as a verb" (Lesson 7). It's not one though. The immediate example she gives of the construction "X ala X" uses a noun. She hadn't opened yet the possibility of nouns becoming verbs and it does not have a verbal meaning in any way ("Does she parents?" why not just "Is she a parent?").
Moreover, the position after "li", "mi", or "sina" is not exclusively a verb, because it's taught earlier that it can be also a noun and an adjective. You only think that it should be a verb because in your lessons, you teach that "li" precedes a verb. And you work around the cases with nouns and adjectives by saying there is a hidden verb "to be" to justify them, an explication not supported in the Book.
So why do prepositions have to become verbs? Why isn't there a verb "to be" before them, just as in the case with nouns and adjectives?
Also, if we consider the prepositions to be verbs in the examples you've given, they can't have their prepositional object, because it's required that they are prepositions to have a noun after it to be its object. Being verbs, those sentences actually mean "Do you originate earthly Germanly?" and "The worker uses usefully." You claim that there is "from" after "originate", but that's the preposition "tan", so "sina tan ala tan tan ma Tosi?" could mean what's intended. Note that those verbs lack objects in the former sentences, which should be marked by "e", as verbal objects do. What do they mean if they are a verbal position, no one knows, because Sonja didn't opened that possibility. Your guess is that they mean the same as their corresponding preposition "sina tan ala tan e ma Tosi?". That's not necessary, since we can just put the preposition in the position of the verb and say "sina tan ala tan ma Tosi?" just as Sonja does.
jan_Lope wrote:Other word lists are better
Other word lists don't exactly represent the official view on grammar and semantics. Just compare the old and new meanings of "anpa" and "noka".
jan_Lope wrote:the first slot in a "la" phrase is mostly for a noun or pronoun
That's consequence of there being more nouns than prepositions. There's only one case of 'la' with a noun before it (besides a possible general case which may have the same meaning as this): ... la = lon ... (this comprises 'tenpo' expressions, too, because 'tenpo' is a noun primarily)
jan_Lope wrote:tan jan seme la sina pu? - noun adjective seme as adjective la ...
(Which is the human cause ...?)
you think "tan" can be a preposition here also. But how can we distinguish whether it is a noun or preposition?
That's why I don't even consider "tan" to be a noun. If I did, I couldn't differentiate between the cases and *irony mark* the reader would have to guess if I mean "in what human cause" or "because of what human", because it isn't clear enough what I really want to say and the phrase "in a cause" makes sense *end of ironic statement (sorry lol)* (and it doesn't mean "principle, goal", because that's "tawa", "nasin", or "lawa")
jan_Lope wrote:mi moku e moku, kepeken ilo moku li moku e telo, kepeken poki.
This sentence has two verb phrases with a prepositional object each: "moku e moku, kepeken ilo moku" and "moku e telo, kepeken poki" ("kepeken" is a preposition in each verb phrases).
If you put one of this prepositional object in a "la" phrase you will break up the corresponding verb phrase. You can't see to wich verb phrase is the prepostion connected to.
This relation doesn't need to be reciprocal. "mi moku e moku kepeken ilo moku" = "kepeken ilo moku la mi moku e moku." isn't equivalent to "mi moku e moku kepeken ilo moku li moku e telo kepeken poki." = "kepeken ilo moku la mi moku e moku li moku e telo kepeken poki." That's not a case covered in the Book, but I believe that if I put a preposition before la in a sentence with two verb phrases, then it will apply to both of them. In that case you can't put one of the prepositions before 'la', unless you're actually using both "ilo moku" and "poki" to "moku e telo", like in
"mi moku e moku kepeken ilo moku li moku e telo kepeken ilo moku kepeken poki" or, longer
"mi moku e moku kepeken ilo moku li moku e telo kepeken ilo moku li moku e telo kepeken poki".
I can also say "mi moku e moku kepeken ilo moku lon tenpo ni li moku e telo kepeken poki lon tenpo ni." There's no need to use "tenpo ni la". You can even put "kin" after the second verb phrase to make it specifically clear that it's the same "ni".
jan_Lope wrote:"tenpo" is a noun here
"tenpo" is almost always a noun, especially because there it's in an expression equivalent to "lon tenpo" which indeed obligues it to be a noun. It's 100% certain it couldn't be a preposition.
"kepeken ilo sitelen la jan li ken sitelen lon lipu" could mean
"in the pictorial usage of a tool one can write on paper." (or
"in the pictorial useful usage one can write on paper.", if "ilo" is considered an adjective and
"pictorially usefully usefully, one can write on paper." if we consider "kepeken" to be an adjective.)
"kulupu pali li kepeken seme?" means
"the work group uses what-ly?" if "kepeken" is a verb (what-ly is like an adverbial form of 'what', probably "how". It could be answered with "pona" (uses well), "nasa" (uses strangely) etc.)
"the work group is what usage?" (if a group can be a usage lol and "kepeken" is a verb)
in order for that sentence to mean "what does the group uses?" it must have a preposition: "kepeken seme?" = "with (using) what?" without a verb, like Sonja does ="the group (is) with (using) what?" = "the group uses what?"
Or, as you insist it should be a verb, there must be "e": "kulupu pali li kepeken e seme?" (what does the group uses?) which is ungrammatical because prepositions aren't verbs.
It's your turn.