Your invention of "optional commas before preposition" isn't bad per se. It can be confusing though for somone who reads your modifications/additions to Toki Pona as gospel, and it is certainly irritating for someone who tries to keep the official Toki Pona book apart from the jan nasa that there are out there. I already told you that describing your own conlang and prefacing it with "based on the official Toki Pona book and Pije's lessons" (I'm paraphrasing) is, well, I don't know the legal term, but I certainly would try and avoid it.jan_Lope wrote:toki!janTepanNetaPelin wrote: Also, there is no comma before a preposition, and there is no consensus that "lupa" means "to pierce". (It's worth trying it out though, yet there is no consensus, and there is no "the verb 'lupa'".) The official dictionary says: "NOUN door, hole, orifice, window", so there is no definition for "lupa" as a verb.
Is there a logical reason why you can't put optional commas before preposition?
Is there a logical reason why the transitive verb lupa should not exist?
You already know the reasons for and against commas before prepositions. Yes, it can be handy to distinguish "I released your car" and "I gave you a room" (both "mi pana e tomo tawa sina", but there are other options). For me, a comma is a bad choice for a separator between a sentence and a prepositional phrase, because I'm used to use commas for separating similar things (and yes, some of these commas can be optional in Toki Pona). So, when I read "mi pana e tomo, tawa sina" I wonder "hey, where is the first prepositional phrase before "tawa sina"?" Like, "mi pana e tomo tan jan pona, tawa sina" (and this comma would be optional: "mi pana e tomo tan jan pona tawa sina", because in pona Toki Pona one wouldn't say "a friend to you", but "your friend" - "jan pona sina", so a comma doesn't add clarity in "pana e tomo tan jan pona tawa sina", because the two prepositional phrases "tan jan pona" and "tawa sina" are not to be read as nested).
If one wants to add a separator, something like " - " could work. "mi pana e tomo - tawa sina". But (as with the comma) one might come to the false assumption, that there is a pause between "tawa" and "sina".
Rather I would mark the compounds of a noun-phrase: "tomo-tawa" - "car".
"mi pana e tomo-tawa sina." - I released your car.
"mi pana e tomo tawa sina." - I gave you a room.
But before I would do any of those, I would avoid to create confusion about the fact that official Toki Pona (and Pije's lessons) don't have any of the above interpunctuation. It's always just "mi pana e tomo tawa sina". Period.