Toki Pona Forums

I was trying to think about how to say 'about' the other day and it spurred a few questions.

I've seen 'e' used as 'about'
mi toki e moku : I talk about food.

This seems weird to me since moku isn't a direct object. Which made me think toki as a preposition might mean 'talk about' in the same way tawa means 'go to' by itself.

Sentences with tawa and lon skip the verb and use a prepositional phrase.
mi tawa tomo : I go to home. 'go' is implied from using tawa as 'to' and I've been told 'mi tawa tawa tomo' is wrong.
mi lon tomo : I'm at home. 'at' home assumes existence and I assume 'mi lon lon tomo' is also wrong.

As soon as you add other verbs to the sentence they seem to drop the implied verb.
mi pana tawa jan pona mi : I give to my friends. The 'go' is no longer implied.

Am I understanding tawa/lon wrong and can toki be used as as preposition for 'talk about'?

SoweliTeloNasa wrote:
Am I understanding tawa/lon wrong and can toki be used as as preposition for 'talk about'?

You correctly understand tawa/lon, but you can't use "toki" as a preposition.

We had the “about” problem about (different one) a decade ago as part of the general problem that everything was being taken as direct object of ‘toki’: what was said, what it was about, who it was said to, and what language it was in. After considerable discussion back and forth, we were pretty much agreed that
what was said had to be a direct object
and who was addressed should be attached by ‘tawa’.
The language used should either also be a direct object (it is ‘toki’, after all, just like messages) or should be treated adverbially (as in Esperanto) or attached by some other preposition (‘lon’, calquing English, or ‘kepeken’).
The topic suggested another preposition (upgrading ‘sike', calquing English again) or used adverbially.
The two adverbial suggestions more or less cancelled one another out and ’sike’ seemed too farfetched, as did ‘lon’ (though, Sonja -- who was absent during this discussion --later reintroduced it).
In any case, languages came to be attached by ‘kepeken’ (Pije never caught on to this).
Finally, the suggestion was made to do topics explicitly; talking about x was just saying something pertaining to x, ‘e ijo {x}’ (the {}s add ‘pi’ is x is more than one word). This move -- which is not perfectly satisfying but works pretty well -- applies equally to other words like ’toki’: ‘pilin’, ‘kute’, ’sona’ etc. I have to admit that people still occasionally use the adverb forms, usually requiring ‘pi’.

SoweliTeloNasa wrote: ...
Sentences with tawa and lon skip the verb and use a prepositional phrase.
mi tawa tomo : I go to home. 'go' is implied from using tawa as 'to' and I've been told 'mi tawa tawa tomo' is wrong.
mi lon tomo : I'm at home. 'at' home assumes existence and I assume 'mi lon lon tomo' is also wrong.
... can toki be used as as preposition for 'talk about'?

toki!

"mi tawa tomo." In this context "tawa" is an intrasitive verb. If "tawa" is a preposition here, the predicate would be missing. A preposition can't be used as a predicate. Only verbs, nouns or adjective can use as a predicate. Please see viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2715

"mi tawa, tawa tomo." is right. The first "tawa" is a verb and the second "tawa" is a preposition.

"mi lon tomo." In this context "lon" is an intransitive verb here.

"'mi lon, lon tomo." is right. The first "lon" is a verb and the second "lon" is a preposition. If "lon" is a preposition here, the predicate would be missing.

"toki" can't use as a preposition.

It’s not clear where Lope gets the rule that only verb, nouns and adjectives can make predicates. But, in any case, items like 'mi tawa tomo’ “I go home” are common in the corpus and never said to be improper. So, it seems that prepositions can also be predicates. Items like ‘mi tawa, tawa tomo’ are often ridiculed, so are pretty clearly not a tp solution to a problem.
(Lope won’t read this, but I supose it is a case of persistent spam -- aside from not being spam.)

if the tawa in mi tawa tomo is an intransitive verb, doesn't that make tomo an adverb? so something like 'I go in a house like way'.

I thought all the words could be any part of speech that made sense. So what decides that words can't be a part of speech? I'm curious since I think we've been using sewi/anpa as the prepositions for over/under and our vocab list say they can only be the noun/modifiers.

The drive to make positional nouns into prepositions (in place of ‘lon --‘ generally) has aleays been present but has been resisted generally but the pressure is growing. I think that the prepositional uses are still considered errors, but occasionally just not notice. The case with the verb forms, ‘sewi’ for “go up”, for example, have pretty clearly become established and don’t often cause any comment. In any case, the trends are clear and pretty much inevitable.

SoweliTeloNasa wrote:if the tawa in mi tawa tomo is an intransitive verb, doesn't that make tomo an adverb? so something like 'I go in a house like way'.

toki!

"mi tawa tomo."
We have seen that "tawa" cannot be a preposition here. A preposition introduces the prepositional object in Toki Pona. In this case, however, the predicate, i.e. the sentence statement, would be missing. Please see
http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona6.php and viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2715.
In this context the declarative sentence "mi tawa tomo." also expresses an action, more precisely a movement. An action is expressed by a verb. One could also express the same statement with a transitive verb and a reflex pronoun and a preposition. Then the sentence is grammatically clear. I prefer grammatically unambiguous sentences:
"mi tawa e mi, tawa tomo."

Please see here https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https:// ... 0000000000

The sentence "mi tawa tomo.", on the other hand, has several grammatical variants and thus several statements. The subject is the pronoun "mi". But the predicate can be build by these variants:

- intransitive verb "tawa" + an indirect object with the noun "tomo"
- intransitive verb "tawa" + adverb "tomo"
- transitive verb "tawa" + adverb "tomo"
- adjective "tawa" + adjective "tomo"
- noun "tawa" + adjective "tomo"

These are of course grammatical variants. Whether all make sense is left open.

BTW: You can use the auxiliary verb "wile" before a verb.
"mi wile tawa tomo."
This sentence has more grammatical variants.

Most of those variants make sense to me. There are two that I don't understand.

- intransitive verb "tawa" + an indirect object with the noun "tomo"

I see that your site says a similar thing but translates all the examples with a preposition. Which would mean mi tawa is translated as 'I go' (intransitive), and the indirect object tomo becomes a prepositional phrase 'to the house'.

Is that the correct understanding? And can we assume similar prepositional phrases for other indirect objects?

mi pana ona e ilo : I gave her a tool. Does this work? The 'to' is implied in the same way.

And the second thing,

- transitive verb "tawa" + adverb "tomo"

Can it be transitive without the 'e' direct object?

SoweliTeloNasa wrote:

- intransitive verb "tawa" + an indirect object with the noun "tomo"

I see that your site says a similar thing but translates all the examples with a preposition. Which would mean mi tawa is translated as 'I go' (intransitive), and the indirect object tomo becomes a prepositional phrase 'to the house'.

Is that the correct understanding? And can we assume similar prepositional phrases for other indirect objects?

mi pana ona e ilo : I gave her a tool. Does this work? The 'to' is implied in the same way.

I am often not very happy about the widespread use of an intransitive verb and an indirect object.

mi tawa tomo. - I'm going (to the) house.

Better:
mi tawa, tawa tomo. - I'm going to the house.

mi pana ona e ilo. - The gramma is wrong. Right is:
mi pana e ilo, tawa ona. There are two objects here: an direct an a prepositional object.

SoweliTeloNasa wrote: And the second thing,

- transitive verb "tawa" + adverb "tomo"

Can it be transitive without the 'e' direct object?

Yes, it can.