tawa tomo pi pali ala

Community: Meet and greet, introductions, networking, gatherings, events, what's new in your life?
Komunumo: Interkoniĝo, sinprezentoj, socia retumado, renkontiĝoj, eventoj, kio novas en via vivo?
Mako
Posts: 184
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 11:32 pm
Location: San Francisco

Re: tawa tomo pi pali ala

Post by Mako »

tenpo suno ni la mi en mama mi li tawa sewi tawa ma sewi tan ni: tenpo mute lili la mi pali lon ma. Soweli mama li tawa poka mi. Tawa li ike mute tan ni: telo mute li anpa tan kon. Telo li pini la ko walo lete li anpa. Telo en ko li anpa la jan lawa pi tawa tomo li wile lukin pona e nasin. Tenpo mute lili la tawa tomo li ken tawa pona tan ni: sike ona li len e linja kiwen ko. Tenpo mute pini la mi kama tawa tomo mi lon poka telo mute. Mi pini tawa la mi wile pali e ni: mi wile lawa e tawa pi soweli. Ona li pana e ko jaki e telo jelo. Ko walo li pona mute tawa soweli tan ni: soweli li kulupu e ma lete.

If object-incorporation is productive in TP, then IMO it should be 'li tawa lawa'.
mi lawa e tawa pi soweli mama > mi lawa tawa e soweli mama

kama tawa vs. kama lon: I suppose the difference here is location at destination vs. successful movement to the destination (il est arrive' vs. he has arrived). Does this distinction break down along national L1 lines?
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: tawa tomo pi pali ala

Post by janKipo »

'tomo tawa' not 'tawa tomo'
'e tawa soweli' 'pi' needs two following words. "I want to lead a dog trip"?
The dog is not in a group of cold countries, but in a group from cold countries, so 'e kulupu pi ma lete'
Hmmm! I lead movingly or I move leadingly? I think the latter is better. I don't think object incorporation is productive (or indeed exists at all) in tp. Why not just 'lawa e soweli'?
'kama', when used for motion claims completeness. actually getting there (like arrivir [I didn't check] in French). What auxiliary verb is used with this to announce this completion varies from language to language, with most Europeans favoring "to be', I think and English going with "to have", but with all sorts of variants about what to say after the fact (and, indeed, I may have that whole thing wrong for the Major European languages -- it's been a while). In any case, tp doesn't make any of those distinctions in a systematic way. The problem here is between the intuitions based, in English, on "he came to the goal" and "he arrived at the goal". The latter seems to stress the completion of a travel, the former just he coming to be here after perhaps being elsewhere. Curiously, the tp prepositions seem to work the opposite way: 'tawa' is obviously connected to the travel and 'lon' is just as obviously not. I'm not sure how this is going to play out as tp develops.
Mako
Posts: 184
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 11:32 pm
Location: San Francisco

Re: tawa tomo pi pali ala

Post by Mako »

janKipo wrote:'tomo tawa' not 'tawa tomo'
'e tawa soweli' 'pi' needs two following words. "I want to lead a dog trip"?
The dog is not in a group of cold countries, but in a group from cold countries, so 'e kulupu pi ma lete'
Hmmm! I lead movingly or I move leadingly? I think the latter is better. I don't think object incorporation is productive (or indeed exists at all) in tp. Why not just 'lawa e soweli'?
'kama', when used for motion claims completeness. actually getting there (like arrivir [I didn't check] in French). What auxiliary verb is used with this to announce this completion varies from language to language, with most Europeans favoring "to be', I think and English going with "to have", but with all sorts of variants about what to say after the fact (and, indeed, I may have that whole thing wrong for the Major European languages -- it's been a while). In any case, tp doesn't make any of those distinctions in a systematic way. The problem here is between the intuitions based, in English, on "he came to the goal" and "he arrived at the goal". The latter seems to stress the completion of a travel, the former just he coming to be here after perhaps being elsewhere. Curiously, the tp prepositions seem to work the opposite way: 'tawa' is obviously connected to the travel and 'lon' is just as obviously not. I'm not sure how this is going to play out as tp develops.
1.I wrote 'tawa tomo' in the title because I was talking about the trip to my cabin rather than the car which I used to get there.
2. 'soweli li kulupu e kulupu pi ma lete'?
3. kama: so how would you say 'I am in the process of getting somewhere'.
4. tawa vs. lon: well, it's always interesting to participate in the growth of a language.
5. DO incorporation: if it doesn't exist in TP, I guess I'll have to put it in one of my own conlangs.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: tawa tomo pi pali ala

Post by janKipo »

1. NOT the title, which is perfectly clear, but 2nd line 'jan lawa pi tawa tomo', 'la tawa tomo li ken'.
2. Yeah, 'kulupu e kulupu' is unfelicitous, maybe something like 'kulupu e soweli pi ma lete'
3 Unless I'm missing a subtlety here, being in the process of getting somewhere is pretty much going toward there, 'mi tawa tawa' I go toward the destination (unfelicitous again, but we're short on words and have to make do).
4. Glad to have ya.
5. Go to it -- after explaining what you mean by it.
janMato
Posts: 1545
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2009 12:21 pm
Location: Takoma Park, MD
Contact:

Re: tawa tomo pi pali ala

Post by janMato »

Mako wrote:If object-incorporation is productive in TP, then IMO it should be 'li tawa lawa'.
mi lawa e tawa pi soweli mama > mi lawa tawa e soweli mama
Object incorporation is a real thing in Samoan. (i.e. not argle bargle that I made up). Imho, the verb in toki pona is poorly mapped out

So the four diagrams--
1) Subject li modal modal modal verb adverb (pi) something modifiers e DO
2) Subject li preposition noun phrase (e DO). e.g. jan li lon supa e ilo.
3) subject li verb noun. e.g. jan li kama sona.
4) "Stuff" + subject li (modals) verb e DO + "Stuff". <-- If stuff that would ordinarily go between the verb but before the e can't go there, it can only go in a la phrase or the prep phrases (or maybe in another sentence)

The only thing controversial with #1 is what the heck the pi phrase means. In the corpus, almost no one has used this pattern. In the jan Pije lessons, there is no mention. But it seems like it could be legal.

jan ante seemed to not like structure like #2, which are usually tawa/lon constructions. I didn't like it until to my amazement I read that this pattern exists in other natlangs, too. (at least the intransitive version does)

#3 Is it a verb-verb compound verb? Is it verb-noun compound? Is that 2nd word a modifier? Who the heck knows? jan Sonja canon doesn't help much because jan Sonja usually doesn't put much after the verb or before the e. Ditto the corpus (most people put suli/lili/mute and rarely other things post verb but pre e)

We do have these fairly old li kama sona, li awen sona, li pana sona, expressions, which imho, are verb-noun compounds and (the noun is the characteristic DO for the corresponding verb) But tp isn't supposed to have compounds, just phrases and atomic words. Regarding toki pona's total word count, we already are kidding ourselves a bit by not counting proper modfiiers. If we let in too many of these compound words then we really will be kidding ourselves about about the word count. Compound words need to be internally grammatical, e.g. jan pona is a lexeme (imho) but it is a noun-modifier lexeme and thus completely legit.

tawa lawa really should mean "to move as a head does", or "to move in the manner of a leader" (maybe in a haughty fashion, or to strut)

Pattern #4 is always, uncontroversially correct. It is this pattern that I'm calling a "weak verb" for lack of a better name for what ever the heck it means to avoid sticking words after the verb-but-before-the-e and using periphrasis and discourse to make up for the constraint.
Mako wrote:kama tawa vs. kama lon: I suppose the difference here is location at destination vs. successful movement to the destination (il est arrive' vs. he has arrived). Does this distinction break down along national L1 lines?
Not enough data--(not just on this specific issue, but any difference between tokiponists of different L1's) I think we got 25-50 or so people that have written something of substance in toki pona and I don't know where they all came from. In any case, I haven't seen any patterns that jump out at me due to L1.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: tawa tomo pi pali ala

Post by janKipo »

Not necessarily pushing myself forward, but have you looked at my grammar on tpnimi.blogspot.com, the first page? It helps me see what you are driving at with your four patterns, none of which I recognize immediately, but all of which are, on consideration, legitimate tp patterns, viewed in a different way. [Oops, sorry, I thought the previous was from jan Mako]
I don't doubt that object incorporation is a real thing (if in Samoan is it general in Polynesian?), I'm just not clear what it means of the various possibilities the name suggests.
The 'pi' phrase is clearly legit and as you say the interesting question is what it means; in particular, whether it has some function other than grouping modifiers or whether it is just another modifier (in which case, the question is what modification of verbs mean).
Compound phrases aren't words, so the word count remains, in any case. Whether these phrases are fixed semantic units is another question, to which the official answer is "No", since any combination can (officially) be used for different things in different contexts. But we know that we actually do use many of them almost exclusively for one meaning.
2) is restricted (by your description) to the Prepositions , 'lon, tan, tawa, sama. poka' (that I can remember off-hand; 'kepeken', which is often used as a preposition, can't work this way. The transitive forms tend to be befuddling, particularly if the places is at all complexly presented.
3) Your example is of a modal + verb phrase, so doesn't raise the question of whether verb+noun is a verb or something else (is 'sona' a Noun? here it is an intransitive verb).
BTW, you need to get used to the fact that, in tp, words do not stay in their original word classes, but can -- and do -- turn up acting in almost any possible category. Two of your further examples are again modals ('kama, awen') with whatevers acting as cores of VPs. The 'pana sona', unless it means something like "give wisely", is probably a mistake for 'pana e sona', though maybe not (in which case we need some further work here). 'tawa lawa' means "to tawa lawaly" and what that means depends upon the situation: in the instant case "to walk with DO on a leash", but speaking of a person, in another situation, it might mean "to strut" and so on. "Context will decide."
Well, 4) is correct once the grammar of "Stuff" is sorted out. I still don't see what weak verbs are being contrasted with. There are no rules against sticking all manner of things between the verb and the direct object, it is just that we don't do it much and, when we do, it is often unclear (outside context at least) what is going on. Hence the need for further sentences (further complicating the post-verb structure seems counterproductive).
As I've said, I don't see any reliable connection between 'kama lon' or 'kama tawa' and any other language.
Post Reply