toki! mi jan Natan.

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natan
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Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:13 am

toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by natan »

toki! mi jan Natan.
Or should that be nimi mi li Natan?

pu says the latter, yet I see the former in use often.

After reading http://www.suburbandestiny.com/?p=799, I believe my aim will be to use toki pona as the original, simple, way of communication set out in pu. (If I want to speak, write or think complex things, I will use English.)

Currently, I still get a little confused, so I will likely bug everyone with questions.

mi wile e toki pona.
(I need toki pona.)
janKipo
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by janKipo »

jan Natan o, kama pona tawa toki pona

'mi jan Natan' is safe and correct. 'nimi mi li Natan' is in pu but is wrong for two reasons 1. tp names are adjectives and so always need a preceding noun, which doesn't happen here. 2. 'Natan' as an adjective means "called by this name" and the only thing available for this to apply to is 'nimi', but it is you, not your name that is called 'Natan'. The nearest things to correct along this line are 'nimi mi li ni: Natan' and 'nimi mi li nimi 'Natan'', both of which are more complex than what you use. Stick with the easy stuff. There is the full story in a FAQ on tpnimi.blogspot.com

Bug away; it's what we are here for.
natan
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:13 am

Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by natan »

jan Kipo,

Read post about 'nimi' (http://tpnimi.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/t ... i.html?m=1).

In English, at least according to everything I have read, a person's name is a noun. So why then, do you say (Are you the only one?) a person's name in toki pona is an adjective? Would mean names for all things in toki pona are adjectives too, or are personal names an exception to the/a rule?

I am interested to read your thoughts. If they are posted elsewhere, please share the link.

jan Natan
natan
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Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2016 3:13 am

Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by natan »

So I looked at pu again re: adjectives and names.

Page 37/38 says:
Proper names behave as adjectives. Use them after a noun that describes what they are.
Example given is:
nimi mi li Apu
My name is Apu.
This, as mentioned by jan Kipo above is incorrect However, on page 20, under grammar, it states:
NOUN + li + ADJECTIVE.
which I would take to mean that the above example is grammatically correct.

In my (relatively speaking) uneducated way, I read mi jan Apu as I am (person) Apu and nimi mi li Apu as My name is Apu. I see these as being answers to questions Who are you and What is your name?.

But I am not a linguist, so what would I know!?
janKipo
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by janKipo »

pu is at least mildly inconsistent here. Proper names are explicitly said to require a preceding noun (unlike ordinary adjectives, which can function as nouns or verbs alone) . This is not the case with 'nimi mi li Natan' . Further, if 'Natan' here modifies 'nimi' then it is your name, not you, that is called 'Natan' (well, maybe both, but that gets really confusing). Further. if the predicate adjective modifies the subject, why is the correct answer to 'sina seme?' and the like not just 'mi Natan', which would then be grammatical and further get the right thing named? There are a large number of ways to do this, most of them contradictory or unnecessarily complex and likely to cause problems elsewhere. So, stick with ''mi jan Natan', which everybody understands and accepts.
janKipo
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by janKipo »

ops, missed the first reply. I say that proper names in tp are adjectives because (as you not later) pu (and all the other books) say they are and they have been used that way since forever. But notice that this is for proper names, not general names. Names of various things of open classes are nouns in tp as in English. I'm not sure why the difference (or how real it is, beyond the need for a previous noun in the proper case). I am also unsure how wide the sense of "proper name" is, since we are constantly coming into cases where the proper name convention is being used to smuggle in generic name (often literall, names for genera, like 'Soja' for soybeans). And then there are the problems of names of companies and products and programs and books and .... . There is a strong temptation to draw a hard line at unique individuals, but even that turns out to be perilous.
natan
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by natan »

I either don't understand your argument, or I simply don't believe it.
janKipo
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by janKipo »

Well, I can run through the argument again, but that clearly won't help. Where do you stop following, if that is the problem? What don't you believe (short of the conclusion)? Maybe we can start with what we agree on and work from there.
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jan_Lope
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by jan_Lope »

natan wrote:toki! mi jan Natan.
Or should that be nimi mi li Natan?
...
I believe my aim will be to use toki pona as the original, simple, way of communication set out in pu. (If I want to speak, write or think complex things, I will use English.)
jan Natan o, toki!

Unfortunately some Toki Pona speakers use their own slang. The best is to ignore these people.

"mi jan Natan." is correct because "Natan" is not a official Toki Pona word. To make it clear what it is we use a noun before. The word "jan" show us "Natan" is a human. In "pu" unofficial word are adjectives and need a noun before. But Sonja use in pu the example "nimi mi li Apu" also. From the grammatical point of view it could be correct (NOUN + li + ADJECTIVE). The adjective belong to the noun here. But this unclear because "Natan" could be a name, a disease, property, ... (sorry ;-).

For my point of view it is the best to avoid "nimi mi li Natan".
pona!
jan Lope
https://jan-lope.github.io
(Lessons and the Toki Pona Parser - A tool for spelling, grammar check and ambiguity check of Toki Pona)

On my foe list are the sockpuppets janKipo and janSilipu because of permanent spamming.
janKipo
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Re: toki! mi jan Natan.

Post by janKipo »

Always nice to agree with Lope, even if our reasonings are slightly different. (And to have him call someone else's usage "slang".)
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