Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

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jan Akesimun
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by jan Akesimun »

I kinda lost track of the conversation about page two a a a, but since I write and translate tp a lot, I've run into several concepts that seem not to want to break down into it. Oddly for a Taoist conlang, the hardest has been tao. Is it pu (which, as the only undefined in my dictionary is starting to bug me more than it should), or would it be nasin with a few modifiers, or can tp just not express the inexpressible yet? Some word like law, or custom, or principle also has been troublesome. Something like nasin kulupu is the best I can come up with, but it doesn't seem to express rule or practice or such very well. Also what would put or place be? Awen? Other than those, I agree with jan Te about a bend/turn/fold word, jan Josan about one meaning sharp/pointy, and jan Pisku's suggestions (left, right, put in/insert/enter/poke/puncture. Unless the last would be unpa...?
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janMato
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janMato »

jan Akesimun wrote:tao
Religions, philosophies, politics, are "nasin X", X depending on what you feel is salient at the moment. I would pick a eponym, eg. nasin pi jan Lajo (The philosophy of Lao)
jan Akesimun wrote:Is it pu
pu is reserved and undefined. It it is a straight loan word, then pu is the "uncarved block"
jan Akesimun wrote:nasin kulupu
That makes me think of democracy 1st, but it's vague enough to cover lots of things.
jan Akesimun wrote:Also what would put or place be? Awen?
mi lon ijo musi lon kasi suli. I put Christmas decorations on the tree. Not everyone like this construction, but it is something one can get used to.
mi awen e ijo musi lon kasi suli. This sounds like he's still holding it, like maybe it would fall of otherwise. But that is just me, I'm not sure there's anything certain about such a fine distinction.
jan Akesimun wrote:put in/insert/enter/poke/puncture. Unless the last would be unpa...?
To get away with that, you'd need a kepeken phrase.
mi unpa e pan kepeken ilo kipisi. I plunged the knife into the bread. Well, really, "I f*ked the bread with a knife", and it sounds just as jarring in the tp as it does in the English.
janKipo
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janKipo »

'tao' is indeed just 'nasin'; what is inexpressible goes unexpressed. But as janLosi says, we can :D callit whatever we want (and never be more wrong than right). Taoism is nasin To.
'pu' is a mystery, but seems to be intended as a function word. Several suggestion have been made for it's use: separate off final PPs, use in place : to indicate significantly connected sentence, introduce restrictive relative clauses. No clues which it actually is, though the second seems the most neede (and goes a way toward the third).
'nasin kulupu' serves for tribal customs, any sort of regular pattern of doing things is 'nasin'.
mi lon E ijo musi lon (or tawa) kasi suli, which nobody objects to, and mi lon kasi suli e ijo musi, which everybody hates.
'awen e x' apparently means "wait for x"
Until I hear definitively otherwise, I would restrict 'unpa' strictly to copulation and not go off on either extensions (bees 'unpa' flowers) or, as here, metaphors. I would think that 'palisa' as a verb means, poke or stab. Whether that extends to insertion, I don't know. "enter" is just 'tawa insa' (so insert is probably the transitive form). "puncture" is presumably "make a hole in".
Left and right wii probably be the last common notions to figure out.
The sharp, pointy word is, apparently, 'palisa'. The bend, fold is probably 'lipu'

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jan Akesimun
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by jan Akesimun »

To get away with that, you'd need a kepeken phrase.
mi unpa e pan kepeken ilo kipisi. I plunged the knife into the bread. Well, really, "I f*ked the bread with a knife", and it sounds just as jarring in the tp as it does in the English.
Hm.. So what would a.. less disturbing wording be? A tawa construction, as in mi tawa e ilo kipisi lon pan?
mi lon ijo musi lon kasi suli. I put Christmas decorations on the tree. Not everyone like this construction, but it is something one can get used to.
mi awen e ijo musi lon kasi suli. This sounds like he's still holding it, like maybe it would fall of otherwise. But that is just me, I'm not sure there's anything certain about such a fine distinction.
I haven't heard of using lon as a verb, besides talking about living somewhere, but it seems to work. Especially with jan Kipo's e suggestion. pona. :)
pu is reserved and undefined. It it is a straight loan word, then pu is the "uncarved block"
Makes me wonder when/if jan Sonja's going to publish her book.. Off topic, but is anyone else getting the feeling it won't come out until jan Kipo and jan Mato perfect the grammar? :P

Okay, so then how would one express concepts such as life/ tolive, "few" without resorting to "a little," and discuss relative speed?
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Kuti
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by Kuti »

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janMato
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janMato »

I noticed a typo is something I wrote (image that!). *If* pu is a loan word, is means "an uncarved block" as described in the the popular philosophy book the Tao of Pooh.
Hm.. So what would a.. less disturbing wording be? A tawa construction, as in mi tawa e ilo kipisi lon pan?
Well, this isn't lojban, so a "real" toki ponist wouldn't worry about the fine shades of meaning of this construction vs highly similar ones. That said...

This means "I moved the knife on the bread." I image a back and forth sawing motion on top of the bread, but not necessarily entering it.

"mi tawa e ilo kipisi lon insa pan" -- Okay now we're sawing through the bread.

And if we don't mind toki nasa, we can use this, which opens up the end sentence prep slot for other use

"mi tawa lon insa pan e ilo kipisi." I do such things to a knife such that the knife is characterized by moving inside the bread.
Makes me wonder when/if jan Sonja's going to publish her book.. Off topic, but is anyone else getting the feeling it won't come out until jan Kipo and jan Mato perfect the grammar? :P
Well, we don't have the alternate reality available for ready comparison, but it seems that jan Sonja absence had the positive effect of stabilizing the language, a good thing for learners, but the negative effect of being a drag on community building.

There is enough community generated corpus text that any amateur linguist can write reference grammar (or some variation of that) to show how tp turned out. What the fans can't easily do is know for sure what the designers intentions were, or issues a Version 2. Not that I want a version 2, languages are kind of like standards of measure (miles and kilometers), their users aren't served well if they change too fast.
Okay, so then how would one express concepts such as life/ tolive, "few" without resorting to "a little," and discuss relative speed?
At least two approaches. One, imagine you are an islander with an impoverished sense of number, color, formal logic, etc. "You saw a fish as big as a cat." Not, "You saw a fish about 10 lbs"

jan lili li pilin e ni: tenpo kama ale la ona jan li ken moli ala. Young bucks think they can live forever.
mi lukin e soweli. nanpa soweli li sama nanpa luka mi. I saw a few deer. (I saw animals. The animals number is like the number of my fingers)
mi lukin e soweli. sowli li ken lon tomo mi. I saw animals. They could have fit in my house. (i.e. there were only a few)

The other approach is, "Hey, I'm a software developer in Arlington, who did go to school, who does know how to use numbers, who thinks to hide a distinction is to in a small way to tell a lie." Then proceed to extend the language (without changing the grammar or basic vocabulary) to deal with numbers, scales, missing

* jan lili li pilin e ni: tenpo kama ale la ona jan li moku pi pan.
jan lili li pilin e ni: tenpo kama ale la ona jan li moku pi pan pona. (now grammatically correct under current rules, but the pona is just filling a grammatically required blank)
This example sentence uses direct object incorporation into the verb and assumes you've heard the phrase "bread is the staff of life" It would really work better if there was a distinct particle instead of "pi" Because the pan is a part of the intransitive verb phrase, it's a message that this is a like a compound word and means something more specific than a man eating bread at the table.

mi lukin e soweli LWW nanpa. nanpa li ni anu suli wan anu lili wan. I saw 7+/-1 deer.
That example doesn't really break any rules, but it isn't what an unschooled islander would say.
janKipo
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janKipo »

Sorry, 'lili' is the antonym to both 'mute'' and 'suli', so, "a few" as opposed to "many" comes out 'lili'. Some people use 'mute lili', which I don't quite get, but is taken to mean "a few".
I think of 'mi tawa e ilo kapisi lon pan' as spreading butter or the like.
'mi tawa insa pan e ilo kapisi' doesn't need long (which, in fact, confuses things).
Well, the easiest"live" is 'lon', "be present, hence, exist", but that is not much help in distinguishing live from dead when both are around. Just 'moli ala' for now -- something better may turn up.
Relative speed, like every comparison (so far, I see a move to using 'mute' and 'lili'), requires two sentences. x li tawa wawa mute. y li tawa wawa lili. together mean x is faster than y.
I haven't figured out how Mato's V+pi+NP works yet, but its official purpose -- for a right grouping modifier of the verb -- is not used much, so maybe a new use can be introduced. Or maybe what he is after is a right-grouping modifier.
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