I've noticed a couple of trends in recent tp submission in various venue by people of various skills levels. I started by correcting these patterns. then moved on to just questioning them and commenting on them. I am now to the point of wondering if they are not on to something inherent in tp that gets lost in too strict application of the rules. Let's talk about them a bit.
The first new pattern (maybe not so new, as I look back) is iteration, repeating the same word immediately after itself (occasionally even three times). The most common case is 'mute mute' "very much", but usually attached to another adjective, so "very very", an intensive, a common use of epetition in other languages. That this seems to be the point in tp is confirmed by the fact that the other common words in this pattern are 'pona' and 'ike', used in context that call out for extremes, where 'pona mute' or 'ike mute' would seem to work. All the adjectives used in this way seem to be evaluative, in some sense, but there are not yet many other cases. There are, however, a couple of cases of verbs being repeated. I put those down to dittography at first, but now see that they might have been meant to indicate repeated or intense activity. Both 'tawa' and 'pali' obviously allow interpretations of this sort "running" or "wandering around", say, and "overworking" or "slaving away". So far, I don't think I have seen a repeated noun to suggest plurality. I do note, however, that all of these cases can be covered by 'mute' as a modifier.
The other trend started with these same cases but now with the notice that these expressions as modifiers were not set off by 'pi', as the rule requires. So there was 'pona mute mute' (even with a third 'mute') rather than 'pona pi mute mute' and similarly with 'jan ike ike', even in writers who were generally very careful about their 'pi's. It is as though the repeated words were not taken as two words but just as a strong one. And that set off a chain of thoughts: if 'ike ike' is just one word, "strong 'ike'", then why is 'ike mute' two word, or 'pona lili', for that matter. So, maybe the 'pi' rule needs fine-tuning to exempt the intensive forms even when they take up more than one word (though 'pi's might be needed to specify the scope of the intensification). But why stop at intensifiers? Well, because it is hard to know where to stop once you get started. But some cases seem simple. We already have that any string of numerals meeting certain conditions is a unit, without a 'pi'. And that extends to ordinals as well. What about the case of colors, where most of our familiar colors are actually two or more words in tp, must we say 'kili pi jelo loje' rather than just 'kili jelo loje'? And what about other cases of compounds of words in the same semantic space, body parts, say? I don't know where this might end, except either in returning to the simplicity of the current rule, or advancing to a welter of complexity and dispute, but it seems a good and timely idea to consider it.