la phrases

[jan_Lope]

toki!

Normal sentences of Toki Pona start with a noun phrase. A noun phrase starts with a noun or pronoun. Sometimes there is a conjunction word before (taso, en) but we can ignore the conjunction here.

A la phrase can be a complete sentence. It starts with with a noun or pronoun too.

A la phrase can be the same as a prepostional object after lon.
... lon X. = X la ...
A prepostional object starts after the preposition with a noun or pronoun of course. So the la phrase starts with a noun or pronoun.

You talk about time with this la phrase:
tenpo ... la ...
What is tempo here? A noun.

A sentence with a la phrase "A la B" can be write as "When condition A Then B". To describe a conditon you need a noun or pronoun at the beginning.

A la phrase can be a single word. This can't be a prepostion, because a prepostion connect to a prepositional object. But before the prepostion is nothing and after it is the seprator la. Nothing can connect here.


As you can see la phrases start normally with a noun or pronoun.

janTepanNetaPelin wrote la phrases start with a preposition. I can't see it.

But are there posisibilities for preposition at the beginning of a la phrase?

Why do you think it is possible?

How can we distinguish such preposition from a noun?

pona!

[janTepanNetaPelin]

[jan_Lope]

[janTepanNetaPelin]

[jan Alanto]

Maybe Tepan don't know any evidence that endorses his way of using prepositions before "la", but I found those in the Official Toki Pona Book:

1. Sonja mentions "fragment" as A in "A la B." She doesn't explicit it must be a noun or a pronoun (she doesn't even distinguish nouns and pronouns). As a prepositional phrase is indeed a sentence fragment, it may go before "la".

2. In an exemple, Sonja uses "tan seme la" and translates it just as if it were "tan seme" at the end. Although she doesn't explicit the literal interpretation like in some previous examples, it's simpler to assume she meant "from what" than "what reason la", just changing the order of the sentence.

2.1. As a complement to the argument 2 it can be said that the nominal POV (that of the dictionary) of "tan" is a preposition, further validating that it should be read as such before "la" and also requiring another step of reasoning to get at the noun "reason" instead of "because of".

3. The definition given by Sonja for prepositions is that it introduces a noun. Nothing is said about connecting that noun to anything else. Prepositions can even be used without a verb.

I didn't add to those arguments that Sonja isn't prescriptivist, but rather describes her own way of using toki pona, implying freedom of interpretation of the rules, providing it keeps the simplicity and structure. Moreover, that's the way the community uses "la" and prepositions.

[janKipo]

There is more organized material on 'la' phrases on tpnimi.blogspot.com.
This discussion seems backwards to me, being about whether you can import NPs from a 'la' to a PP at the end, after 'lon'. The terminal PPs. are primary, part of the basic sentence, to which 'la' phrases are peripheral. The situation seems to be that any terminal PP can be moved to a 'la' phrase. But 'lon' is regularly (always?) dropped in the process and some other prepositions may be on certain occasions (not well worked out). So, going from 'x la S' to 'S lon x' works if this is restoring the underlying situation, changed by the opposite shift, but generally not otherwise.

[jan_Lope]

[jan Alanto]

[jan_Lope]

[jan Alanto]