Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Tinkerers Anonymous: Some people can't help making changes to "fix" Toki Pona. This is a playground for their ideas.
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janTe
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janTe »

Actually, come to think of it, I wonder if "palisa" could have connotations of straightness.
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janMato »

janTe wrote:Actually, come to think of it, I wonder if "palisa" could have connotations of straightness.
a! "long mostly hard object", dunno why I didn't think of that.

I'll have to update some of my linja's to palisa's

Both linja and palisa have the same issue though, both are (at least used to be) noun only. If one was in a nit-picky mood, neither definition contains the word straight and nothing in either definition obliges them to be straight.
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jan Josan
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by jan Josan »

I wonder what a 'linja palisa' would be...It seems either 'straight line' (and in contrast to 'linja sike' for 'curly, wavy'), 'crusty hair', or a contradiction in terms.

I have in the past wanted a word for sharp or pointy. 'ilo tu' can work for scissors or knife, but not really for the adjective.
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janMato »

jan Josan wrote:I wonder what a 'linja palisa' would be...It seems either 'straight line' (and in contrast to 'linja sike' for 'curly, wavy'), 'crusty hair', or a contradiction in terms.
linja palisa: The set of all items that are stick-like wavy-floppy-thin-long-things.
linja sike: circular or spherical wavy-floppy-thin-long-things.

I dunno, like discussion earlier, if you stick too close to the canonical definition the lexical gaps become wider. We can either bridge the gap by creating more words (nah, no fun in that), or adding more meanings to the existing words.

I'm dense. Where did you get "crusty hair"? you mean linja lawa pi palisa jaki? linja lawa sama palisa jaki sounds better but would be hard to use in a sentence:

linja lawa li lon lawa mi sama palisa jaki. <= legal but the "like gross sticks" is too far from linja lawa
linja lawa sama palisa jaki li lon lawa mi. <= legal only if the first linja has four modifiers (and not a prep phrase)
linja lawa pi palisa jaki li lon lawa mi <= sounds like dirty pubic hair is on my head.

Let me point out that none of the tp sentences are true, by the way.
jan Josan wrote:I have in the past wanted a word for sharp or pointy. 'ilo tu' can work for scissors or knife, but not really for the adjective.
mi lawa li jo e pini sama pipi lili lili lili. My head has a end like a little bug. [This seems like a safe form of reduplication because all the lili's modify pipi]
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jan Josan
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by jan Josan »

janMato wrote: I'm dense. Where did you get "crusty hair"?
With linja often meaning "hair" (see entries under 'linja' in jan Leke's handy new dicitonary) and palisa as a modifier, I see "long, mostly-hard" hair as possible, but not likely (could more easily be dreads. "linja kiwen" if anything for hard-hair).

pointy more like a cone or sharp edge, I suppose. But shapes in general are not so easy in toki pona.
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janKipo »

Way back to jan Mato's list: I note that none of them actually has a way of saying bend or fold or turn but only various ways of getting to the result (a doubled shirt, a change of direction, etc. I haven't quite figured out how we got off on dirty hair ("Make my da") (bend > curl > hair > straight > stick > sticky?) but it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. The wisdom of avoiding the issue will only last until we get to a case where we can't and want to talk about the actual activity of bending (etc.) and then, given our resources, we have , I think, to work with 'sike' (the only shape word we have) and get "straight" out of that, too.
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janTe »

jan Josan wrote:I have in the past wanted a word for sharp or pointy.
Me too! It's possible that we got our wish with "kipisi".

I'm happy to use "palisa" to mean straight (adjectivally) or straighten (verbally), and "palisa ala" to mean bent or bend. I figure it's better than inventing new vocabulary.

The only other word I've found myself wanting was something that meant "to cross" or "across". I was trying to describe a bridge, but I was thinking that it could also mean through (prepositionally), to travel a long distance, to translate from one language to another, or in a word for transgendered. (These are all things I find myself talking about sometimes.)
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:Way back to jan Mato's list: I note that none of them actually has a way of saying bend or fold or turn but only various ways of getting to the result (a doubled shirt, a change of direction, etc. I haven't quite figured out how we got off on dirty hair ("Make my da") (bend > curl > hair > straight > stick > sticky?) but it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. The wisdom of avoiding the issue will only last until we get to a case where we can't and want to talk about the actual activity of bending (etc.) and then, given our resources, we have , I think, to work with 'sike' (the only shape word we have) and get "straight" out of that, too.
Darn it, just a few days ago I found a natural language that had less than ~150 base verbs. Now I can't find the link to it. If I remember correctly, it was like Basic English, where everything was "give up" instead of "surrender", i.e. ~150 verbs whose meaning varied based on the complement.

ona li pana e kon monsi. <== generic verb + a complement
ona li kon monsi <== a fancy verb

ona li tawa e sike (pakala) <== go in a circle (part of a circle), turn
ona li tawa sike pakala <== fancy verb, turn

The fancy verbs continue to worry me precisely because I can't tell where the verb stops and the adverb begins.

sike ala = straight? I'm at a loss whats the opposite of a circle. The opposite of a broken circle (ie. an arc), might be a straight line, but it's quite a long story.
sike pakala ala = not-broken circle, not broken-circle, un-arc-like, straight
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jan Josan
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by jan Josan »

janTe wrote:The only other word I've found myself wanting was something that meant "to cross" or "across". I was trying to describe a bridge, but I was thinking that it could also mean through (prepositionally), to travel a long distance, to translate from one language to another, or in a word for transgendered. (These are all things I find myself talking about sometimes.)
I have been trying to figure out a way to use "nasin" for "through". for instance, what if nasin was also a preposition of the order of [anpa, insa, sewi, poka] meaning through? I was thinking of the through the window problem. All of the other prepositions have many other meanings as nouns as does nasin, but when prefaced by lon seem to work without confusion. There would have to be a distinction between "tawa nasin = through", and "lon nasin = on the path".

mi lukin tawa nasin lupa tomo. I look through the window.
moku li tawa nasin sijelo mi. food goes through me.
tomo tawa mi li lon nasin kiwen. my car is on the road.

I'm not sure how it would work for "across" though: tawa nasin ante?

The safer way for now seems to be by paring tan and tawa (from x to y):
mi tawa, tan poka nanpa wan, tawa poka nanpa tu.
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Re: Are there any words you've found yourself wanting?

Post by janMato »

jan Josan wrote:mi lukin tawa nasin lupa tomo. I look through the window.
moku li tawa nasin sijelo mi. food goes through me.
tomo tawa mi li lon nasin kiwen. my car is on the road.
I like it. I had to re-read the (old) definitions to be reminded of the physical sense. I think it is necessary and inevitable.
jan Josan wrote:I'm not sure how it would work for "across" though: tawa nasin ante?

The safer way for now seems to be by paring tan and tawa (from x to y):
mi tawa, tan poka nanpa wan, tawa poka nanpa tu.
pona a! This also seems rather necessary and inevitable. I should check later and see if I can find prior attestation.

"tan: from, by, because of, since"
The old prep definitions are a bit weak. The words "from" "by" cover just about *everything* in English-- I eagerly await the new style definitions (right now the new style only says "origin"). "because of", "since" can both be the causative reason, but "since" can also be a time relation. I've been avoiding the "from" senses because some people seem to read "tan" more by the "causation" than physical location sense.

There have been previous attempts, recently this thread, trying to translate 8 states away-- where it was speculated it couldn't be done.
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