POS - first pass

Language learning: How to speak Toki Pona, translation problems, advice, memory aids, tools and methods to learn Toki Pona and other languages faster
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janMato
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janMato »

Where the official grammar is quiet, we aught to tread carefully.
- community constructions used once by one person, don't make a trend
- if the entire community makes a mistake, it isn't a mistake anymore, it is the rule
- innovations that closely follow existing patterns are probably safe (e.g. poka is a bare preposition by the classic word list, but we have another pattern that says locational preps should be prefixed by lon, eg. lon anpa, lon supa, lon sike, so to continue the pattern, it should be lon poka regardless to what the classic word list says)
- innovations that are more avant garde, are only right to the extend that it sounds right and people copy it.

li lon X e Y is avant garde, imho, I'd have to see more people use it (hopefully un-self consciously!) before I'd really trust it.
janKipo
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janKipo »

Wish I had my notes on all this stuff from way back when. This is not innovation, but part of the regular pattern with 'lon', 'tawa' and 'tan.' I think it has been used less with 'lon', more with 'tan' and most with 'tawa'. There is a long note in one lesson, about "objects" that are not affected by the action; this is the same point , made in a different, less precise, fashion.
'poka' as a preposition means "with(accompaniment)". 'lon poka' means "at/on the the side", a somewhat different notion, being mainly spatial. They converge in the not so literal sense, however, when the talk of making choices of allegiance in a conflict.
'lon x e y' is old hat, just largely ignored.
And who is Mato to talk of treading warily? pu!
janMato
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janMato »

janKipo wrote:'lon x e y' is old hat, just largely ignored.
I'll do some more searches specifically targeting this. If this is canon, to the extent one exists, I'm thinking this is like "li pi", construction that is so little used, that there might be something about it that makes it incompatible with the rest of the patterns of the language.
'poka' as a preposition means "with(accompaniment)". 'lon poka' means "at/on the the side", a somewhat different notion, being mainly spatial. They converge in the not so literal sense, however, when the talk of making choices of allegiance in a conflict.
Then we have a 2nd pattern, that sike, anpa, sewi used as prepositions without lon would indicate some abstract or metaphorical sense.
And who is Mato to talk of treading warily? pu!
Well, some one has to make these mistakes or the language won't evolve.
janKipo
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janKipo »

I don't think 'poka' is enough to build a new pattern on, but I do expect that the 'lon' is going to fade from a lot of those combinations (though maybe not from 'lon poka').
I do think 'li pi' may have made it into one exercise in Bije's book, but I'm not sure. The stuff with 'tawa' is a bit more common. and maybe a couple with 'tan'. I'm not sure that there is any with 'lon' though. But it is a pattern.
Very true about evolution, but I'm still trying to get a fairish number of people who can work with its now form.
Last edited by janKipo on Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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jan Ote
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by jan Ote »

janKipo wrote:I do thin 'li pi' may have made it into one exercise in Bije's book, but I'm not sure.
jan Pije, lesson 11 wrote: Another use
pi has one other use. I have decided to describe this use in a separate section because it somewhat breaks the rules that you learned above. Consider the following sentences:
 kili ni li pi mi. -- This fruit is mine.
 tomo ni li pi jan Tami. -- That house is Tommy's.
Although it may look a little odd, a pi phrase can be used after li to tell who owns something. Here are some more examples if you need to look at them:
 ilo ni li pi sina. -- This tool is yours.
 ma ni li pi jan Tosi. -- This land is the Germans'.
 toki ni li pi mi mute. -- This language is ours.
janKipo
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janKipo »

Hmmm! Not a bad thing to have. How would you say it otherwise? (kili) ni li kili mi. (tomo) ni li tomo pi jan Tami (ilo) ni li ilo sina. (ma) ni li ma pi jan Tosi. (toki) ni li toki pi mi mute?
janKipo
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janKipo »

BTW If you think 'lon kasi' is strange, consider 'mi kwn pali e ilo e jan' "I helped a man make a tool." Maybe this is what 'pu' as virgule is for, to break these really badly ambiguous sentences. Of course, we can combine them: 'mi ken tawa ma Kansa e jan lili bi jan meli e meli ni' "I helped a woman mover her kids to Kansas"
janMato
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janMato »

Those are ditransitives. I was thinking about that, but ditransitives right now are conjunctions.

I can create a tool and a person.
I can move to Kansas this woman and her children.

Where would the pu (tentatively) go to change these from the conjunction meaning to the benefactive?
jan-ante
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by jan-ante »

janKipo wrote:Sorry, but that is the way the grammar crumbles. 'lon' is basically a preposition, and, as such, can have a noun complement in context (I haven't seen it tried in modifier slots, but, then ....) Like most tp words, it can be used as a noun ("placing, presence, address" "existence, truth, reality"). a verb ("place, put, insert", "create, verify"), and a modifier (so far without complements , so "real, existent, true"). With a small vocabulary, words have to do extra work (and they don't get paid extra).
that doesnt mean the word can be verb and preposition at the same time and place. at one instance it is either verb, or prepostion. moreover, the meaning of construction lon x e y is not self-evident, this is an extra reason to refrain from it
janKipo
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Re: POS - first pass

Post by janKipo »

Meaning is given in the general rule for prepositions. It is always possible, of course, to double up 'mi lon e ilo suno lon kasi' But there is no problem with the intransitive form:'mi lon tomo mi', where it is both (or a verb that takes NP complements). Why get twitchy with the transitive form?
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