nimi 'awen' li sona e seme?

[jan Ote]

jan Kipo li toki e ni:
Again, let me remind of 'awen' "keeps on keeping on".
jan Kipo li toki e ni: kulupu nimi pi "jan li awen tawa" li sona e ni: "tenpo pini la jan li tawa. tenpo ni la jan ni li tawa".
tenpo mute la mi lukin e sitelen toki sama ni lon ni. taso mi sona e ni: tenpo pini la mi lukin e sitelen toki ante:

describer
 1. unchanged, staying or continuing to be in the same state
 2. not moving, staying in place; To continue to be in the same place; stay or stay behind:
 3. to wait
 4. to remain
 5. to reside; to live in a place permanently or for an extended period; live
 6. to sit?
 7. safe; free from danger or harm
To be left after the removal, loss, passage of time, or destruction, use, consumption,
transitive verb
 * to keep, protect, preserve, conserve
 * to save, keep, guard

Vocabulary
[...]
awen - to wait, to pause, to stay; remaining

After reading the old TP official site and Pije's book I was 100% sure that 'awen' means "to remain, stay in the same place, wait, not move", sometimes: "to pause an action". But time and time again I read that you use it as "to continue an action...". Is it something wrong with my understanding of English anu of toki pona?

[janMato]

Strongly reminds me of calculus.

tan tenpo suno sin tawa tenpo pimeja la jan li awen pali.

The action is taking the person from one state to another (work isn't done to work done). The action remains constant all day.

This is kind of like motion, speed and acceleration. The car moves from A to B, but if it isn't acceleration, then the speed stays the same.

Except for about 3 modal verbs, all modal verbs burst into existence in the last year or two. I just checked the corpus and out of 102 hits of "li awen," nothing jumps out at me as a clear modal-- it's mostly intransitive, with a few transitives.

Ah ha! Found ref. Lords Prayer, "sina awen weka e mi tan ike" Remarkably from 2002. Other versions like on akidave's site don't use this construction.

[jan Ote]

The action is taking the person from one state to another (work isn't done to work done). The action remains constant all day.

This is kind of like motion, speed and acceleration. The car moves from A to B, but if it isn't acceleration, then the speed stays the same.

So, you and jan Kipo use 'awen tawa' like English "keep moving", in the meaning: "continue to move", "do NOT STOP moving". But it seems to me that jan Sonja and jan Pije say 'awen' means something opposite:

jan Pije:
to wait, to pause, to stay; remaining
jan Sonja:
1. unchanged, staying or continuing to be in the same state
2. not moving, staying in place

I cannot see the meaning "to continue an action, e.g. a movement" in these canonical sources.
Yes, Sonja uses the word "to keep", but in the meaning "to protect, preserve, conserve" (mi awen e moku ni tawa sina), not for expressions like "keep going".
Does "be in the same state" include "be in the state(?) of motion"? For me, a motion or any other action is changing a state.

[janKipo]

I take 'awen' as the word for inertia, among other things. What is at rest stays at rest, what is moving keeps on moving. This fits most of the given meanings by Sonja and Pije. The one it doesn't fit is the change version, "stop, pause", which seems to me just to come in from left field. It would be nice to have a modal for just stopping or pausing as distinguished from completing, but picking 'awen' seems perverse. Every other meaning for 'awen' is a state (past and present the same) and then suddenly it is a change-of-state (past and present directly opposite). Why? Even if your model of awen is a rock, it isn't a case of stopping anything.

[jan Ote]

Thank you very much, jan Kipo. It's the most difficult part of toki pona I found till now. I have to learn to use it:
mi awen lon ma tomo Asina = I stay/live in Athens.
akesi li awen tawa jan = A crocodile waits (stays in a place) for a man.
jan li awen e moku = A man keeps food, preserves it.
soweli li awen moku = A hyena is continuing eating. It is still eating.
tomo tawa li awen tawa = A car keeps on moving.
ona li awen moli = He is continuing beeing dead, is still dead (when sb has any doubts?)

[janMato]

Thank you very much, jan Kipo. It's the most difficult part of toki pona I found till now. I have to learn to use it:
1-mi awen lon ma tomo Asina = I stay/live in Athens.
2-akesi li awen tawa jan = A crocodile waits (stays in a place) for a man.
3-jan li awen e moku = A man keeps food, preserves it.
4-soweli li awen moku = A hyena is continuing eating. It is still eating.
5-tomo tawa li awen tawa = A car keeps on moving.
6-ona li awen moli = He is continuing beeing dead, is still dead (when sb has any doubts?)

#2 is the harder to parse

jan li tawa tomo. Man goes home. It's a predicate locative that implies motion. They don't exist in English or any language I've studied, ,but they exist.

I've assumed these things are somewhat 'defective' verbs-- i.e. I'm a bit worried about applying all the operations we normally apply to a verb.
jan li [modal verb] tawa tomo.
jan li wile tawa tomo. The guy wants to go home.
jan li ken tawa tomo. The guy can go home.
jan li awen tawa tomo. The guy continues on his way home.

? jan li awen tawa tomo e soweli. They guy is taking the animals home.
? jan li awen tawa e soweli tawa tomo. The guy is taking the animals home.

#6 those darn zombies!

[janKipo]

Ote
Also a stock joke: "News Flash! (Dictator of your choice) is still dead"
You'll have notice the ambiguities here 'awen tawa jan' also could mean, "keeps going to the man" (another reason for the comma part of my PP in NP suggestion, though here about a VP)
But see how hard it is to fit a "stop" into these patterns.
Mato:
'tawa' is a prep at home, but as a verb it functions quite normally and so fits into the VP slot of modals. So both of your questioned example are in fact OK (and the 'e' clarifies the status of 'tawa' -- I'm going to assume no one (except me in an example) is going to use 'awen' as both modal and vt simultaneously). Hey, better zombies than vampires (really?).