Toki!

[janKipo]

It seems to be from "defeat" indeed. It could, from another point of view, do just as well for "flunk."
I don't see why "student" (a real student anyhow) wouldn't be 'jan pi wile sona'. The fact that you use (rather nicely) 'wile sona' for "question" doesn't seem a serious objection.
'pali pini' is hard to figure "finally (completely?) did/made/worked" But, 'pini pali' is clearly not going to work here. Part of the problem is that 'pini' means both "stop" and "finish" and these are two very different notions, which I don't know how to sort out in tp. If you stop something, you can take it up again and it may not have a natural end. If you finish something, you have come to its natural end and there is nothing left to take up (though you can keep on with some of the activities involved in the process).

[Mako]

tenpo ni la mi wile tawa telo poka mije sama. taso ona li tawa ala tawa tomo pi pali mi mute. ona li ken ala toki kepeken ilo toki tawa. mi pilin e ni: ilo ona li pakala. jan li ken ala toki kepeken ona. taso mi sona ala e ni: ona li lon ma seme. ona li pakala ala pakala? mama ale li sona ala e ni!

[janKipo]

'tomo pali pi mi mute?' unless you have several workplaces. ?? "The whole family does not know this" ?? "Every parent does not know this"??

[Mako]

'tomo pali pi mi mute?' unless you have several workplaces. ?? "The whole family does not know this" ?? "Every parent does not know this"??

How, then, would you say "our workplace" (tomo pali wan pi mi mute?). And I meant "the whole family does not know this". And the crisis is over.

[janKipo]

I am always laconic at the wrong time. 'tomo pi pali mi mute' is ambiguous: it may mean "the many buildings where I work" or it may mean "the building of where I do my many jobs", depending on whether 'mute modifies all the goes before it only back to the 'pi' (both are grammatical). For "our (common) workplace", 'tomo pali pi mi mute' suffices: 'mute' pluralizes 'mi' and th whole then modifies 'tomo pali', so "our workplace".

[janMato]

'tomo pali pi mi mute?' unless you have several workplaces. ?? "The whole family does not know this" ?? "Every parent does not know this"??

How, then, would you say "our workplace" (tomo pali wan pi mi mute?). And I meant "the whole family does not know this". And the crisis is over.

seli loje li sin lon tomo pali pi mi mute. A fire started in our office.

ala pi kulupu mama li sona ala e ni. * No one in the family doesn't know this./No one in the family knows.

English in exotic in that it avoids double negatives. So unless there is some evidence to the contrary, tp is probably a double negative language.

Re modifier order and scope--e.g. "pali mi mute"
I've a strong intuition that some orders of modifiers are less likely to be misunderstood. If all hypothetical speakers chose an efficient ordering of modifiers, then we'd see a predictable ordering of modifiers of set phrases/ordinary modifiers/plural markers/negations/color words. But I haven't finished working my thought out on this matter. At least the wikipedia article seem to think that all of these are equal and can be shuffled. Furthermore, once there is a predictable order, then scoping falls into place, with or without the pi. Imho.

[janKipo]

Hmmm!. English, of course, does not avoid double negatives, it merely tends to classify them as colloquial or somehow substandard. On the other hand, I don't know a language in which double negatives are common, at least to the extent that I have ever noticed them. French negatives are rather convoluted, but not really double and I can't think of examples in German, Spanish, Latin, Greek or Sanskrit that clearly double (of course, all these languages are in my distant past, so I may have forgotten them -- but, on the other hand, I am a logician, so these things do tend to stick).

You maay be right about how negation works in tp, but I have not seen a speck of evidence for it, and until it happens, I am going to go along with the belief that it proceeds "normally". 'kulupu mama ala li sona ala e ni ala' works out to saying -- in a very complex way, that nobody in the family knew about that and dropping any one 'ala' means that somebody did.

I agree that there is an order of modifiers and that we don't really know ow it goes yet, but until the day that we do, we will stick with the grouping described, including the known exceptions.

[jan Ote]

I don't know a language in which double negatives are common, at least to the extent that I have ever noticed them.

In Slavic languages double negation is common and standard:
 EN: `I see nobody on the road', said Alice.
 PL: Nie widzę nikogo.
 CS: Nevidím nikoho.
 RU: Я не вижу никого.
 lit.: Not see+1sing.pres. nobody+acc. = I not see nobody.
There is no proper way to use single negation in sentences like this. If we use words like "nobody", then a grammar rule forces us to use negation for a verb too. If somebody tries to use
 PL: * Widzę nikogo
 CS: * Vidím nikoho
 RU: * Я вижу никого
 lit: I see nobody
then it's a glaring grammatical error - nobody speaks like this.
All my life I use double or even multiple negatives:
 Nikt mi nigdy nic nie mówi = lit.: Nobody to-me(dat) nothing never not tells.
 not [ exists t, exists p, exists s: in time t person p tells me s ]
This sentence is not only a proper one, but the most natural way for Polish speaker to express this. The same for Russian or Czech.

Said all these, I'm against double negation in toki pona. Double negation is awkward for people learning a new language and gives nothing.
So, I'm for:
 ali pi kulupu mama li sona ala e ni.
 Everybody of family not-know this.
or possibly
 ala pi kulupu mama li sona e ni.
 Nobody of family know this.

[janKipo]

Thanks; Slavic is out of my experience. It is good to know that this possibility is normal in a large language family. But, I agree, not in tp, which does not generally go in for redundant features and so makes a negative sentence by a single negation of the positive, rather than by a total recasting. Since this is not Lojlan, however, I can't help but wonder whether the multi-negation form could be used for emphatic expression (as it is in "colloquial" English), without forcing us to go into logical decomposition. An open possibility, I think.