Writing System?

[janKipo]

Uffdah! This all raises an interesting question: does 'mi lukin pona' mean "I see well" or "I look good (i.e., am handsome or at least healthy looking)?
Surely, "I look at myself" is 'mi lukin e sama' (with all the questions this can raise).
The "try to" sense of 'lukin' (not so plausible now that we have 'alasa') pretty clearly does not apply here, but only on content grounds
How 'sama' works as a verb has not been tested much, I think, but I would expect what the subject seems to be would be the object, not a complement (which are pretty rare), or a verbal -- rather than nominal -- complement.
But then, the lessons do suggest that complements are more common than appears in the corpus, since it seems to solve the "about" problem with complements (and thus adds half a dozen verbs at least)
The 'e ni:' construction corresponds exactly (including connection choice) to the English "that" construction for indirect discourse, so stretching it to other cases is tricky, although using 'ni' to serve as a connection to cover relative clauses is useful, but follows a different pattern.
'kama' takes a VP complement, but not, apparently, a NP one; where you come to in the literal motion sense is introduced by 'tawa'.
'sama' is also a preposition, so one question here is whether it is one here (in which case there would be no 'e'). If it were, it would modify 'ni lukin' as a way of seeing, which doesn't seem to be right, so on the whole, it looks the sentence (with Josan's correction) is pretty much right as it stands -- unless 'sama ...' is itself the object rather than an adverb here. I don't know how to decide that one.

[jan Josan]

There is precedent for using sama this way, but I realize I missed something - there should be no 'e':

ni li lukin sama sitelen pi ilo MSpaint.

For a good discussion on sama used this way look for jan-ante's post "sama-same as" where he discusses this common mistake.

[janMato]

There is precedent for using sama this way, but I realize I missed something - there should be no 'e':

ni li lukin sama sitelen pi ilo MSpaint.

For a good discussion on sama used this way look for jan-ante's post "sama-same as" where he discusses this common mistake.

Ah, yeah. Equalize/equals. Once "ijo li sama e ijo" means "something equals/equalizes something", it's hard to read "li sama e ijo" as anything else.

Maybe the direction this is heading in is that all sorts of words will eventually take an unmarked complement and when it does so, it will have a different meaning. What the lexicon can't provide, the grammar must expand to provide. Trying this out with an few candidate, it seems to be productive, if one doesn't mind a lack of precedent.

mi jo kili. I fruit-have./I'm setting aside in my inventory some food.
mi jo e kili. I have (a piece of) fruit.
mi toki kili. I talk about fruit.
mi toki e kili. I talked a fruit (to stick out ones tongue?)
mi sama kili. I'm like a fruit.
mi sama e kili. I'm the same as a fruit/I equalize(weight?) the fruit.
mi moku kili. I fruit-eat./I'm dieting.
mi moku e kili. I ate (a piece of) fruit.
mi pali kili. I fruit-worked. I raised fruit. I farmed fruit.
mi pali e kili. I processed the fruit.
mi awen kili. I'm canning or preserving food.
mi awen e kili. I await the fruit's (arrival)

It's almost like this started out as a predicate thing, eg. S li PP for static things, then became generalized to prepositions of motion (to/into with the implication of motion), then to metaphorical propositions of motion (kama, come to be), and finally it is just another way to express the complement of a verb. Unmarked juxtapositions though, in my opinion make the language harder. Toki pona could dispense with li and e both and still be intelligible, just harder to parse with more garden paths.

[jan Ote]

Uffdah! This all raises an interesting question: does 'mi lukin pona' mean "I see well" or "I look good (i.e., am handsome or at least healthy looking)?

ona li pona lukin. -- She's good visually, pretty, beautiful. (jan Pije's Lesson 3, 9; Dict: Body)
ona li pona unpa. -- He is sexy, good in bed. (Dict: Sex)
ona li pona moku. -- It is good to eat, tasty, delicious. (jan Pije's Lesson 14; Dict: Food)
(Dict - an old set of official thematic dictionaries, now entries are to be found in wiki drafts)

oko sina li pona lukin -- you have beautiful eyes
oko mi li lukin pona -- my eyes see well

[janMato]

Uffdah! This all raises an interesting question: does 'mi lukin pona' mean "I see well" or "I look good (i.e., am handsome or at least healthy looking)?

ona li pona lukin. -- She's good visually, pretty, beautiful. (jan Pije's Lesson 3, 9; Dict: Body)...

Which leads back to the original question,
She seems (to the eye to be) beautiful.
? ona li pona sama. Has a strong reading of, she washes herself.

She seems (to the eye to be) sexy.
? ona li unpa sama. She is sex-like. Also has a dangerous meaning of, she's screwing herself, she's a/my sex partner (derivational paraphrasis). No one could safely use this is polite speech.

It seems (to the eye to be) delicious.
? ona li moku sama. It eats itself. It is eating itself. (unlikely, unless it is "on it's own"--emphatic reflexive) It is food-like. It is a side dish (derivational paraphrasis of the brother/sister/coworker sort).

[jan Ote]

? ona li moku sama. It eats itself. It is eating itself.

ona li moku e ona [sama].

To make your idea more clear, you can use the modifiers sama "same" and ante "different". Compare:
mama li telo e ona sama. -- The mother washes herself. (same person)
mama li telo e ona ante. -- The mother washes him or her. (somebody else)

It is food-like.

ona li sama moku. -- It is like a food, resembles food.

[jan Josan]

I understood where you were going with sama as reflexive before, but not in these cases.

She seems (to the eye to be) beautiful.
? ona li pona sama. Has a strong reading of, she washes herself.

A. ona li pona lukin. she is [pona- stative verb:good] [lukin- mod:visually] she is visually good
B. ona li pona sama. -- she is [pona- active verb:fixing, improving] [sama: mod: self] she is self fixing.
C. ona li pona sama X. she is [pona- stative verb:good][sama- preposition: equivalent to][X obj. of preposition] she is pona, same as X is pona
example: ona li pona, sama meli sama. --> (pona ona)==(pona pi meli sama) she is good, like sister
D. ona li sama pona. she is [sama- preposition/stative verb: equivalent to][pona, object of preposition]. she is the same as goodness.

She seems (to the eye to be) sexy.
? ona li unpa sama. She is sex-like. Also has a dangerous meaning of, she's screwing herself, she's a/my sex partner (derivational paraphrasis). No one could safely use this is polite speech.

A. ona li unpa lukin.
B. ona li unpa sama. (you can add this to your tp swear list: "o unpa sama!"
C. ona li unpa lukin, sama meli sama.
D. ona li sama unpa.

It seems (to the eye to be) delicious.
? ona li moku sama. It eats itself. It is eating itself. (unlikely, unless it is "on it's own"--emphatic reflexive) It is food-like. It is a side dish (derivational paraphrasis of the brother/sister/coworker sort).

A. ona li moku lukin.
B. ona li moku sama.
C. ona li moku, sama kili.
D. ona li sama moku.

a while back jan Kipo had suggested some prepositions could be separated with commas for clarity. I ended up doing this here because it does seem to help. Especially if we were going to try something like:
ona li pona, sama meli sama ona. (she is good like her sister).

[jan Josan]

Now that I see jan Ote's entry, I think my B.s might be wrong-- Is the reflexive transitive or not?

she washes herself:
ona li telo sama.
or
ona li telo e ona sama.

I can't find the original examples for this-- jan Mato didn't you recently post some links?

[janKipo]

I see 'sama' needs some work, even beyond rereading the lessons. For the nonce, I am going to go with 'sama' in the relexive sense as being the DO in all cases (if not the modifier on a pronominal DO) and will extend the range of NP complements (and VP for that matter) very slowly, if at all. So far, the former go only with Prepositions and the latter only with Modals, with some possibility of extending NPs to the propositional predicate (that normally take sentences as objects) for the "about" question.

[jan Tawi]

Just wondering if you could simply use "sama la" to express the idea.

sama la ona li lukin pona.
"seemingly" she is good-looking.

Just a thought, though, since I haven't been following TP's developement for quite some time; so I'm not sure if 'la' is a productive word to express new meanings... anyhow I think it's quite comfortable to pull out 'sama' and put it in front of the sentence; it makes the rest of the sentence easier.