Non-imperative sentences without overt subjects
Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:35 pm
Prof. Quang’s original paper with a title somewhat like this focused on English “Screw you!” (or a variant), not imperative, because that would require “yourself” (as in the rhetorically different “Ah, go screw yourself”), but pretty clearly a sentence and lacking an overt subject. Quang called it a phocative and gave a detailed discussion (not without challenges since). But no similar expression has occurred in toki pona, nor one for which a similar explanation seems plausible. So this paper is about interjections, complete utterances which are not obviously sentences and pretty clearly lack anything that is a subject (or maybe are only subjects).
We can start with the “social glue” expressions, which are used to facilitate social interactions but bear virtually no meaning whatever. Uttering one of them is just performing a social act and discussion about what the words used in the the act are pointless (and usually fruitless as well). The exemplar here is ‘toki’, uttering which is a greeting, an acknowledgement of a community with another person. It is not directly related to talking, the root meaning of the word, since it functions fulling in the most tangential contacts (“hi ’n’ bye”). Any attempt to derive it from a current sentence is doomed to failure along many dimensions.
The same is largely true of ‘pona’, saying which is thanking someone for a contextually obvious aid, that is, it acknowledges the aid and indicates appreciation of it. As such, it might be expanded into a fuller expression, but none of the proposals have seemed at all plausible. “mi pana e pona tawa sina” and the like have got the situation turned around, since thanks is for what you did for me, not me for you and what I offer you is not an aid or even a particular good, merely an acknowledgement: ’sina pana e pona tawa mi. ni li pona tawa mi’ or so. But that is in no way a plausible grammatical source of the interjection.
The rarely used response by the thankee, also ‘pona’, “You’re welcome” or “Don’t mention it” or “Glad to help” or similar in English, is even more opaque as, indeed, is the content of the response: acknowledging the thanks, approving that the forms are followed through, modestly downplaying the act itself, and so on. The main function is to continue firming the social bonds, even if not particularly between these two people.
To the frustration of translators, this ‘pona’ is indistinguishable, in print at least, from another ‘pona’ which is merely a particular case of a more general pattern of comment on the present situation and which can be viewed without difficulty as a case of erosion of ‘ni li pona’. A classic case would be ‘sina pana e sitelen, tawa mi. pona!’ “Thanks (for the picture)” or “(The picture is) pretty”? At one time, the habit seems to have been to use terminal ‘a’ in the latter case, but this habit has faded in both directions: no ‘a’ then and ‘a’ with “Thanks”. Context, alas, does not always decide.
‘pakala’ looks like one of those reportive interjections “(This is a) disaster/mistake.”But that does not do justice -- even with all the psychophonetics -- to the frustration, ain, rage and so on embodied in this utterance. So, it is probably better to take it as another unanalyzable itemIt is not a part of the social glue, of course, since it serves mainly a private function, not involving other people .
‘ike mi’, is a report, to be sure, but also a confession and an apology. (This seems to be borrowed English usage, so suspect, but apparently established.) Thus, it is both social and personal, somewhere between ‘pona!’ and ‘pakala’ pragmatically.
Returning to the more purely social, we have ‘kama pona’ “Welcome!”, pragmatically related to ‘toki!’ but looking like the many eroded optatives, like ‘tenpo suno pona!’ It can’t be an optative’. of course, because the event, the kama, is known to have occurred, the occasion for the utterance. (It can’t be an imperative for the same reason, as well as because the event is not a voluntary action.) So perhaps it is reportative: “This is a good arrival”, “Your arrival is good”. But these fail to take in the social dimension, the enfolding of the recipient into the community. Thus, it seems best to take ‘kama pona’ as a separate unit, ona a par with ‘toki’, where welcoming consists of uttering the phrase, a completed speech act.
In a recent Bible translation, the question arose whether the same might be true of the English word “praise” and the toki pona ‘toki e pona {x}’. Can the act of praising someone consist simply of saying “praise him” ‘toki e pona {x}’, in an appropriate context? Anyone who has been in such a context can see that it clearly can. So we have another case of a self-defined speech act, where saying it is doing it. Unlike ‘kama pona’ or ‘toki’, however, the piece continues to function normally as well, so that we can say ‘ona li toki e pona {x}’ or even (for an interesting doublet) ‘o toki e pona {x}’ (as we cannot with ‘kama pona’ or ‘toki’).
A different sort of doublet, along the lines of that with ‘pona’, perhaps, occurs between eroded optatives and current comments. ‘tenpo sin pona’ can be equally an observation that it is a nice morning and a wish that the hearer’s morning be good: deeply ‘tenpo sin ni li pona’ (or ‘ni li tenpo sin pona’) and ‘o tenpo sin sina li pona’ and, as social glue, they work about equally well, so context is not always sufficient.
In addition to current comments are the observatives, that call attention to features of the environment held worthy of attention. We tend to think of dangers like “Fire!’ ‘seli!’ or “Bears!” ‘soweli!’, but they can be used to call attention to anything around. At least to plausible sources for such eroded sentences ‘x’ are ‘o lukin e x’ and ‘x li lon’, with the former preferred because of its immediacy.
Answers depend, of course, on prior questions and their full form is supplied by the matrix of the question. The core of ‘A x ala x B’ is replaced by ‘(x)ala’ or ‘x’. ‘seme’ in the question marks the spot for the answer, if you hold that the answer to a question is deeply a full sentence.
An emendations also fits into the matrix fo a previous utterance, to correct it or add to it: ‘ona kama’ ‘li kin’ amounts to ‘ona li kama’. ‘mi tawa ma tomo Toleto’ ’mi kin’ becomes ‘mi tu ll tawa ma tomo Toleto’. Sometimes the placement of the emendation is not automatic but is in principle solvable.
The main problematic forms of the general type being considered here are those social glue short wishes: “Good morning”, “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Birthday” and the like. We are all conscious that they are optative since we tend to extend them to ‘mi wile e ni tawa sina:’ and the like. And that also shows that we sense that they are deeply sentential. But this latter sense, combined with the bareness of of the form, leads to taking the whole as an imperative rather than an eroded optative. So ‘tawa pona’, “(may you) fare well” is presented as an impossible imperative ‘o tawa pona’(impossible since the wellness of the fairing is not voluntary). Rather it should be something like ‘o sina tawa pona’ or ‘o tawa sina li pona’ or even ‘o sina jo e tawa pona’ (This last is suspect since blatantly English and the sense of ‘jo’ as “experience, enjoy, etc.” doesn’t occur in other contexts.) Similar patterns are possible with most such cases, the ‘jo’ having the apparent advantage of always working and being easy to write rules for, though the rules are all mainly “get rid of ‘sina’ and all the particle-like pieces”.
This piece is preliminary and sketchy. I am sure there are many more cases to consider and many better suggestions about how to deal with specific cases. Comments of all sorts are eagerly sought.
We can start with the “social glue” expressions, which are used to facilitate social interactions but bear virtually no meaning whatever. Uttering one of them is just performing a social act and discussion about what the words used in the the act are pointless (and usually fruitless as well). The exemplar here is ‘toki’, uttering which is a greeting, an acknowledgement of a community with another person. It is not directly related to talking, the root meaning of the word, since it functions fulling in the most tangential contacts (“hi ’n’ bye”). Any attempt to derive it from a current sentence is doomed to failure along many dimensions.
The same is largely true of ‘pona’, saying which is thanking someone for a contextually obvious aid, that is, it acknowledges the aid and indicates appreciation of it. As such, it might be expanded into a fuller expression, but none of the proposals have seemed at all plausible. “mi pana e pona tawa sina” and the like have got the situation turned around, since thanks is for what you did for me, not me for you and what I offer you is not an aid or even a particular good, merely an acknowledgement: ’sina pana e pona tawa mi. ni li pona tawa mi’ or so. But that is in no way a plausible grammatical source of the interjection.
The rarely used response by the thankee, also ‘pona’, “You’re welcome” or “Don’t mention it” or “Glad to help” or similar in English, is even more opaque as, indeed, is the content of the response: acknowledging the thanks, approving that the forms are followed through, modestly downplaying the act itself, and so on. The main function is to continue firming the social bonds, even if not particularly between these two people.
To the frustration of translators, this ‘pona’ is indistinguishable, in print at least, from another ‘pona’ which is merely a particular case of a more general pattern of comment on the present situation and which can be viewed without difficulty as a case of erosion of ‘ni li pona’. A classic case would be ‘sina pana e sitelen, tawa mi. pona!’ “Thanks (for the picture)” or “(The picture is) pretty”? At one time, the habit seems to have been to use terminal ‘a’ in the latter case, but this habit has faded in both directions: no ‘a’ then and ‘a’ with “Thanks”. Context, alas, does not always decide.
‘pakala’ looks like one of those reportive interjections “(This is a) disaster/mistake.”But that does not do justice -- even with all the psychophonetics -- to the frustration, ain, rage and so on embodied in this utterance. So, it is probably better to take it as another unanalyzable itemIt is not a part of the social glue, of course, since it serves mainly a private function, not involving other people .
‘ike mi’, is a report, to be sure, but also a confession and an apology. (This seems to be borrowed English usage, so suspect, but apparently established.) Thus, it is both social and personal, somewhere between ‘pona!’ and ‘pakala’ pragmatically.
Returning to the more purely social, we have ‘kama pona’ “Welcome!”, pragmatically related to ‘toki!’ but looking like the many eroded optatives, like ‘tenpo suno pona!’ It can’t be an optative’. of course, because the event, the kama, is known to have occurred, the occasion for the utterance. (It can’t be an imperative for the same reason, as well as because the event is not a voluntary action.) So perhaps it is reportative: “This is a good arrival”, “Your arrival is good”. But these fail to take in the social dimension, the enfolding of the recipient into the community. Thus, it seems best to take ‘kama pona’ as a separate unit, ona a par with ‘toki’, where welcoming consists of uttering the phrase, a completed speech act.
In a recent Bible translation, the question arose whether the same might be true of the English word “praise” and the toki pona ‘toki e pona {x}’. Can the act of praising someone consist simply of saying “praise him” ‘toki e pona {x}’, in an appropriate context? Anyone who has been in such a context can see that it clearly can. So we have another case of a self-defined speech act, where saying it is doing it. Unlike ‘kama pona’ or ‘toki’, however, the piece continues to function normally as well, so that we can say ‘ona li toki e pona {x}’ or even (for an interesting doublet) ‘o toki e pona {x}’ (as we cannot with ‘kama pona’ or ‘toki’).
A different sort of doublet, along the lines of that with ‘pona’, perhaps, occurs between eroded optatives and current comments. ‘tenpo sin pona’ can be equally an observation that it is a nice morning and a wish that the hearer’s morning be good: deeply ‘tenpo sin ni li pona’ (or ‘ni li tenpo sin pona’) and ‘o tenpo sin sina li pona’ and, as social glue, they work about equally well, so context is not always sufficient.
In addition to current comments are the observatives, that call attention to features of the environment held worthy of attention. We tend to think of dangers like “Fire!’ ‘seli!’ or “Bears!” ‘soweli!’, but they can be used to call attention to anything around. At least to plausible sources for such eroded sentences ‘x’ are ‘o lukin e x’ and ‘x li lon’, with the former preferred because of its immediacy.
Answers depend, of course, on prior questions and their full form is supplied by the matrix of the question. The core of ‘A x ala x B’ is replaced by ‘(x)ala’ or ‘x’. ‘seme’ in the question marks the spot for the answer, if you hold that the answer to a question is deeply a full sentence.
An emendations also fits into the matrix fo a previous utterance, to correct it or add to it: ‘ona kama’ ‘li kin’ amounts to ‘ona li kama’. ‘mi tawa ma tomo Toleto’ ’mi kin’ becomes ‘mi tu ll tawa ma tomo Toleto’. Sometimes the placement of the emendation is not automatic but is in principle solvable.
The main problematic forms of the general type being considered here are those social glue short wishes: “Good morning”, “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Birthday” and the like. We are all conscious that they are optative since we tend to extend them to ‘mi wile e ni tawa sina:’ and the like. And that also shows that we sense that they are deeply sentential. But this latter sense, combined with the bareness of of the form, leads to taking the whole as an imperative rather than an eroded optative. So ‘tawa pona’, “(may you) fare well” is presented as an impossible imperative ‘o tawa pona’(impossible since the wellness of the fairing is not voluntary). Rather it should be something like ‘o sina tawa pona’ or ‘o tawa sina li pona’ or even ‘o sina jo e tawa pona’ (This last is suspect since blatantly English and the sense of ‘jo’ as “experience, enjoy, etc.” doesn’t occur in other contexts.) Similar patterns are possible with most such cases, the ‘jo’ having the apparent advantage of always working and being easy to write rules for, though the rules are all mainly “get rid of ‘sina’ and all the particle-like pieces”.
This piece is preliminary and sketchy. I am sure there are many more cases to consider and many better suggestions about how to deal with specific cases. Comments of all sorts are eagerly sought.