simple, primitivist language
Christian Richard
Toki Pona
Toki Pona is a pidgin-like natural, simple language.
Natural, because it is meant to communicate basic human feelings,
actions, concepts, and the realities of everyday life.
Simple, because it reduces words and ideas to their most simple
meanings, avoiding unnecessary complexity. The entire language has
only 14 sounds and 150 words.
TOKI PONA:
http://www.geocities.com/marraskuu1978/tokipona/tokipona.html
Paul Davidson
simplicity is too simple? :)
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Paul Davidson
Christian Richard <christian.ri...@home.com> wrote in message
news:3b70cc8c...@news.yec1.on.wave.home.com...
dave odden
> How would you translate "tuque", "oxygen" or "database"? How much
> simplicity is too simple? :)
My guess is that "oxygen" would be something like "air which makes things
taste like fruit that is not good", and "database" would would be "place
which you cannot touch made of hot things where people put things that we
think are like pictures of things that they think they know". Really, this
is not such a simple language as you are assuming. The grammar says "Verbs
do not change for person", but note that the post-subject marker is employed
only with full NP subjects, hence jan li kama "the person comes" vs. mi
kama "I come". Clearly the language actually does have 1st and 2nd person
subject inflections, showing that the language is by no means trivial.
I was quite amazed to discover one fundamental principle of the language,
that adjectives have scope over all words that precede it: "...qualifiers
can be added after a noun. These are cumulative. That is, if we add a third
word, it will modify the sum meaning of all the previous ones, rather than
just the word that directly precedes it." Therefore it turns out that you
cannot say specifically "ears of the small dog", all you can say is "small
ears of the small dog", and a sentence like "small ears of the large dog"
should be as nonsensical as "large small ears of a dog". I have been looking
for years for a language where scope relations are computed irrespective of
constituency. I was wondering, then, if "The rat bit the dog of a small
child" really means "The mouse nibbled on the puppy of the small child".
Christian Richard
I really enjoy your comments.
Indeed, the language does have some "cons" which I have outlined in my
section "The Idea Behind Toki Pona"... for example:
- the inability to precisely express complex things like "databases"
and "oxygen". I would personally use "tomo sona" (house/place of
knowledge) "kon" (air, atmosphere) and "
- the need to learn syntax words like "li"
And to say "ears of the small dog":
lupa kute pi soweli lili
hole(s) hearing pi mammal small
ears of dog small.
There is a particle "pi", which rather loosely means "of"... it is
used to separate words to indicate that the last one modifies the
previous one and the sum of these then modifies the one before the
"pi".
Learning "pi" comes in lesson 8, which I have not yet put online =)
There is also a way of expressing parallel modifiers, with "en" = and.
jan suli en pona
person big and good
big, good person
which may have a slightly different meaning than
jan suli pona = good big-person, good leader, good adult
Christian Richard
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Oh and tuque would be "len lawa" = head clothing
Where is the marking "[+Canadian]"?
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Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Christian Richard
>
>Where is the marking "[+Canadian]"?
If one insists on marking it "Canadian," it would be "len lawa kanata"
or "len lawa pi ma kanata" =)
Paul Davidson
> My guess is that "oxygen" would be something like "air which makes things
> taste like fruit that is not good", and "database" would would be "place
> which you cannot touch made of hot things where people put things that we
> think are like pictures of things that they think they know".
Hey, I know people that talk like that in English. :)
Paul Davidson
Kjell Rehnstrom
In caso que ego ha ben comprendite le _pi_ es un poco simile al iranian
(perse) ezafe: -e- que etiam functiona como un specie de marcator de
genitivo e compositos. Un enormemente effective sorta de utensile
lingual.
Cellus