Toki Pona/Parts of speech and function

Nouns Nouns are nouns primarily on account of where they appear in a sentence. Almost any content word can be used as a noun. Individual nouns exhibit no internal structure, and all noun processes are done at the phrase level. Noun phrases have the following basic structure: head modifier possessor (pi noun-phrase) Pronouns mi and sina mi is the first person pronoun in Toki Pona, and sina the second person pronoun. These pronouns are worth considering separately from the others because their meaning is resolved by context and doesn't refer to anything mentioned earlier. Both of these pronouns at times take modifiers, usually ale (sometimes ali), mute, or tu. Additionally, li never occurs after either of them if they are the only subject and aren't being modified. ona ona is often described as a third person pronoun in Toki Pona. This pronoun can be anaphora for anything mentioned, to be mentioned or in context. Unlike languages like Chinese, which use a similar pronoun, this word can't be dropped entirely. In Toki Pona, the subject can never be dropped. This results in ona sometimes being used as a dummy pronoun. ona sometimes takes modifiers, usually mije, meli, and mute. waso pi tawa wawa li tan ma Oselija. ona li suli li ken ala tawa lon kon. This can be translated as "The emu (lit. the bird of powerful movement) is from Australia. It is large and flightless (lit. cannot travel in air)." ni ni is often described as a demonstrative pronoun in Toki Pona. ni is usually translated as "this" or "that" and is supposed to indicate the anaphora used when pointing, say with a finger. Because Toki Pona is almost never used in face-to-face situations, the word is used much the same as ona, except that it can refer to an entire sentence or clause, whereas ona cannot and primarily refers to a noun phrase. jan Sali li lon tomo pali mi. ni li ike tawa mi. This can be translated as "Sally is at my office (lit. my building of work). This is bad for me." Noun Markers In Toki Pona, noun markers are used to distinguish the roles of words in a sentence. There are two particles which mark nouns, and a specific class of words that marks indirect objects. en The particle en introduces the subject of a sentence. It is omitted before the first subject, but must occur before every other subject of a sentence. en mi moku. This sentence is grammatically incorrect. Instead, one would need to say "mi moku." mi en sina li moku. This sentence can be translated as "You and I eat." Here, en introduces an additional subject to the sentence (sina). e The particle e introduces direct objects. Unlike en, e is always used before every direct object. mi moku e pan. This can be translated as "I eat bread." Here, e introduces the direct object pan to the sentence. Prepositions In Toki Pona, there is a set of five words that can act as prepositions: kepeken, lon, sama, tan and tawa. As discussed in the section on prepositional verbs, prepositions can act as verbs, however prepositions more commonly are used to introduce indirect objects. mi moku e pan kepeken ilo. This can be translated as "I eat the pizza using a fork." Here, kepeken introduces the indirect object ilo. Verbs Verb phrases appear immediately after the word li or after a subject that is only an unmodified mi or sina. Verbs have no internal structure, and all verb processes are dealt with at the phrase level. Verbs can be intransitive, transitive, or prepositional. Additionally, intransitive verbs (or transitive verbs with both a direct and indirect object) can also act as verbal adjectives. All verbs can increase their valence by adding objects or prepositional phrases. Verb phrases have the following basic structure: [li] preverb head modifier (pi noun-phrase) Intransitive Intransitive sentences consist solely of a subject and verb. jan li moku. This can be translated as "The person eats." Alternatively, it could be translated as "The person is edible," where moku acts as a verbal adjective, meaning "to be edible." Transitive Transitive sentences consist of a subject, verb, and at least one object. jan li moku e kili. This can be translated as "The person eats fruit." kili li moku tawa waso. This can be translated as "The fruit is for the birds." Alternatively, it could be translated as "The fruit is food for birds," where moku acts as a verbal adjective, meaning "to be food." Prepositional In Toki Pona, prepositions constitute a unique class of words. While these words can be used like regular verbs, the word e doesn't need to be used for direct objects they take. However, this does affect the meaning the words have. Additionally, instead of reduplicating li or e for prepositional verbs, the preposition used is instead reduplicated, but this does result in some ambiguity, as the preposition can be analyzed as a separate indirect object. jan li tawa ma ante. This can be translated as "The person goes to another country." jan li tawa esun tawa tomo sewi. This can be translated as "The person goes to the market and church." Alternatively, this can be translated as "The person goes to the market for the church," where the phrase tawa tomo sewi is analyzed as a separate prepositional phrase from the verb. Preverbs Preverbs, also called auxiliary or serial verbs, go between li and the head verb. They can change the grammatical mood, tense, and/or aspect of the verb. See Mood for more on these verbs. jan li ken pali. This can be translated as "The person can work," where ken gives the head-verb pali an abilitative or permissive mood. Verb Markers In Toki Pona, verb markers are used to distinguish the roles of words in a sentence. Unlike those which mark nouns, verb markers change to mark modality instead of grammatical function. Verbs must have a marker, except for certain circumstances. li The particle li introduces an indicative verb. It is omitted after a single subject which is either an unmodified mi or sina. ona li moku. This can be translated as "It eats." Here, li marks that the verb is in the indicative mood. o o'''s meaning varies depending on the presence of a subject. If there is no subject, the verb's modality is imperative. Otherwise, o can mark both the imperative and optative moods. Unlike li, o is never omitted. When o has an omitted subject, an implied sina is treated as the actual subject.o pali!This can be translated as "Work!" Here, it's implied that someone is being addressed and that this is a command.jan Sali o pali.This can be translated as "Sally should work," or "Sally, work." Here, the addressee is specified, and thus isn't necessarily a command. Verb Operations Verb operations are done entirely at the lexical or periphrastic level. Agreement Verb phrases don't change to agree with the subject. For example: jan li pali. — The person works. jan mute li pali. — The people work. jan mute li pali mute. — The people work a lot.Similarly, verb phrases don't change to agree with the object either. For example: jan li pali e tomo. — The person builds a house. jan li pali e tomo mute. — The person builds several houses. jan li pali mute e tomo mute. — The person builds several houses a lot. Valence To increase valence, verbs can hypothetically take an infinite amount of subjects and objects, but subjects are always obligatory, except for some specific circumstances (see o), and objects, however, are never actually obligatory, unless the verb is prepositional. For example: mi moli. — I die. or I kill [something]. mi moli e jan. — I kill a person.Reflexive pronouns and reciprocals can't dispense with the direct object. They can be replaced with sama as anaphora. jan li lukin e sama. — The person saw themself. mije en meli li lukin e sama. — The man and woman saw each other. TAM Tense Tense is represented using either la or prepositional phrases, and often uses the word tenpo modified by pini, ni, or kama for the past, present or future, respectively. A characteristic activity or quality of a time can alternatively be used to mark the time or tense. tenpo ni la jan li pali. — Now, the people are working. tenpo pali la jan li pali ala. — The people weren't working during their normal work hours. Aspect Aspect is sometimes expressed through modifiers to the main verb or preverbs.jan li pali pini e pali ona. — The person completed their work.jan li pini pali. — The person finished working. Mood Mood is usually expressed through preverbs and the particles li and o. jan li ken pali. — The person can work. jan li wile pali. — The person wants to work. jan o pali. — The person should work. Negation Verbs are negated by placing ala after the verb.jan li pali. — The person works.jan li pali ala. — The person doesn't work. Modifiers Most words in Toki Pona can act as modifiers. Modifiers of nouns and verbs can have slightly different meanings, but are usually relatively similar. Modifiers always come after their head word. Adjectives Adjectives in Toki Pona can be defined as the modifier of any noun, which means that any word can be an adjective.mi lon tomo suli.This can be translated as "I'm at the large building." Here, suli is acting as an adjective of tomo, modifying its meaning. Adverbs Adverbs are less common compared to adjectives, but they function exactly the same way.mi jo pona e poki mi.This can be translated as "I firmly grasp (lit. hold well) my purse." Here, pona is acting as an adverb of jo, modifying its meaning. pi The particle pi in Toki Pona is used to change the order of modification in a phrase. Everything before pi is treated like its own morpheme, and everything after as a separate morpheme. pi requires at least 2 words to follow it to be grammatical.mi wile e kili pi laso telo.This can be translated as "I want the blue (lit. watery green-blue) fruit." However, the sentence takes a somewhat different meaning without pi:mi wile e kili laso telo.This can be translated as "I want the blue-green fruit of the sea." Numerals and Quantifiers Numerals and quantifiers function almost exactly the same as modifiers. There are many competing number systems, none of which are dominant in usage, which makes it difficult to determine what are numerals and quantity words. The three most prevalent systems are those presented in Toki Pona: The Language of Good (for brevity: "the pu methods") and nasin nanpa pona (often abbreviated to nnp, lit. "the good number method"), which can all be used to define this category. There are a few words for approximate amounts, which are relatively common and appear more often than specific numbers, and which are universal to all number systems: lili: few, little, not many mute: many, multiple, several ale or ali: all, every, whole; bountiful, plentiful The pu Methods There are two official counting systems presented in Toki Pona: The Language of Good, which are listed below under the monikers "Simple" and "Complex." Simple In the simple system, there are just five words to express any quantity: ala: nothing, zero wan: one tu: two mute: many (any quantity above two) ale or ali: everything, infinity Complex The complex system is additive, and has a similar count of just five words to express any quantity: wan: one tu: two luka: five mute: twenty ale or ali: one hundred nasin nanpa pona nasin nanpa pona, like the complex system, is additive and uses the same basic words for quantity, though it has one more and much more complex ways to express numbers: ala (X): zero wan (W): one tu (T): two luka (L): five mute (M): twenty ale or ali (A): one hundred In nasin nanpa pona, ala can be used not only to represent the number zero, but also like a decimal point. For example, wan ala wan represents 1.01. To represent a negative number, weka can be placed before the number, as in weka tu, which represents -2. Unlike the other number words in nasin nanpa pona, ale (or ali) must be preceded by the amount of times it appears in the number to have a numerical meaning, i.e., wan ale for 100, tu ale for 200, but just ale doesn't have a numerical meaning. Additionally, instead of being added together, all ale in a number are multiplied with the whole number before it, so tu ale ale ale represents 2,000,000. Numbers in nasin nanpa pona may become quite large if fully written out, as in the number tu tu ale ale luka ale tu wan ala mute luka tu, which represents 4,000,503.27. nasin nanpa pona uses abbreviations in these situations (represented by the letters in parentheses in the number list), which means that the given number could be rewritten as TTAALATWXMLT. weka is not abbreviated with the number, so weka tu would become weka T. Semiparticles Toki Pona has a set of a few words which have both normal content meaning and special particle meaning. These are called semiparticles or pseudo-particles. ala ala as a regular content word refers to nothingness, and as a numeral zero. As a particle however, it negates things. ala acting as a particle vs. as a regular content word is often difficult to determine, especially as ala is often used as a modifier, and as a particle appears in the same placement as modifiers. However, ala can occur in special positions that regular modifiers could not, such as after prepositions but outside of the prepositional phrase, or between preverbs and their head. kin kin often acts as a modifier, meaning "too" or "also." However, sentence-initially (optionally with la), kin acts as a conjunction, roughly equivalent to "and." nanpa nanpa as a content word refers to numbers or counting, but as a particle marks ordinal numbers. For example, "soweli tu" roughly means "two animals," while "soweli nanpa tu" roughly means "the second animal." taso As a content word, taso means "only" or "alone." However, like kin, it can occur at the beginning of a sentence as a conjunction, meaning something like "however." la In Toki Pona, la is a very versatile particle. la is often described as a "context-marker," and typically acts as a conjunction, prepending adjuncts to an independent clause. These adjuncts can mark the topic — the spatial and/or temporal location, a condition, the speaker or the source used — to the independent clause. It can also prepend converb-like words or noun-phrases to the independent clause. Usually, the dependent clause connected by la to the independent clause is called a la-phrase. Topic Marking Location la can often mark the location of an action in both space and time. The preposition lon can optionally be placed before the location, however this is viewed as mostly redundant in most circumstances.ma Sonko la jan mute li toki kepeken toki Sonko.This can be translated as "In the People's Republic of China (the Republic of China is often referred to as ma Tawan instead), many people speak using Mandarin." Here, the spatial location is an adjunct which could instead be said as lon ma Sonko at the end of the sentence.tenpo lili la mi ken moku.This can be translated as "In a little while (lit. small time), I'll be able to eat." Here, the temporal location is an adjunct which could instead be said as lon tenpo lili at the end of the sentence. Condition In Toki Pona, conditions are treated as context, and are rather difficult to separate from the clause they are dependent on.mi moku mute la mi wile lape.This can be translated as "If I eat a lot, then I'll want to rest." Here, the phrase mi moku mute is a condition. Hypothetically, the sentence could be rephrased to "mi wile lape tan ni: mi moku mute." However, this is more likely to be read as "I want to rest, because I ate a lot," where mi moku mute is not a condition but instead a cause. Speaker la can be used to mark the speaker of a sentence in mainly two ways: simply saying the speaker's name (or a pronoun that refers to the speaker), or using a full sentence.soweli la mu.This can be translated as "The animal said 'moo.'" Here, the speaker is marked in the la-phrase, while what the speaker says appears in the independent clause. Additionally, mu is an interjection, which is why there isn't a verb to make the independent clause a full sentence.jan li toki la "mi lon tomo".This can be translated as "The person said 'I'm home.'" Here, the speaker is marked in the la-phrase using a full sentence, while what the speaker says comes afterwards. This kind of phrasing is much rarer, and often instead speakers will use the following phrasing: speaker [li] toki e ni: "quote". Source la-phrases can also be used to show the source of a claim in much the same way as the speaker.lipu pu la nimi "ale" en nimi "ali" li sama.This can be translated as "According to Toki Pona: The Language of Good, the words 'ale' and 'ali' are the same." Here, the source is within the la-phrase, while the sourced information is in the independent clause. Converbs la can occasionally be used to show that the dependent clause functions like a converb, as in the following examples: ante la: alternatively, instead, otherwise ken la: hypothetically, maybe, possibly kin la'': additionally, also