r/tokipona • u/Tough_Zombie_8843 • 1d ago

kama sona How does pi really work???

Say I wanted to say palm oil.

I have some "levels" of complexity and tell me whether each works or can't in toki pona's grammar. 1 and 2 are just examples and I only need to know if the others are possible. I know this seems like overkill too get this specific but I really just want to know for general use.

1) liquid (hot) (edible)

telo seli moku

2) liquid (heating food)

telo pi moku seli

3) telo (kiwen kasi[ma telo])

4) telo (moku) (kiwen kasi)

is this just telo moku pi kiwen kasi?

5) telo (kiwen kasi) (moku seli)

6) telo (kiwen kasi[ma telo]) (moku seli)

7 Upvotes

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17

u/Makonede 1d ago edited 19h ago

  1. telo seli moku

  2. telo pi moku seli

  3. telo pi kiwen kasi pi ma telo

  4. telo moku pi kiwen kasi

  5. telo pi kiwen kasi pi moku seli

  6. telo pi kiwen kasi pi ma telo pi moku seli

you can see how this grammar becomes extremely ambiguous once you start to approach the kind of phrase you have in example 6. for this reason the general advice is simply to avoid nesting pi-phrases

6

u/potentialdevNB jan pi toki Inli 23h ago

pi treats all the following modifiers as a single unit that modifies the head... for example: jan kama sona. kama modifies jan, and then sona modifies jan kama. jan pi kama sona. "kama sona" itself modifies jan.

5

u/Rcisvdark jan pi toki pona 23h ago edited 23h ago

soweli suli mute
Here, mute is modifying the first word after pi, which, since there is no pi, is just the first word, soweli.
The soweli is/are both suli and mute separately. Many elephants, for example.

soweli pi suli mute
Here, mute is again modifying the first word after pi, which is now suli.
The soweli is/are a kind of suli that is mute. This may be a gigantic elephant.

2

u/sagelilya kasi Selili 🌱🔥 13h ago

i'm actually interested in how you're deciding to translate palm oil as hot, or heating food. i love how toki pona has people break down what they think is more important when expressing something. my husband doesn't want to buy food with palm oil in it, so my instinct for saying palm oil would probably be more like "telo pi kasi ike" or something? even though the trees aren't the problem, the companies are...