FAQ 11 How do you say directions in toki pona?

The basics are easy.
"in front' is 'lon sinpin'
"behind" is 'lon monsi'
"above" is 'lon sewi'
"below" is 'lon anpa'
"to the side" is lon poka'

Ah, but which side, left or right?  For most of the history of tp, the argument has raged between the heart people and the hand people.  The hand people want to name "right" for the dominant hand, 'luka wawa' or 'luka lawa' or even 'luka pona' and "left" getting the negation (or 'ike' in the last case).  Lefties are not too fond of this and are a sizable portion of the population, so they object.  Heart people want to name left for the crucial organ that is (more or less) on that side:  'pona pilin' or 'pona ilo' or some other word for "heart" (all equally dubious).  But dexterocardia, while not as common as left-handedness, is still significant and those people objected to getting left with the negations again.  Some other suggestions were offered, but they all turned out to be disguised forms of one of these ('open' for"right" because I is the side you start on -- but the is because you are right-handed, for example).  Or totally arbitrary, like 'akesi' for "right" and 'wile' for "left" (or the other way around).

What was needed was something universal in tp culture by tied to the two sides.  But tp doens't have much culture, let alone universals.  Except that it is written from left to right in (a part of)  the Latin alphabet.  So, the left hadn't side is the side where writing starts, 'open', and the right is where it ends, 'pini' and no one is offended  (To b sure, there are codes for tp which run in other directions, but they are just that, codes, not the language itself.)  So,
"on the left" = 'lon poka open'
"on the right" = 'lon pona pini'
(USA users will note that this fits with the rule of thumb "Righty tighty, lefty loosy" for faucets.  It doesn't always work elsewhere.)

If we move from personal orientation to geographical, we again have some easy cases:
"East" = (ma pi) kama/open (suno)
"West" = (ma pi) weka/pini (suno)
('suno sin' had some traction for "East", but 'suno pi sin ala' seemed to long for "West"

Given the fuss about "left" and "right" and not offending anyone, one would expect "North"  and "South" to be problems.  But from earliest times the equation has been the boreocentric
"North" = 'lete'
"South" = 'seli'
Antipodeans, be damned!

These words are now so entrenched in the corpus that there seems little hope of uprooting them.  Nor has there been a real clear plan to do so, despite the objection to this situation.  Probably the best was to use the (far from universal) mapping convention, making North the top of the map ('semi/lawa') and South the bottom ('anpa/noka'). "But Chinese maps...".  (There was a version of this for the left/right problem, getting "left" from "West" and "right" from "East" -- another source of 'open'"right" suggestion and as flawed.).  A rather more elaborate scheme, a version of "the Deccan is on the right facing the rising sun", was to align the map 'open' and the personal one and then read "North" ('monsi') and "South" ('sinpin') off that.  Clever and coherent, but it means that the words for "North" and "South" are already direction words and the possibility for confusion is enormous.  Is 'tawa sinpin' "straight ahead" or "south"?  No other proposal has fared as well. 

toki pi kama pi jan kiwen *183*

jan Kaken en jan Lolen li pana e sin.  ona li tawa noka lon nasin lon ma tomo Metopoli li kute e a ni: "a. o pana e pona."  jan Lolen li tawa wawa tawa kalama ni.  jan Kaken li toki e ni. "mi tawa ilo toki li pana e sin tawa jan selo.  ona li kama  tawa insa pi tomo pi ilo toki la ona li weka e len ona li kama jan kiwen.li pana e sama tawa sewi li kama tawa tan a.








o lukin sewi.  ni li walo. ala. ni li tomo tawa kon.  ala. ni li jan kiwen

tp FAQ 9 What is the point of toki pona?

What is the point of tp?

Well, first and foremost, it is fun and exhilarating.  You can learn a language in a few days and become a master at it in a few weeks! You are challenged to express yourself in new ways.  If you  meet those challenge, you have the thrill of triumph. If you don't, no harm done and try again.     Then challenged again to do it in ways that not only satisfy you but are understood by others.  You see new connections and new meanings in old experiences as you express them in a new language.  And, perhaps, you see more clearly and shed some baggage in the process.  All pleasant and exciting.

But once you get into the language, you want to work with it according to your personality and interests.  One common path, associated with writers and anthropologists in various ways, is to reconstruct or imagine the culture and life of the native speakers of the language, based on the language, surface and deep.  Different people may come up with different societies and lives, of course, but each has to account for various facts about the language.  For example, the negative words outnumber the positive  (ike, jaki, pakala, moli, monsuta versus pona, olin, musi, for one list).  Nature words are not very precise, but neither are the words of advanced technologies, nor even of agriculture.  Commercial words are limited to one that still means "flock" and another for barter. The family is present and apparently important but society beyond that is unclear, though the presence of coercion is suggested by 'wile', while other factors suggest egalitarianism.  Here, then, is a field for creative work (all the factors mentioned can be emphasized or explained away, for instance).  

Closely related to this use in theory but very different in practice is applying tp in everyday life here and now.  Try to describe and interact in your present situation using only the basics of tp.  In the process, you may notice that some things that seemed important in English disappear or that overlooked factors rise to prominence.  In particular, things stressed by social custom may be downplayed, physical realities may assume a more pressing role.  Or the opposite may appear.  In particular, your examination of your own role and actions may take on a new light, and, correspondingly, so may those of others toward you.   Generally, whatever it may be, your life takes on a new perspective, in which your action take on a different value, even different possibilities.  

Or, rather than an artlang or a pyschlang, you may think of tp as an engilang, designed to see how much one can do with how little content and structure.  The aim then is to be able to say in tp anything you can say in English (or whatever) and in a reasonably economical fashion.  This is not merely  -- or not even -- a matter of finding tp expressions for all English words.  It is rather a matter of saying in context in tp whatever can be said in a similar context in English and in a not too terribly more complex way.  This involves a long-term effort, for building a context for a particular piece often involves building at least the skeleton of a literary tradition (romantic poetry, quantum physics, crime reports, ...) on which to build the particular case. Presumably, one occasionally finds a brick wall that (at least for now) no one can see a way around.  One has then either to propose some addition to tp (large number -- bigger than three, say -- spring to mind) or set the topic aside as presently unachievable, and, in either case,  note the discovery of an (apparent) limitation.   

I pass over the use to tp as an auxlang, since no one seems to press for that and there obvious problems that offset it ease for learning.  

So, here are three uses for tp.

And fun, of course.  

FAQ 8 How does toki pona deal with large quantities?

Short answer: use 'mute'.  You can expand to 'mute mute' or 'mute suli'  but you don't need to. except maybe for comparisons.

Much longer answer:
Basic toki pona has two numbers, 'wan' and 'tu', from English.  Early on, it has two more, 'tuli' and 'po', also from English.  These were dropped very early, presumably as unneeded. It is not clear why the Daoist advice, "stop off at One," was not heeded, giving just 'ala'. 'wan' and 'mute' for quantities.  But 'tu' remains and anything larger than that is strictly 'mute'.

But, against one sort of toki pona philosophy, people would notice and be concerned with details: four is more than three and five more than either, not differences to be lost in 'mute'.  So toki pona came to allow strings of numbers which together made new numbers.  In particular, 'tu's could be strung out, with a 'wan' at the end for odd numbers, to designate the sum of the string: 'tu wan' 3, 'tu tu' 4, 'tu tu wan' 5, and so on.  In print, this technique can eventually represent any number, of course, but practically, and especially in spoken language, the intelligible limit, under the best circumstances, is 14 (max 5+/- 2 'tu's), not enough for a toki poner to give their age, even.

As a result, in this already suspect idiom, larger units were adopted.  The first, from very early, was 'luka' (relevantly "hand") for 5.  This usage is totally standard, tough officially deprecated occasionally.  In the construction of new numbers, the 'luka's come before the 'tu's, with the lone 'wan' still at the end, if at all (but no longer uniformly marking odd numbers). This extends the reasonable numbers to 35, though 33 and 34, don't quite make the limit.   This covers most toki poner's ages now, probably, but leaves little room for growth or geezers.

Aside from its historical allusions, the choice of 'luka' was wise, since 'luka', as "foreleg, hand"  would never in the normal run of conversation appear in a place where numbers do. Thus, no ambiguities were added in effect.  But the proposed solution to the limits of the 'luka' system, adding 'mute' 20 and 'ale' 100, immediately adds ambiguities -- and ones context often cannot readily break, since both these words are already quantity expressions, going exactly where numbers might also go.  But, in fact, they generally occur as numbers in strings of numbers, where "all" and "many" would not go, so the effect is actually rather minor.  These additions bring reasonable numbers up to 140 and then 700, now with several gaps in each case.  The order is still from largest to smallest: 'ale mute luka tu wan'.  This is as far as official or even generally agreed expressions go.

So, here speculation begins -- and has been going on since 'luka's earliest days.  One can, of course, keep proposing new words for ever larger quantities ('pipi' for 1,000, 'kala' for '10,000 or 1,000,000, say).  But the results are always unsatisfying and, in particular, clunky, according to the speculators.  The problem is generally conceded (by those involved) to be that additive increases make for too long expressions in general.  The internal structure of number strings needs to be opened up.

The first obvious suggestion is to bring multiplication in.  It gets bigger numbers faster and yet is still familiar enough to not require a lot of calculation at each step. Just how to bring multiplication in has led to several ingenious schemes.  One can, for example, take numbers out of their canonical order to mark a product: so 'luka tu' is 7 (canonical, additive), but 'tu luka' is 10.  Or one can move the additive features over to 'en' and use standard modification for multiplication: 'luka en tu' is 7, but 'luka tu'  is 10, "two 5s".  Or one can add an explicit multiplier ('mute' suggested, so back to the 'luka' system, apparently) 'luka tu' is still 7 but 'luka mute tu' is 10.    All of these require some further rules about grouping ('pi', for starters) and various details.  Each of them presents some problems with the transition from the current language -- or even the old 'luka' system.  And, according to some speculators and many contented current users, the results is always a tangled mass of pluses and times (and minuses, even), that is hard to comprehend at a glance (so moving away from an optimal seven item number).

No one (I think) has suggested using exponentiation directly in number string structures.  But the more practical side of that, place notation, is the other obvious way to open number string structue.  Each number in the string is to be taken as a multiplier of a different power of the base of the system and the resulting number is the sum of these products: wyz in base b is  (w x b^2)+ (y x b) + z.  For toki pona, the obvious base is 3, since it has three numbers (counting 0).  So, 'tu tu' is 8, 'tu wan ala' is 21, and so on.  Of course, there is no longer a use for 'luka' ('wan tu').  And reasonable numbers even include this year.  To be sure, learning a new number system is a bit of a pain, but not nearly as bad as it seems in prospect, though decoding the year is a task (2016 is 2201221).

But, so the argument goes, so long as we accept the notion of place notation, why not use the familiar -- virtually universal -- one, decimal?  We could allow 'luka' and use base 6 (Happy 13200!) but that has all the relearning problems of base 3 and no real advantages.  The problem now is to find new words for the missing digits, assuming we would keep 'wan' and 'tu' and 'ala' -- or a whole new set, if not.  Starting from 'luka' as exemplar, the suggestions have focused on body parts, from 'sewi' to anpa' or some subset, or on living types, from 'jan' to 'pipi' or 'kasi' or, on another tack, the first word of each of the nine consonants.  And so on.  Or just a bunch of new words, from wherever, just for numbers.  This last is clearly not toki ponish, which tries to keep the wordlist small.  One cute intermediate suggestion was based on abacus numbers -- how many beads up to the bar and whether or ot one is also down to the bar -- so adding in 'si' ('tuli' is ungainly) and 'po' and then, with the drop,
luka, luwan, lutu, lusi lupo'.  A lesser change than a whole new set.  And, of course, 'luka' can be reanalysed as 'bar and 0' giving a new word for 0 and getting rid of the 'ala'/'ale' muddle.

But none of these are going to get acceptance on their own terms; even 'luka' and certainly 'ali' and 'mute' are still provisional.   So why this drive to get a number system that includes large numbers?  Because large numbers are important in our ordinary lives.  Or so it seems.  But we don't spend much of our lives (most of us) counting things or doing arithmetic.  I do arithmetic maybe twice a week (balance a checkbook, figure out what pan to use), but I use big numbers constantly: PINs, credit cards, telephone numbers, IP addresses, ZIP codes, order numbers, and so on.  But the joke is that none of these are numbers in a strict sense; they are neither cardinal nor ordinal, they don't add or multiply in any meaningful way.  They are, in fact, names, which just happen to be built of digits rather than letters (letters would actually be more efficient, but somehow harder to use). Some of them have an inner structure, not unlike given names, others are just distinctive strings, with no internal structure beyond the order of the digits. Even the few numbers of this class that are numbers in some usual sense, dates, for example, fall easily over into the class of more structured indices.

So, if this is a major driving force in the look for a better number system, we are looking in the wrong place.  We don't need to expand upon 'wan', 'tu', and whatever others we allow nor upon the combination rules.  We need to introduce some system into the realm of Unofficial Words (i.e., proper names).  We need some (quasi) official names for digits (and for letters as well, I would insist).  Then all these problems disappear: mi jo e ilo toki [new name] e ilo sona [another new name] e lipu mani [yet another, longer name].  Where to go for these names (other than the toki pona numbers, of course) will no doubt keep the discussion flowing for a while, but some consensus is surely possible here, where it was not with numbers, so near the core of toki pona.

And, once we have a way to deal with dates and debit cards, someone will figure out a wa y to apply this idiom to counting sheep.

Subordinate clauses

English -- and most familiar languages -- have a variety of subordinate clauses, chunks of language that are almost sentences but cannot stand on their own as fully meaningful.  toki pona has no such chunks of language, everything that is like a sentence is a sentence.  And yet, subordinate clauses play several important roles in English and these roles need to be played in toki pona as well.  This paper is about how toki pona covers these roles.  Most of it is familiar; on the context and bringing them all together is added.

The easiest -- and most familiar -- case is indirect discourse.  This presents the gist of what someone said (or thought or wrote or ....) without actually quoting it verbatim.  In English, it typically involves a clause that begins with "that" (apparently a special one, just for this purpose). and involves several shifts of reference, in pronouns and times, especially.  If someone actually says "I will be there tomorrow", this may be reported as "He said that he would be here (or at the place) today (or on the Snext day)" where the variations depend on when and where the report is made (Sorting out the time shifts are a large part of the gramar of many familiar languages, the "sequence of tense" and the various forms that this requires.) .  In toki pona, the same move is made using the ordinary 'ni "that"', a deictic pronoun pointing to the following sentence, which is just the sentential part of the English version, complete with referential shifts as needed (but not usually tense, of course).  ona li toki e nimi 'tenpo suno kama la mi lon ni' become 'ona li toki e ni: tenpo suno ni la ona li lon ni'  (or as required).

Almost equally straightforward are cases of non-restrictive relative clauses, which add new -- but relatively less salient -- information about someone already identified.  These are marked by the occurrence of a relative pronoun (who, what, which, that, ....) in place of some significant noun in what would otherwise be a sentence.  Usage -- and especially "good usage', e.g., in style books -- varies all over the place on these, depending on country and year and tone and what have you.  Apparently, the current "best" American usage is to set such clauses off with commas and to use the wh pronouns.  "John, who has a dog, is going to Italy", where it is the trip that is the focus and the dog just enters in as interesting side information.  In toki pona, the corresponding structure is just two consecutive sentences, the less central one second, with a pronominal phrase adequate to insure identification:  'jan Jon li tawa ma Italija. ona (mije/ jan ni) li jo e soweli tomo.'

Mention of non-restrictive relative clauses raises immediately the issue of restrictive relative clauses.  These function to further identify a vaguely specified object  which then plays a role in the main line of the text.  In English, these are again marked with wh relative pronouns (which look just like interrogative ones) or 'that".  Current fashion seems to be to prefer "that" as the connector and to not use commas to set the clause off: "The man that came to dinner stayed a month" (in was "the man who came" when the play was written in the 1930s).  In toki pona the pattern is to use two sentences and always use 'ni' somewhere.  Generally, the sentence corresponding to the relative clause is first and the main clause is second, with the 'ni' occurring at the appropriate place in the second sentence. But there is some variations on both which sentence comes first and where the 'ni' goes. The proposed pattern seems clearest (to me, today): 'jan li kama. tawa moku. jan ni li awen. lon tenpo mun.'  

Somewhat more remote from ordinary full sentences (and so, sometimes not considered clauses at all) are expressions where the verb is an infinitive (introduced by a special "to") and the subject, if present at all is either in the direct object form (when detectable) or introduced by "for" or the like.  These are generally associated with intentional verbs (wanting, intending and the like) and related prepositions ("in order", 'because", ...).  "She wanted him to go" ("She wanted for him to go" in some cases, "She wanted to go herself" when she is also the subordinate subject) .  The tp solution is again 'ni' in the appropriate object slot (for the verb or preposition) and the subordinate sentence as that indicated by the deixis:  'ona meli li wile e ni: ona mije li tawa' ('ona li wile e ni: ona li tawa' collapses as 'ona li wile tawa' as English does to "She wanted to go").  [Although the tp sentences are grammatically separate, a semantic/pragmatic/logic subordination persists, to prevent the word from being populated by wished-for horses. If 'mi jo e soweli tawa' is true, then so is 'soweli tawa li lon'  but if 'mi wile e (ni: mi jo e) soweli tawa' 'soweli tawa li lon' does not follow.]

There are probably more cases to consider, but these are the main ones.  Please call my attention to further cases.

kalama pi toki pona

toki pona has 14 (segmental) phonemes, all defined as the IPA standards.  When actually spoken, however, these phonemes are realized in a variety of ways, both predictable and not.  And, in each case, a number of factors enter in that may affect the pronunciation of a particular person on a particular occasion.

To begin at the more predictable end of things.  tp does not have either length of vowels or diphthongs.  But, in practice, stressed vowels are somewhat longer (and usually slightly differently located) than unstressed.  Taking English examples -- which is a bad idea, given the muddled English vowel system, stressed /i/ is probably, in fact,  the diphthong /iy/ while the unstressed is the lower /i/ of "bit".  Similarly with /e/ (/ey/, "bet") and maybe /u/ (/uw/, "hood").  Unstressed /a/ is a schwa (the /a/ in "sofa") and, indeed, unstressed /o/ and /e/ tend that way as well.  Unstressed /o/ moves toward the open o sound but that is often collapsed in English to /a/ and so shift goes on.  Stressed /a/ also often gets (not regularly, apparently) the pronunciation of the /a/ in "hat".  Other substrate languages (and, indeed, other dialects of English) probably have other patterns of difference.  Except in the rare cases where the variation of one vowel goes into the range of another (I live with a speaker who does not reliably distinguish "pin" and "pen" and 'pen" and "pan"), none of these variations are significant for tp.

Much the same is true of the consonants.  The standard for the voiceless stops is unaspirated, but English speakers pretty regularly aspirate word-initial and stress-initial stops.  The standard for /t/ is dental, but English speakers regularly use alveolar.  And so on.  And, again, other languages have other variations.  In particular, an L1 substrate that has nasalized vowels (French, Portuguese, come to mind) will appear in nasalization of word-final /n/ -- and maybe stress-final as well.  Again -- so long as the nasal component remains -- this is not a problem.

But then there are some general phonetic principles in operation which may affect the sound of words.  One is the tendency for consonants between vowels to become voiced, so 'toki' comes out /togi/.  Still not a problem, since there are no voiced-voiceless contrasts in tp.  There is also a (weaker) tendency for stops between vowels to become fricatives, and this could be a problem, if 'mute' came out /muse/ and so fell in with 'musi', say.  So far, I have not heard of a 'p' becoming /f/ or a 'k' becoming /x/, but these would not be problems.  (Well, it might take a minute to get used to the difference from familiar pronunciations, but that is common to all meetings with new people.)

Somewhat harder to cope with -- and potentially more damaging -- are the random changes that apply to just one word at a time.  These tend to be idiosyncratic and based upon experiences unrelated to tp. I offer here just a few examples from my own idiolect and those I have heard:
'lon' pronounced like the name "Lon", tp 'lan', just because of the familiarity
'pona' as /bona/ probably etymological
'pini' as /fini/ also etymological
'musi' as /muzi/ even without general voicing.

Outside of the segmental phonemes, there is one common shift worth mentioning.  It sounds odd but it is not really a problem.  Because of the stress accent patterns of many languages, there is a tendency to take "stress on the first syllable" to mean "stress on the next to last syllable", as it does in most tp words.  As a result, the few three-syllable tp works are pronounced  /-'-/ rather than /'--/.  In at least the case of 'kepeken' this is reinforced etymologically. On the other hand, most three-syllable tp words look Finnish, which reinforces the first syllable rule.  One can imagine cases where this would make a difference, but I have never been able to construct a real one.  

tp FAQ 7 How different are the "dialects" of tp?

Not very; less than American and British English, probably less than Northern and Southern American English. You can read and write for a long time without knowing or showing which dialect you are in.

The least substantive issue is whether to use a comma with 'la. And, if you decide to use one, whether to put it before or after the 'la'. Commas also play a role in more substantive issues, but even here they are usually still considered optional (though occasionally appreciated). The most common place for them is before the terminal prepositional phrases, after the DO, where they prevent the preposition from being asorbed as a modifier in the DO: 'ona li pana e tomo tawa mi' (“He gave my car”) vs 'ona li pana e tomo, tawa mi' (“He gave me a house”). Other possible places are in modifier strings, to prevent new modifiers being caught up in earlier 'pi' phrases, and in 'la' strings, to separate out left grouping ones from the usual right groupings. The PP commas are actually a rule in one dialect (Lope's), the others are just occasional uses for some people.

The most substantive differences are in vocabulary. There are about 118 words that all dialects accept and understand essentially the same way. Then there are about half a dozen words which some dialects have but other lack or treat as mere variants of other words. The not firmly fixed words are 'esun' “shop”, 'kin' [emphasis], 'kipisi' “cut”, 'monsuta' “fearsome” 'namako' “excess”, and 'oko' “eye”. A few people have occasionally also revived an old word for a particular purpose.

In addition, there are a number of variations on how generally accepted words are used: some allow only 'wan' and 'tu' as numbers; some allow 'luka' (5) as well, some even allow 'mute' (20) and 'ale' (100). Some people use 'lukin' for “look for, seek”, others prefer 'alasa'. Some take 'kute' to mean “obey”; others don't. And there are probably others of this sort.

There are even a few variations in grammar. As noted (FAQ 3), some people still take 'kepeken' to be a verb (with 'e' before the DO) when in the verb position. Others take it as a preposition everywhere. Despite very different descriptions of how 'pi' works (FAQ 5), most people deal with actual cases about the same way. The most common difference is over whether prepositional phrases as modifiers need 'pi'.

Since there is no readily available good source of idioms (compound words) , some people will know some that others do not, with inevitable loss of communication for the moment. In a few cases – those around 'toki' being the most common (FAQ 4) – alternate idioms are fairly common.

But, for the most part, people know of the variations (or simply don't notice them) and get on with the substance of what is being said.   

tp FAQ 6 How do you make a question in tp?

Well, not like that. The most striking feature of tp questions for English speakers is that they are exactly like non-questions: there is no moving of question words to the front, no added 'do's, no changes at all except in vocabulary. In fact, it is possible to make a legitimate question in tp just by putting a question mark at at the end (and using the question intonation – whatever that is – in the spoken form). This is not generally recommended, of course, as it is likely to be misunderstood.

WH questions. The easiest form of question to make in tp is the WH question: who?, what?, where? when?, why?, how?, and so on. This formed by putting the WH word where the answer would go: “Who is that man?” is 'jan ni li seme?' and the answer would be '(jan ni li) jan Wasi' (or 'seme li jan ni' with corresponding change in the answer. But the first is more tp and the latter more influenced by English). So, frame your answer and then put 'seme' in for the uncertain part. The other WH words are handled in tp with prepositions: 'tan seme?' “why?/because of what?; 'tawa seme?', “why?, for what purpose?”; 'lon seme?' “where?”; 'lon tenpo seme?', “when?”; 'kepeken nasin seme?', “how?” and so on.

One has to be careful about answering such questions, however. Although the “replace 'seme' with the answer” is a handy guide, it cannot be followed mechanically. Aside from the problems with 'nimi sina li seme' noted earlier (FAQ 2), such simple questions as 'sina seme e ona' “What are you doing to her?” can contain hidden problems. In this case, the question seems to require as an answer a transitive verb with 'ona' (assumed here to be a person) as the direct object. So, if the correct answer is 'unpa' or 'moku' or 'utala', there is no (grammatical) problem. But what if you are just talking with her? 'toki' is a transitive verb, but it does not take an animate object. You want to say 'mi toki taso poka ona' and that is the right response, answer matrix to the contrary notwithstanding. That is 'seme e' asks for a relevant predicate in which the given DO plays a significant role, but not necessarily the DO role. 'seme' in every place is to be understood in a similar broad way, asking for the relevant information, not just a quick filling of a form. Note that the answer may require a whole sentence, even though it looks like only a word is needed.

Choice questions. With WH questions, the range of answers is open, just about anything of the right sort (noun, adjective, verb) might be correct in some case. In choice questions the range is restricted to two (or a few more) choices. These choices are laid out in the appropriate place by connecting them with 'anu', “or”. “Do you want coffee or tea?” 'sina wile e telo pimeja anu telo laso?' The question mark (which I admit to often forgetting) and the question intonation are important here, since the same sentence pattern can be declarative: the announcement for the stewardess asks the question above: 'sina ken jo e telo pimeja anu telo laso', for example. The answer here is simple to give your choice 'pimeja' or 'laso' (and probably 'ala' for “neither”, and maybe 'en'/'tu' for both). This works in all positions, but the broader issues may still arise (as the neither and both options suggest – is there a further choice unmentioned?).

Y/N/- questions. These are a strange combination of the first two (and the one to come, for that matter). They consist of a declarative sentence followed by 'anu seme?' In this, 'seme' replaces a whole sentence and gives the respondent the opportunity to supply whatever he wants (of relevance, of course). But the issue here is truth. So, as a choice question, you can choose between the offered sentence, acknowledging it as true (the Y option) or anything else, which both denies the given sentence (N) and offers an opportunity to provide a replacement. Admittedly, the expected N answer is just the denial of the given sentence (it with 'ala' after the verb) and so the Y answer can be just the verb of the given sentence and the N answer just 'ala', as well as the whole sentence. But other things are possible and legitimate: given 'sina tawa sitelen tawa anu seme?' aside from '(mi) tawa (sitelen tawa') or '(mi) (tawa) ala (sitelen tawa)' you can get N answers like 'mi wile telo e linja' or even 'soweli mi li ike sijelo'. While these alternatives play a straightforward role in this kind of question, they play the role of explanations and excuses in the final kind.

Y/N questions. This is just a Y/N/- question with the options of 'seme' replaced by the negative sentence and the whole fused. However, the fusion has also been reduced so that, rather than 'sina tawa ala anu tawa sitelen tawa', we have only 'sina tawa ala tawa sitelen tawa'. But the effect is what you would expect: the answers are just 'tawa' (Y) and '(tawa) ala' (N).

[This pseudo-transformational explanation is not historically correct. The pattern was taken over from Chinese, although the direct translation would have been 'tawa tawa ala' from 'go not go', but the word order was kept, although reinterpreted. Hence the fact that the negated verb appears first, apparently.]

tp FAQ 5 What does 'pi' mean?

pi' groups two or more words together into a unit in a modifier string.

That is, it doesn't mean any thing, any more than 'li' o 'e' do. Or it means whatever modification means and there there are several separate stories. The first three have nothing to do with 'pi', since it is never used with them directly. The others are relevant because whenever the modifier is more than one wor long, it requires a 'pi' before it.

1. 'ni' “this/that” Attached to a noun phrase, 'ni' indicates a particular case (or cases) of things satisfying the description, which one is determined by context, often just the previous sentence (the thing referred to by essentially the same phrases) but also waving at the environment. Attached to verbs it indicates a particular way of doing things, usually demonstrated or described in the context, “thus”.

['ni' is used as a pronoun to refer to the content of the whole of previous (or following) sentence, as opposed to 'ona' which refers to the referent of a previous noun phrase only. When 'ona' refers back to x, 'x ni' can replace it, but the suggestion is often of a closer connection, for example, the tp equivalent of a restrictive relative clause.]

'ni' when it occurs is usually one of the last three modifiers, but, if the modifier string involves a number of 'pi' phrases, it may move up toward the head, just before the 'pi's begin. If it is left to the end, it can use a comma.

'ni' is never itself modified.

2 'kin' is used to emphasize a word for a variety of reasons. The usual list is: emotive stress, contrast, extension, and corection.

Emotive stress. This is a sort of comparative but without any claim to actually compare: the object simply arouses an emotional response beyond normal: 'ni li suli kin!' “It's hyuuuge!” 'jaki kin!' “Ewww, gross!”

Contrast. A claim is made and another contrasts with it. 'mi awa ma Italija' 'pona. mi tawa ma Kanse kin' “Im'm going to Italy.” Nice, but I'm going to France”
Extension. Adding more cases to a claim. 'mi tawa ma Italja' 'mi kin' “I'm going to Italy. Me too!”
Correction. 'mi jo soweli suli' 'sina jo e kin soweli suli' ('kin' can go with any word, not just nouns and verbs).
'kin' can, as noted, turn up anywhere, but it is never modified. It always affects the word just before it, so doen't get commas.
3. Numbers, both cardinal (strings of tp numbers in order 'ale mute luka tu wan' or 'ala' alone) and ordinal (as before but with 'nanpa' in front) don't take 'pi' no matter how long they are. They tend to be among the last three modifiers, but may move toward the head if threatened with 'pi' phrases. They cannot be modified and can use commas after 'pi' phrases.
4. Possession (or, better, pertinence or connection) This is the original use of 'pi', to connect noun phrases to other noun phrases to indicate that the referent of the second phrase owned or was somehow relevant to referent of the first. Just what that relevance might be is contextual, since we “own” in this sense not just our house and car but our legs, our children, our friends, our political candidates and so on.
[In this original use, 'pi' not only could occur in predicate position but also could occur with only a single word following it: 'ni li pi mi' “That is mine!”. Both of these have since largely disappeared though still occur in some textbooks. This use is, fo course, the source of the definition “of” in most word lists and the explanation “attaches a noun + adjective to a noun phrase” that is also common, though usually immediately contradicted in the examples.]
Possession is usually among the last three modifiers, but does not move forward except if it is a fairly simple (especially one-word) form. Strictly speaking, possessions cannot be modified, but the noun phrase involved may involved many levels of modification.
5. Incorporation. This process is peculiar to predicates. In it, the peripheral terms, the objects, come to modify the verb directly. In English we can go from “He hunts ducks” to “He is a duck hunter”, and other languages use this process even more centrally. So also in tp: from 'ona li alasa e waso telo' we can get to 'ona li alasa pi waso telo'. Similarly, 'ona li alasa, kepeken palisa pana' can become 'ona li alasa pi kepeken palisa pana' and then even 'ona li alasa pi palisa pana', because of the vagueness of the modifier relation. (Note that tp here reproduces exactly the ambiguity of English “rifle hunter” meaning either “hunts with rifles” or “hunts for rifles', since the difference between direct object and prepositional object has been dissolved.)
6. Degrees. This is best thought of as occurring in the predicate, too, to be transferred later to subject and objects. Simple modifiers come in degrees: not at all, a little, normal, a lot, and totally (roughly speaking) and both “a little” and “a lot” can have degrees, too. And most of these can be denied one way or another as well, So around the normal 'suli' there grow up 'suli ala' (which may not be quite 'li') and 'suli lili' and 'suli mute' and 'suli ali' – and the emotive 'suli kin'. And these can be shaded, with meanings to be worked out in context: 'suli lili ala' “not slightly large” and 'suli pi lili ala' “large and not slightly” and so on.
7. Blends. This obviously applies in the case of color words in tp, where, if we want to be more specifically green than “laso” (which covers about half of green over to into purple), we day 'laso jelo' “yellowish green”. But it sometimes applies in oter cases, where something is not quite really some way, but is sorta that way: 'ilo jan' “robot” is a machine that is humanish, sorta human, for example. And there are surely other cases in this way.
8. But the vast majority of cases of modification are just buried restrictive relative clauses: x{y} is just a compression of 'x li y' ({y} is just y, If that is one word, otherwise it is 'pi y'.) Thus, whenever a modifier string gets hard to figure out, we can stop and go backward to the series that led up to it, seeing how it is put together. Unfortunately, as tp is constituted, there are often several paths, but, if the writer was nice, he may have left commas to show when new layers were added. It also helps to sort out degree, blends and possessions early on (numbers and 'ni' and 'kin' handle themselves to some extent.

Consider the following case: 'tomo pi laso jelo, pi soweli pi suli mute, pi jan pona mi pi alasa pi waso telo li seli.' So, something is on fire and going back to the head of the subject noun phrase, we see it is a building. So the nub is 'tomo li seli. The first thing about that building is 'tomo ni li laso jelo' “it is green” (the comma cuts off 'li laso jelo pi soweli pi suli mute' or “it is very-big-doggish green” (we have have to take this as a lump because , if 'suli mute' did not modify 'soweli', the 'pi' before 'soweli' would be followed by only one word – forbidden!). Now, we have two possibilities again, that very-big-doggish is a type of green house or that this is a case of possession. Given the vagueness of both “-ish” and possession, we can collapse these and say. 'soweli pi suli mute li jo e tomo pi laso jelo ni' ('jo' being the appropriate vague word here). Now (each 'pi' introduces a range of ambiguities) we have further cases: the comma tell us that 'jan pona' does not modify 'suli mute', but it might modify 'soweli pi suli mute', or 'tomo pi laso jelo pi soweli pi suli mute', either a blend “a friendly sort of very large dog” or “a friendly sort of green house for a large dog” or possession “a friend' very large dog” or a friend's house for a very large dog”. Ah, but the lack of a comma before 'mi' says that it modifies 'jan pona', so this is a noun, not an adjective and we can go for “possession”. But we still do not know whether it is 'jan pona mi li jo e soweli ni' or 'li jo e tomo ni'. Again, relying on the total fuzzitude of 'jo', we can pretty much say that for present purposes (i.e., before the insurance issues arise) both are true and equally effective at getting us to the right house. The final bit is (un)marked as modifying 'jan pona mi' and so tells us which of my friends 'jan pona ni li alasa pi telo waso' (presumably eventually 'e telo waso', though the thought of ducks being used for hunting has its charms). Most cases are simpler and will not need this sort of peeling; some are worse.



If y is not a number nor 'ni' nor 'kin' and modifies x, use x{y}.

tp FAQ 4 How do I use 'toki'?

A handy trick with 'toki' as a verb is to think of it as meaning “say” and see what makes sense then. The result of this is that the Direct Object, after the 'e', is what is said, either the quoted exact words (introduced by 'nimi') or a paraphrase (usually spelled out in a sentence after 'ni:') or some other description (“The Gettysburg Address”, say). What doesn't make sense there are references to persons (“I said Tom” – not, note, “I said “Tom””) or topics “I said my sister's troubles with her boyfriend”) or languages “I said Russian”.

But these things that don't fit with “say” are things we do want to say using 'toki', thought of as “speak, talk, communicate” etc. Over the years, the community has worked out more or less acceptable ways to deal with these others.

“talk to/with someone” This is easy, since it is just like English: 'toki tawa jan'. 'toki poka jan'. Thereis prbably some difference between these two, maybe that the latter implies more strongly that jan talks back. (The idea that the other person should be a Direct Object seems rooted in the notion that the DO is what is affected by the action, as a heaer would be. But that notion is not a good guide to what is a DO, since what is seen, the DO of 'lukin', is probably not affected by being seen, while the place arrived, the object, but not the DO, of 'tawa', probably is.)

“talk about something” Here the temptation is to find a preposition for “about”, just like the last case. But there is no obvious candidate, though both 'tawa' and 'tan' have been tried (and maybe 'lon', too). The community solution (not our best effort, admittedly) is 'toki e ijo {x}' for “talk about x” (where “{x}” comes out as x, if x is a single word, but as 'pi x' otherwise). Of course, this gets funny looking when talking about many things, 'toki e ijo pi ijo mute' and the like. And, as has been pointed out, the 'pi' – or the modifier relation – just is a sort of “about”, the whole being literally “say something about x”. So, why not just use 'toki {x}'?

“speak [language]” Like the other two cases so far, this was once treated as a DO (hence the word for “language” is 'toki') but the usual sort of cross-talking problems arose. The community was torn between introducing the language using 'kepeken' and 'lon', but settled on 'kepeken'. Sonja settled on 'lon'. Now both prepositions are used freely, often in the same paragraph. There is also a dialect, preserved in some textbooks, that take the language used as an adverb of manner to the verb and so attach it directly: 'toki pi toki pona' (cf the Esperanto of my youth: “tcu vi parolas esperante”). This was one reason why the direct attachment did not catch on for talking about: we might want to talk about toki pona in English, for example, which would them be indistinguishable from talking about English in toki pona: 'toki pi toki pona, pi toki Inli'.

In the end, both adverbial uses were rejected because they muddled ordinary adverbial uses. I want to be able to talk a lot, 'toki mute', without worrying about whether I am also talking about a lot athings or about magnitude or in many languages.

tp FAQ 3 Doesn't 'kepeken' need an 'e'?

No.

That is, if you mean to introduce the reference to the tool being used. 'kepeken' is a preposition and the characteristic of those words is that they always take their object immediately after them, without an intervening 'e', as verbs require.

That being said, there is a dialect of tp which harks back to a few years ago and which is still around in older textbooks and those derived from them, in which 'kepeken' is a verb or a verb and preposition. So, in this dialect, when 'kepeken' occupies the verb slot (right after 'li', etc.) it is a verb and requires 'e'. If it comes at the end, it is a preposition and doesn't.

But prepositions can go into the verb slot and, once there, still don't need 'e'. And the community came to notice that there was little difference between saying “He uses a tool for some unmentioned activity” and “He does some unmentioned activity using a tool” and so stuck with the simpler, no 'e', version throughout

It should also be noted that prepositions, like all non-verbs, can be used as transitive verbs in a causative sense. In that case, the Direct Object must, as usual, be introduced by 'e'. So, “I use a tool” is 'mi kepeken ilo' but “I make him use a tool” is “mi kepeken ilo e ona'

(Speaking of which, why, with all the drive to trim down the number of words in official tp, does it still have both 'kepeken' and 'ilo'?)

tp FAQ 2 How do I answer 'nimi sina li seme?'

Suppose you are (or plan to be) jan Wasi in the tp community.

Then the safe and adequate answer is 'mi jan Wasi'

But this doesn't seem to answer the question exactly, which calls for a word or expression that fits into the place of 'seme', but you have given a sentence of a different form. We will talk about the problems with this notion of answering questions later, but for now, look at some problems with attempts to meet that requirement,

'(nimi mi li) jan Wasi'. But 'jan Wasi' refers to you, so this literally says “My name is me”. It says that your name is a person and a person is a name, both absurd; names and people are different. Further, it says that 'jan' is part of your name, which it is not. Your name in tp is an adjective which requires to always have a noun to lean on when being used to refer to you and, for people, that noun is usually 'jan'. But your name is the supporting adjective, not the whole expression; that is just how we use the name to refer to you.

So, maybe a better answer is '(nimi mi li) Wasi', which is what pu recommends. But remember that the rule is that a proper adjective (name) has always to have a noun to lean on and there isn't one here, so this is ungrammatical apparently. The immediate rescue is to say that it leans on the 'nimi' subject of the sentence, but that isn't quite right either. Suppose we redundantly repeat that subject in the predicate: '(nimi mi li) nimi Wasi'. Remember that proper adjectives mean “called by this word”, so this means that my name – not me, necessarily – is named 'Wasi'. So, the interesting question now is, what is this name named 'Wasi'?

Incidentally, if the adjective in 'nimi mi li Wasi' actually does modify the subject 'nimi mi' and so does not need a noun directly in front of it, why is the correct answer to 'sina seme?' and the like not just 'mi Wasi.', which would then be grammatical as a sentence and have the adjective modifying the right thing, for a change?  

We need to pause here a moment to think about the names of words. If we want to talk about something, we have to use a name for it (in some broad sense, but in the present case we can stick with the narrow one). We cannot use the thing itself to talk about it; my claim that my cat is cute does not start off with my cat in all her furry glory in the subject place of the sentence. Subjects are words and cats aren't. But names are. So we can put a name in the subject (or object, etc.) place in a sentence about that name and the grammar will be possible, even fine. But we usually end up saying something weird: “Bets is four letters long. Bets is my sister. So my sister is four letters long” Ahah! An ambiguity in the use of the word “Bets”, once as a name for a person and once as a name for that name. But this ambiguity is systemic and should be avoided systematically. Let us have – as we do – a standardized name for words. Let us enclose a word in quotes as a name for the word itself (there are other systematic possibilities, like spelling it out, but this is short and simple), as I have been doing throughout here. If we transfer this pattern to tp, our problems disappear.

But we have to remember that quotation names (and this covers cases of quotations of longer expressions) are names, thus adjectives, thus needing a noun to lean on, typically 'nimi'. So the right way to answer the question at the start, if you insist on, matching 'seme', is '(nimi mi li) nimi 'Wasi''. The other possible unobjectionable approach is '(nimi mi li) ni:' Wasi. Where what follows the colon is not another word in the sentence by a display of a name to which we now point with 'ni'.

After all that, I admit that I have no expectation that anyone will do this right (well, I do hope most people will reply with 'mi jan Wasi') but will continue to use the three muddled forms. And everyone will understand and almost no one will complain. A proof that just because you understand what a person is trying to say, doesn't mean that he has said it correctly or even coherently; it just means you are a cooperative and involved listener.     

tp FAQ 1. What do 'li' and 'e' do?

A bit of back ground first. Both English and tp have a basic Subject-Verb-Object format, a noun-phrase (noun plus maybe some adjectives) describing who does or is what the sentence is about, followed by a verb phrase (verb plus maybe some adverb or a copula --”be” plus a noun or adjective) telling what the subject is or does and then maybe another noun phrase telling what the subject did that to. In English, it is usually pretty easy to tell nouns from verbs from adverbs from adjectives. They are usually different words and they behave differently. Thus, it is pretty easy to tell when the subject (a noun phrase) ends and a verb phrase, the verb, begins, and, similarly, when another noun phrase, the object, starts up. In “The tall man shot the fat duck”, “shot” is pretty clearly a verb, so the noun phrase before it constitute the subject and the noun phrase after it the object.

The situation is quite different in tp: either it has no nouns, verbs, etc. or almost every word is in several of these categories or there ae many words in different categories that look exactly the same. However you describe the situation, if you just have a string of words that might be nouns or adjectives or verbs or adverbs, it is not clear where the sections are. Consider this:'jan suli utala waso suli'. It turns out that one can divided this into Subject-Verb-Object (or even without the object) almost anywhere and get a grammatical – if sometimes decidedly odd – sentence. “A man aggressively enlarged a large bird” (j/su/ws) “A large man aerially attacked a fatty” (js/uw/s) “And aggressive large man is a fat bird (jsu/ws) and so on, including, of course “A big man attacked a large bird” (js/u/ws). To be sure, context will often eliminate many of these from consideration, but not in all cases and, in some cases, we may want to say one of the less likely things – it would be news, after all, if a big, bellicose man made a large object fly (jsu/w/s). So, to be on the safe side, we need ways to say explicitly in tp what is done covertly in English by the shifting between nouns and verbs.

'li' goes at the break between the Subject noun phrase and the Verb verb phrase, where in English there is the shift from noun to verb.

'e' goes in the break between the Verb verb phrase and the Object noun phrase, where in English there is the shift from verb to noun.

So, when you have finished saying who is doing the doing but before you say what is done, drop in 'li'. And when you are done with the doing and before you get to whom it is done to, drop in 'e'.

The sentnces above look like this then:

jan li suli utala e waso suli

jan suli li utala waso e suli

jan suli utala li waso suli

jan suli li utala e waso suli

jan suli utala li waso e suli

There will be some complication – but very minor ones – when we get to compound sentences, but that is later.

There are, however, three complications which arise immediately and need to be dealt with now.

1. When the whole of the subject is 'mi' or 'sina', 'li' is NOT inserted before the verb. Note that this does no affect subjects of more than one word that involve 'mi' or 'sina', like 'mi mute' or 'sina ali', or 'tomo mi', all of which require 'li'. This exclusion also does not extend to other pronouns, 'ona' and 'ni' both of which always require 'li'.

2. the verb place in a sentence is sometimes occupied by a preposition (a small class of words which are set aside just for the following reason). Prepositions take objects, but they are not the Direct Objects of the Subject-Verb-Object pattern. In particular, they attach to the preposition directly with out an intervening 'e'. So, “I am going home” is 'mi tawa tomo', NOT 'mi tawa e tomo'. To make matters slightly worse, 'mi tawa e tomo' is a good sentence but with a different meaning, “I move my house”, where the preposition behaves like an ordinary verb (as most non-verbs can). So, in applying the 'e' rule, you need to be aware when you are using a preposition and when you are using it AS a preposition.

3. Strictly speaking, the pattern of tp sentences is more completely given as Subject-Verb-Object-Prepositional Phrase. There is no marker like 'li' and 'e' to indicate the beginning of a propositional phrase at the end of a sentence, but the same sort of problems can arise here as those met by 'li' and 'e':

'ona li pana e tomo tawa mi' may mean either “He gave me a house” or “He gave my car”, depending on how 'tawa mi' fits in. I get a car if it is 'ona li pana e tomo/tawa mi' with 'tawa mi' a prepositional phrase. I lose a car, if it is just part of the modifier string to 'tomo'. As a kindness, some people have taken to putting a comma before final prepositional strings. These are always optional but often appreciated by readers (and the corresponding voice changes by listeners).

toki unpa *184*

jan Oliwa en jan Malija li uta e sama li pilin suwi e sijelo sama la jan Oliwa li toki e ni:"mi pilin e ni:  tenpo ni li tenpo tawa .." jan Malija li toki kin: "mi tu li unpa.  a! lon! mi tu o kama tawa tomo mi."

ona tu li kama.

tomo lape la jan Oliwa li open weka e len pi jan Malija.  taso meli  li toki e ni.  "o pini.  o mi tu li kepeken tenpo suli  tawa open musi.  open la mi weka e len sina.  ni pini la sina pali e mi."  meli li open weka e len mije. nanpa wan la meli  li weka e len noka anpa pi tu en tu, mije.  meli li uta e noka mije li pilin suwi e ona.  nanpa tu la meli li weka e len pi sijelo sewi kepeken nasin ni: meli li open e nena len li uta e selo pi lukin sin. meli li pali e ni tawa nena ali. taso meli li lukin e sike pi loje walo la meli li awen li uta suwi e ona li kama e ni: ona li kama nena. ni pini la meli li awen open sin.  jan Malija li pini weka e len pi sijelo sewi la ona li open weka e len pi noka sewi.  kin la ona li pali ni la palisa mije pi jan Oliwa li kama suli li kama kiwen.  tan ni la meli li open e len sijelo sewi la len walo li nena wawa.  meli li pilin suwi e ona li a li awen weka e len.  meli li pini weka e len mije la jan Oliwa li toki e ni: "tenpo ni la mi ken weka e len sina.  mi musi mute ni."  taso ona sewi e len meli la jan Malija li len e ala kin e len insa anpa ala. e poki pi nena meli ala.  jan Maliaja li lon wawa e selo unpa lon palisa pi jan Oliwa li anpa wawa lon supa lape.

jan Oliwa li lon e noka sama lon insa pi noka meli.  mije li open uta e sike pi loje walo li kama e ni: ona li nena.  palisa luka mije li pilin suwi e nena unpa li kama e ni: jan Malija li a li a e kalama ni:"jan Oliwa o, o, o. Oli o unpa e mi, unpa, unpa". tenpo ni la meli li jo e palisa mije li lawa e ona tawa lupa meli.  palisa pi jan Oliwa li tawa insa,  mije li tawa en tan li tawa en tan.  tenpo tawa ali la meli li sewi e nena monsi sama li utala e palisa tawa.  ona tu li kalama wawa.  jan Oliwa li a e ni: "jan Malija o, o, Mali o, ma, o, mama o"  jan Malija li a wawa li anpa wawa sama lape.  tenpo sama la jan Oliwa li a wawa li pana e linja suli pi telo walo mije li anpa wawa tawa sewi meli.  tenpo lili pini la jan Malija li weka e selo jo pi telo walo li kama jo e len telo seli.  meli li pona e sama kepeken len ni.  ni pini la meli li open pona e palisa mije. tenpo ni la ona li suli ala li kiwen ala.

taso meli li pona e ona la meli li wile pilin suwi e ona.  tan ni la palisa li kama suli li kama kiwen..  jan Malija li lon e ona lon uta sama li pilin suwi e lawa ona kepeken  loje uta sama.  meli li tawa en tan lon palisa kepeken uta en luka.  jan Oliwa li a wawa li sewi e nena monsi mije.  jan Malija li kon kepeken uta li tawa en tan wawa mute.  jan Oliwa li a wawa mute li pana e linja suli pi telo walo tawa nena meli. meli li pilin sike e telo sama pona selo. meli li anpa lon supa li anpa e noka sama tawa supa anpa.

jan Oliwa li anpa e sama lon insa pi noka sama li lon e sinpin lawa ona lon insa pi noka meli.  mije li open pilin suwi e nene unpa meli kepeken loje uta sama.  meli li open a li sewi e nena monsi li tawa en tan wawa.  taso a pini meli kama la meli li kama jo e mije li lon e ona lon monsi mije li kama lon sewi mije li kama jo palisa mije li lawa e ona tawa lupa sama.  meli li awen linja e monsi sama li tawa en tan wawa.  nena meli kin li tawa en tan, li kama nena pi suli en kiwen.  tenpo ni la jan Malija kama tawa a pini.  jan Oliwa kin li a li pana e wan pi telo walo. jan Malija li kama jo sin e len telo seli li pona e sama en mije.   tenpo lili pini la jan Oliwa en jan Malija li kulupu kepeken luka en noka li kama lape.  taso ni kama la ona tu li toki e ni tawa sama:  "mi olin e sina"

Try first without looking here.  Let me know if you find other, better, meanings or other problems.
uta v "apply mouth to, kiss"
pilin suwi "touch sweetly, caress"
ni pini la "after that"
len noka anpa  apparently "shoes and socks"
len sijelo sewi "shirt" apparently: the lack of body parts and clothing names gets fuddling here
nena len "button"
selo pi lukin sin "newly exposed skin"
sike pi loje walo "pink circles" (the proverbial tits on a boar-hog)
awen  here apparently "pause, linger"
len walo "tighty whities"
nena wawa "popped up, became a hill rapidly"
awen weka  here apparently :kept on taking off"
len noka sewi "pants"
len insa anpa "panties"
poki pi nena meli "brassiere"
selo unpa "condom'  [Pedantic note: these were originally made out of selo insa pi mani len, sheep guts]
anpa wawa "fell back" or something like that.
nena unpa "clitoris"
a v "cry out, moan" something like that
tawa en tan "to-and-fro-ing" mixed action.
tenpo tawa ni la  "on the instrokes"
nena monsi "buttocks"  a lot of nena here
tawa sewi meli "on top of her"
tenpo lili pini "after a little while"
loje uta "tongue" or "lips"
kon kepeken uta  "suck"  I think
pilin sike "rubbed in circles"?
pona selo "lotion"? maybe "soap"
Last sentence of this section seems to work out to "Sat on the edge of the bed with her legs hanging over"
insa pi noka this has to be "knees"
sinpin lawa "face"
insa noka here must be "between the legs"
a pini meli kama  "before her last cry"
kulupu kepeken luka en noka  "Cuddled up intertwined together"
ni kama la "before this"

Note on temporal relations

Part of working on prepositions and on 'la'

Known:

Vector tense/implicit particular quantifiers over occasions.

X la = lon X

tenpo pini (P)/ tenpo ni ()/tenpo kama (F)

(fussinesses: 1) the scope of CP (condition phrases, 'la' phrases) are not defined, so subsequent unmarked sentences might be narratively continuing these times or revert to the moment of speech or some other contextually defined time. Similarly, subordinate sentences with these marks might be secondary tenses off the implicit axis or redefined from the absolute base: 'tenpo pini la jan li toki e ni: tenpo pini la meli li kama', her coming before person speech or just before utterance of this complex? I am inclined to think that a temporal in a CP would restrict one in a PP in the sentnece to which the CP was attrached or in a CP that followed it attached to the same sentence, but I can imagine a case being made for the opposite positions.

2) Strictly, 'tenpo ni' can mean “then, at the time of the just mentioned event” as well as “now” and so be a temporal connective. To avoid confusion – and because having a way to get back to the now is always handy – I recommend using 'tenpo sama' for the relative meaning.)

Extended vector tense (relative tensors)
Same pattern (?)
tenpo pini/kama lili/suli  "a little/long time ago, in a little while, a long time hence"
     
      (fussiness:  not sure how apt 'lon' is here. since it is not in the stretch of time put rather at the end of it --
      which is, admittedly probably 'lon' as well. The pattern 'tenpo lili pini' makes as much sense, apparently,
      but this one is established.)

Other quantifier cases

(universal)

presumably also X la = lon X

tenpo ala/ ali “never/always”

(fussiness: I suppose this are usually in fact only about past occasions (and the present?) but that is only implied. The explicit cases do not seem to have occurred (and are rare in English, too) but would presumably be formed just by adding 'pini' or 'kama' to the end of the forms just given to make G and H:”has never/always” and “will never/always”. It is arguable that the forms should be with the opposite arrangement of quantifier and direction, e.g. 'tenpo pini ali' for G. Since there are no occasions, it is hard to figure out which is right or even what principle to use to decide. But see later. At least it is clear that dividing the quantifier and the vector into two phrases does not help: 'tenpo pini la tenpo ali la' and 'tenpo ali la tenpo pini la' bear undetermined relations to one another, some bound up in the metaphysics of time but also in the issue of the scope of 'la' phrases, but none of them giving the equivalent of what is intended here. And they raise issues about the scope of PPs which we really don't want to mess with now.))

(numerical) iterations

Still the same pattern, I suppose

tenpo N/mute/lili “N/many/(a) few times” (maybe also 'mute lili' and 'lili mute' ""several times”/”occasionally” and “rarely” - not, apparently set off with 'pi').

(fussiness: All the problems about past and future cases apply here, though the implication that this is about the past is even sharper. But the two prenex solution, assuming 'tenpo pini/kama la' subordinate 'tenpo N la', works better here. 'tenpo lili' can also mean “a short time” and so belongs in the duration section as well as here. Perhaps the PP form is distinctive.

Iteration needs to be distinguished from repetition, the same action done repeatedly on a single occasion. Contrast: “The officer has shot suspects on three occasions” with “The officer shot the suspect three times” It is not clear just how to do repetitions but apparently either an adverbial phrase 'pana pi tenpo tu wan' or even just 'pana tu wan' or some modification in the various nominal complements, 'pana e sike kiwen tu wan' or 'utala e ona kepeken sike pana tu wan' are adequate.)

Unitized occasions

presumably same pattern

tenpo suno/pimeja/esun/mun pini/ni/kama “yesterday, today, tomorrow, last night, tonight, tomorrow night, last week, this week, next week, last month, this month, next month”

sike suno pini/ni/kama “last year, this year, next year”

(fussiness: All non-ni strictly mean “some past/future day/week/month/year” but are used for the

proximal one by convention/implication. The more general understanding adds to the simple 'tenpo' only a sense of the length of the displacement from the present, which is not strictly relevant here. 'ni' again has the possible sense of “the same as that containing the latest mentioned event” and the 'sama' solution is recommended again.

Known phrase in 'la', preposition unknown

Duration

tenpo suli/lili “for a long/short time”

tenpo suno/esun/mun N (including 'mute', lili' and compounds) “for n days/weeks/months”

sike suno N “for n years”

The issue of the correct PP gets into the whole matter of prepositions in tp, which is the subject of another study under way. The “for” in the English for this notion means that the event referred to occupies the whole of that time and no tp preposition is obviously telic in this way ('tawa', for example, does not assert that goal is actually reached, so is “toward” as much as “to”). Parallels in other languages (“por” or “para” in Spanish, in particular, but also similar patterns in German and French and Latin) give varying suggestions for use in tp, based on equally dubious associations. Personally, I feel like promoting 'awen' to prepositional status for the occasion, but that is a bit radical until other options have played out. Even the use of 'lon' is not automatically excluded, since it is areal as well as punctal (“in” as well as “at”) and so is at least a partial fit (and as good as other obvious choices).

My attention has been called to the use of 'kepeken tenpo mute' as part of the expression for "slow" 'tawa ma lili kepeken tenpo mute'  Whether this can be generalized (maybe with 'mute' changed to suli') offers a way out of the usual preposition debate (and a nice counter to the arguments about how to indicate the language used).

Tp doesn't have words for hours, minutes and second, but, if it did, presumably this pattern would apply with them as well.

(fussiness: the numerical cases could also be read as iterations of specified periods. The difference seems to be mainly that duration has the event taking place throughout consecutive stretches of the sort mentioned, N weeks but attached end to end, where as iteration assumes some gaps between the weeks involved (and that the whole event is repeated, not part in one week and a further part in the next, although all of this is open to context. It might take me three months to walk the Appalachian Trail, even though the months were in fact divided into several disjoint stretches of a week or so each, so 'tenpo esun mute la mi tawa noka lon nasin Apalasi' is true in both senses.) Again, the PP might be different, but I am not sure.)

Temporal overlap

S1 la S2 “When/while/if S1, then S2”

Presumably the PP format is 'S2 Prep ni: S1'

This relation is so weak that it is enough for it to be true that there is one instant during S1 holding that S2 hold as well (and, of course, there can be true cases where even this does not apply). We usually (I think) have something more explicit in mind. And it may be that sorting these out is a necessary step before doing much more about the PP. We can clearly separate out the general claims as being 'tempo ali/mute' (and maybe a few non-temporal factors) with scope over the whole complex (which means we have some clues about scope!). What we seem to be left with are that either S2 holds at some point during S1 or that it follows “immediately” on S1. The first gets subdivided among cases where S2 and S1 coincide exactly or one falls wholly within the other or they overlap with a bit of one preceding the other and a bit of the other following the one. But this expressions does not indicate any of these differences, so we need just the minimal claim of a relationship and so are back to just what the prepositions say. It may be, of course, that the prepositions are all more explicit than 'la' and that this is a 'la' expression which does not have a prepositional analog.

Unknown

Displacement (tensored vectors)

So, an event is in the past/future, but how far specifically? The answer is, presumably, in terms of some unit and some number of that unit, combined with the direction in time. We have the pattern already of unit + direction = displacement by one unit in that direction: 'tenpo suno pini', say. The only apparent question is where does the N, in this case the implicit one, go? That is, is “three days ago” 'tenpo suno tu wan pini' or 'tenpo suno pini tu wan'? And, of course, does it make a difference? It would, certainly, if there were another notion around that would take up the other form. In this case, the possible other notions seem to be directional duration, which seems highly unlikely (“for three past days”) or iteration with specified periods, which seems somewhat more likely (“in three separate past days”) but allows of a two-prenex solution. S, it seems just a matter of making a choice (and maybe coming up with a principle afterwords to justify it – no prior principle is obvious). The earlier case of relative displacement suggests puttting the number last, but it is itself open to question. Once the phrase is set, the X la = lon X patterns seems appropriate.

Relative position.

How are two event related in time, more precisely than the S la S pattern and, particular, relative to one another. The English patterns to be dealt with are

After S1, S2

Before S2, S1

While S1, S2 (with some of the subdivision mentioned under 'la' spelled out here)

Put this way, this appears to be about conjunctions, but, given the short supply of those in tp (and the unclarity about how to extend the list without creating more problems than it is worth), it is easier to think of the problem as being about PP, on the model of “because”, 'tan ni', or as introducing a new category of CP.

On the preposition side, for the first two cases, a single pattern presents itself, since 'tan' is pretty clearly retrospective, looking backward toward the beginning, That means that “after that” could be just 'tan ni', but, to keep our “post hoc” separated from our”propter hoc”, we would go for 'tan tempo ni'. By parity of reasoning (or parody), “before this” would be 'tawa tenpo ni' Thus we get the four patterns for the order S1 S2

S1. tan tenpo ni la S2

S 1 tawa tenpo ni: S2

S2. tawa tenpo ni la S1

S2 tan tenpo ni: S1

The other possible pattern takes up the general notion of a condition. To say that S2 is later than S1 is to say that S2 occurs in a condition in which S1 is done or that S1 occurs in a condition in which S2 is yet to come. Alternatively, we can say that S1 is in S2's past and S2 is in S1's future. This gives the following patterns

S1. ni pini la S2

S2. pini ni la S1

S1. kama ni la S2

S2. ni kama la S1

It must be said that the reading of 'ni pini' as “this being over” and “pini ni' as “in the past of this” is open to challenge with exactly the opposite readings. This is a reason to prefer the prepositional solution, although the fact that the PP with opposite results occur at virtually the same place (the difference between ':' and '.' being not very great and the 'la' coming late) makes it tricky as well (but the same situation has not caused obvious problems with 'tan ni').

The simple 'ni' and 'kama/pini' phrases could obviously be moved to PP, presumably with 'lon', but then the temptation might be to make that, like 'tan ni', into version which picks up the next sentence, reversing the order meaning yet again. That is, S1 lon pini ni: S2 = S1. kama ni S2 and so on.

The final, “while” case raises a number of problems, some already mentioned, others involving things like the aspect modals ('open, awen, pini, kama'), that lie outside this paper. The solutions are more or less the same as the other two. In the second version, for example, 'awen' can fill in for 'pini/kama'. The prepositional form is less obvious, but 'lon', being areal and also the only spatial preposition left, might work. But many questions seem to remain (mostly probably pure fussiness, the Lojban syndrome).

It would be nice if we had a firm grasp on sentential nominalization so that we could extend this discussion from the case of two sentences to to a sentence and a noun "after his coming" "before the battle" (don't even mention the "just" -- 'taso' just doesn't work).  I suppose the second could be 'utala kama' or 'pini utala' and the former similar things with 'kama ona', but problems seem sure to arise (as here already) and we don't know how to handle most sentences, "John hunted deer on Thursday," for example.

Displacement again

So, one event comes after the other; how soon after? Both parts of this issue have been dealt with (more or less), so the question here is how to combine them. They do appear to be independent in the sense that displacement does not depend upon whether we are talking about S1 before S2 or S2 after S1. The only significant fact is that the earlier discussion of displacement was in terms of past and future relative to the present (or whatever the axis is) and that factor drops out. But, on the other hand, we cannot, apparently use just the numbered units (or 'tenpo suli/lili'), since that is duration of the event, not of the gap between events. Using some preposition raises the question of which one again. Using the desperation 'pi' raises the question of what to attach it to. This seems the most open question.

esun and commerce

The basic meaning of 'esun' is "swap, barter", the exchange of one object for another.  So it involves two people and two things.  Each person brings a thing to the exchange and leaves with what the other brought.  So a full description of a transaction is, in English, Person 1 exchanged object 1 for object 2 with person 2. In tp, the corresponding description starts 'jan nanpa wan li esun e ijo nanpa wan tawa ijo nanpa tu ... jan napa tu'. It is not clear what goes into the gap.  English suggests 'poka', but 'tan' (as the source of thing 2 and a natural for later "buy") and 'tawa' (as the final place of thing 1 and a natural for later "sell") also have merit; let's leave it as X for the moment.  What is central here is the symmetry of the situation: if we exchange one person or object for the other, we can get back to the same fact by also exchanging the object or person: jan nanpa tu li esun e ijo nanpa tu tawa ijor nanpa wan X jan nanpa wan.

Let us consider some reductions of the full form.  We might consider the case where the objects involved are ignored, for example, to talk about habitual activities: Bob trades with Bill, first 'jan Babi li esun X jan Bili' and then 'jan Babi en jan Bili li esun (X sama)'. Similarly, we can ignore the people (somewhat) and simply describe the exchange of thing 1 and thing 2: jan li esun e ijo nanpa wan e ijo nanpa tu (it might be argued that a "mixed" 'en' is appropriate here).  Putting these together, we get 'jan Babi en jan Bili li esun e ijo nanpa wan e ijo nanpa tu' (with the loss of the information of who brought what to the swap -- except by unreliable implication).  Or one person might be ignored and maybe even one of the objects.  So Bob, a collector of kiwen, might satisfy 'jan Babi li esun tawa kiwen', while Bill, a distributor of ko, might regularly fulfill 'jan Bili li esun e ko'.  Notice that here the connection between participant and what they bring o take away is maintained, so that we cannot say (with the same meaning) 'jan Babi li esun e kiwen', though 'jan Babi en jan Bili li esun e ko e kiwen' seems proper from ;jan Bobi li esun e ko tawa kiwen X jan Bili'

But we don't barter much anymore, but rather buy and sell.  This is a form or barter, of course, but one of the items is always money, which is always the "for" position in English, regardless of from whose point of view the transaction is viewed  The person who bring money to the swap is the buyer, the person who takes it away the seller,  So "Bob buys thing 1 from Bill" comes over as 'jan Babi li esun e mani tawa ijo nanpa wan X jan Bili', which, by a familiar transformation become 'jan Bili li esun e ijo nanpa wan tawa mani X jan Bobi', i.e., "Bill sells thing 1 to Bob",  Reducing to "Bill sells thing 1" gets 'jan Bili li esun e ijo nanpa wan'  and "Bob buys thing 1" is 'jan Babi li esun tawa ijo tu' (notably NOT 'jan Babi li esun e ijo nanpa wan').  Thus, the glosses that give both "buy" and "sell" for 'esun' need to be modified to make it clear that these are not simply to be used interchangeably: the DO is what you bring, what you go away with is a 'tawa' phrase' A better gloss than "buy" would be "pay ..." (with the 'tawa' to express "for" and the price as DO).  "Sell" actually works correctly, which suggests something about barter, perhaps.  This tends to increase the strength of the use of 'tawa' for X, but the difficulties with the two implicit 'tawa's works against it.  

Pretty Little Girls School (Teachers (Union ....))

James Cooke Brown, the creator of Loglan, confronted the ambiguity of "pretty little girls school" and various extensions to find all the possible readings and to build into his language a way to disambiguate them.  In the right grouping fashion of English and Loglan, he found the following possibilities:
P(L(GS)) a pretty example of a small school for girls.
P((LG)S) a beautiful example of a school for little girls
(PL)(GS) a beautifully small example of a school for girls
(P(LG))S a school for little girls who are beautiful
((PL)G)S a school for girls who are beautifully small
In each case, any binary pair could conceivably be not a subordination relation but a parallelism:
pretty examples of small girls and small schools, for example.

These patterns can be extended indefinitely in the grammar and quite a bit further in even in practice: pretty little girls school teachers union official, say.  Loglan's requirement of complete freedom from syntactic ambiguity naturally required a general scheme which would teat each such pattern differently yet still fall under a general rule.  The resulting system, while not terribly complex, is somewhat difficult to produce and interpret on the fly, but it does work.

Happily, tp does not require complete freedom from ambiguity but merely strives to bring out major differences in structure and ease the disambiguation task to (usually) manageable proportions.  It seems likely that, in the spoken language, further disambiguation comes in changes in voice and perhaps the written language should reflect that, but now we have only the abstract grammatical structures to suggest thaty these added features may occur and need to be recognized.

So, for tp, we might take something like "good little fish bowl", which, since tp groups left rather than right, comes out as 'tomo kala lili pona'.  As in the case of Loglan, the uniform default grouping is unmarked, though the grouping is mirror-imaged. The remaining cases are (with hypothetical commas to mark possible signs of the differences involved)
tomo pi kala lili, pona
tomo kala pi lili pona
tomo pi kala lili pona
tomo pi kala pi lili pona
Hopefully, the pattern is clear enough to extend to cases of good little fish bowl shelves (supo ...) and good little fish bowl shelf brackets (palisa ...) and beyond (but remember that tp style favors many short sentences over any kind of long structure).

When the items within a grouping are conjoined rather than subordinate, the rule seems to be the same: a pair in a modifier position is set off by 'pi'.  New issues arise about conjoined heads: does the 'lili' in 'tomo en kala lili pona' modify both 'kala' and 'tomo' or only 'kala' and the same applies to 'pona' and 'kala pili'?  that is, is this ((t+k)l)p, (t+(kl))p, t+((kl)p)?  And, it follows, 'tomo en kala pi lili pona; might be either t+(k(lp)) or (t+k)(lp).  This suggests that the rules for conjoined terms needs some further study, recommending commas at least and maybe even different markers.  Or, of course, prohibitions against certain kinds of conjunctions.  But this latter seems to prohibitive, since, even with many sentences rather than longer strings, some conjunctions seem inevitable (the red-and-blue ball on the beach, for example).  But at least more study and thought is needed here.

'la' phrases

What all can go in front of 'la' in a sentence and to what end?  This is going to be an ongoing listing, adding new points as they turn up but striving to be, eventually, complete and informative.

1. Conditional sentences, the "if" part of "if,,, then..."
In S1 la S2, the overall claim is that S2 is true at least in a situation where S1 is true, should such a situation arise in the relevant time.  It can also be said as "When S1, then S1" and maybe even "S1 only if S2" and "Whenever S1, S2: and so on, though each of these adds (in English) other information or various implications that are not in the tp form: that S1 is likely to occur, say, or definitely did not occur but might have.  And so on.  Whether or not these added implications can be built into some other structure in tp, they do not occur in the rawest form here,

S1 la S2 is a relatively unsophisticated conditional, and possibly an ambiguous one.  The grammar, in a rare display of recursion,  seems to allow either S1 or  S2 to already include a 'la' phrase, so that both '(S1 la S2) la S3' and 'S1 la (S2 la S3)' appear to be grammatical.  The complexity of interpreting the first, however, makes the second the far more likely reading, so conditions may generally be taken as accumulating from the left (against the usual tp pattern).  This is useful, since tp does not permit sentential use of 'en' (or some other "and" word), though conjoined conditions are quite common and this patterns provides a way,  (The ambiguity may turn up again with non-sentential phrases and may be resolved differently there.)

For the Lojbanists among us, sentential 'la' does not seem to be a mere logical connective, but "modal".  That is, the  mere fact that S1 is not true at any point in the proceedings or that S2 is true, does not make the whole conditional true, though a relevant occasion (and that takes some unpacking) of S1 true and S2 false does falsify the whole.  Some connection, however worked out, is implied by the conditional claim.


2.  Tense. A. Vector

The most common use to 'la' in running text is probably to specify tense, which is not a mandatory category in tp but a felt need for many of us with tensed L1s.  The stock expressions here  are
'tenpo pini'  past (at some time now finished)
'tenpo kama' future (at some time yet to come)
'tenpo ni' present (at this time)
They place the whole event of the sentence after 'la' at a particular (though generally unspecified) time in relation to the present (or, as we see, the time of the events being narrated).  This temporal location may bleed over to other sentences in a narrative sequence, where, without further explicit markers, events in later sentences may be attached to the earlier established time (or a little later to keep up with the flow of events).  In this context, then, one of these markers may indicate a time remote from an already remote point and not explicitly attached to the time of uttering the sentence.  Even 'tenpo ni' in a narrative, may be just "at that time", not the "now" of the speaker, but of the event.  (How to break out of this context to return connection to the speaker's present is not an issue that has been dealt with - 'tenpo ni kin' or 'tenpo ni sin' seem likely candidates.)

'tenpo X la' has another version, a terminal PP 'lon tenpo X'.  The relation between the two is not worked out, but I assume that some differences will emerge, even if only rhetorical ones.  Other prepositions than 'lon' may also have a role (more later).

Whatever else may be the case with PPs here, they pretty clearly have restricted scope relative 'la' expressions. In S1 la S2 lon tenpo X, 'lon tenpo X' applies only to S2 directly (whatever may be the informal implications) .  In 'tenpo X la S1 la S2'  'tenpo X' may apply only to S1, but more likely applies to the whole conditional (we expect to use these initial 'la's to distinguish some of the various kinds of conditionals).  If 'tenpo x' is only for S1, it would be more natural (to a good Lojbanist, certainly) to say 'S1 lon tenpo X la S2.'

Taking these phrases as being, in effect, about some unspecified point in time rather than simply as directions without points at the end, opens a variety of possibilities.  The following sections look at some of these.(The theoretical purely vector tenses might use just the modifiers as pre-la or as prepositional complements.  But at least 'pini' and 'ni' have other uses both with 'la' and prepositions, so the present plan works better.)

B. Spcified times

One immediate response to saying that tense is about some unspecified time, is to ask about specified times.  Why not allow pinpointing a time ?  So we get dates as 'la' phrases.  Or we would if we had a settled system for dates, probably 'tenpo sunpo nanpa tu tu pi tenpo mun nanpa luka tu' or, colloquially, 'tu tu pi luka tu' (4/7) ?  but at least two such notions are well established in tp usage: going to the extremes and moving stepwise through time.

At the extreme we have (Gen 1:1) 'tenpo open la' (or just 'open la;, but this has a rhetorical use as well "to begin with")"At the beginning time"  (and, one expects in these apocalyptic times, 'tenpo pini la' now in a very different sense).  Presumably -- though not in the corpus yet -- other times that are pinned down to events will serve as well: 'tenpo pi utala suli'  "during the big war" and 'tenpo pi utala pini' "during the last war" (clear from context, we hope, though not in abstraction).

Stepwise we have 'tenpo suno pini', "yesterday" and similarly with 'pimeja' for "last night" and 'esun' for "week" and 'mun' for "month" and the same pattern with 'kama' and 'ni'  'sike suno' meaning "year" can also fit into this pattern, without needing 'tenpo'.   Strictly, all theses 'pini's and 'kama's are just any past/future one, but the use for the immediately past/future one is generally the understood convention (how to counter this convention is not clear, as is the reason for wanting to)

C. Quantifiers over moments of time

Another obvious question arising from a form that says "at some time in the past", say, is "What about 'at all times in the past'?"  and "What about getting rid of 'in the past'?".  So, 'tenpo pini' leads immediately to 'tenpo pini ali' (or is it 'tenpo ali pini'?) and just 'tenpo ali', "always".  And that leads naturally to 'tenpo ala pini' (or 'tenpo pini ala') "never".  But, if something can happen at no time and at every time, it can happen at one time or two or (in tp) at many,  And so we get 'tenpo wan pini' (or 'tenpo pini wan') and so on through whatever numbers we have, also with directional restrictions -- just 'tenpo mute la' "often"

At this point we  notice that 'tenpo seme' is also a possible 'la' phrase, here being taken as "How often"?  It could however equally be just "When?", as king for a specification of the sort just discussed or soon to be.  There is no obvious way to specify beforehand what kind of answer is sought (cf.  'sina seme?') , though I suppose modifiers could be used in some way: 'tenpo seme pini' vs. 'tenpo pini seme',  say.
 
The fact that something can occur on several occasions allows another way to specify a time: ordinally: 'tenpo nanpa tu la'  "on the second occasion".

Two side points here.  The same event occurring on several occasions is different generally from a single event that involves repetitive action, though they are clearly related.  The locution we are discussing here is about something that happens on separate occasions, not about repetitive actions.  So "He has attacked him three times" is clearly ' tenpo tu wan la jan mije nanpa wan li utala e jan mije nanpa tu' (to be terribly fussy),  But how do we say that on one occasion he hit him three times: 'tenpo wan la ona li utala e ona ... tu wan' but we do not know what goes in the blank -- nor exactly where the blank is.  It is assumed that 'tenpo' plays a role here, even though time is not particularly significant, compared to the notion of instances (but L1 is a powerful force here and most of ours use a time word here), so 'utala pi tenpo tu wan' is the leading contender.

Secondly, a number of "tenses" which seem to fit with this "always", "often: "once," "never" sequence do not fit naturally here: "usually, regularly, generally, more often than not" and so on.  They will turn up later in this discussion of 'la'.

D. Tensors

Since tenses place an event in relation to the present as being displaced from it forward or backward in time, it is natural to ask "Displaced how much?"  If we have a vector from one point to another, we can ask about its tensor, how long is the arrow?  tp provides days, weeks months and years as units (see above) and a few numerical units.  The move one of these units fore and aft is already covered, so the rest follow naturally 'tenpo suno pini tu' (or is it 'tenpo suno tu pini'?) is "two days ago" and so on in obvious patterns, including 'mute' for "a long time", measured in whatever units.  (It might be that, at least for 'mute', a useful distinction could be made between ' tenpo mute pini' and 'tenpo pini mute', one being "a long time ago"(unit unspecified) and the other "on many occasions in the past".  It is not clear which should be which, though I will -- I think at this moment -- argue for 'tenpo mute pini' for "a long time ago" and then extend that to answer other questions about the various placements of quantifiers in these expressions.  Stay tuned)

E.  Stretches of time.

In addition to the question of how much time has passed since an event, one can ask how long  the event took.  What little usage there is seems to point to a tensor without a vector for this purpose:  ' tenpo suno tu la jan li tawa tomo'  "For two days the person went toward home.'  and especially 'sike suno mute la jan li lon' "The person is old" (so maybe 'jan li lon sike suno mute'?).

3, Continuity

One common use of 'la' phrases is to attach the current sentence to the previous one,  The flip side of 'tan ni:' "because of the following" is 'tan ni la' "because of the preceding, therefore". Although far less common, this naturally suggests 'tawa ni:" and 'tawa ni la', "in order to, for".  

'taso' is another continuity word, but it does not require 'la'.  I suppose that 'anu' can be used in this way as well, again without 'la'

The most common continuity expressions, yet the ones with the fewest uses in tp, are temporal relations: "before, after, since, until, during/while" (others?).  I am inclined to think that "after that" is just 'ni pini la', "that being past" with some device for tensors again (presumably just the ternsor with 'pi' and the connector).  Of course, the case could be made that 'pini ni', "in this's past" means "before this", but I find that confusing (as others do my version).  The same contrast can be made for 'kama',  of course.  Perhaps we have to allow both and let folks sort out their own usage here (to everyone's confusion).  

"Since, until, during" delimit stretches of time again, not by a metric but by reference to another point or stretch,  Further, within that stretch we can manage the array of tense relation "Since I saw him, I have never/often/always/twice thought of him" So, the expression seems to be a first 'la,' after which others are possible but not required,  The temptation here is just to use "before" and "after" again, with the other terminus, now" understood, even though that leaves the stretch indistinguishable from a mere sequence if no subordinate tenses are used: 'ona li kama weka.  ni pini la mi li tawa noka'  "After he left, I walked" or "Since he left, I've been walking"  Perhaps  using modal 'awen' in the second case would do it,  Or putting 'awen' in the 'la' phrase: 'ni pini awen'  Or something else.  Such as insisting on secondary tenses to avoid ambiguity.  

But 'awen' does seem to fit naturally into "during, while." If "after this" is "this being done" (or "in this's future"), then "during this" seems to be "this going on" (or "in this's going on", the two seem to collapse), so "meanwhile: is 'ni awen' (or 'awen ni'),  This fits in pretty much with the modal uses of the three verbs for aspects, insofar as tp uses these at all ('pini' does both terminative and perfect, 'kama' inchoative, 'awen' progressive and superfective.  'open', with no role here, does initiative.) 

4.  Sources

This covers a variety of cases.

We can talk about where something is true as well as when.  Thus, we can use place names in 'la' phrases to discuss customs, habits, and the like of a particular place or even a group: 'ma Mewika la, sike suno tu tu ali la, jan ali li wile e jan lawa ma.' [Just noticed another temporal expression not discussed above.]   Like similar temporal expressions, these have a corresponding PP with 'lon'.

We can talk about where we get our information: "according to Wikipedia, " 'ilo Wikipesija la'.  Or, whether we take it as information or not, the source of a claim "In John's opinion," 'jan San la' ('mi la' is probably the one most usually accurate, but it is assumed throughout tp.)  All of these have the PP version with 'tawa' "according to" (though 'tan' would seem to make more sense).

The usual reasons for mentioning sources, aside from accuracy and avoiding responsibility, is to give some indication of what reliance the hearer should put on the claim (and maybe convey some indication of the speaker's reliance),  Another way to do this is to indicate how you came by the claim.  Of course, citing a source says you came by it second hand, but you can do that without citing a source: "I hear that...",  "science tells us" ('nasin la' or 'sona la'?), even "it follows that" (though this may overlap with 'tan ni').  So 'kute mi' and 'pilin mi' (stronger than just 'mi') and 'lukin mi' (eye witness) and the  like may be used (though rarely are -- L1 again).
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5. Reaction (emotion, verification)

Aside from our confidence in a claim and its source, we may comment on a claim in terms of how it affects us or how we expect it to affect our hearers.  The most common o these are 'pona la' "Fortunately" and 'ike la' the opposite.  We also have 'wile la' "Hopefully" .  More generally, emotions show up as separate interjections, just 'a!' (for just about any\thing) or adjective interjected (with or without an 'a') to give a more specific response.
The most interesting reactions are actually ot attached but responses to someone else's claim 'lon' and 'ala'  "That right" and "Lies". They can be used in reporting claims, however.

6. Organization

When what one says is organized, one tries to project that organization to one's listeners and so gives guidelines:
open la.  "to begin with"
(nanpa) wan la "First"
wan la "On the one hand"
ante la "on the other hand"  But also "On the contrary" and "Otherwise" (after a list of objections or compliments)
kin la "Moreover, in addition"
pini la "in conclusion"
poka la  "by the way, digressing a bit"  (probably 'awen la' "to get back on track"
ali la  "in summary"
lawa la  "the main point, most importantly"
There ought to be things for "for example" and "expanding on that" but I don't know them

7. Topic?

Some folk say that the 'la' phrase can be used to front the topic, the focus of a point when it might be buried syntactically because of the fixed word order (or just for emphasis even if it normally came first, or just to satisfy some L1 pattern): 'kama kon ante la jan nasin li sona e lon ni'  "Climate change, scientists know it exists."

8.  Modals

The common use of modals in 'la' phrases is 'ken la'. "Possibly, maybe" ,  One would expect then to find 'wile la' "Necessarily, surely", but it hasn't occurred (a few logician show pieces aside).  The closest to it is 'lon la' , but that seem to be "In fact, actually" to contrast with speculation and errors.
The other technical modals (lukin, alasa, sona) don't have the lawlike character that this construction seems to require and 'kama' is wrapped up in tense.
The notions like "regularly, in general, usually, habitually" and the like need expression and words like 'nasin' and 'lawa'  and even 'awen' suggest themselves, but there is no usage.  'nasa,' of course, serves as the opposite point for at least some of this.  'kama la' alone might have the force the force of something occurs without regularity or even against it.