Natural semantic metalanguage

This article needs work:

Prior art to cite and synthesize:

• [liz]. (22 September 2003). "[probably OT] Perl in Natural Semantic Metalanguage". PerlMonks. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
• (1 March 2009). "TP semantic prime words". Dave's wiki. PBworks. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
• Daniel K Lyons. (27 April 2017). "Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Toki Pona". Daniel’s blog. Archived from the original on 17 September 2019. Retrieved 24 April 2024.

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Natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) is a theory in linguistics. It claims that languages can be simplified into a core, universal set of semantic primes, connected with syntactic frames that have equivalents in all languages.

Toki Pona speech can be compared to explications in NSM. Both tend to have a heavy focus on circumlocution. However, the semantics of Toki Pona words are not quite as barebones as those of NSM primes. Meanwhile, Toki Pona interestingly lacks direct expressions of several semantic primes. Some are handled through grammatical particles. Others are much more technical to convey.

Semantic primes

The following table lists English and core Toki Pona exponents of semantic primes.

Category	English	Toki Pona
Substantives	I	mi
	you	sina
	someone	jan
	people
	(some)thing	ijo
	body	sijelo
Relational substantives	kind	See Kinds.
	part	See Parts.
Determiners	this	ni
	the same	sama
	other/else	ante
Quantifiers	one	wan
	two	tu
	some	See Some.
	all	ale
	much/many	mute
	little/few	(mute) lili
Evaluators	good	pona
	bad	ike
Descriptors	big	suli
	small	(suli) lili
Mental predicates	think	See Thoughts.
	know	sona
	want	wile
	feel	pilin
	see	lukin
	hear	kute
Speech	say	toki
	words	nimi
	true	lon
Actions, events, movement	do	See Actions.
	happen
	move	tawa
Location, existence, specification	be (somewhere)	lon
	there is
	be (someone/something)	Any noun used after li (jan, ijo, etc.)
Possession	(is) mine	(jo) mi
Life and death	live	See Life.
	die	moli
Time	when/time	tenpo
	now	See Here and now.
	before	See Before and after.
	after
	a long time	tenpo suli
	a short time	tenpo lili
	for some time	See Some.
	moment	tenpo
Space	where/place	ma
	here	See Here and now.
	above	lon sewi
	below	lon anpa
	far	(lon) weka
	near	lon poka
	side	poka
	inside	insa
	touch	pilin
Logical concepts	not	ala
	maybe	(lon) ken (la)
	can	ken
	because	tan (ni:)
	if	la / lon ni:
Intensifier, augmentor	very	mute/suli/a
	more	See Comparisons.
Similarity	like/as/way	sama/nasin

Semantic molecules

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See also

• Swadesh list

References

English Wikipedia has an article on
natural semantic metalanguage.