Part-of-speech roles

Under the part-of-speech analysis introduced by kala kala, content words are a single part of speech that unifies adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Only a word's position in a sentence's syntax determines whether it takes on an adjective, noun, or verb role.

When a word is used in a different role than its original definition, there are fairly regular rules for deriving its new meaning.

Roles

Verb

A word takes on a verb role when it is the head of a predicate, the main word in the position after li (and after any preverbs).

Noun

A word takes on a noun role when it is the head of virtually any other phrase, such as a subject, direct object (after e), pi phrase, prepositional phrase, or context phrase.

Adjective or adverb

A word takes on an adjective role when it modifies a noun, and an adverb role when it modifies a verb. Within any phrase, this position is called a modifier.

Conversion rules

Adjectivization and adverbialization

Converting a word to an adjective (or adverb) is very simple and vague, merely indicating that the head has something to do with the modifier's original meaning.

This may mean a variety of things:

• A physical property of the head, such as quality, size, shape, age, color, material…
• A possessive relationship, "the [head] of [modifier]'s". This is often the meaning of pronouns and names used as modifiers (as in tomo mi, "my house"), albeit not always.
• Proximity, origin, or purpose. These can be expressed more clearly with prepositions.
• From a verb, an action habitually associated with the head. For example, jan sona ("person who knows") and tomo moku ("room for eating").
• From a preposition, the action that would cause that preposition to take place. For example, tawa as an adjective can mean "moving", and lon as an adjective can mean "real" ("existing at a given place").
• Any other relation between the head and modifier

Nominalization

Converting a verb to a noun generally means "something that is [verbed]" or "the act of [verbing]". For example, pana as a noun can mean "gift" ("something that is given") or "the act of giving". Prepositions, which can already double as verbs, can also be nominalized in this way; for example, tawa as "motion" ("the act of going to some place").

Converting an adjective to a noun generally means "that which is [adjective]". For example, loje as a noun can mean "that which is red": either a given thing or set that is red, or the color red itself. ala as a noun can mean "nothing" ("that which is not").

Verbalization

A word converted to an intransitive verb (without e) generally means, "to be [noun/adjective]".

A word converted to a transitive verb (with e) generally means, "to make [noun/adjective]"; that is, "to cause [the direct object] to be [noun/adjective]". For example, li pona e means "improve" ("to make good"), and li suli e means "enlarge" ("to make large").

Verbalization is powerful; it is not always the case that a verb will have such a pithy English backtranslation.

There are arguably two main exceptions to the transitive verbalization method:

• Words that can describe senses, such as pilin, lukin, and kute, can mean "to [sense] [the direct object]"; respectively, to feel, to see, and to hear.
• Some other words (possibly chiefly those for body parts, but also telo), tend to mean "to apply [noun] to [the direct object]". For example, mi luka e waso means "I pet a bird" ("I apply the hand to a bird"). ona li uta e sina means "They kiss you" ("They apply the mouth to you"). jan li noka e sike means "A person kicks the ball" ("…applies the foot or leg to…").

Summary

To	Meaning
Adjective	"of or relating to [noun/verb]"
Noun	"that which is [adjective/verbed]"
	"the act of [verbing]"
Verb	"to be or make [adjective/noun]"

Repeated conversion

These rules can be chained together to generate even more related meanings of a word. These meanings are sometimes less understood without context, such as using a word in a secondary role, then referring back to that usage of the word in a tertiary role.

Converting a word back into its original part of speech might transpose it from its original meaning. For example:

• Toki Pona: The Language of Good defines moku as a verb, "to eat".
• This can be used as a noun, "something eaten; food".
• This in turn can be used as a verb, "to be food; to be eaten". As intransitive verbs, these two senses have opposite meanings (although as transitive verbs, eating something and causing it to be eaten are equivalent).

For verb senses, this phenomenon is called monsutatesu.