kepeken e: Difference between revisions

==Transitivity==

Recall that toki pona [[verbs]] take a [[direct object]] introduced by the [[particle]] [[e]]. It is expected that the reader understand this point before they attempt what follows.

 

The meaning of a transitive construction in toki pona is generally clear when the ordinary sense of the [[content word]] is verbal:

 

It is not clear whether this is tale of big bad wolf or of lycanthropy, since in the first case the word is interpreted as a modifier applied to the object, and the second as a noun into which the subject is transformed. This confusion is called the {{tp|[[monsutatesu]]}}, the "monsuta test", since it is most clear with the word ''monsuta''. However, ''monsuta'' is not the only word that behaves this way. Many prepositions are similarly ambiguous, particularly when used transitively.

== Lexemes ==

In the beginning, ''kepeken'' was a transitive verb. It was also a preposition. It is not the only word that straddled both categories — at certain times "poka" could act as a preposition, though today it is definitively not able to do so — but it remains as of today the most contested.