Talk:Preverbs

In English

It's not clear to me that there should be a discussion of English grammar here. I understand that for teaching it's useful to draw comparisons to a known language, but Toki Pona preverbs differ from English auxiliaries and perhaps it's confusing to identify them? I'd not be opposed to putting a link to another wiki's article on English auxiliaries as a point of comparison. JPeton (talk) 21:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I do agree that it may be better to remove them, if anyone objects. Feel free to revert my edit. SnpoSuwan (talk) 10:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Usage categories

There is no way tawa would make it into the same category as pini and open. It's not even clear if it ever existed - and that's putting it generously - there are several teachers that will say that it definitely doesn't exist and seeing it as a preverb is a misunderstanding of tawa as a preposition (together with styles like transitive prepositional phrases). ku listing it should not influence a usage frequency category like this.

I'd even put olin above tawa, and olin is not backed by anything - I don't even know how the "rare" parts made it into the list. Jan Ke Tami (talk) 11:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

tawa preverb is something Sonja has used at times, most famously in this Discord message on mpptp: "mi tawa moku e kala!" At other times she has also said "i sometimes use tawa preverb but i seem to be the minority" and "i accept tawa preverb as a style of toki pona." and "i have french inclinations that make tawa preverb very natural sounding". It's a very rare feature, and possibly only really Sonja's idiolect, but I don't think it's factual to say that it doesn't exist. And unlike what the article currently says "mi tawa moku e kala" (I'm going in order to eat fish) is definitely meant as a different thing from transitive prepositional phrases (because then it would mean "I move the fish towards food"). But all that said, I agree that it's barely worth mentioning. The only thing that really makes it worth mentioning is that Sonja chose to teach it as an example of "preverbs in usage" in ku, so we need to add nuance to that. — jan Pensa (talk) 13:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

a! Yea, that is different! Jan Ke Tami (talk) 00:25, 20 May 2024 (UTC)