Toki Pona is not exceptional
Despite Toki Pona being a constructed language, many of its features have direct counterparts in natural languages. Toki Pona may lack certain features of English, but this does not necessarily make it an exception to linguistic patterns.
This is a comparison of features that may seem common that Toki Pona in fact shares with natural languages.
- Many natural languages do not inflect words to mark all or any of number, gender, or animacy.
- Particles: Many natural languages have grammatical particles. A potential point of comparison is Japanese and Korean particles that can mark noun cases and tag sentences.
- Time: There are tenseless natural languages, such as most of the Chinese languages. Toki Pona has some strategies in common with them for specifying time, and its tenseless approach avoids forcing speakers of such languages to adjust to a new piece of grammar.
- Many natural languages do not have native terms for jargon, and very many technical terms were not present in any languages until recently, so Toki Pona's lack of such vocabulary and avoidance of lexicalization do not inherently make it impractical.