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In many cases, the official book eliminates commas (between li-phrases, e-phrases), but not always. For clarity, I keep them in the didactical punctuation.
ona li lili li lete.
→ ona li lili, li lete.
Last edited by janTepanNetaPelin on Thu Jun 21, 2018 4:01 am, edited 2 times in total.
I'm using a hiphen between noun (phrase) and modifier in the didactical punctuation.
The same goes for adjective-adverb-phrases and verb-adverb-phrases.
toki pona li pona mute.
Last edited by janTepanNetaPelin on Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
When a word is omitted, for example "li" after "mi"/"sina", an apostrophe is used instead.
Last edited by janTepanNetaPelin on Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
ona li jo e kiwen.
→ ona li jo e '-kiwen.
→ ona li jo e Kiwen.
mije li sona e ijo.
→ mije li sona ''.
Last edited by janTepanNetaPelin on Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:13 am, edited 3 times in total.
ona li wile lape lon supa.
→ ona li wile+lape lon+supa.
This chops up units in very distracting ways and has no real foundation in grammar. I don't see the point of it, since the structures are clear, nor why the two cases are treated the same, since the structures are quite different.
Oops! Just caught the last one, not the earlier pieces.
Last edited by janKipo on Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The books don't eliminate commas; there are no commas there. The only required comma I can think of is after a vocative ad before sentence, where there is an audible pause. Other commas may be useful sometimes (before terminal PPs after NPS, say) but none are required (well, except in Lope). Commas generally break the flow unnecessarily. So Tepan is not retaining commas, he is adding them.
Hyphens are pointless, since they just makr the fact that one word follows another. They might be hand in the case of three or more words following a 'pi', but those are relatively rare to justify all the rest of the parsley.
The apostrophe for missing 'li' after 'mi, sina, o' is cute and possibly useful. But some of the things Sonja says suggest that there is no 'li' there to be missing, that 'mi' attaches directly to the predicate at the formation stage. So, the apostrohe should wait for a decision on that question.
The idea of "omitted words" has a certain appeal to a grammarian, but not enough to clutter the page with apostrophes. 'kiwen' as "stone, metal" is not an adjective with a missing modificand, but a derivative concrete (pun not avoided) noun. Similarly, transitive verbs without their objects are just intransitive verbs (derivational transformation are separate from grammatical ones).
I realize that these signs are not meant to be actually used in writing but only in analysis. The dange is that one comes to rely on them to read text (though God know why you would in most cases) and thus lose the grasp of how the language goes together. I think analysis is better. done by doing it in the open: this comes from this by these processes. The summary of the results is usually less informative or generally applicable.
ona li tomo-tawa mi. "It is my car."
ona li tomo, tawa mi. "It is a house to me."