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Introduction

nasin pin’t is an exploration of what expression can look like in Toki Pona. Since pi simply groups adjectives, it is not necessary- you can always reintroduce a head noun and continue describing it. In fact, Toki Pona depends on this in conversation! You would find it surprisingly easy to never use pi.

Why?

nasin pin’t has some very practical lessons to teach about Toki Pona, even if you do not fully adopt it.

It solves a specific case of syntactic ambiguity in Toki Pona! When using multiple pi, either of the following are possible:

• Each pi makes a single adjective, and all affect the head noun equally.
  • jan pi tawa noka pi pali wawa would be interpreted something like “Person of foot-movement and powerful work”
• Each pi includes the entire rest of the phrase, including following pi
  • jan pi tawa noka pi pali wawa would be interpreted like “Person of powerfully-working foot-movement”

Examples

Here, pana sona is a single adjective that modifies jan. Using pi joins all following adjectives into a single adjective, so similarly you get a jan [pana sona]. If you wanted to break this up, recognize that both jan and pana sona actually are describing mi- so if you split it up, it should still describe mi!

Here, the adjectives behind pi now modify something other than the subject- they modify the object of a preposition. This can also easily be broken up, with a separate sentence describing the head of the prepositional object, a tomo. However, there is a purpose to the kama wawa that actually goes back to applying to the subject! This version of the statement is even more clear as to what the tomo is for, and what you’ll do when you get there.