A topic centralizing beginner questions about Toki Pona.
Note: This post is considered a wiki post, meaning users with a high enough trust level may edit it as if they were a moderator. This allows for frequently asked questions to be added to the original post!
A good start for questions:
for an FAQ, I have this one that is pretty robust!
I can't believe I didn't notice this topic until now! I'll probably have a lot more questions than I've already asked, and I hope that my somewhat idiosyncratic style of asking them is ok.
It's due to my preferred way of learning, which is try try to build a (generally but not necessarily mental) model/theory as quickly as possible (as opposed to, say, trying to first absorb a broad fact base, and only then try to integrate them into a theory), and then essentially apply the scientific method, performing experiments (a bit of a generous term, usually it's just asking questions to someone who knows more) to expand and refine it.
I really like how well this applies to conlangs, since there I can usually get a lot more information than "does this sound right?" or "does this mean X? If not, what does it then mean?", instead (or rather, additionally) getting to see entire theories of how (features of) the language works :D
For that reason I also like to start with grammar rather than vocabulary, so that when I learn vocabulary I already know how to use it. Ideally I'd just learn one word from each grammatical category initially, juuuust enough to construct example sentences that I can then test for grammaticality 
With that in mind, I have a question to test a theory about toki pona questions which would imply that they can generate presuppositions. If that theory is right, I'd like to know how to refute a bad presupposition in toki pona. Consider in English how you'd answer "do you want more tea?" or "have you stopped smoking?" differently depending on whether you have in fact smoked at some point, or have had any tea at all.
Suppose we are roommates and I have a cat, and I come home and find the cat missing and you eating a meat-based dish. Depending on whether or not you did eat the cat, how would you answer "sina moku ala moku e soweli mi" (which I don't predict generates a presupposition) differently, if at all? How about "sina moku e soweli mi ala mi" (which I predict does)?
If I did eat your cat: "mi moku e soweli sina" (or simply "moku").
If I did not eat your cat: "mi moku ala e soweli sina" (or "moku ala").
Basically I would treat this like any yes/no question, and I don't see any presuppositions that need to be taken into account.
I'm not familiar with how presuppositions work, but I'd think "I am eating meat" would count as one here. I can't honestly say "moku ala" to this question because I am eating something, and you're simply inquiring what I'm eating. While this particular question may be considered a bit nonstandard, it's easy enough to interpret, and I personally would answer "sina" or "sina ala" as appropriate.
Just what I was hoping to hear!
It's all exactly in accordance with my theory, and the way you say you'd answer is the simplest way I can imagine.
And yet it sounds like you do I am in fact analyzing the question in a way that results in it raising a presupposition of meat being eaten, and that would make it infelicitous to answer it in most other ways.
Ah, but I forgot to actually ask the question that illuminates how to refute a bad presupposition! Let me do that now: how would you answer the questions if the dish is actually vegan?
My guess, but I don't want to bias you: (mi) moku ala soweli"
this would be just like a yes/no question I imagine, likely to be answered in the same fashion as if you had asked “sina moku ala moku e soweli mi”
A very small amount of speakers use ala to mark questions outside of the main verb. so you'll see "X li Y ala Y e Z" but you will probably not see "X ala X li Y e Z" or "X li Y e Z ala Z" or something like that. But you may see it, especially if you talk to someone who has decided to use ala like that.
just chiming in with what lipu pu has to say about this (emphasis added, it's specific about where ala goes):
"The other way [of forming a yes-or-no-question] is to repeat the word being used as a verb, adding ala in between. ona li mama ala mama / 'Is she a parent?'" (p32)
I also note that most speakers will produce and correctly interpret "PV ala PV" questions despite not being the whole of the "main verb" as pu-mentioned. Something like "sina wile ala wile moku e soweli?" is perfectly well-formed.
oh yes! of course! And this is true for prepositions as well.
Verbs with modifiers are definitely more awkward to use X ala X with. Some people do it anyway, but you may not see "sina moku ala moku pona" or "sina moku pona ala pona" as often as "sina moku pona anu seme" because they just. sound weird to most (but not all) speakers.
In that case, I would not answer the question as a yes/no question, and instead correct them by saying "mi moku e kasi a", placing emphasis on kasi. Another possible answer, if I simply wanted to deny that I was eating meat rather than affirm that the dish is vegan, could be "soweli ala".
Friendly reminder that lipu pu is not authoritative! It is a great resource, and the dialect outlined in it is understood by the vast majority of speakers; but if the rules outlined in lipu pu are causing trouble with your clarity of meaning, feel free to ignore them.
How would you answer the two questions in the case where you were eating something vegan?
I see; it was present in the toki pona doc I read, so I took it as gospel. I am on the fence about whether or not I will incorporate it into my idiolect... on the one hand, simplicity and all that, and also if I am interpreting @cosmicPython correctly (but I have a follow-up question for them), we're 50/50 on whether or not it triggers a presupposition. On the other hand, at least one person saw it as presupposing, and even if other people miss a presupposition I am expressing it's really not the end of the world, and, other than introducing presuppositions into the semantics (which is a pretty huge step, and I should probably try to experiment with triggering them under more normal grammatical circumstances before I decide one way or another), in terms of formal semantics, once you have added the necessary machinery to support questions at all, it doesn't add much complexity at all to support "sina moku e soweli mi ala mi".
aha! I can pu now but have not yet done so.
I have Thoughts™ about "X ala X" vs "anu seme" and "X ala X" inside modifier and preverb stacks, but they will have to wait until I understand both the grammar and semantics of toki pona better, they are not yet on stable enough ground to be worth subjecting the forum denizens to.
Still fits my theory, nice. And thank you for the strategies! "soweli ala" is what I should have predicted had I not messed up the grammar... I wrote "(mi) moku ala soweli" but that's really not what I intended, what I intended was "(mi) moku e soweli ala". It's useful to know that this can be further shortened to "soweli ala", which makes total sense.
By the way, I have a much simpler question than all this: is "pu" a transitive verb? If so, what does it mean? I am confused about what I would put as the object/patient.
mi pu e sina.
I give you this book for free. I smack you with this book. I cause you to interact in some way with it.
Cool, thank you :D @lipamanka's semantic spaces dictionary has this for it:
The semantic space of pu contains all interactions with the official toki pona book: Toki Pona the Language of Good by Sonja Lang. This could be anything from reading it to using it in a project to folding oragami out of its pages to throwing it at your enimies to reanimating it like frankenstein's monster. In order for something to be pu, it must be some sort of interaction with the official toki pona book.
Can one phrase those sorts of interactions using pu as a verb?
o lukin e ni: lipu linluwi ni li jo e toki mute lon linja. toki linja la mi pana e sona tan lipu pu. mi pu e linja.
sama la mi pali e tomo lili kepeken supa kasi pu. pali la mi sike e supa kasi li luka e sike li pali e kipisi. mi pu tomo.
possible translation
Look at this: this internet-page has a lot of talking in threads. In this thread-talk I gave knowledge from lipu pu. I pu'ed this thread.
Similarly: I build a little building using pu's pages. When building it, I curve the pages, apply my hand to the curve, and build a sharp edge. I pu in a building type of way.
sina toki pona e mi la mi kama sona a
(that is proper grammar, right? going for thanks to your helpful explanation, I see!)
Is there a dictionary that has the words "linluwi" and "kipisi"? So far I have only been using nimi.li and the semantic spaces one.
Also, I like the sort of systematic building up of context displayed in your examples :D
Follow-up question: is there a way to get a reference to an event? As in: "I am eating. It (the event of eating, not necessarily the food) is good".
sina toki pona tawa mi la mi kama sona a
(the direct object of toki is usually understood to be the thing being spoken, pls correct me if I'm wrong)
oops, forgot those weren't pu. nasin toki mi li nasin pi mi taso. In the top bar of nimi.li make sure you toggle Common and Uncommon words on, and you'll find the definitions for those.
Thx I'm trying to be as helpful as possible lol
tenpo can work here depending on the context. mi moku e ijo. tenpo moku li pona.
yeah I need to go through and phrase everything as its base part of speech. most of them are phrased as nouns or nominalized verbs
Makes sense!
I had done that, but forgot that I had toggled the non-pu sources off in the ··· menu 
Much appreciated :D but does that mean that this is not necessarily an idiomatic thing to do in general conversation?
Clever! How about "lon" (as in "lon moku li pona")?