Varying degrees

I believe I now have a complete suite of degree markers for Koa. I'll sketch them out below with both a noun and an adjective for reference:

vaha pi anu "a small amount of water, very little water"
neso pi anu "a little water, some water"
nai pi anu "some (unspecified amount of) water"
aiva pi anu "quite a bit of water"
poli pi anu "a lot of water"

kuma vaha "not very hot, a little hot"
kuma neso "slightly hot, sort of hot"
kuma nai "somewhat (neutrally) hot"
kuma aiva "quite hot"
kuma poli "very hot"

English doesn't do a very good job of distinguishing between 1 and 2, or 2 and 3, but I think the semantics are pretty straightforward:

vaha - near the lowest end of the expected spectrum of degree/quantity
neso - indefinite between low and middle
nai - completely indefinite/neutral
aiva - indefinite on the higher side
poli - near the highest end of the expected spectrum

So there you have it. I notice this set of examples owes a particularly large debt to Finnish...