No Scope Creep
No Scope Creep is a proposal to remove the scope creep effect from the language.
THE PROPOSAL: Just remove it.
Why
Here is how the language currently behaves with scope creep:
| Wide scope | Narrow scope | |
|---|---|---|
| No serial verb | Sía raı nä shoe jí, ꝡä kuq súq hóa | Shoe jí, ꝡä kuq súq sía raı |
| Serial verb | Shoe kuq jí súq sía raı | Not possible :( |
And here is how it could behave without scope creep:
| Wide scope | Narrow scope | |
|---|---|---|
| No serial verb | Sía raı nä shoe jí, ꝡä kuq súq hóa | Shoe jí, ꝡä kuq súq sía raı |
| Serial verb | Sía raı nä shoe kuq jí súq hóa | Shoe kuq jí súq sía raı |
This pattern feels clearer, and it makes serial verbs (one of Toaq's superpowers!) usable in more situations.
On that note, Toaq experts currently consider bu, ao, he, etc. to exhibit a kind of scope creep as well:
| Wide scope | Narrow scope | |
|---|---|---|
| bu | Bu tı tú poq | ??? |
| ao | Ao muaqsho tú shıtuaq | ??? |
| he | He cho báq gochıq sía poq | ??? |
Officially, there is no way to get a narrowly-scoped reading of the quantifiers. There is one proposal from uakci that uses the syntax … he nä … for this purpose, but what if we just gave the above sentences narrowly-scoped readings?
| Wide scope | Narrow scope | |
|---|---|---|
| bu | Tú poq nä bu tı hóa | Bu tı tú poq |
| ao | Tú shıtuaq nä ao muaqsho hóa | Ao muaqsho tú shıtuaq |
| he | Sía poq nä he cho báq gochıq hóa | He cho báq gochıq sía poq |
There you go. I really think narrow scope is a better default!
Why not
i think, in fact, that serials being "unitary" verbs that don't radiate semantics outwards across the whole sentence is a huge advantage
Maybe it is an advantage? But consider that even non-serial verbs can already radiate side effects: some can be undefined on certain inputs, some can create questions, and some (individual-level predicates) might even take scope. With that in mind, it's not a stretch to imagine that serials could take scope, too.