Pronoun
Toaq has relatively many pronouns. It makes distinctions that English does not:
- Clusivity: there are many words for “we” depending on who exactly is included.
- Exophora vs. anaphora: there are different pronouns for “things or people external to the text” (exophora) vs. “references to earlier phrases” (anaphora).
- Animacy: there are different third-person pronouns for animals vs. objects vs. ideas. There are 4 different anaphoric pronouns for different types of grammatical constructs.
Pronoun | Meaning |
---|---|
hó | he/she/they (latest grammatically animate DP) |
máq | it (latest grammatically inanimate DP) |
hóq | it (latest grammatically abstract DP) |
tá | it (latest adjective-like DP) |
áq | itself/himself/herself/themselves (clause subject) |
chéq | each other (reciprocal with clause subject) |
Notes
- All living animals have the pronoun nháo in Toaq, not just humans.
- The subject (first argument) of a clause binds only the anaphoric pronoun áq, so you cannot use hó, máq, hóq… to refer to it.
- For each pronoun, there's a verb crated by affixing -bo to it that means “___ is (that pronoun)'s”.
- For example, suqbo means “yours” and tabo means “its” (belonging to the referent of tá).