Pronoun

Toaq has relatively many pronouns. It makes distinctions that English does not:

A Venn diagram of personal pronouns.

• 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) and for “references to earlier phrases” (anaphora).
• Animacy: there different pronouns for “he/she/it” for animals, objects, and ideas. There are even different anaphoric pronouns for different types of grammatical constructs.

Exophoric pronouns

*Unofficial but popular

Pronoun	Meaning
jí	I, me
súq	you
nháo	he, she, they
súo	y'all (you and they)
múy	we (you and I)
míy	we (they and I)
máy	we (you, they, and I)
kóu*	it (inanimate object)
ráy*	it (abstract)

Anaphoric pronouns

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)
róu	it (latest content clause)
kúy	it (latest lu DP)
zé	it (latest object incorporating verb DP)
fúy	he/she/they/it (same referent as latest pronoun)
bóu	it (latest demonstrative noun phrase)
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 only binds 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).