Animacy

Toaq has a system of grammatical animacy.

Any noun phrase belongs to one of four classes, each with its own word for “he/she/they/it” that refers back to the most recent noun phrase belonging to that class. (This system of anaphoric pronouns is the only place in Toaq where this animacy distinction comes up, so the classes are known varyingly as animacy classes, anaphora classes, or pronominal classes.)

Grammatical, rather than natural animacy

Toaq's animacy being "grammatical" means that it is a property of expressions, not of their referents.

If you know some Spanish, it's like "grammatical gender" in that language. La persona is feminine, even if the person you're talking about isn't necessarily female.

Toaq's pronouns work the same way: if you describe a person as sá sao ("someone big"), the appropriate pronoun to refer to them later in the sentence is tá (“it_descriptive”), because sao has the "descriptive" animacy. It's not correct to use hó, because that's the pronoun for animate verbs, not animate referents.

Table of classes

Toaq animacy classes

Nr.	Class	Pronoun	Example	Meaning
Verb classes
I	Animate verbs	hó	sá poq	a person
II	Inanimate verbs	máq	sá jıo	a building
III	Abstract verbs	hóq	sá sıo	an idea
IV	Descriptive verbs	tá	sá de	something pretty

Verb animacy classes

Class I – ho

For living beings and their actions.

🧒	🐕	🏊	🗣️
deo	kune	lıaı	kuq
child	dog	swims	says

Class II – maq

For inanimate tangible things.

🥝	⛰️	📦	🔥
zeo	meı	tıaı	loe
fruit	mountain	box	flame

Class III – hoq

For abstract (intangible) concepts.

🌃	🔠	☯️	🚭
nuaq	laı	chuaq	juao
night	letter	ideology	rule

Class IV – ta

For words that could apply to many things.

💨	✨	☕	🌈
suaı	de	loq	reo
fast	beautiful	warm	colorful

The main verb animacy classes.
See image version.

Every Toaq verb belongs to some verb animacy class:

• If the verb necessarily implies animacy/sentience of its subject, it's in class I (hó).

  Examples: poq, naq, kato, che, be, deo, mıe, koı, moı, tao, fıeq, jaı…

• If the verb describes some other tangible object, it's in class II (máq).

  Examples: cea, kıoq, haq, toq, nao, hoe…

• If the verb describe an abstract concept or idea, it's in class III (hóq).

  Examples: noı, daq, dao, sıo, muı, zu…

• Other verbs are in class IV (tá).

  Examples: doq, nuı, juı, lıo, muo, raq, daı, de…

There is one exception: the verb raı. This is so that we can use raı as a dummy verb whose only role is to bind ráı for later use, e.g.,

Sá raı nä dua jí, ꝡä bu bo jí ráı da.

There are some things I know I don’t own.

In a serial verb, the first verb determines the animacy.