Clause Reform

The Clause Reform is a proposal which aims to make clause boundaries and the attachment of subordinate clauses more intuitive. It supercedes the Subclause Reform.

Motivation

In official Toaq, verbs are allowed to be underfilled. This raises two big questions:

• How do we know where one clause ends and the next clause begins?
• What are the semantics of an underfilled verb?

Toaq's official answer to the first question is that clauses are greedy; they eat up as many arguments and adjuncts as they can get. However, experience with Toaq Delta leads me to believe that greediness impedes the language's usability. Because subordinate clauses look just like non-subordinate clauses, the grammar presents learners with a beautifully simple lie: that you can underfill any clause and include trailing adjuncts in any clause. Being perceptive loglangers, most will come to realize that the "real" grammar, the one that enforces greediness, looks more complicated, but this gap between the real grammar and the intuitive grammar that works 98% of the time is fairly large. Greediness becomes something you watch out for, not quite something you internalize.

The theory behind this proposal (and likewise the Subclause Reform) is that giving up a little bit of convenience in order to simplify the grammar can be a very worthwhile tradeoff. This was what happened with auto-hóa, for instance: for all the tinkering that was done, it turned out that a little bit of verbosity was what gave us the most intuitive and usable grammar.

As for the semantics of underfilled verbs, there are some sensible answers out there, such as filling the verb's implicit arguments via existential closure or imagining them to be an implicit 'ké', but I'm a bit pessimistic that speakers won't fall into the trap of using an ambiguous mix of the two. The Toaq Dzu Way seems to be to make your implicit variables explicit, in which case we probably shouldn't agonize over this question.

Clearer clause boundaries

Verbs may not be underfilled; they always require as many arguments as their definition calls for.

Shao tú poq, lä sho zaomıa já.
Everybody wants to become famous.

*Shao tú poq.
Everybody wants. (Everybody wants what?)

Consequently, nouns and adjectives must be intransitive, because Toaq's syntax gives them a single covert argument.

*Ké jea
The buyer (buyer of what?)

Ké jea lô chao
The buyer of the vehicle

*Tú poq buı
Everybody outside (outside what?)

Tú poq nı̣buı
Everybody outside this place

Determiner complements and adjectives also must not end with a verb that forms serials.

*Ké kuqnu
The alleged (not: "the allegation")

Ké kuqnu juna
The alleged fact

When determiners bind variables, the variable name is the full serial verb of the determiner's complement, excluding any adjectives. So sá kuqnu toaqpoq lıq would bind the variable kúqnu toaqpoq.

The adjective head kı- is covert most of the time. In official Toaq, the rule is that kı- must be overt whenever the preceding word could form a serial verb. In this proposal, the rule is instead that kı- must be overt in the verbal complex; everywhere else, it gets to be covert.

Kea kı̣pıao ní gıaqchuo.
This instrument is an elaborate machine.

Gıaqchuo ní kea pıao.
This elaborate machine is an instrument.

A big advantage of these changes is that sentence fences (well specifically, the words ꝡa, da, and móq) may now always be covert.

Pu tam gaı jí sá arane. Sao hó ꝡeı!
I saw a spider. It was huge!

Jua hú. Duashao jí, ꝡä luı faq hí raı.
That's strange. I wonder what happened.

Hóı déo, soa súna máma ba.
Kids, come help your mom.

TODO: decide whether to keep the example with hóı… does hóı need to modify a particular speech act, or is it a speech act in itself?

Flexible subclause attachment

TODO: explain the extraposition idea and also deal with trailing adjuncts