Toaq is a tonal language. It has tones! That is: saying a word with a rising or falling vocal intonation, for example, makes for a difference in meaning.
Function of tones
Toaq has mostly grammatical tone: when you change the tone of a word, its grammatical function changes (for example (de) “is beautiful” → (dê) “beautifully”).
This is in contrast to lexical tone, like in Chinese: there, when you change the tone of a syllable, it becomes a different word (lexeme) entirely. For example 西 xı̄ “west” → 媳 xí “daughter-in-law”.
Toaq has a little bit of lexical tone, too, limited to particles: (da) and (dâ) are two different lexemes.
The four tones
- The falling tone
is used for verbs, predicatizers, and adjectives. ( (fa) “goes”, (kúe gı) “the good book”, — (… po káto) “… of the cat”) - The rising tone
is used for nouns, determiners, and pronouns. ( (káto) “the cat”, (sá kato) “some cat(s)”, (jí) “I/me”) - The low glottal tone
is used for complementizers and clause-initiating words. ( (ꝡä gı) “that it’s good”) - The rising-falling tone
is for adverbial adjuncts. ( (fêı) “angrily”, (nîe tíaı) “inside the box”)
Interaction with parts of speech
This table shows how the four tones interact with Toaq's parts of speech:
| Falling tone
|
Rising tone
|
Glottal tone
|
Rising-falling tone
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verb |
|
Bound variable | Adjunct | |
| Pronoun | Argument | Incorporated object | ||
| Determiner | Argument | Incorporated object | ||
| Complementizer | Speech act complement | Subclause head | Incorporated object | |
| Interjection | Interjection | Inquiry | Expression of empathy | |
| Speech act particle | Lexical tone (i.e. (da) and (dâ) are simply different lexemes) | |||
| Focus particle | Steals tone from head if possible, otherwise rising tone | |||
| Conjunction | Highest precedence | Default precedence | Second highest precedence | |
Interaction with focus particles
Tone on focus particles is a little nuanced. If you focus something carrying a tonal inflection, like the in (máoja), then the focus particle "steals" the tone. But if the word is uninflected (in the "default tone" for its part of speech), the focus particle stays in its default rising tone form.
Here are some examples of how this works for each of the focusable parts of speech:
| Falling tone
|
Rising tone
|
Glottal tone
|
Rising-falling tone
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verb | Uninflected, must use prefix form to avoid conflict with rising tone
(kụrıatua) |
(kú maoja) | (kû shoı) | |
| Pronoun | Uninflected
(kú jí) |
(kû jí) | ||
| Determiner | Uninflected
(kú báq nam) |
(kû báq nam) | ||
| Complementizer | Unattested | Uninflected
(kú ꝡä) |
(kû ꝡä) |
One exception is the event accessor verb (ë), which carries an inherent glottal tone due to being both a verb and a subordinator.
| Falling tone
|
Rising tone
|
Glottal tone
|
Rising-falling tone
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Event accessor verb | (kú ë marao) | Uninflected, must use prefix form to avoid conflict with rising tone
(kụ̈'e marao) |
(kû ë marao) |
Simple Focus is a proposal intended to simplify the behavior of tones with focus particles.