Subclause Reform

The Subclause Reform is a proposal that changes the grammar of subclauses to fix some known ambiguities, and make them more naturalistic.

Reasons

In official Toaq, content clauses have the exact same grammar as the main clause of a sentence, and can appear wherever a determiner phrase might appear. But this grammar actually turns out to be ambiguous! Consider the following sentence:

Moaq jí ꝡä za ruqshua râo ní nuaq.

Which verb does the adjunct râo ní nuaq modify? It's not clear where the subclause ends. This example could mean either "I remember that tonight, it's going to rain" or "Tonight, I remember that it's going to rain"!

Another tricky thing is that in official Toaq, you can underfill verbs, for example by using a transitive verb intransitively:

Leo nháo da.

Now how would we say "It delights me that they tried"? If we allow verbs in subclauses to be underfilled, this also creates ambiguity!

Jaıca ꝡä leo nháo jí.

Again, it's not clear where the subclause ends, because jí could belong to either the inner or outer clause, depending on which verb is underfilled. Clearly, we need a better solution.

Proposal

To avoid ambiguity when a relative clause has a trailing adverb, we simply ban trailing adverbs from appearing anywhere inside a relative clause. So if you see an adverb after a relative clause, you can know for sure that it belongs to the outer clause:

Pıe jí cháı, ꝡë baı tâocıa súq hóa.
I drink the tea that you unintentionally made.

Pıe jí cháı, ꝡë baı súq hóa, tâocıa.
I unintentionally drink the tea that you made.

And to avoid ambiguity when a content clause has a trailing adverb, we say that subclauses starting with ꝡä/lä/etc. can only appear at the very end of a clause, coming after the outer clause's trailing adverbs:

Zaı jí, ꝡä jıa tao nháo hóq nhûq súq.
I hope that they will do it for your sake.

Zaı jí nhûq súq, ꝡä jıa tao nháo hóq.
I hope for your sake that they will do it.

Normally, such a clause will fill in the final slot of the verb. But if you want to use a content clause as the subject of a transitive verb, for example, then you can use the word có, which is a lot like the 'it' in English "It delights me that they tried".

Jaıca có jí, ꝡä leo nháo.
It delights me that they tried.

Not yet covered: ꝡá, ꝡë ꝡä