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) vs. “references to earlier phrases” (anaphora).
- Animacy: there are different third-person pronouns for animals vs. objects vs. ideas. There are even 9 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)
|
Notes
- All living animals have the pronoun nháo in Toaq, not just humans.
- The subject (first argument) of a clause binds only 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).
content clause)