Animacy: Difference between revisions

Any noun phrase belongs to one of nine '''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'''.)

Toaq's pronouns work the same way: if you describe a person as {{t|sa sảo}} (“someone big”), the appropriate pronoun to refer to them later in the sentence is {{t|tá}} (“it_adj.”), because {{t|sảo}} is an adjective. It's not correct to use {{t|hó}}, because that's the pronoun for animate ''verbs'', not animate referents.

! colspan=5 | Verb classes

| I || Animate verbs || {{t|hó}} || {{t|sa pỏq}} || a person

| II || Inanimate verbs || {{t|máq}} || {{t|sa jỉo}} || a building

| IV || Adjective verbs || {{t|tá}} || {{t|sa dẻ}} || something pretty

<div style="text-align: center; display: inline-block;">

<div style="font-size: smaller; padding: 1em">[[User:Lynn|Lynn]]’s animacy poster, <br>outlining the main verb animacy classes. <br>[[Media:AnimacyPoster.png|See image version.]]

'''Class 0''' consists of just the verb {{t|raı}}. This is so that we can use {{t|raı}} as a dummy verb whose only role is to bind {{t|ráı}} for later use, e.g.,

:; {{t|Sa rảı bı, dủa jí bû bỏ jí ráı da.}}

How do we determine the animacy class of a DP like {{t|sa dẻ pỏq}} — a [[serial]] of a class-IV and a class-I word?

 

An unofficially proposed rule seems to boil down to: "use the first non-class-IV word's class, if possible; otherwise use class IV".<ref name=seoqrea />

 

 

I've been thinking about how to determine the animacy class of serials. To me, both of Hỏemaı's original suggestions for how to do this lead to unexpected results, such as pủ zảı being class III if you just use the head's animacy, and chủa lỉq being class I if you take the most animate serial component. So, I've come up with the following system that I think works rather intuitively, using the concept of 'animacy strength', similar to the concept of 'class strength' first described here: https://toaqlanguage.wordpress.com/2021/08/08/miscellanea1/#comment-244 {{Transcript|The basis rule is that the the highest predicate determines the type of the whole phrase and therefore its adverbial behavior. With some predicates (call them weak predicates), it is more useful to say that the highest *strong* predicate determines the type. All non-Main Class predicates are strong. Some Main Class predicates are weak, such as, e.g. “jaq”. For example, if “lẽ” (“le” being a Modal) attaches high, then so would “jãq le”. It would be less useful if it had to attach low.}}

Then, by assigning words the appropriate animacy strengths, you can put e.g. {{t|tảq ''tủa'' sỉq}} in class I, {{t|dẻ ''rủa''}} in class II, {{t|''chủa'' lỉq}} in class III, etc. Generally, all verbs not in the main class would be weak, and all verbs of animacy class IV would be weak, while most other verbs would be strong.