Animacy

Toaq has a system of grammatical animacy.

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.)

Grammatical, rather than natural animacy

Toaq's animacy being "grammatical" means that it is a property of expressions, not of their referents.

If you know some Spanish, it's like "grammatical gender" in that language. La persona is feminine, even if the person you're talking about isn't necessarily female.

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

Table of classes

Toaq animacy classes

Nr.	Class	Pronoun	Example
0	(raı alone)	(ráı)	sa rảı
I	Animate verbs	hó	sa pỏq
II	Inanimate verbs	máq	sa jỉo
III	Abstract verbs	hóq	sa sỉo
IV	Adjective verbs	tá	sa dẻ
V	clauses	róu	dûa jí sıa rảı
VI	lu phrases	kúy	lú tảo jí hóa
VII	po phrases	zé	pó sa gỉ
VIII	Personal pronouns	fúy	nháo
IX	Demonstratives	bóu	ní

Note the following distinction:

• Classes V through IX apply when the expression has a certain grammatical form.
• Classes 0 through IV apply depending on the "main" verb animacy class of a determiner phrase.

Verb animacy classes

A poster outlining the main verb animacy classes.

Every Toaq verb belongs to some verb animacy class:

• If the verb is raı, it's in class 0 (the class containing only raı).
• If the verb necessarily implies animacy/sentience of its subject, it's in class I (hó).

  Examples: poq, naq, kato, che, be, deo, mıe, koı, moı, tao, fıeq, jaı…

• If the verb describes some other tangible object, it's in class II (máq).

  Examples: cea, kıoq, haq, toq, nao, hoe…

• If the verb describe an abstract concept or idea, it's in class III (hóq).

  Examples: noı, daq, dao, sıo, muı, zu…

• Other verbs are in class IV (tá).

  Examples: doq, nuı, juı, lıo, muo, raq, daı, de…

Which is the "main" class?

How do we determine the animacy class of a DP like 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".