Pronoun

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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
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)
one (people in general)
kóu* it (inanimate object)
ráy* it (abstract)
Anaphoric pronouns
Pronoun Meaning
he/she/they (latest grammatically animate DP)
máq it (latest grammatically inanimate DP)
hóq it (latest grammatically abstract DP)
it (latest adjective-like DP)
róu it (latest rising-falling tone content clause)
kúy it (latest lu DP)
it (latest object incorporating verb DP)
fúy he/she/they/it (same referent as latest pronoun)
bóu it (latest demonstrative noun phrase)
áq itself/himself/herself/themselves (clause subject)
chéq each other (reciprocal with clause subject)

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 ).