Pronoun

Revision as of 23:42, 30 October 2022 by Uakci (talk | contribs) (add new word forms)

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
Pronoun Meaning
I, me
súq you
nháo he, she, they
kóu* it (inanimate object)
róeq*, ráy* it (abstract)
súo y'all (you and they)
úmı*, múy we (you and I)
ínhe*, míy we (they and I)
ámao*, máy we (you, they, and I)
one (people in general)
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)
kóeq*, kúy it (latest lu DP)
it (latest object incorporating verb DP)
fúeq*, 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)

(* Unofficial but popular. If two forms are listed, prefer the first one since it no longer uses ay uy ıy oy ey syllables, which are now outdated.)

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 ).