Self-termination

Revision as of 22:47, 17 February 2023 by Laqme (talk | contribs) (Delta)

Toaq has self-terminating clauses. A subclause is "terminated" when it can't take any more arguments, and yet another positional argument follows. The "self-" reflects the fact that no explicit terminating particle is necessary.

Meoca ꝡä loı súq nháo jí.
The fact that you hate her saddens me.

It would be ungrammatical for to be a third argument to loı, which is "full" — so it must be a second argument to meoca.

Bua ké poq ꝡë luı do hóa jí ní ní doaq.
The person who gave me this lives in this city.

It would be ungrammatical for ní doaq to be a fourth argument to do, so the ꝡë-clause closes before it.

These examples are intentionally written without commas to clarify that the comma isn't what closes a subclause. But in practice, it's considered proper Toaq punctuation style to write a comma at the start and end of a subclause: Bua ké poq, ꝡë luı do hóa jí ní, ní doaq.

A limitation

One limitation is that self-termination isn't activated by adverbials, so it's hard to add an adverbial to the end of a main clause with a subclause object.

Ruaq súq, ꝡä jaı súq râo púchaq.
You say that you were "happy yesterday".

Ruaq súq, ꝡä jaı súq ??? râo púchaq.
You said that you are "happy", yesterday.

Without cy at our disposal, we have no choice but to move the adverbial elsewhere (Ruaq râo púchaq súq, ꝡä…).