Independent Personal Pronouns

The Independent person pronouns in Toqabaqita are for single, dual and plural pronouns for first person exclusive, first person inclusive, second and third person categories. With only a few systematic exceptions the pronominal noun phrases are used in the same position as where a lexical noun phrase would occur. Lexical nouns are marked only as singular or plural in Toqabaqita.^[13]

The variants in the table marked with (1) were used exclusively by women. Of these pronouns used only by women, only the first person inclusive plural pronoun kia is used at the present time. This is specifically in the context of referring to one's home, or one's home place or one's country most commonly when away from one's home area.^[16] It is notable that although there are multiple plural personal pronouns some are used more commonly than others. Some alternatives are rarely used, specifically these are the first person exclusive kamaliqa, the third person plural kiiluqa, and the second person singular qoo. Both forms of the second person plural, kamuluqa and kamaluqa are commonly used. There are phonetic associations with specific person pronouns. The dual pronouns all contain r, and the plurals all contain l, with exception of the third person plural kera. Lichtenberk suggests that this is due to their associations with the numbers rua which glosses as two, and ulu which glosses as three, and also that perhaps the plurals were previously trial or paucal forms of pronouns.^[4]

In some cases where the independent pronoun and a subject marker are identical (homophones) and occur in the same sentence one will be omitted, and Lichtenberk (2008) suggests it is the pronoun that is omitted. This occurs for koro, where it is both the inclusive dual inclusive independent personal pronoun and the dual inclusive nonfuture subject marker. Similarly kulu is both the plural inclusive independent plural pronoun and the plural inclusive nonfuture subject marker. Lichtenberk believes that most speakers would avoid the repetition.^[17]

In the above example the first kulu would be deleted.

The independent personal pronouns, including the third person pronouns, are used with human reference, or with spirits, very rarely with animals. They may be used with mythological animals or with an animal that is in view.

The third person pronoun can be used to specify subject topicalization, even with inanimate objects, as is:

There are numerous specific uses of the independent personal pronouns such as the third person singular pronoun being used to close off a story or a narration, in a verb-less statement:

To emphasize a pronoun the same strategies that are used with lexical nouns are also employed, but with a specific pronominal foregrounder ni.

Here the emphasis is on the persons being spoken to.

The inclusive pronouns can be used in a way to include the addressee, to index personal closeness or in a jocular sense.

Person Markers

Toqabaqita uses person markers with proper nouns that designate people, spirits, ogres, pets and domestic animals. They are gender differentiated, with tha used with male and ni with female people. When referring to gods and spirits and introduced Christian deities, tha is used. Tha is used to refer to all pets and domestic animals, both male and female. They are used for reference not for address, see examples 11 and 12, but even then they are not obligatory.^[23]

Contrast the need for a person marker when talking about Ulufaala the named person in the narration, rather than when he arrives in person.

Tha is used with the nouns that refer to children, wela (child, young person), kale (offspring), or weleqi (adult males).

Tha is used for inanimate objects that actually have names.

Object Pronouns

In Toqabaqita there are two classes of transitive verbs, Class 1 and Class 2, and they index their pronominal direct objects differently. Class 1 transitives have object indexing suffixes only for the third person; -a for singular direct objects, -daroqa for dual categories and -da for plural objects.^[28]

Toqabaqita doesn't index object status first and second person, but it is indicated by the appropriate independent personal pronoun as in (18).

Class 2 Transitive verbs have object indexing suffixes for all grammatical persons and numbers, and follow a similar pattern to the independent personal pronouns.^[29]

Again there are forms that were previously used only by women, in women's speech, that are no longer used. For the third person singular there are two forms -na and -a, and their use is often phonologically determined, in particular so there are no sequences of three vowels.^[29]

The -na object pronoun is used here in (20) to follow the vowel a.

Subject Pronouns

Toqabaqita has subject indexing suffixes which appear on the verb and also indicate nonfuture tense, future tense, imperfect aspect, sequentiality, negative aspect, and dehortation.^[30] There is some suffixes that are the same in the third person dual and plural categories. It is interesting to observe that there are no archaic women's speech forms noted by Lichtenberk.

.^[31]

Simple negative

The negative verb

Double negative construction

The third strategy used to express negation in Toqabaqita is the double negative construction, which involves the negative verb aqi and negative subject markers in combination.^[50] This construction is more common than the simple negative.^[42]

Broadly speaking, the double negative involves two negative clauses used sequentially. The first of these may be considered a "mini-clause" involving a third person subject marker and the negative verb aqi. The second clause is a negative event clause that is negated using negative subject markers. The negative event clause does not include a subject phrase, however, a noun phrase corresponding to the subject of this event clause may optionally precede the mini-clause.^[50]

Two subtypes of the double negative have been identified; these are referred to as the "general" and "sequential" double negative constructions respectively.

Spatial distinctions

Toqabaqita, like many Austronesian languages,^[61] makes distinctions between what will be termed 'spheres', wherein referent entities in a speech act may be considered members of the speaker's sphere (speaker proximal), the addressee's sphere (addressee proximal), or as belonging to neither (distal).^[59] A further distinction can be made that refers to a speech act simply not belonging to the speaker's sphere.^[62]

There is some flexibility in terms of which sphere a referent may be categorised, starting with the most apparent:

• physical proximity i.e. a referent that is physically closer to the addressee may be considered part of their sphere as opposed to the speaker's
• if the referent is a part of a whole, the referent will form part of the sphere to which the whole belongs e.g. a speaker's arms and legs are speaker proximal
• who is involved in a state of affairs, or else who is seen as central to the state of affairs being discussed in a speech act will also determine its sphere^[59]

Additionally, spatial distinctions are often combined with temporal aspects in Toqabaqita, where the time of the speech act also approximates physical proximity to a speaker.^[59]

The below table summarises this:

In addition to speaker relativity encoded by spheres, spatial distinctions are also made in terms of planar and elevational dimensions in Toqabaqita.^[64] Primarily, the encoding of spheres correlates to the position of referents along a medial-distal plane, which contrasts with elevational, up-down distinctions which are described using qualifying demonstratives.

Exceptions to these distinctions are evident, which are later discussed, particularly in the elevational distinction.^[65] It is also worth reiterating that spatial deixis can often be semantically combined with some notion of temporal deixis, however the full extent of these functions will not be discussed due to scope.^[59]

Determiner demonstratives

Determiner demonstratives are modifiers within noun phrases. The internal structure of a noun phrase including a determiner demonstrative is illustrated below:

${\displaystyle [[noun]determiner.demonstrative]}$^[66]

Their formal criteria are markedly different to that of the other demonstrative types listed in this section. Most saliently is their restriction in terms of syntactic use. Determiner demonstratives are the only identified type which can only apply within a noun phrase. In contrast, other demonstratives can apply as or can modify predicates, verbal predicates, and some take on extra functionality in that they are able to modify even obliques.^[67]

For Toqabaqita nouns, the default is always that the referent is definite, unless specified as indefinite. The absence of determiners in Toqabaqita may be attributed to its use of postnominal markers. However this lack of definite marking helps assist in obscuring its distinctions as a demonstrative.

Example 49 shows how definite determiners are unmarked. It also includes use of an addressee proximal determiner demonstrative:

Note that the demonstrative occurs prior to the object marker. Additionally, that wela, is glossed as meaning 'the child', indicating a form of definiteness about the unmarked noun. Compare this to example 50 showing the use of the indefinite article marker, incidentally also the number one, alongside the use of a qualifying demonstrative:

Note that in this example the demonstrative has fused with the postnominal marker.

While the functionality of a qualifying demonstrative is broader in scope, and includes far less syntactic restriction than that of a determiner demonstrative (further discussion later), its usage in this example shows syntactic contrast with the prenominal indefinite article. For this reason, this example of a qualifying demonstrative is mentioned in this section, and shows that although the determiner demonstrative on its own can stray into conceptions of article functionality, it is, by formal criteria, a member of the demonstrative class.

When comparing features cross linguistically, the issue of comparability is often that there are no one-to-one correlations between languages.^[56] Combining universal criteria from both Himmelmann^[56] and Diessel,^[57] there are arguments for and against including what are called here "determiner demonstratives" as a type of demonstrative as opposed to a type of determiner or article. The name for this type of functionality in Toqabaqita itself hints that they possess flavours from both camps.

See below for a full list of determiner demonstratives and their meanings:

Note that the numbers 2, and 3 in parentheses in the table exist to differentiate the addressee and the distal, since in English, there is no comparable distinction.

Determiner demonstratives can all function as exophoric markers, i.e. whose meaning refers to reference beyond the discourse, however only some may be used endophorically, i.e. referencing either an item previously mentioned (anaphoric) or that will be mentioned later in the discourse (cataphoric). There is further debate in typological linguistics as to whether endophorically referencing demonstratives are perhaps a different subgroup, in contrast to exophoric functionality which is widely considered core to the definition of demonstratives.^[56][58] Since determiner demonstratives encode such a strong sense of spatial deixis in Toqabaqita, they have been included in this section, despite the increased level of syntactical restriction in typological formal criteria pertaining to its usage.

Qualifying demonstratives

There are two qualifying demonstratives, together used to signal vertical displacement from the deictic centre:^[76]

While these qualifying demonstratives can also indicate temporal deixis,^[77] its discussion here will be limited to how spatial deixis is signalled.

There is some overlap in terms of formal criteria with the determiner demonstratives in that the qualifying demonstratives also occur as part of the noun phrase. However, only qualifying demonstratives may take third person pronouns as the head, as in example 60:^[69]

Note that, the qualifying demonstrative, loo, has fused with the subject marker.

Another formal difference which distinguishes the qualifying demonstratives from the determiner demonstratives is that the former are able to occur with indefinite, but referential noun phrases.^[69] In these cases, the qualifying demonstrative needs to specify indefiniteness, otherwise the default is definite. Recall example 50 used in earlier discussion. This demonstrates how an indefinite head can be modified by a qualifying demonstrative:

This example also shows the use of a pronominal indefinite article, as well as a postnominal demonstrative.

Qualifying demonstratives are also able to be used alongside a determiner demonstrative when used anaphorically, and in these cases, both modify the same head noun.^[78] The qualifying demonstrative occurs after the determiner, as in the example 61:

It is clear the formal criteria used to distinguish qualifying demonstratives encompasses greater syntactic possibility, however its similarities to determiner demonstratives still attest to its typological classification as a demonstrative.

Locative demonstrative adverbs

These can be divided into two types. presentative adverbs, and general locative adverbs. Together they identify the location of an entity in space, or the presence, existence of an entity at a location.^[80]

Locative demonstrative adverbs make distinctions between speaker and addressee spheres as well as elevation:

Note that the speaker proximal form, neq(e), also functions as an emphatic marker, however this function will not be discussed here.^[81]

Despite diverging in formal criteria to the aforementioned demonstrative types, locative adverbs remain a form of demonstrative due to their function in distinguishing spatial deixis.^[56] Furthermore, if we broaden our definition of demonstrative to beyond our conceptions of its functionality in English, we can conceive that it is possible for parts of speech other than the noun phrase, to take on demonstrative, deictic marking.

Situational demonstrative adverbs

These encode spatial/temporal deixis with an emphatic-identifying function, of which there are three members.^[90] They are listed below alongside their spatial meanings:^[91]

• neri (speaker proximal)
• nena (non speaker proximal)
• nabaa (past temporal significance, sphere is irrelevant)

These are clause level constituents and occur clause finally. While their use does include functions beyond spatial deixis, discussion here will be limited due to scope.^[92] For the same reasons, nabaa, although listed to provide an accurate summary, is not further discussed here.^[93]

Example 68 shows the use of both neri and nena:

In this case, the speaker changes from neri to nena which is also an imperative (see example 69).

Stylistic choices are also possible in that it is grammatical to choose a situational adverb depending on how the speaker wishes to contextualise the speech act. For instance, neri, the speaker proximal, can be used to describe an addressee's situation if that same referent also impacts the speaker. This could be due to physical proximity, however could be more abstract, as in example 70 which involves a mother reprimanding her children in response to an earlier event which could have impacted all of the, including the mother herself, and thus invoking the speaker proximal: