4. Geqjaı jí súq / Pleased to meet you
In this lesson, we’ll cover how to form the simplest Toaq sentences.
Conversation
Lucas has just moved to a new city where people speak Toaq. He meets Míqte on the internet. Read their conversation out loud, paying attention to the falling and rising tone marks. What mistake does Lucas make?
LucasJadı.
Sıomche jí. Naq jí.
Bua jí Tóaqgua. Jí Kanada.
Upa, zı! “Kanada jí.”
Kushe, gom jí. Sıom jí Tóaqzu :)
MíqteGıtu! Shadı.
Zuche jí. Geqjaı jí súq.
LucasA, jadı! Kıjı
MíqteBua súq Sáqmeı, ına. Bua jí Rédueq.
Tıjuı Sáqmeı Rédueq.
LucasIna. De Rédueq!
MíqteNho, de Rédueq.
Vocabulary
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| jadı | hello |
| kıjı | thank you |
| shadı | welcome |
| upa | oops |
| kushe | sorry |
| gıtu | no worries |
| a | ah, oh |
| jí | I, me |
| súq | you |
| Tóaqzu | Toaq |
| Tóaqgua | Toaqgua |
| zu | ▯ is a language |
| zuche | ▯ is a linguist |
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| sıom | ▯ studies ▯ |
| sıomche | ▯ is a student |
| Kanada | ▯ is Canadian. |
| naq | ▯ is male |
| lıq | ▯ is female |
| de | ▯ is beautiful |
| gom | ▯ makes a mistake |
| bua | ▯ inhabits, live in ▯ |
| geq | ▯ meets ▯ |
| jaı | ▯ feels happy |
| geqjaı | ▯ is happy to meet ▯ |
| tıjuı | ▯ is near ▯ |
Toaqgua
A bit of worldbuilding can really tie a conlang together. It’s nice to imagine the place where the conlang is spoken as a vivid environment with its own people and culture. How would they use Toaq? What words or registers or forms of poetry would they invent?
When we imagine Toaq being spoken somewhere, we often think of Tóaqgua, a fictional country somewhere between Southeast Asia, Lojbanistan, and Atlantis. Sáqmeı and Rédueq are equally fictional cities within this country.
Verb, subject, object
The basic structure of a Toaq sentence is: verb, subject, object. The conversation above consists entirely of such sentences, alongside interjections, such as jadı hello and kushe sorry, which may occur mostly anywhere. They are italicized in the text to help you spot them.
Toaq does not distinguish between verbs, nouns, and adjectives in its dictionary. Compare these three sentences:
Sıomche jí.
I am a student.Naq jí.
I am male.Gom jí.
I make a mistake.
If you look these words up in a Toaq dictionary, they’ll look like this:
sıomche — ▯ is a student
naq — ▯ is male
gom — ▯ makes a mistake
Only English differentiates the parts of speech here. From Toaq’s perspective, these are all verbs. (The verb sıomche means, to be a student).
Each of these verbs has a “hole” or “slot” (▯) in its definition. To make a complete sentence, you say the verb, and then a subject to fill the slot.
Verbs with two slots
Now compare these sentences:
Sıom jí Tóaqzu.
I study Toaq.Bua jí Sáqmeı.
I live in Saqmeı.Tıjuı Sáqmeı Rédueq.
Saqmeı is nearby Redueq.
Again, let’s look up these verbs in a Toaq dictionary.
sıom — ▯ studies ▯.
bua — ▯ lives in ▯.
tıjuı — ▯ is nearby ▯.
These verbs are have two slots. To make a sentence, you say the verb, and then fill both slots: a subject and an object.
Verbs with one slot are also called intransitive. Verbs with two slots are transitive.
Underfilling
In Toaq, you’re not allowed to “underfill” a verb. Tıjuı jí is not a valid sentence. Coming from other loglangs, this may come as a surprise. Basically, it’s not clear if Tıjuı jí should mean “I’m near something” or “I’m near it” or something else. So, in Toaq, we prefer just fill the object with an explicit pronoun or determiner.
Tıjuı jí máq.
I’m nearby it.Tıjuı jí sá raı.
I’m nearby something.
Nouns and tone
Have you been paying attention to the tone marks? For now, all our nouns are proper nouns: Tóaqzu, Míqte, Sáqmeı, and so on.
Notice that these are all in the rising tone, as are personal pronouns: jí (me) and súq (you). The basic rule is that verbs are in the falling tone, and their participants — nouns — are in the rising tone.
Bua jí Rédueq. De Rédueq.
What's a "noun"?
We’ll call anything that can fill a verb slot a “noun”, in this textbook. This is a little inaccurate and idiosyncratic, but there’s no confusion, since Toaq does not have lexical nouns.
Linguists might call them something like “argument phrases.” When being more proper, Toaqologists call them noun forms, or aqmı.
The word mí
If you’ve learned some Toaq before, you may know that the official Toaq Delta way to refer to things by name in Toaq is mí name. This still works fine!
In this textbook, we adopt the convention that the rising tone makes variable names, and that there’s no real difference between a proper name in the real world and a variable name in the logic world. So, Míqte refers to Lucas’s new friend because of some context that that name is used in, just like how pronouns refer to the right thing in their own, smaller context.