Tokana is an SOV language, where grammatical
relations are expressed by a combination of case
marking and agreement. As in most verb-final
languages, modifiers precede the words that they
modify--the one exception being numerals and
quantifiers, which follow the noun. Compounding is
extremely common. Tokana distinguishes between
nouns and verbs, but does not have a separate
class of adjectives: states and properties are
instead expressed by stative verbs (e.g., "be
happy") or stative nouns ("happy one"), where the
former function as predicates and the latter as
arguments or noun modifiers (hence "happy child"
is literally a compound: "happy-one child").
Stative nouns are formed productively from stative
verbs through nominalization, discussed below.
Case
There are a total of seven cases in Tokana,
but only five of them are attested in this text:
absolutive (the unmarked case, not indicated in
the interlinear), dative (glossed DAT), locative
(LOC), instrumental (INST), and ablative (ABL).
Case markers are suffixes, which go on the
rightmost element in the noun phrase (hence, if
the noun phrase consists of a noun-noun compound,
only the head noun will be marked for case while
any preceding noun modifiers will be unmarked). A
partial exception to the rule that case markers
are suffixes comes from the dative: When the
rightmost element in the noun phrase ends in a
consonant preceded by a non-glide vowel, <-i-> is
infixed before the final consonant (e.g., <hen>
"two" becomes dative <hein>); in other cases, <-i>
is suffixed.
Case marking of subjects and objects in Tokana
follows a typologically unusual 'active' pattern,
where the choice of case marker is influenced by
semantic factors such as aspect. Noun phrases
denoting agents (of which there are none in this
text) appear in the ergative case, while noun
phrases denoting the patient of a telic
change-of-state event or the endpoint/goal of a
motion event appear in the dative case. All other
subjects/objects appear in the absolutive case.
(N.B.: "telic" means having a natural endpoint.
For example, "Mary ate the apple" is telic because
the event necessarily ends when the apple is
completely consumed, while "Mary pushed the stone"
is atelic because there is no natural endpoint. On
the other hand, "Mary ate apples" is atelic
because the event can go on indefinitely, while
"Mary pushed the stone into the ditch" is telic
because the event ends once the stone is in the
ditch. In the Tokana equivalents of these
sentences, "the apple" and "into the ditch" would
appear in the dative case, while "apples" and "the
stone" would be in the absolutive case.)
Concerning the other cases found in this text: The
instrumental case is used to mark instruments
(among many other things), and forms "if" clauses
and adverbial clauses when attached to a
nominalized verb. The locative case marks
locations (among many other things). The ablative
case marks the source, or the measured thing in a
measure relation (among many other things): hence
in the Tokana equivalent of "many of the apples"
or "a bushel of apples", "apples" would be in the
ablative case.
Agreement
Verbs can agree with their absolutive,
dative, and ergative subjects and objects in
person, number, and animacy. Person and animacy
agreement are marked by prefixes, while number
agreement is marked by suffixes. Definite noun
phrases trigger agreement, while indefinites do
not. Tokana is a 'pro-drop' language, meaning that
agreement markers can appear without any overt
definite noun phrase for them to agree with, in
which case they function essentially like pronouns.
Agreement in Tokana can be exceedingly complex,
but luckily for you there happens to be very
little agreement in this text. The prefix <a->
marks agreement with a third person inanimate
dative noun phrase, while the prefix <e-> marks
agreement with a third person inanimate absolutive
noun phrase. The suffix <-t> marks plural
agreement for intransitive verbs (e.g., <e-teuna>
= "it is put", <e-teuna-t> = "they are put").
Number agreement on verbs is crucial for the
interpretation of definite arguments, since noun
phrases are not themselves marked for number
(e.g., <tsinu> can mean "seed" or "seeds", hence
<tsinu e-teuna> = "the seed is put" and <tsinu
e-teuna-t> = "the seeds are put").
Argument Structure
Arguments (subjects, objects)
may be freely omitted in Tokana if their referents
are unknown or recoverable from the context. There
is no passive construction in Tokana. To form the
equivalent of a passive, simply omit the (ergative
case-marked) agent noun phrase. By the same token,
an intransitive verb (e.g., "go") taking an
absolutive or dative argument can be made
transitive (e.g., "put" = "cause to go") simply by
adding an ergative argument.
Verb Morphology
Verbs in Tokana inflect for
tense, aspect, and negation, among other things.
All of the verbs in this text are in the non-past
(default) tense, and none of them are negated. A
couple of verbs are in the perfect aspect (glossed
PRF), which is formed by a kind of ablaut. When an
action verb is inflected in the perfect, it
expresses the state resulting from the action
(e.g., <lima> = "open, be opened" becomes perfect
<leima> = "be open, be in a state of having been
opened").
Nominalization is quite common in Tokana: To form
a relative clause or other embedded clause, the
verb is nominalized. Since Tokana lacks a separate
class of adjectives, the functional equivalent of
a modifying adjective is a relative clause formed
by nominalizing a stative verb (e.g., forming
"happy one" from "happy"). There are three kinds
of nominalization attested in this text:
subjunctive nominalization (marked by a pair of
suffixes glossed SUB-NZR), theme nominalization
(marked by a suffix glossed TH.NZR), and
circumstantial nominalization (marked by a suffix
glossed CR.NZR). Their functions are a bit hard to
explain. Roughly, subjunctive nominals are similar
to English infinitival clauses, and correspond to
"if" clauses when inflected in the instrumental
case. Theme nominals are formed from verbs (mostly
stative verbs) which take absolutive subjects, and
indicate an individual bearing the property
denoted by the verb (e.g., "happy one").
Circumstantial nominals are used to modify nouns,
where the noun bears an oblique relation to the
event denoted by the verb from which the nominal
was formed (e.g., "cut-CR.NZR knife" would mean
something like "the knife with which [something]
was cut"). For reasons which it is too complicated
to go into here, verbs in the perfect aspect are
nominalized using the circumstantial nominal form
rather than the theme nominal form.
