This monograph provides a detailed grammatical description of a language called Tokana. Tokana is a 'model language' - that is, an invented language (or the outlines of one) constructed for personal amusement and edification. I have been working on Tokana for about three years now, and this sketch represents my first attempt to present it in a form which is accessible to a larger audience.
I should mention right away that Tokana was not designed to be a 'philosophical' or 'logical' language, or a vehicle for international communication like Esperanto and other such projects. Instead, it is intended as a purely artistic endeavour (some would say a self-indulgent one, but then all art is fundamentally self-indulgent, even when it appeals to a mass audience). Tokana represents my attempts to explore certain aesthetic impulses and theoretical ideas, which constructing a coherent linguistic system which is (I hope) internally consistent, interesting, and relatively complete.
My goal throughout the project has been to keep things 'realistic'. That is, I have tried to adhere as closely as possible to what we know - or what I think we know - about how naturally evolving human languages work. Thus Tokana is intended to look and feel like a natural language, with all of the complexities and irregularities which natural languages tend to have. Although I constructed the grammar of Tokana 'from the ground up', with the idea that it be a unique creation which is not obviously derived from (or related to) any single living language, I have nevertheless borrowed many phonological and syntactic features from existing sources. Among those languages which have contributed features to Tokana are: Basque, Choctaw, Cree, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Kwakwala (Kwakiutl), Lakhota, Malagasy, Spanish, Quechua, and Warlpiri.
Like all natural languages, Tokana exists within a cultural and historical context - albeit a somewhat sketchy one. Tokana is (or was, or would be) spoken by an imagined people, also called the Tokana, who live somewhere on Earth, but in a time quite remote from our own - either the distant past or the far future, or perhaps some alternate history. The fictional 'narrator' of this monograph is a fieldworker, a linguist or anthropologist, who has chosen to present his research in the form of a reference grammar for non-linguists. In keeping with this idea, I have tried to be concise yet comprehensive, illustrating each point with example sentences. I will assume that the reader is familiar with basic descriptive terms of traditional grammar (such as "subject", "object", "preposition", "embedded clause"). Beyond this, I have tried to avoid technical terminology wherever possible, and to define - or at least illustrate - those terms which I do use.
Note finally that Tokana is an ongoing project, with no fixed endpoint. The vocabulary expands almost daily, while the grammar has undergone a number of revisions and refinements, and will no doubt continue to evolve as long as I remain interested in the project. The grammatical description presented here is thus not the final word on Tokana, but merely represents the state of the language as it exists now. Subsequent changes, if any, will be reflected in future editions of this monograph.
Many thanks to my illustrious predecessors in what Tolkien called "the secret vice", as well as to my many talented contemporaries, for providing me with much needed support and inspiration.
Matt Pearson
UCLA
July, 1996