Atomic verb

In Toaq, everything in the dictionary is a verb, except for particles and interjections. There is no lexical distinction between nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs.

For example, maı is a verb meaning “to love”, meı is a verb meaning “to be a mountain”, and mıo is a verb meaning “to be blue”.

A verb expresses a relation of the positional arguments that follow it. The dictionary definition for any verb has symbols like ◌ or ___ in it to indicate how the arguments are related by the verb:

leoq: ◌ shields ◌ from ◌.
lẻoq jáke jí rúq: The jacket₁ shields me₂ from the rain₃

Toaq verbs can be juxtaposed to create serial verbs.

What about all the other parts of speech?

Noun phrases are created by placing determiners in front of verbs (including the second tone , which is a sort of suprasegmental determiner meaning the.)

Adjectives are a special case of the serial verb system: mıo meı is a serial verb meaning “to be a blue mountain”.

Prepositions and adverbs are created from verbs by tone-conjugating verb phrases into and : see Adverbial.