Changes between Beta and Gamma

Here is an overview of changes since the Public Beta version of Toaq on http://toaq.org/.

Sounds and spelling

• An update to the tones: the ǎ tone for relative clauses is now "rising glottal", and it is spelled ä. The ã tone for adverbs is now "falling glottal".
• There are new consonants z /d͡z/ and nh /ɲ/. There is a new vowel y /ə/.
• There are some new syllable endings, like uoı. They aren't fully set in stone yet.
• Syllables may start with an unwritten glottal stop, like elū (elephant). Within a word it's written with an apostrophe: elū'āı.

Vocabulary

• The interjections ha, hıa, hue are gone. Future interjections will probably look like: á, è, m̄.
• A few common words have moved: toaq (language) is now zu. deoq (talk) is now koy. suo (broken) is now zuy.

The quantifiers update

• Quantifiers now precede a falling-tone predicate phrase: sa rảı instead of sa ráı.
• sa kủnē binds a variable that may be referred back to using kúnē.
• do (the special variable name word) is no longer used, because every word can act like a variable name.
• baq is now a quantifier. baq pỏq means "people", the kind, rather than "a person" or "some people".
• hoı ("the aforementioned…") is now a quantifier.
• Unofficial but popular: You can omit rảı after a quantifier, e.g. Gỉ tu da. "Everything is good." This may or may not bind ráı, depending on who you ask.

The Small Grammar Update

• Adverbs no longer work like sủaq dẽ = dẻ sûaq. Instead they just embellish the assertion (like sủaq, na ru dẻ hôq).

The new pronoun system

• This is pretty big! Make sure to read the blog post.
• ho is now always "anaphoric": it refers to someone mentioned earlier in the text. The new "exophoric" third-person pronoun is nhao.
• ta is now a pronoun referring to adjectival descriptions like sa dẻ. There's no new 4th-slot tag to follow fı go cu.

Miscellanea #2

• lu now works the same in every tone (it didn't quite before), and always binds hoa.
• la now starts a declaration the way ma starts a question. The fate of "old la" is undecided.
• Instead of lû, say lâ now.

Miscellanea #3

• ju takes a full sentence.
• lu is terminated by ky, and relative/content clauses are terminated by cy.