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.
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
- 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.