Cleft

More on this in the refgram
Syntax: The cleft verb

In Toaq, the word nä is used to create so-called clefts. A cleft is a complex sentence that rearranges the contents of a simple sentence. In English, this is often used for emphasis (It is my purse that they stole). In Toaq, this functionality already lives in focus markers, and so nä is primarily a tool for rearranging sentence structure.

nä with noun phrases

Imagine you’ve got a hefty noun phrase like that one hammer my great-grandfather passed down to me and you’d like to use it in a sentence. You really don’t want to put the enormous noun phrase in the middle of the sentence, like

Choq jí ké ujoq, ꝡë toeq do páopaopao jí hóa râo púchaq zûo, ꝡä tua poaq jí báq seoqkası da
I used that one hammer my great-grandfather had passed down to me yesterday to crack some walnuts open.

You’ll notice that the remaining content of the sentence unwieldily maneuvers around the large noun phrase. It’s like it doesn’t even belong there any more. (This is known as a violation of right-branching – we’re putting a large thing in the center of the clause.)

So why not move the noun phrase to the front? nä does just that:

Ké ujoq, ꝡë toeq do páopaopao jí hóa nä choq jí hóa râo púchaq zûo, ꝡä tua poaq jí báq seoqkası da
That one hammer my great-grandfather had passed down to me, I used it yesterday to crack some walnuts open.

The nä-phrase (underlined) sits comfortably in the corner of the clause. Elsewhere, we’re able to refer back to it using hóa. In this sense, the thing after nä serves the role of a relative clause which describes the fronted noun phrase.

Orthographic note: one usually does not place a comma after nä, unlike after bï.

nä with ꝡä

Complementizer clauses, such as those created with ꝡä, is also a noun phrase and can be fronted just the same:

Ꝡä tua shaı hóaq nháo lóebeaq dûı chuı jôro, nä tua dua nháo sía poq, ꝡä mala faq hóa.
That he’d sinned by snuffing the candles out prematurely, he let nobody know such a thing ever happened.

nä with ë

ë is a regular verb, and é … is a regular determiner phrase, so nothing changes. Still, a neat example is in order:

É fıekuq súq báq côm jí gûoshı, nä hoaı shue duq jıba raqmoı jí hóa.
The one time you cursed at me, I still keep involuntarily thinking about it from time to time. [= it keeps popping up in my mind]

(You could also say Ké, ë … for That one time ….)

nä with adverbials

As with the above, suppose you’ve got a heavy adverbial like after I’d picked her up from the station. In English, we may move adverbials around, including sending them to the front of the sentence, so both of these sentences mean the same thing in English:

I got breakfast after I’d picked her up from the station.
After I’d picked her up from the station, I got breakfast.

Similarly in Toaq, nä can handle adverbials. This time around, no hóa may appear (because it’s not a noun phrase we’re referring back to):

Taq aıja chuıchuq jí bîe, ꝡä heaqnua jí chúece nháo.
I got myself to eat breakfast after I’d carried her away from the train station.

bîe, ꝡä heaqnua jí chúece nháo, nä aq aıja chuıchuq jí.
After I’d carried her away from the train station, I got myself to eat breakfast.

You can think of nä as serving the role of the comma in the English translation.

nä and bï

More on this in the refgram
Syntax: Topic

There are a couple slight differences between the two:

• bï designates the so-called topic of a clause, while nä is a purely syntactic gesture (and does not impart focus – that’s the job of particles like kú, see linked article).

  This is the difference between My grandmother, I love her and As for my grandmother, I love her. In the latter of the two examples, as for my grandmother establishes that it’s your grandmother that you’d like to talk about – provide new information about.

• For noun phrases, bï does not bind hóa. You must use another anaphoric pronoun if you want to refer back to the topic. The crucial difference is that bï’s complement, the topic established, is not required to appear in the clause! So for example, this is valid Toaq (and valid English, although some languages like Japanese like this pattern better than English does) and the extra specification in square brackets is not required at all:

  Báq kası bï, he duq garabıa jí <ı>[gêm máq]</ı>.

  As for walnuts, I tend to get nausea [from them].

• Officially, bï requires definite topics. For example, sía gama bï as for no camel is invalid (for semantics reasons).
• Officially, bï does not take adverbials.