Changes between Beta and Gamma

Revision as of 14:14, 3 September 2021 by Laqme (talk | contribs)

Here is a quick 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, .
    • 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 , say now.
  • Miscellanea #3:
    • ju takes a full sentence.
    • lu is terminated by ky, and relative/content clauses are terminated by cy.