Toaq

Toaq is a logical language and an artlang made by Hoemaı. It's tonal, and it is mostly analytic. Despite being a loglang, Toaq is designed to be pretty and very simple. It manages to do this while having a grammar that can be converted into logic unambiguously. It has went through 4 iterations, labeled Alpha through Delta. The current iteration is Delta.

Toaq shows influence from South East Asian languages in terms of phonology.

/m/

m

meı

/b/

b

bue

/pʰ/

p

poq

/f/

f

fuaq

/s/

s

seoq

/l/

l

lıq

/n/

n

naq

/d/

d

deo

/tʰ/

t

tıeq

/d͡z/

z

zeo

/t͡sʰ/

c

coa

/ɾ/

r

rua

/ɲ/

nh

nhoq

/d͡ʑ/

j

juo

/t͡ɕʰ/

ch

chao

/ɕ/

sh

shıa

/w~j/

ꝡ

ꝡa

/ŋ/

q

aq

/g/

g

guı

/kʰ/

k

kue

/ʔ/

'

aomo

/h/

h

haq

/a/

a

anı

/u/

u

ujoq

/i/

ı

ırue

/o/

o

oguı

/ɛ/

e

elu

The syllable structure is CV(Q) or CF, where Q is either /ŋ/ or /m/, and F is a falling diphthong.

The letter ꝡ /w~j/ is pronounced /w/ after /i/ and /ɛ/; /j/ after /u/ and /a/; and can be both after [a].

There are 4 tones: falling tone (no mark a), rising tone (acute á), low-glottal tone (diaeresis ä), rising-falling (circumflex â). Rising-falling can also be a falling-rising tone. Low glottal is pronounced with a low falling tone while putting a glottal stop between the vowel. example: ä [˨aʔ˩a].

The tone is spread across the whole word, rather than the syllable only.

Grammar

The order is VSO.

Tones play a syntactic role, rather than lexical. In general, verbs take the falling tone. Determiners, pronouns and arguments take the rising tone. Subclause markers and some other clause-related particles take the glottal tone and the rising-falling tone is for adverbs.

Verb definitions are written with places. Here is the definition of "chuq" as an example: "▯ eats ▯."

The boxes serve as places to put your arguments in.

Chuq	jí	sá	shamu
eat	me	some/an	apple
I eat an apple.

Here, jí fills the first slot, and sá shamu fills the second slot. A verb can have at most 3 places. A verb can also have zero places.

Ruqshua.
rain
It's raining.

Verbs, adjectives and nouns in English all lexically correspond to verbs in Toaq. For example, the equivalent of English "apple" is shamu (to be an apple). English "large" is sao (to be large).

When a verb is used as an argument, it means something that'd qualify for its first slot. In other terms, shamu (to be an apple) becomes something that is an apple, shámu (the apple).

Shıa	shámu.
fall	apple\the
The apple falls.

Plainly using the rising tone as an argument implies it's the apple you've talked about before. To not do that, you can put a determiner before it. In which case the verb gains a regular falling tone.

Shıa	sá	shamu.
fall	some	apple
A/some apple falls.

Here are most of the determiners:

Determiner	Meaning
ló	X you've mentioned
sá	some/an X
tú	each X
túq	all Xes as a whole
sía	no X; none of the Xs
ní	this/that X
báq	X in general, X-kind
hí	which X?, what X?

ló is the same as just making the argument rising tone. Here are some examples:

Shıa	sıá	shamu.
fall	no	apple
No apple is falling.

Shıa	hí	shamu.
fall	what	apple
Which apple is falling?