diff --git a/settings/rust-to-dust/imperial/language-design.md b/settings/rust-to-dust/imperial/language-design.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c456831 --- /dev/null +++ b/settings/rust-to-dust/imperial/language-design.md @@ -0,0 +1,402 @@ +# Rust to Dust Imperial Language: Design Spec + +Status: **DRAFT r0.** First conlang project for Rust to Dust. Nothing here is +canon until the operator rules on it. + +The language has no name. Its working slug is `rtd-imperial`. A name is owed +and should come from the ontology and phonology below, as +[setting.md](../setting.md) asks, not from an English label. Nothing here +assigns one. + +## How To Read This + +Every claim carries a tag: + +- **[E]** evidence. The source material says it, and the file is cited. +- **[I]** invention. This draft proposes it. The operator can overrule it, and + it is the part most worth attacking. +- **[E→I]** an extension. The source gives a seed and this draft develops it. + +Sources read: everything under `settings/rust-to-dust/` (`README`, `setting`, +`aliens`, `story`, `battle-royale`, `language-design`), the house method in +`settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md`, and Weksa's +`docs/language-model.md`, `interlingua-standard.md`, +`best-modern-approach.md`, `multilingual-utterance-lowering.md` and +`schemas/interlingua-packet.md`. The stance design is read from the unmerged +branch `weksa-lowering/speaker-state` (see Dependencies). The forge repos and +Weksa `state/` and `docs/` hold no other Rust to Dust material: a forge search +for the setting returned nothing outside Weksa. This draft therefore rests on +about 440 lines of setting prose, and the invention share is large. + +## 1. Speech Community + +### Who speaks it [E] + +The empire's aliens: reptilian, scale-decorating, aesthetics-as-moral-truth, +honor as devotion to aesthetic perfection in a chosen field (`aliens.md`). The +empire is galaxy-spanning, so the language is a **network language**. Its +community is defined by the imperial cultural network (media, prestige, +commerce), not by a homeland. Humans are not native speakers. They meet it +through subtitles, memes and broadcasts, and their contaminated English is a +separate register (`language-design.md`, Registers). + +### Speech situations [E→I] + +`language-design.md` lists registers. This draft turns each into a situation +with a speaker, an addressee and a stake, because a register is a relationship +and not a vocabulary list: + +| Situation | Speaker → addressee | Stake | Source | +|---|---|---|---| +| Broadcast commentary | commentator → mass imperial audience, about a performer | rendering an aesthetic verdict in real time | E (battle-royale) | +| High honor speech | warrior or master → rival, patron or witness | binding a vow, naming a performance | E (register list) | +| Warrior discourse | practitioner ↔ practitioner of one field | form, discipline, challenge | E (register list) | +| Commercial acquisition | buyer ↔ seller, or buyer → cultural object | access and integration phrased as uplift | E (setting: commerce as delivery rail) | +| Panel-show media | host ↔ guest before an audience | turning the guest's stance into performance | E (story: the panel) | +| Tourist admiration | tourist → anything | consuming a safe spectacle | E (aliens: tourists) | +| Address to humans | any → human | uplift, fascination, appraisal | I | + +The last row is added. The story's central irony is that the empire +understands the father's refusal better than he understands the empire, so +how imperial speakers address humans is a design surface, not an afterthought. + +The first proving slice is **broadcast commentary** [E]: `battle-royale.md` +names it as the runtime use, and it needs the fewest situations to be +distinguishable by a reader. + +### Status ladder [I] + +The source gives status *signals* (scale decoration marks profession, class, +rank, grief, celebrity, courtship, school, combat discipline, public +obligation, commitments) and a *measure* (the more elaborate the decoration, +the more visible the claim of virtue). It gives no ladder. The invention: +status is two axes, not one. + +- **Field.** The discipline one is devoted to (combat, speech, hosting, trade, + politics, art). Honor is field-relative [E]. A master of one field has no + rank in another. +- **Standing in the field**, by *claim and demonstrated constraint*, not by + force: + 1. **Unclaimed.** No decoration in a field. This is shameless, not neutral + [E: unpainted = shamelessness]. + 2. **Claimant.** Decorated, undemonstrated. Tourists live here: the claim is + bought and the constraint never chosen [E: tourists buy a safe spectacle]. + 3. **Practitioner.** Decorated, with constraint demonstrated in the field. + 4. **Master.** Constraint demonstrated before witnesses. + 5. **Exemplar.** Master whose form others cite. +- **Bare-by-claim** is an exceptional state off the ladder, not a step on it. + Going unpainted as an artistic claim that the performance alone is art is a + provocation [E]. The grammar must be able to say it without saying + "shameless". + +The language's address and agreement system tracks **claim versus +demonstrated constraint**, because that is what the source treats as the +moral measure. A tourist's loud, expensive decoration is a *mismatch* the +language can state, and the language carries that mismatch in the grammar +itself. + +Decoration is the primary status channel in the world. In speech it surfaces +as address terms, honorific-like marking and metaphor (Section 4), not as a +phoneme-level trick. + +## 2. Phonology (provisional) + +The source gives no phonetic profile. It poses the question +(`language-design.md`, Open Questions) and says naming should follow from +phonetics. House method (Zyphos) assigns Airawa hard dorsal and coronal +edges and Sa'auei'a soft flow. This language must not collapse onto either +[I]. + +### Design stance [I] + +Three pressures from the source, turned into sound: + +1. **Aesthetic devotion**: the language should sound *composed*. Prosody is + deliberate, with controlled length, no clutter. +2. **Chosen constraint is mastery**: constraint should be audible. Phonotactics + are *tight*, so that a speaker visibly refrains from the permitted-in-vulgar + alternatives. +3. **Reptilian body** [E: reptilian]: the inventory leans on sustained + fricatives, hisses and trills that a non-human vocal tract makes easy. The + source does not specify a vocal tract. This is the weakest-evidenced + choice and a human-pronounceable romanization is therefore required. + +### Inventory (draft) + +- **Stops** (voiceless only): `t`, `k`, `ʔ`. No voiced stops. This separates it + from Airawa's `g d q`. +- **Fricatives**: `s`, `ʃ`, `x`, `h`, with voiced `z`, `ʒ`. Fricatives + contrast in **length**: short and held. Held fricatives are the language's + main prosodic ornament and carry register weight (Section 3). +- **Sonorants**: `n`, `m`, `l`, trilled `r`. +- **Vowels**: `a`, `i`, `u`, `e`, each short or long. A long vowel is the + other register-bearing length. +- **Syllables**: `(C)V(C)`, coda `s n l ʔ` only. No clusters. The absence of + clusters is the phonotactic form of "chosen constraint". + +### Prosody [I] + +- Stress and length are the speaker's expressive budget. In formal + registers, *less* length variation reads as more command of the form. A + commentator in broadcast register may spend length on a performer's + moment, and an honor-speech speaker withholds it. Restraint is therefore + audible without a phoneme change (Section 3). +- Broadcast commentary has a lengthened, sibilant "announcer" delivery. Tourists + over-lengthen. Master speech under-lengthens. + +### Romanization and rendering [I] + +An ASCII romanization is owed before any lowering output is scored: the +speaker-state lowering renders text, and the renderer for the audience needs +a stable orthography. `ʃ ʒ x ʔ` need ASCII digraphs. The choice follows +the Weksa pronunciation-lowering docs and belongs to a later cut. + +### Open + +- The inventory is a sketch, drawn from three pressures. It should be rerun + after at least a hundred roots exist, not defended. +- The source calls for names to "emerge from ontology and phonetics". This + draft supplies phonetics, and the name waits for the first root set. + +## 3. Register, Status and Restraint: Stance Explicit + +### Weksa's constraint [E] + +On the unmerged `speaker-state` branch, `docs/interlingua-standard.md` adds +a packet `stance`: **felt affect** (anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, +contempt, affection, shame, as grades) and **`restraint`**, how much of the +felt affect is held back (0 none, 1000 fully). It is felt, never displayed. +How a feeling shows and how much leaks is cultural; each language's ontology +maps felt affect and restraint to its own register. A held-back feeling is not +a claim, so it is never a predication. + +This language must therefore **mark stance explicitly in its own grammar**, +and the marking is derived from the packet's `stance`, never from English +register words in the source text. + +### Why this language is the hard case for restraint [E→I] + +For the empire, restraint is not suppression of a shameful interior. It is +**the visible form of chosen constraint**, which is the moral proof of +mastery [E]. So the map from `restraint` to surface is *inverted* relative to +most human defaults: + +- High restraint is the *display* of virtue. A fully restrained speaker with + strong felt affect is exhibiting form. +- Low restraint with strong affect is not honest. It is *vulgar* [E: "vulgar + violence as failed form"; "collapse into mere function"]. +- Zero affect is not neutrality. It can read as an absence of devotion. + +The deliberate consequence is that stance cannot be flattened to a politeness +level. Two axes are needed, and the source's lens questions (elegant, +disciplined, sincere, vulgar, memorable) ask for both. + +### Obligatory categories [I] + +Proposed grammatical commitments (the target-language selections that step 4 +of `language-model.md` demands). Each names the packet field that feeds it. + +1. **Finish marking** on predicates: an obligatory grade-class drawn from + `stance.restraint`, coarsened to a few classes. Working classes: + *raw*, *held*, *finished*. The unmarked form does not exist: leaving it + off is not neutrality but a gap that the community reads as vulgar. + Feeds from: `stance.restraint`. +2. **Leak channel**: how much felt affect shows *through* a high-restraint + frame. Leak is not mapped to emotion words. It is mapped to **form + choices**: clipped versus full inflection, length spent on a fricative, + word choice within a field. This follows `speaker-state`'s own example + (anger leaking through clipped syntax is stance). Feeds from: felt affect + grades against `restraint`. +3. **Standing agreement** on referents: field and standing-in-field of a + named performer, with the **claim/demonstrated** mismatch statable. Feeds + from: speaker and scene features (Section 6). +4. **Witness and form-evaluation**. Broadcast commentary is evaluative by + situation. Evaluation is expressed as a **separate discourse layer** + (a particle or clause layer), not as adjectives in the content: the + lens questions [E] (elegant, disciplined, sincere, vulgar, memorable, + promising, mastery, collapse) are the layer's open slots. It is + kept apart from content because a held-back evaluation is not a claim + about the world, and the interlingua keeps content and attitude + separate. Feeds from: `discourse` features and the situation. +5. **Evidential**: commentary asserts what the camera sees and *infers* the + performer's sincerity. The inference must be marked, because the source + puts sincerity in the performer, who is not the speaker and not available to + telemetry. Feeds from: the evidentiality feature the standard already + names. + +### Register is a function of three inputs [I] + +Register is not a setting on the speaker. It is selected from the pair +(speaker's standing and community, scene relation to addressee and subject) +and the situation, with stance as the final modulator. This is what +`persona-drives-ontology` implies on the speaker-state branch and what the +`language-ontology` cut will implement as deterministic selection +`select(profile, stance, speaker, scene)`. This spec supplies the **content +of that selection table** for this language; it does not write the table. + +Cases the table must cover first: + +| Case | Expected pull | +|---|---| +| Commentator, high restraint, strong approval of a restrained low-means act | finished marking; evaluative layer foregrounded; length withheld | +| Commentator, low restraint, strong approval | raw marking; the speaker is performing delight. Only permitted in tourist-adjacent registers | +| Master addressing rival | held or finished; address by field and standing | +| Tourist, any affect | claimant standing; over-lengthened; evaluation layer present but misapplied | +| Host to a human guest on a panel | warmth and appraisal mixed: affection plus contempt at high restraint is the *normal* pairing. The guest's rejection is absorbed as form | + +The last row is the story's turn written as a stance mapping, and is worth +testing first: contempt and affection together, restrained, with the evaluation +layer calling the rejection *sincere*. + +## 4. Meaning Before Surface + +The language is never produced by substituting English words with alien +ones. The method is the Weksa path (`language-model.md`): packet, then +ontology projection that can split, collapse or reweight concepts, then +grammar commitments, morphology, phonology, surface. + +### Concept splits and collapses [E→I] + +The source names distinctions the language must make (`language-design.md`, +Open Questions). Each is decomposed below into components so a lowerer can +select a form from the packet's facts and not from a gloss. + +| Distinction | Decomposition (hypothesis) | Needs from the packet | +|---|---|---| +| **victory** vs **mastery** vs **spectacle** vs **vulgar overmatch** | victory: outcome of a contest. mastery: outcome *plus* demonstrated chosen constraint. spectacle: attention drawn, independent of constraint. vulgar overmatch: means exceed the opposing means with no constraint chosen. | outcome; each party's means; whether the means were chosen | +| **crude** vs **failed** | crude: sincere, unrefined, with form attempted. failed: form collapsed into mere function. | actor's means and discipline as facts; the stance of the performer is not available, so the ontology reads from conduct | +| **resistance** admired and absorbable | resistance read as: threat, folk art, breakout talent (`battle-royale.md` commentary list). Choice depends on whether it centers a performer or a practice. | performer-centered vs distributed agency | +| **public spectacle** vs **living practice** [E] | spectacle: meaning lives in a central performer. practice: meaning lives in relationships. The empire reads distributed cooperation as noise or misattributes it to a performer. | number and relation of agents; presence of a focal agent | +| **unpainted**, split | shame / danger / contempt / rawness / refusal / purity (the source lists these senses). Different surface forms: the sense is selected by relation and stance, not by a gloss. | decoration state, scene relation, speaker stance | + +### Scale decoration in grammar and metaphor [E→I] + +Decoration is the language's central metaphor domain [E: used for rank, +grief, celebrity and more]. Proposed uses, to be tested not asserted: + +- **Address**: terms of address name a decoration claim ("the one marked for + ...") instead of a rank noun. +- **Insult**: lack, mismatch or fraud of decoration (a claim not backed by + constraint). The strongest insult is the claimant who is also vulgar. +- **Praise**: finish, as in a surface completed. +- **Metaphor**: grief and obligation are *worn*. A human speaking of loss + reads, in this language, as a person visibly undecorated by it. + +The source does not say whether the language has these metaphors. They are +the draft's strongest invention and the easiest to overrule. + +### Root families [I] + +House method: faint family resemblance, never a nametag. No roots are +proposed here. The first root set should come from the field concepts +(combat, speech, hosting, trade, art) and the constraint/finish axis, and +should be minted against corpus items, not authored in a vacuum. + +### Contamination direction [E] + +What leaks into human English first (`language-design.md`) is an open +question. [I] Candidates are evaluation-layer particles (the empire's form +verdicts become meme tags) and the claim/finish vocabulary, because the +story's kids absorb *prestige codes* first. The subtitle renderer is a +separate target profile and not this spec's job. + +## 5. Evidence and Invention, Summarized + +**Evidence-backed (E):** +- reptilian, aesthetic-honor, decoration-as-status speakers; unpainted as + profound shamelessness; unpainted-as-provocation for a rare few +- mastery requires chosen constraint; overmatch and tourists are vulgar; the + lens questions +- the empire is a network; commerce carries, culture conquers; the registers + listed +- broadcast commentary and flavor-first subtitles as the runtime use +- the packet has `stance` with felt affect and restraint; the ontology maps + them (speaker-state branch) + +**Invention (I):** +- the two-axis status ladder and the claim/demonstrated-constraint mismatch +- the whole phonological inventory and prosody +- the five obligatory categories and the inverted restraint reading +- the decoration-grammar and metaphor uses +- the speech situations table, notably the address-to-humans row +- the contempt-plus-affection panel pairing + +**Not settled in the source and left open:** +- the language's and speakers' names; the vocal tract; whether the empire is + one language community or a family of dialects; whether non-reptilian + imperial subjects speak it and how it marks them + +## 6. What The Lowerer Must Provide + +Interlingua rule [E]: the packet carries neutral meaning plus source-side +communicative pressure, and target-language concept splits belong +downstream. The earlier Rust to Dust sketch in `language-design.md` puts an +`aesthetic_reading` block (form, discipline, spectacle, honor status) **in +the packet**. This draft recommends moving it: those are the *imperial +ontology's reading* of neutral facts, so they belong in the ontology +projection, and the packet carries the facts the reading is derived from. +[I] This is a change to existing content and the operator should rule on it. + +Fields, in order of need. "Seed" means the standard's inventory already has +a slot. "Gap" means the standard has no field yet; per the Promotion Rule, +the gap is first an `rtd.*` extension and is promoted only after use in two +real packets. + +| Need | Why | Status | +|---|---|---| +| `stance` with felt affect and `restraint` | the whole of Section 3 | seed (unmerged: `speaker-state`) | +| **speaker** axes: field, standing in field, school or lineage, decoration state, community | status and register selection | seed slot `Speaker` (unmerged); the *values* are the gap | +| **scene**: relative status of speaker, subject and audience; audience composition (imperial, tourist, human via subtitles) | register and address | seed slot `Scene` (unmerged) | +| `medium` and `setting` ids for broadcast commentary | situation selection | seed (`context`) | +| `instrument` role on predications, **for each party** | overmatch is derived from both parties' means | seed role | +| **volition of the constraint**: chosen / compelled / unknown, as a predication feature | the line between mastery and mere lacking | gap (`rtd.` extension first) | +| **ordering of means** (power or means gap) | vulgar overmatch | not a packet field: ontology-side order over concept ids, so the packet carries concepts and the ontology compares them | +| referent **decoration state** (decorated / unpainted / bare-by-claim / not applicable) | status, insult, the human-undecorated reading | gap (`rtd.` extension first) | +| referent **community** or `member_of` relation | tourist versus warrior; human versus imperial | seed relation `member_of`; community ids come from the `language-ontology` cut | +| **focal agent** presence | spectacle versus living practice | derivable: a predication with plural or no agent role; not a new field | +| `evidentiality` | witnessed versus inferred sincerity | seed feature (to confirm its option set) | +| `polarity`, tense, aspect | ordinary | seed | +| `preserve` | which nodes the commentary must keep | seed (`constraints`) | + +Fields the draft deliberately does **not** request: `aesthetic_reading`, +`honor_status`, `spectacle_value` or any value judgment. The performer's +sincerity is not telemetry, and the commentator infers it. These are +outputs of the imperial ontology and must not be put into the packet by the +client, or the client is deciding the language's concepts. + +## 7. Dependencies, Risks and Next Cuts + +**Dependencies.** Stance and the `Speaker` and `Scene` slots exist only on +the `weksa-lowering/speaker-state` branch. The `language-ontology` cut +(community and ontology-entry documents) is not landed. This spec states +the content those cuts will hold, and does not substitute for them. + +**Risks.** +- The inventory and the grammar are heavily invented on thin evidence. Mitigation: + tag everything (done) and test the five obligatory categories against the + lowerer before building roots. +- The claim-versus-constraint ladder risks making the language a *status-code + detector*. The source's hold is that honor is devotion, not rank. Test: + can the grammar say a bare-by-claim performance without calling it low? +- Draft collides with `language-design.md`'s packet-side `aesthetic_reading`. + Resolved by the recommendation in Section 6 if ruled. + +**Next cuts, in order.** +1. Operator rulings on the forks below. +2. A first corpus slice: ten broadcast-commentary utterances, each decomposed + to a packet (neutral facts plus stance), with the expected surface *category* + (finish class, evaluation layer) and no words yet. +3. The selection table for Section 3's first five cases. +4. A root set from the field concepts, and a naming brief for the language. +5. An orthography and a pronunciation lowering. + +**Forks for the operator (recommendations given).** +- Move `aesthetic_reading` out of the packet into the ontology. *Recommend: + yes.* +- Is a two-axis status ladder right, or should honor be flat within a field? + *Recommend: two axes, because tourists need a place.* +- Is inverted restraint (restraint as display of virtue) the intended reading? + *Recommend: yes, it follows from "chosen constraint is mastery".* +- Is the vocal tract reptilian-literal or a human-stylized invention? + *Recommend: human-pronounceable stylization with length as ornament, so + the first corpus does not wait on phonetics.*