Hypodescriptive terms

Disclaimer:

This is still very speculative. I will need to let this block 'bake' for quite a while because of the importance and potential of the terms. I don't want an initial vocabulary that's worse than it needs to be.

Even after I am completely satisfied, this block will still be very speculative. User feedback will be required to find the best use for all parts of this term space.

Caution: These terms are (mostly) not part of the actual vocabulary yet. I will add a tutorial when they become 'real'.

The Truest of Dirt

The bottommost block (of 255 terms) of the Description layer describes the Created terms 'true' and 'false' (or 'on' and 'off'). These terms do not actually have any Creation Spokes. This means that the two lowest digits of the Instrumentation index for these terms will both be zeros. Since a 'zeroed' layer of a glyph can be completely ignored when using a chorded keyboard, (or when speaking the index) these terms can be used as an abbreviated, simple or 'express' set of terms.

This block follows completely different rules than the rest of the Description layer.

Honestly, this aberration makes ever so much more sense that trying to use this valuable virtual real estate to actually 'Describe' the abstract concepts 'true' and 'false' for the purposes of casual conversation. Complexity is the cost of customization.

The 'standard' Description laths break down as follows:

External Descriptions

• Action - making things happen
  
• Dimension - moving beyond verbal communication
  
• Absolute - leaning towards excessive dogmatism
  
• Time - making things worse
  

• Sensation - a personal impression such as curious, smell, warm or like
  
• Value - a judgment such as good, beautiful or expensive
  
• Relative - measured against something else such as bigger, older
  
• Format - related to pure style, or limited control (because it is the bottom)
  

Articulating your Hypodescription

These Hypodescriptive terms can be combined with Articulation terms and the plug to create a range of meanings. The Creation and Specialization layers must remain at #00. Negation (unplugging) reverses the meaning of the Hypodescriptive term, not the Articulation term

• Simple Talk
• Feelings - This is for basic communication with a child
  
• Interjection - These are things that must be said quickly
  
• Animal Noise - These are noises that animals and small children make
  
• Questions - These are used to elicit information 
  
• Small Talk
  
• Emotion - These clarify the subtext in personal communiques
  
• Insults - These express displeasure
  
• Compliments - These express pleasure
• Handy Stuff - Terms that modify the use of following glyphs.
• Dog Verbs
  
• Near Future - These tend to be commands or expressions of intent
  
• Near Past - These can describe 'current' actions
  
• Far Future - These describe actions which shall happen eventually
  
• Far Past - These describe actions that haven't happened recently
  
• Pointers 
• Personal Vocab #1 - These are terms shared with family and business associates
  
• Personal Vocab #2 - These are slang and inside jokes shared with friends
  
• Special Layer Pointers - These simplify the everyday use of Specialized vocabularies
  
• External Data - These refer to URIs such as files or other locations of external data
  
  

The first table does not have either the Dimension or Action Types. This table contains terms related to the first sounds made by a child. These might actually be the first things that a child will learn after a few passive nouns.

The 'Feelings' sub-table consists entirely of one syllable terms.

The 'Feelings' sub-table has been shrunken to a 3 X 3 array of graduated feelings for a small child. terms #0100, #0200 and #0300 would normally be questions to the small child. The child could reply with a specific term from the matching column or with the generic terms #0400, #0800 or #0C00.

The generic terms fall between the specific terms as far as the intensity of the feeling goes. For example, the physical sensations in order from worst to best are:

•     hurt, bad, average, good and finally 'tingly' (which is very good).
•     'Numb' covers both good and bad absences of physical sensation. 

The 'Animal Noise' sub-table should reference local animals. 'Livestock' may stand for cow, lama. musk ox, etc. I have no idea why this is important, but "good parents" teach their children about animal noises.

Any term can be made into a question by adding the '??' (#10[00-FF][00-FF]) Articulation spoke. The term #1060A6 would be the question, "dogs??". This could appear anywhere in a sentence such as, "dogs?? gave flowers to you". The 'Question' terms below simplify common general questions and do not require the '??' Articulation spoke (although it could be added for emphasis).

Simple Talk

The second table has the Dimension Type. This table contains terms related to non-verbal cues in common social interactions. When speaking face to face, 'Emotion', 'Insults' and 'Compliments' are often conveyed by tone of voice or body language. Since Instrumentation is designed to be used by people who can't see or hear each other, emotional content must be made explicit. 

The 'Emotion' glyph would usually come at the beginning of a sentence or conversational phrase (to 'set the stage'), although 'sarcasm' and 'humor' might come at the end for greater comic impact and 'ellipsis' goes where it is needed. 'Emotions' can also be used with the Articulation spokes, #C54C00 (my doubt) would be translated as "self doubt" or "self depreciation".

The 'Insults' and 'Compliments' occur in pairs, so 'useful' (#6000) can be considered a complement to 'useless' (#5000) as well as a compliment.

The elements of the 'Handy Stuff' sub-table are defined just below the table itself.

Small Talk

The 'Handy Stuff' sub-table (above) contains meta-data terms which defines the number, purpose or structure of the following glyphs or bytes in a sentence, equation or program invocation.

In some cases, such as an encrypted message, the count of glyphs would be automatically supplied by the system when the message was created. In most cases, these glyphs would be interpreted by the system (not by the user) when an incoming message was received.

Eventually, there will be a switch in the User Interface area that will determine whether a term is a function by default (for creating programs). In this case you would specify #-7A00 (the negative value) to make the function into a passive term. This would also apply to links.

#7600/7A00 - If a glyph is not marked as a link or a function, it is considered to be the name of the link or function. A term cannot be marked as a link or a function unless it is documented as such.

#7700 - The major predicate need not be marked if it is obvious. Unfortunately, there is no absolute standard of obviousness. This term can also be used to indicate that a Specialized term is being used as a predicate (appendectomy could be a specialized predicate).

#7900 - The function parameter count is not needed if a function does not have a variable number of parameters.

#7B00 - 'Non-glyphic bytes' would be data such as images, sound or text that are attached to a glyphic message.

#7D00 - The GVRM is the Instrumentation vocabulary version number. Instrumentation applications use this to detect the error, "Message not version GVRM000?00".

#7E00 - Unicode can be used to embed foreign proper names (or even sounds, using the "International Phonetic Alphabet"). These would tend to be a part of a sentence rather than the separate document that the 'Non-glyphic bytes' provides.

The third table has the Action Type. This table contains the "Dog Verbs". These are used for emphatic or very simple communications (such as with a small child, with someone unfamiliar with Instrumentation or with a trained animal). The Near Future Dog Verbs are often imperative terms.

The Dog Verbs explicitly provide the near future, near past, far future and far past tenses. They tend to be used as 'singular direct other or self' person (you and I), but they can be used with any of the unspecified persons. If a verb suffix is added to increase clarity it should match the near/far and future/past Dog Verb root tense (unless time travel is involved), but the once/many tense can be altered as needed.

Dog Verbs

The fourth table has the Dimension and Action Types. This table contains terms related to indirection, abbreviation and use of other spaces. This table is entirely active so all names and addresses must be provided by the user.

The first two banks contain Personal Vocabulary terms. Since Instrumentation is an automated language, the appliance will take care of substituting the correct term. You only need to worry about using the 'right' Personal Vocabulary when reading an incoming message. The 'back pointers' will contain a reference to the source of the data. A back pointer could be transmitted to synchronize Personal Vocabularies at the beginning of a message, but I haven't really worked out the required protocols.

The "Source Personal Data Tables" (in the Specialization layer) will contain titles in their #[0-F]0 locations to facilitate selection. The title would be something such as: "model railroad club", "work", "!Shiva! device", "Thursday night games", "Friday night shenanigans", "family" and, of course, "Current Romantic Entanglement".

The next (Special Layer) sub-table contains pointers to oft used blocks or single terms in the Specialization layer for quicker reference. Pointing to the #00 term (the index term) in a Specialized block points to the entire block. Use of a "Special Layer Pointer" that points to an entire block will "lock-in" that block and must be unplugged before other terms can be entered.

A "Special Layer Pointer" would be replaced by the term to which it points in a created message. This would guarantee that the person receiving the message would get the proper reference. "Special Layer Pointers" are personal abbreviations that reduce eight syllable Specialized terms to two syllable Hypodescriptive terms as an aid to memory and data entry speed.

The final (External Data) sub-table contains pointers to external data spaces using URIs such as file names, 'foreign keys' or other resources. The actual structure of these pointers in a created message is currently undefined.

Pointers

Notes

#1 - A 'hexadecimal point' is like 'decimal point', but for the base sixteen (hexadecimal) numbering system. It separates the numbers that are larger than one from the numbers that are smaller than one. It may be represented by a period or a comma depending on the local notational conventions. Within Instrumentation, the hexadecimal point is represented by the 'negative zero' (#-0). I would have preferred "hedeximal point", but somebody (with no poetry in their soul) had already coined the word.