Tetral

tetral is an artistic language designed to be used by cyborgs and robots in science-fiction stories. Therefore, it is also highly logical, in order to sound very computer-like. The language is designed around a base-4 numeral system.

=Phonology= tetral name is originate from the amount of symbols in its basic system. There are only four of them. These symbols correspond to four figures (0, 1, 2 and 3), and have several ways of being represented - either on paper, orally, or any by any mean to represent a base-4 number. This is a big advantage of tetral : you can commumicate either by speaking, writing, sending smoke signals, slapping on the wrists ...

Another advantage of this system is that it is easily encoded on a computer, since a computer can only encode numbers (there is a one-to-one mapping between base-4 numbers with one figure and binary numbers with two figures). Hence, tetral text is very compact on a computer.

In this document, we will use the spun dashes writing system The spun dashes alphabet represent 0 as a vertical bar, 1 as slash, 2 as a backslash and 3 as a dot centered in height. Here is the table :

tetral figures are usually put together in group of 3 called codons. The codons are the actual basic units in grammar. Let's just glimpse a bit in it, and note that there is two types of codons : the structural codons are wodons with three times the same figure, the regular codons are the 60 others.

In the spun dash writing system, figures of a ame codon are written vertically (downwards), wheras codons are written horizontally (left to right). The direction of txt and codon may vary, but this the usual way. Let's just give a sample of text written with the spun dashes alphabet.



Here is an alphabet based on the same principle, but with different character for figures, which are more suited to be printed by a stamp. Little translation or rotation of a character does not affect its meaning, therefore it is very aesy to write with stmaps in tetral (like a machine could do)



=Grammar=

Regular words
These words are written with the sixty codons that do not contains the same digit three times in. There is no further subclassification on their role. For instance, can be translatted, as the adjective "large", the verb "enlarge" or the nominal expression "the large size" depending on the context it is used with.

Example : Tree :

Structural words
These are written with the three codons, and . These words do not carry any meaning (or almost none). The list of structural words is very confined, but each of these words are very often used.

LIST TO COME

The blank world
This word is written. It is used to separe other types of words. Thought its role is similar to the european space, its use is sometimes forbidden. Here are the cases where you may or may not use it :
 * You must use it between two regular words.
 * You mustn't use it between a group or a common word and its lists or connectors. Other lists associated to this world mustn't be separe by a blank also from the nominal group (In other words, The words and its attributes should be made in one block)
 * You shouldn't use it between a regular word and a structural word in general.
 * You may use it between two structural words, especially when separation is unclear

Variable-length worlds
=Vocabulary=