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 originates from the amount of symbols in its basic system: four. 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 sword writing system The sword  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 codons composed of three times the same figure, the regular codons are the 60 others.

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



Its numeric table is

The fellowing example shows another alphabet based on the same principle, but with different symbol for figures, which are more suited to be printed with a stamp. Little translation or rotation of a character does not affect its meaning, therefore it is very easy to write tetral manually with stamps.



=Grammar=

Regular words
These words are written with the sixty codons that contains at least two differents figures. There is no further subclassification on their role. For instance, can be translatted, as the adjective "large", the verb "enlarge" or the nominal expression "a large object" depending on the context it is used with.

If you know a bit of lojban, notice that there is no clear distinction such as selbri (relation word) and sumti (argument word) in. Relations are made up from regular word, by adding the suffix. See structural words for more details.

Example Tree :

Structural words
These words are written with the three codons, and . They do not carry any meaning (or almost none). The list of structural words is very confined, but half of these words are the most used ones, since they are use to organise the sentences.

The blank world
This word is written. It is used to separe other types of words. Its role is similar the latin space, but is translated by a comma , in latin form. The blank word between two words is sometimes mendatory, sometimes facultative.
 * You must use it between two regular words.
 * 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 ambiguous.

Sentence structure
Sentences are articulated as arborescences where a node corresponds to a word and its children correspond to its qualifiers, or the words it refers to.

Computer science terminology will be reused here. The topmost word is called the root. The depth of a word (or node) is its distance from the root. Put in another way, the root have a depth equals to 0 and every other nodes have the depth of their parent plus one.

The height of an arborescence (or sentence) is the maximal depth of the nodes composing it.

Parameters
Parameters are word used to refine the meaning of an other word, like adjectives and relative propositions do in English. For example red refines the meaning of apple. The parameters of a word a given in the parameter list, right after the word they are supposed to modify. The parameter list starts with and ends with. Structure :

Example : A red apple

The meaning of a word can only be modified through its parameters.n

Relations
A relation is a word changes the meaning of the link between a word and one of its parameter. The relation is put in front of the parameter it applies to, and is separed from the parameter word with. When a parameter has no given relation, a "to be" relation is assumed i.e. the parent word is also one the entity given by the parameter. An explicit relation can change this meaning. The parameter can be the location of the parent word, the owner, ...

A relation word can be any kind of word, but a small set of word are used in 90% of relation uses.

structure :

Example : I'm looking at you

Note that (?) means "owned by". In the case of an action, the owner should be understood as the subject of the action. Similary, (?) means "owns" and refers to the direct object in when relating with an action.

A relation can have parameters itself, although this is very rare, and it tends to make the sentence unclear. Example : to come from home.

Collections
In every languages it is common you have to refer to several entities with the same properties or actions. One obvious solution is to repeat the properties to each entity, but this is cumbersome. English skips repetion by allowing to stack different subjects before the verb (the last word separated by and). In you cannot stack words one after the other to group them. Indeed such stacking just enumerate words without any relation between them. Remember : there is relation only between a parent word and its children. Tetral add a new concepts, a collection wich basically allows us to group various entities. Collections can group word entities to give them the same parameters. But it is stronger than that. It can group several parameters and give them the same relation as it can group several relations and give them the same parameter.

A collection is started with the codon and ends with codon.

Examples :

green apples, melons and pears. (Each of them are green, individually.)

Looking at an apple and a melon. (One after the other, or a the same time, ... The order is unspecified.)

Looking at myself.

Please note that nothing prevents a word from having its own parameters list inside a group. You can also also nest groups but it sounds a bit weird and its usage is strongly discouraged when uneeded. I may be justified in cases such as the following one, where is a parameter applied to two entities, and  is a parameter applied the the three entities.

A collection is sometimes referred as collection list, to remember it forms a list like the parameters list.

Closings
Some sentences are very huge arborescence that can go deep. Some conveniance tools and some good practise is needed to keep track of opened lists. The first good practise is obviously to avoid to build large height tree.

As this is not always possible, the second good practise it to add useless blank word after the opening and before the closing of a depth-4 list (or at a multiple of 4 depth). But the previous exemple has something special more. It use the pattern with one parameter nested several times. This grows up the depth of the tree as fast as adding meaningfull words. This is innefficient. Hence, a new connector, which like relation do not growths depth is added. It is. It is a simple shortcut to a one-word parameter list. is eqyivalent to. Please do not mistake this shorcut with a relation. A relation specify the link between two word, and is used to actually links two words. can be used with relations, though. is equivalent to. Do not mistake with, wich is a parameter linked to its parent by the relation.

Variable-length worlds
=Vocabulary=

Common variable identifiers
=Example : Babel=