i mentioned it a bit in my intro, but i'm working on a (very much a wip) non-linear lang named trine. trine is written-only*, with its glyphs taking the form of triangles that tile a plane. due to the glyph formation system, only 64 glyphs are possible, so the vocabulary is forced to be minimalistic.
glyphs
trine's vocabulary consists of 64 glyphs that are each formed by a frame (shown in white) and up to 6 additional segments. the segments can be divided into two categories, outer segments (shown in blue here), and inner segments (shown in pink here). glyphs can be represented as two-digit octal numbers, with the first digit indicating the set of outer segments, and the second indicating the set of inner segments. the first digit also acts as a sort of category: 0 for grammatical terms, 1 for spatial ones, 4 for 'emit'-like actions, etc.
when writing, glyphs are rotated (but not reflected!), so any orientation is correct for writing. however, the orientation shown here is the most 'canonical' one, i suppose? when discussing glyphs, if I refer to the 'upper-left' segment, i'm referring to the one that's in that position when the glyph is in the above orientation.
each glyph represents a transitive verb, with each side representing one of three nouns: the upper-left is X, the subject (pink); the upper-right is Y, the object (blue); and the bottom is Z, the event of the verb occuring (yellow). placing two glyphs next to each other causes them to share an argument. glyphs can be chained in this way, forming complete statements.
for reference, the following glyphs, from left to right, are 01/US ("X is currently communicating to Y in this text"/"X is me, Y is you, Z is this conversation"), 11/UP ("X is above Y"), 12/TO ("X goes to Y"), and 43/LI ("X emits light at Y").
channels
while trying to form more complex sentences, an obvious problem is that each noun can only be referred to once. for example,"i go to a light-emitter" would be:
what if that light-emitter also happened to be "you", though? we could try:
that wouldn't be correct though, because the left LI and right LI don't necessarily refer to the same object.
the answer is channels! channels are pseudo-glyphs that connect all three of their sides (ie. "X is Y is Z"). now we can write:
if we "unfold" the channel, we get:
channels also allow you to restructure a phrase so that parts don't run into each other.
channels have a long-distance version, which for lack of a better name, are called long channels. a pair of channels can be connected by a curve in order to indicate that the object referred to by each is the same ("X1 is Y1 is Z1 is X2 is Y2 is Z2"). long channels can also point to an image or a piece of non-trine text:
empty arguments
describing everything as a web of relationships is fun, but it makes it hard to talk about certain concepts. many glyphs have special behavior when their X or Y argument is empty. for example, no-X UP becomes "Y is the ground", and no-Y UP becomes "X is the sky".
flattening
images aren't a very convenient format to transmit information. so, in locations where images aren't viable, trine can be flattened into a series of chains. for example:
after splitting apart chains, they can be converted into an ascii-friendly format:
- each glyph is replaced by its two-digit or two-letter code
- between glyphs, the sides connected are indicated with two of
-,>, and<.- the X side of a glyph is represented by an angle bracket pointing toward it,
- the Y side by an angle pointing away from it,
- and the Z side by
-
for example:
becomes US<>TO>>LI or 01<>12>>43
multiple chains are seperated by semicolons (or another delimiter, as long as it's clear). the 4-glyph image above becomes US<>TO>>LI; NO>-TO or 01<>12>>43; 07>-12.
if multiple instances of a glyph appear, they can be labeled, either by appending digits or letters to the glyph's code. if using alphabetic codes, numbers are clearer, and if using numeric codes, letters are clearer.
grammar
implication
there's a few useful grammatical constructs in trine so far. the first are 03/SO and 07/NO:
SO is "X implies Y", and NO is "X implies not-Y". in the case of an empty X, they become "Y is true" and "Y is false" respectively. empty-X NO is the main form of negation. both glyphs tend to connect to other glyphs' Z arguments.
US<>TO-<NO means "i don't move."
time
trine doesn't really have tenses, but you can mimic them with 02/TH. TH is "X is before Y", or "X, then Y". like SO and NO, these often connect to Z sides. by combining TH with US (US-<TH and US->TH), you can say when an event occurs relative to "now", or the time of the text's writing.
US<>TO>>LI; TO->TH>-US is "i went to the light."
vocabulary
if the word choice so far seems kind of bare, that's because it is! the only words that are mostly set in stone are the ones mentioned so far. there's some other 4-series glyphs, and a whole set of 2-series glyphs, but i'm not really sure about them. for now, though, this is the current (stable) lexicon:
- 00/IS: "X is Y"
- 01/US: "X is communicating to Y through this text" ["X is me"] ["Y is you"]
- 02/TH: "X is before Y"
- 03/SO: "X implies Y" ["Y is true"]
- 06/SM: "X is similar to Y (in property Z)"
- 07/NO: "X implies not-Y" ["Y is false"]
- 10/AT: "X is at Y"
- 11/UP: "X is above Y" ["X is the sky"] ["Y is the ground"]
- 12/TO: "X goes to Y"
- 14/IN: "X is inside of Y" ["Y is the world"]
- 16/NR: "X is near Y"
- 40/SY: "X communicates to Y"
- 41/SO: "X emits sound at Y"
- 42/HT: "X emits heat at Y"
- 43/LI: "X emits light at Y"
the end
i mean it's not really the end, trine has a few other pieces to it that i haven't really touched on much, but i think this is enough as a solid introduction to what there is so far. i'd like to add some more complex examples, but for now i'm doing this by hand and i'm tired. more to come soon, hopefully!