Design Notes
Specific decisions traced from pressure to resolution. Why did the language arrive at a particular form? What alternatives were considered? What does the choice reveal about the design space?
This section is being built progressively as decisions are documented.
Why tofeka
See Knowledge & claims for the full treatment — the epistemic pipeline, the tofeka / tofeki distinction, Popper's demarcation criterion, and how Tonesu's grammar makes fallacies structurally visible.
The s- family density
Of the 17 consonant families, s- is the only one with 4 of 5 vowel slots filled as primitives: se (perception), si (signal), so (sound), su (structure). All four land in the perception-information space.
This is not accidental — it reflects an early design decision to give the information domain rich internal differentiation. Where other families distinguish one or two degrees, the s- family distinguishes the full spectrum from raw sensation to structured form.
See notes/phonosemantic-map.md in the repository for the full consonant family analysis.
The vowel-register hypothesis
Every CV primitive can be read as {family-in-register} — the consonant is the ontological family; the vowel is the register of encounter. The five vowels map to the V-prefix scope modifiers:
| Vowel | Register |
|---|---|
-a |
abstract / universal |
-e |
emergent / forming |
-i |
particular / precise |
-o |
collective / distributed |
-u |
interior / foundational |
This is observed in the existing primitive set — not imposed on it. Whether it becomes a normative design rule is an open question.