V-Particle Productivity Test
Theme: Grammar & syntax · 10 sentences.
VPT-001 · V-Particle Productivity Test
Purpose: The V tier (bare vowel particles: a e i o u, word-initial only) has five reserved slots and no current assignments. Test whether genuine corpus pressure exists for any of them. The tier's phonological safety is confirmed (word-initial V is unambiguous; no parse invariant violation). The question is whether the functional gap exists — does the current system handle each candidate function cleanly, or is there a real hole?
Background on existing resources:
- ru (primitive: coherence/unity) — already serves as minimal affirmative: "yes / that coheres" (grammar.md § Answers to Polar Questions)
- no (primitive: negation/absence) — already serves as minimal negative: "no / that does not hold"
- na-X (name marker particle) — handles identification/naming, including addressed turns in corpus
- fa-be! (affect-rise compound) — handles "surprised" as an affective claim
- fa-de (affect-decay compound) — handles reluctance/distaste as an affective claim
The real test: does each V candidate offer something structurally different from the current system, or is it just a shorter form of what already exists?
Text type A (S494–S497): Discourse-level acknowledgment and vocative Text type B (S498–S500): Affective interjection register Text type C (S501–S503): Diagnostics — direct comparison vs existing particles
S494
a
Bare acknowledgment: "Right. / I see. / Got it."
S495
a, la-ze ki...
Discourse-chain acknowledgment: "Yes, and then—"
S496
o na-Moses
Vocative: calling a person's name directly.
S497
o na-Moses, la-tu ki di-pa-su
Vocative integrated into a sentence.
S498
e!
Surprise / attention shift: "Oh!" or "Look—"
S499
e, go-no-fe helms vo
Attention-getting opener before a major statement.
S500
u
Mild disapproval / reluctance.
S501
ru
DIAGNOSTIC: a vs ru head-to-head in a polar-question response.
S502
la-Elohim ka-si lo-na-Moses
DIAGNOSTIC: o vs na-X in a divine-address corpus sentence (EXO-001 context).
S503
i, la-mi no-si la-ze ki
DIAGNOSTIC: i (hesitation) — written register value.
Batch Summary
| Entry | Particle | Verdict | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| S494 (VPT-001-A) | a |
gap exists, narrow | a ≠ ru (tracking vs coherence-claim), but ru adequate so far |
| S495 (VPT-001-B) | a |
marginal | a lighter than ru as discourse-glue opener; not blocking |
| S496 (VPT-001-C) | o |
genuine gap | standalone direct address; na-X alone is an NP, not a speech act |
| S497 (VPT-001-D) | o |
preferred | address-then-command structure cleaner with o pre-separator |
| S498 (VPT-001-E) | e |
genuine gap | attention signal ≠ fa-be!; e makes no affective claim |
| S499 (VPT-001-F) | e |
productive | rhetorical attention opener before major claim |
| S500 (VPT-001-G) | u |
narrow gap | reluctance register distinct from no and fa-de; lower pressure |
| S501 (VPT-001-H) | a |
marginal | a/ru distinction real but not blocking in corpus so far |
| S502 (VPT-001-I) | o |
confirms gap | EXO-001 direct-address retest; o needed for vocative speech acts |
| S503 (VPT-001-J) | i |
not productive | written-register filler; stays unassigned |
Generated from registry/entries.yaml.