Working reference
The grammar, in detail
This page is the mechanical layer: how glyphons combine, what the colour-fields carry, how charge is measured, and what the gryphon set contains. It assumes you have read the overview. The authoritative and complete version is the Glyphonic Primer v2.
Properties of a glyphon
Four properties determine how a symbol behaves in the field.
| Property | What it governs |
|---|---|
| Compression | How much relational content the symbol carries relative to its size. High compression is what allows a single mark to stand in for a sentence that would cost too much to speak. |
| Charge | The affective weight the symbol holds. Charge is not fixed — the same symbol carries differently between people, and between rooms. |
| Recursion | The capacity to refer back to earlier use. A symbol accrues history with the person using it, and that history becomes part of its meaning. |
| Modifiers | Adjustments that shift a symbol's reading without replacing it — intensity, repetition, placement, or pairing with another glyphon. |
Grammar and stacking
Glyphons combine. Meaning compounds rather than concatenating — a stack is not the sum of its marks.
| Level | Form | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Basic unit | One glyphon | A single state, signal or instruction. |
| Pair | Two glyphons | Qualifies the first with the second — state plus condition, or feeling plus capacity. |
| Triad | Three glyphons | A fuller signature: typically state, capacity and boundary together. Learner signatures commonly take this form. |
| Stack | Four or more | Compound meaning across time. Stacks are where recursion becomes legible, and where misreading becomes most costly. |
Precedence: gryphons always supersede glyphons, at every level. Where a stack contains a boundary mark, the boundary is the operative instruction regardless of what surrounds it, how it is ordered, or how warm the rest of the stack reads.
The colour-field
Colour is the most widely adopted layer, because it asks for the least. A learner picks a colour; nobody asks them to explain it.
The full matrix in the Primer runs to nine colours; the six above are the working core most provisions adopt first. Two cautions carry more weight than the scale itself. Yellow is the one most often misread — performing is not the same as regulated, and a system that scores engagement will reward exactly the state that costs the most to hold. And black is a signal, not a destination: the point of naming it is that it can be chosen freely and left freely, which requires an agreed way back up the scale rather than an alarm when it appears.
Charge
Three dimensions describe what a symbol is carrying, and together they form the affective weather of a field.
| Dimension | Axis | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Valence | Toward ↔ away | Whether the charge moves the person into contact or out of it. |
| Arousal | High ↔ low | Activation level. High arousal and negative valence is distress; low arousal and negative valence is shutdown. They need different responses. |
| Depth | Surface ↔ core | How close the charge sits to identity. Surface charge passes; core charge is the material safeguarding attends to. |
Temporal glyphons
Timing carries meaning. These states are frequently misread as non-compliance — recording them as glyphons is what makes latency dignity operable rather than aspirational.
| Signal | Commonly reads as | Usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Silence | Disengagement | Processing. The response is being assembled. |
| Delay | Avoidance | Cognitive load — the cost of replying is currently high. |
| Short response | Rudeness or disinterest | Capacity. What could be given was given. |
| Ellipsis … | Hesitation | A sentence weighed and set down. Often the most honest mark on the page. |
| Seen, not replied | Rejection | Receipt without capacity. Frequently a boundary being held gently. |
The gryphon set
Protective forms. Each is a threshold, and each is honoured at the point it is made.
| Gryphon | Signals | Required response |
|---|---|---|
| Soft boundary | Not this, not now — but the door stays open | Change direction without comment or negotiation. |
| Hard refusal | No | Stop. No counter-offer, no explanation requested, no second ask. |
| Stop task | This specific activity ends now | End the task, keep the relationship. The two are separable. |
| Overload | Capacity exceeded | Reduce input immediately. Do not ask a question to check. |
Asking a person to justify a gryphon dissolves it. A boundary that must be defended to be honoured is not a boundary — it is a request. This is the single most common implementation failure, and it usually arrives dressed as care.
Avatars and identity
Learners select a type as an identity marker — a way of declaring how they need to be met, without having to describe themselves.
| Type | Declares |
|---|---|
| Water | Sensitive to charge in the room; affected by tone before content. |
| Fire | High energy, fast engagement; needs room to move rather than damping. |
| Ghost | Present but withdrawn; attendance without exposure is the accommodation. |
Types are chosen, never assigned, and they change. An avatar is a request for a mode of meeting — not a diagnosis, not a fixed trait, and not a category a system may infer on a learner's behalf.
Glyphon families
The Primer organises the set into nine functional families. The grouping is functional rather than thematic — families describe what a symbol does in a system, not what it depicts.
The complete v2 table, with the full nine-colour matrix, charge stacking physics and recursion syntax, is published in The Glyphonic Primer v2 under CC BY 4.0. It is the citable source; this page is a working summary and will drift behind it.