2.1 Morphology🔗ℹ

In linguistics, morphology concerns the internal structure of words and the ways in which meaningful units combine to form new words or related forms. A word may consist of a root together with prefixes, suffixes, infixes, or other morphological elements, where each element contributes systematically to the meaning or grammatical behavior of the resulting word.

Ming applies a similar principle to programming concepts. An ideograph is therefore not necessarily an indivisible name. It may participate in semantic derivation, structural modification, and composition, so that a resulting ideograph retains a systematic relationship with the concepts from which it is formed.

This internal organization of an ideograph is referred to as its Morphological Structure.

For example, 弓 represents the concept of index. From this concept, further ideographs can be constructed:

• 弔, derived from 弓 with 丨, represents indexed reference.

• 𢎨, derived from 弔 with 丿, represents a related form of indexed reference using human-oriented, one-based indexing.

• 阝 represents a serial-subset relationship.

• 􏴗, derived from 阝 with 丶, preserves that relationship while modifying its range semantics.

The resulting ideographs are therefore not arbitrary names. Their forms make relationships between programming concepts visible.

The same morphological principle also operates when different kinds of ideographic elements participate in the formation of a procedure name. Some elements primarily contribute an independently meaningful programming concept, while others primarily modify an existing concept, specify structural information, or impose constraints on the procedure represented by the resulting name.

These different roles include:

• Semantic Ideograph, which provides an independently meaningful programming concept and may serve as a semantic root.

• Semantic Modifier, which derives a related meaning by modifying some semantic dimension of an existing ideograph.

• Structural Modifier, which contributes information about the structural formation or positional organization of an ideograph.

• Composition, through which distinct contributions are combined into a new ideograph or concept.

• Naming Rule, through which an ideographic component explicitly constrains properties of a procedure through its occurrence or composition within a procedure name.

• Minor Type, through which more fine-grained distinctions among data structures and values can be represented.

These terms describe different roles that components may play within the same morphological system. Their precise definitions and relationships are given in Terminology.

For this reason, many Ming ideographs should be understood as derived forms rather than as independently invented symbols. Once a semantic relationship has been established, new concepts can be constructed by systematically applying existing semantic or structural elements.

For example,

亻 + 弔 → 伄

does not merely assign a new Chineseoid character to another procedure. 亻 contributes an explicit Naming Rule concerning the relationship between input and output, while 弔 contributes the semantic concept of indexed reference. Their composition therefore produces an operation whose meaning and interface constraints arise from both components.

Likewise,

又LB + 㐅 → 􏿴

expresses the morphological construction of a list, while

􏿴 + 句 → 􏴷

further specifies a list whose elements are strings.

The resulting concepts therefore form a derivational network rather than a flat collection of names.

2.2 Ideographic Morphological System🔗ℹ

This perspective leads to an important characteristic of Ming: its ideographs are not a collection of isolated glyphs created one by one. They belong to a recursive and extensible system in which established semantic concepts, modifiers, structural elements, and Naming Rules can participate in further formations.

We call this overall system Ideographic Morphology.

Once an ideographic unit or relationship has been established, it can participate in further formations. Consequently, Ming’s vocabulary can grow by deriving new concepts from existing ones while preserving explicit relationships between them.

This makes the morphology of Ming fundamentally extensible. A newly constructed ideograph does not merely introduce another name into the vocabulary; it may also introduce a new node and new relationships into the network of programming concepts.

In this sense, Ming’s ideograph system is closer to a morphological grammar for programming concepts than to a conventional naming scheme.

The purpose is not simply to make programming syntax look Chinese. It is to make the internal relationships among programming concepts visible in their names and forms, while allowing those relationships to participate in further semantic and structural composition.

Ming’s ideograph system is not “using Chinese characters to name keywords”; it is establishing an ideographic morphology.

This principle underlies the terminology, morphology, and naming rules described throughout the Ming language.

2.3 Terminology🔗ℹ

Ming’s ideograph system is not merely a system for naming programming keywords with Chinese characters. It establishes an ideographic morphological system for programming semantics.

The ideographs of Ming therefore should not be understood as a collection of independently invented symbols. They form a compositional and derivational system in which individual semantic units, modifiers, structural elements, and naming rules can be combined to construct increasingly specific programming concepts and procedural interfaces.

This morphological system distinguishes different kinds of meaning and different roles played by ideographic components.

At the most fundamental level, Ming distinguishes between conceptual meaning and programmatic meaning.

Conceptual meaning represents what a programming concept means in itself. It is primarily expressed by Semantic Ideographs, which may exist independently of any particular procedure and may be used to describe concepts, data structures, Minor Types, or other semantic entities.

Programmatic meaning, in contrast, expresses properties and relationships that concern a program or procedure itself, such as input and output types, parameter kinds, cardinality, or structural relationships. It is primarily encoded through Naming Rules, whose purpose is to impose such constraints through the morphology of a procedure name.

This distinction is not a distinction between meaningful and meaningless ideographs. Both Semantic Ideographs and Naming Rules carry meaning; they differ in the kind of meaning they primarily express.

A Semantic Ideograph primarily answers:

What concept does this represent?

A Naming Rule primarily answers:

What must a procedure represented by this name be like?

Other ideographic components operate between and around these two roles. Semantic Modifiers derive related meanings from existing concepts, Structural Modifiers describe or alter the morphological structure of an ideograph, and Composition Ideograph combines distinct semantic or structural contributions into a new form.

The resulting system can therefore be viewed as a morphological grammar for programming concepts: existing concepts and rules become building blocks from which new, systematically related concepts can be derived.

2.4 Document Verbs🔗ℹ

Ming uses a small set of verbs with specific meanings when describing the relationships among ideographs, their components, and the properties they express. These verbs should be used consistently throughout the documentation.

• Because of Composition, we use the verb compose to describe the formation of an ideograph from its components. For example, 􏿝 is composed of 毌 and 􏿴BR, and 􏳋 is composed of 亻 and 􏴫.

• Because of Composition, we use contribute to describe the role played by a component in the meaning or constraints of the resulting ideograph. For example, 亻 contributes a Naming Rule concerning the relationship between input and output in 伄, while 弔 contributes the semantic concept of indexed reference.

• Because of Naming Rule, we use the verb specify to describe an explicit constraint imposed by an ideographic component. For example, 亻 specifies that the output has the same type as the input.

• Because of Semantic Ideograph and Semantic Implication, we use the verb imply to describe a property that follows from the semantic meaning of an ideograph rather than being explicitly specified as a Naming Rule. For example, 弓 implies that the corresponding index is a number.

• Because of Semantic Ideograph, we use the verb represent when an ideograph directly stands for a programming concept. For example, 弓 represents index, 彐 represents find, and 毌 represents append.

• Because of Semantic Ideograph, we use the verb express when emphasizing that an ideograph gives explicit semantic expression to a concept or relationship. For example, 并 expresses the concept of multiple values.

• Because of Semantic Derivation, we use the verb derive to describe the relationship between an existing ideograph and an ideograph constructed from it by modification. For example, 𢎨 is derived from 弔 by adding 丿, and 􏴗 is derived from 阝 by adding 丶.

• Because of Semantic Modifier, we use the verb modify when an ideographic component changes some semantic dimension of an existing concept. For example, 丿 modifies the indexing convention of 弔.

• Because of Structural Modifier, we use the verb position when describing the role of a component determined by its structural location, such as L, R, or T. For example, 􏳥 uses 􏳥L to position the corresponding Naming Rule on the right side of the composition.

• When an ideograph is interpreted according to the combination of its components, we use the verb combine when the emphasis is on the resulting interpretation rather than on the physical formation of the glyph. For example, 亻 and 弔 combine to express an operation that performs indexed reference while satisfying the Naming Rule contributed by 亻.

• When an ideograph preserves a semantic relationship from one of its components while adding a further distinction, we use preserve to describe the inherited relationship. For example, 􏴗 preserves the serial-subset relation of 阝 while modifying its range.

• When a Semantic Modifier or other component makes an existing concept more specific, we use refine to describe the resulting specialization. For example, 􏴷 refines the list concept represented by 􏿴 by specifying that its elements are strings.

• When a component extends an existing concept without replacing its original meaning, we use extend to describe the relationship. For example, 𢎨 extends 弔 with a human-oriented indexing convention.

• When a procedure name contains an ideograph whose Naming Rule determines a property of the procedure, we use constrain when discussing the resulting procedure interface. For example, the 亻 component constrains the input and output types of 伄 to be the same.

• When a Semantic Ideograph or its composition gives rise to an unstated property of an operation, we use imply rather than specify. For example, 弔 implies that an index is required as an input and that the referenced value belongs to the indexed input structure.

• When an ideograph is used as a component of a procedure name, we use occur in or appear in to describe its syntactic presence without making a claim about its semantic role. For example, 亻 occurs in the name 伄.

The distinction among these verbs is intentional:

• compose describes how an ideograph is formed from components.

• represent and express describe conceptual meaning.

• specify describes an explicit Naming Rule.

• imply describes a property that follows from semantic meaning.

• derive describes the relationship between a source ideograph and a derived ideograph.

• modify describes a change introduced by a modifier.

• preserve describes a relationship inherited from an existing ideograph.

• refine describes increased semantic or structural specificity.

• extend describes the addition of a related semantic dimension.

• constrain describes the effect of a Naming Rule on a procedure interface.

• contribute describes the role of a component in the resulting composition.

2.5 core ideographs🔗ℹ