A couple years ago, the term “Fiction Cycle” was changed to “Heart Cycle”. Currently (Aug 2022) I am working on updating the Basic Grammar page and the Basic Cycle page. When those are brought to a better state, this page will follow. It takes time to simplify the grammar.

Fiction Cycle

UPDATE MARCH 2020

FICTION CYCLE

Big changes have been underway with the cyclic grammar. I need time to really understand the new version before laying it out for my readers. Though my interpretation of a cycle entered Tapissary way back in 1987, it wasn’t for another 3 decades, in 2018, that a second cycle (which is dedicated to subjectivity) was introduced to complement the original one (which now centers on objectivity). Now the world is reflected onto a stage for the opposing forces of subjectivity and objectivity, and the cyclic grammar is the meeting ground and arbiter. I realized that my language had finally found its voice within this performance of polarization.

Until I am ready to post more results, much of the older explanations below are subject to alteration. I do not want to replace them until I have more experience with the new concepts. As far as I know, no other language has a similar system, so there is no precedent upon which I can compare and test my new concepts. To give you an idea of what this means, imagine a language where you express your ideas always in the context of how close to the core of imagination you are, and at what distance that is from reality. What is close to reality is portrayed as probability, desire, ability, affirmation. These are expressed in English with words, but in Tapissary, they fall into distance, not vocabulary. The examples listed above, which are a hair’s breadth from reality, all fall within the furthest reaches of the subjective cycle just at the border of the objective cycle, which is reality itself. But no matter how far you go to the end of the subjective cycle, you cannot actually step into reality until you cross over into the objective cycle.

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English: I can definitely help you with that.

Tapissary: I help you with that. (last station of the subjective which is knocking at the door of reality. Note that this is really close to being real, but until that CAN help, turns into AM helping, we have still not yet crossed over into something that is really happening).

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English: I absolutely cannot help you with that.

Tapissary: I help you with that. (first station of the subjective which is deeply imbedded in unreality).

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Looking at the first sentence above, it can also mean: I so wish to help you with that /I need to help you with that, etc… There are meanings that exist in English that do not show up in Tapissary. But this is also true the other way around where English has no direct path to cyclical interpretations. These are not little differences. Therefore, it’s taking me time to get used to this altered way of thinking. Distance not only covers aspects such as volition and potentiality, but also includes negation/affirmation, and hints of the past and future as a shared entity, which are not otherwise rendered while using the cyclic grammar. If you’ve taken a look at the articles, you may remember that they show not only distance but orientation. Not only do you know how far along a cycle you’ve travelled, but you establish your orientation as well. Something that is oriented behind you might indicate the past since you’ve come from there. In some cases, depending on context, it can also indicate the future, if it is something unseen or unknown yet to be discovered.

In other words, I am not only working on an organic grammar but must imagine myself living in a society of people who communicate by cycles. For a closing example, I mention below a way to bypass the double negative in such strong emotions such as love. But I think I was premature in assuming this was a fault. As an English native speaker, the double negative is less positive than an affirmative when considering a sentence such as “I do not NOT love you” to mean “I love you” (and please note here that the double negative in Tapissary differs from English. If you say in English, I do not not love you, its meaning is not as strong as coming out straight and saying “I love you”. In Tapissary, this is not the case, they are identical when in the cyclic grammar). But if a culture speaks with the double negative as a form of emotional conveyance, perhaps trying to curb the negation in favor of the affirmative would lessen the impact. How would it feel to be emotionally touched by the double negative? “I do not build you as none of my love”. That sounds confusing in English, but perhaps to a cyclic thinker, it means “I love you” in a particularly meaningful way.

As you continue down the page to look at older posts, please keep in mind that there will be changes to most of them eventually. But the basic premise remains related.

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UPDATE AUG 2019

Please note that since the introduction of the fiction cycle in 2018, I have been focusing on polishing the dynamic between the new cyclic duality. The Graduated cycle which I invented in 1987 finally gets its companion and this has sparked a new identity for the grammar which will take me some time to organically compose and assimilate. The language itself remains mostly intact, however I will not be updating the changes here often, as this is a time of experimentation. Much of this website will eventually be renewed to accommodate the changes, but I will wait until a clean presentation is ready. I apologize for the delay. Until then, I hope you enjoy the info on the website, as the largest part of traditional Tapissary will be preserved in the metamorphosis underway.

There are two flavors of the cycle in Tapissary. The first is the basic one called the Graduated Cycle. This means that the cycle conforms to the normal sense of sequential time as we find in Nature: a beginning, middle, and end. In graphic form, I show it as a circle with 6 coordinates around its rim.

Contrast this with the Fiction Cycle where the smooth logical hoop of the Graduated Cycle distorts into a wave pattern. Before explaining the physical nature of this cycle, I’d like to address what and why it exists.

WHAT THE FICTION CYCLE IS:

Note: Because the Fiction Cycle is a variation on the Graduated Cycle, and applies the same rules, please take a look at the page for the Graduated Cycle first (the BASIC CYCLE tab), so that what follows makes sense.

This page is still under construction. Please pardon the dust.

In mid 2018 I became interested by some lectures of Yuval Noah Harari on the internet. He recognizes the difference between the stories we tell ourselves, and reality. One of the greatest stories ever told according to him, is the economic system. Money is the ubiquitous symbol that represents value, but in fact, the bills and/or electronic credit are not things with any intrinsic value, yet you can use them to buy real things such as food and shelter. Religion, politics, nationality, culture, profession, economics, etc, these are all stories that people choose to agree upon their existence. To test if something is a real living entity, you ask if it can suffer. A failing company, for instance, has no feelings, it cannot suffer, however the people who work for the company can suffer the consequences because they are real.

These stories we use are fictions. Nations are fictitious territories. Fiction doesn’t mean they do not exist, rather, they are not in themselves reality. I prefer to think of Fiction in this grammatical context as meaning ‘to go beyond reality’, or ‘to add some imagined spice to reality’. The nation is a fashioned symbol, the people are real. An American is the same real person as the human on the other side of the world who calls herself Japanese.

Stories make up most of our lives. In Tapissary, reality is distinguished from fiction by determining what is objective and what is subjective. For example, when I say I’m an artist, this is my story. I am a man biologically which is an indisputable fact of reality, not a fiction. Art, on the other hand, delivers us into a division of culture which is embedded with expectations, and is in its very nature a narrative. Another example to keep in mind is the future. That is always subjective because it hasn’t happened yet.

Some sentences may change their meaning according to which cycle you place them. If you see a swimmer and say ‘he has a young man’s body’ in the Graduated Cycle, you are speaking about the biological fact of his physique. That is objective, it is not a story. If instead, you placed this in the Fiction Cycle, then it refers either to an older man, or a boy, neither of which are a young man. It’s the equivalent of saying ‘he looks like a young man’. That is subjective. If you had placed a qualifier onto the Graduated Cycle example above, and said, ‘he has a young man’s beautiful body’, the word beautiful refers to an opinion, even if everyone around agrees with that. Opinion and suggestion are always subjective. Beauty is contestable because rather than fact, it is a personal view. Establishing a story does not demean reality, rather, it can be an enhancement. In fact, it is probably our fictions that are responsible for human civilizations. We are storytellers by our very nature. As each specific enhancement can be interpreted by different users as being either very good, or very bad, Tapissary stresses keeping at least one foot grounded in objective reality to balance the beliefs we hold in our subjective natures.

FREQUENCY OF USAGE

With this said, it is not necessary to signal the story (which is referred to as Fiction in Tapissary) every time it shows up. It is only applied when you would normally choose to apply the cyclic grammar. In most cases this means once or twice in each short to moderately sized paragraph.

APPLICATION OF THE FICTION CYCLE

Unlike the uninterrupted, circular flow of the Graduated Cycle with its 6 steps (1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 6), the Fiction Cycle travels in waves with two hills and two valleys, having only 4 steps. It is highly elastic in its nature because each step in the sequence is in high contrast with its neighboring steps. Because we enter the story realm where we are more grounded in vivid imagination than to cold fact, two essential elements from reality have been removed: step 3 (result and completion) and step 4 (living and usage). That leaves us with a new pattern whose step order is:

6 > 2 > 5 > 1

The formulas used for the Graduated Cycle show each pair with formulas such as (2>1), or (5>3), etc… When writing the formulas for the Fiction Cycle, the same clarity is there with the addition of the minus sign before the formula so that you know we are dealing with the double negative. So the above examples in the Fiction Cycle would look like this:

-(2>1)

-(5>3)

All the rules that apply to the Graduated Cycle also apply to the Fiction Cycle. It’s just the order and the number of the steps that have been changed. Following is the description on how to bring the Fiction Cycle into a sentence.

THE DOUBLE NEGATIVE

When you see a double negative in Tapissary, you can be pretty sure you are in the Fiction Cycle. The double negative is like a formal break with reality. The negative can be applied to verbs, adjectives, and nouns.

Example:

Suddenly the cashier looked upset.

-(1>2).

Suddenly no cashier built displeasure for no appearance.

Xudacctola ze thashrë struinuiy displézapratr biñ apëëxxe’eté.

OR...

Suddenly the cashier didn’t build not any displeasure for an appearance.

Xudacctola ze thashër struinyui displézaprëtra biñ apeexxeté.

OR...

Suddenly no cashier didn’t build displeasure for an appearance

Xudacctola ze thashrë struinyui displézapratr biñ apeexxeté.

Etc...

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Note: Ironically, the basic cycle (Graduated Cycle - used for objective reality) is applicable far less frequently than the Fiction Cycle, because as human beings, we are more prone to stories and beliefs than we are to objective reality. So, I felt it important to point out that the double negative is not meant to favor negative connotations. They are as impartial as the affirmative. Tapissary is not pessimistic. The double negative is simply there to clarify the divide.

(Please see the Basic Grammar page for the formation of the negative).

POETIC COUPLING

Every language has its own indigenous culture. They evolve over the centuries along with the people who use it. Some invented languages evolve at great speed. This is natural of course, because generally, a conlang (constructed language) is created by one person and they have only one lifetime to complete the work. Tapissary certainly fits this category. It has been enjoying periodic refinements which reflect my fluctuating viewpoints over the years. The decades-old systems of prepositional couplings, and the Graduated Cycle for example, give an indication of Tapissary’s culture. The newest addition to the grammar is the Fiction Cycle. This in conjuction with the Graduated Cycle is what I would call my language’s long sought after identity. It is a matter of style and thought process essential to good Tapisreal communications.

I quite intentionally limited the steps in the Fiction Cycle in order to make it wild in the sense of high contrast, but also dependent as it has a limited set of steps (4 steps as opposed to the 6 steps in the Graduated Cycle). But these two versions of the cycle can support each other organically by pairing them up. The thought process in Tapissary is this; when expressing a sentence in the Fiction Cycle, somewhere in a nearby sentence should be the Graduated Cycle in order to reveal something that is reality based. This creates a balance.

Examples:

Fiction Cycle: I avoided the tempting pastry shop.*

This can be followed somewhere later by the Graduated Cycle.

Graduated Cycle: I have a cavity.

Fiction Cycle: Tapissary has enjoyed fluctuating viewpoints over the years.**

Graduated Cycle: The newest addition to the language is the Fiction Cycle.

Fiction Cycle: The surfers, waiting for good waves, looked like seals in their shiny black wet suits.

Graduated Cycle: They sat on their boards over the dark water.

By pairing up the cycles in this way, we can tame the Fiction Cycle. If you remember; establishing moods extends over the entirety of a communication, so that using only the 4 steps of the Fiction Cycle would necessarily limit the range of both the moods and gestures. By inserting a complementary Graduated Cycle nearby, you can once again make use of the full spectrum. The main value of this coupling however, is in realizing the difference between beliefs and reality, something in which we humans are quite weak.

Were I to translate a few paragraphs from a piece of English literature for example, it may be that each sentence contained within those paragraphs is equivalent to the Fiction Cycle. This is quite common for authors to do. In fact, it is quite common for all of us to do in our daily conversations. Eaves drop on the chatter around you, and you may be surprised how dominant ‘embellished reality’ is. Translation can therefore become a little sticky, though one strategy is to cut up a sentence into two or more phrases where one of them contains no story element. You can always add your own summary statement as another strategy, but of course, this might deviate from the author’s original design. Because of Tapissary’s preference to join polarities, authors using that language would approach writing in just a slightly different manner. It should be easy to distinguish the difference in style between a story originally written in Tapissary and that written in another language.

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* This phrase is fictive due to the word tempting, which is subjective; one’s personal opinion.

**Tapissary is a language, not a person. By using the word enjoy, we are looking at a poetic view as if the language itself has feelings. This places the communication squarely into the realm of stories.

POETIC COUPLING; USING ONE MOOD FOR TWO CYCLES

Although the Fiction Cycle has fewer moods than the Graduated Cycle, there is a way to choose a dominant mood when coupling two nearby cycles. Quite simply, the mood in the Fiction Cycle can be removed entirely, thus leaving full responsibility on the Graduated Cycle’s mood. Let’s look at a formula in action:

FICTION CYCLE -(2>5) He enjoyed polishing off the doughnut until he was warned it had fallen onto the sidewalk a few minutes earlier.

GRADUATED CYCLE +(3>2) He spit it out and rinsed his mouth with bottled water.

In the Fiction Cycle, I used the 2nd mood to show the enthusiastic consumption of the doughnut. But the 5th gesture quickly disintegrates the pleasure when he realizes the food was soiled.

In the Graduated Cycle, the 3rd mood emphasizes the result of some unfortunate, albeit comical circumstance. The 2nd gesture highlights the very active solution of spitting out the doughnut and rinsing his mouth out thoroughly.

The formula looks like this:

-(2>5)+(3>2)

But this can be simplified by removing the mood of the Fiction Cycle (which is the 2nd mood in this case), and thereby allowing the 3rd mood of the Graduated Cycle to preside over this Poetic Coupling.

-(5)+(3>2)

HOW TO REMOVE A MOOD

To recap, for any cyclic phrase, the main verb is replaced by an equivalent one, then later on in the sentence, the original main verb becomes the object of a prepositional phrase. Removing a mood in Poetic Coupling is similar, but more condensed, and does not make use of the same prepositional formulae.

Instead, the phrase becomes a little shorter and simpler. The main verb still takes a replacement, but then the main verb itself (which becomes a noun + the preposition OF) follows directly after the replaced verb. Taking the affected part of the Fiction Cycle’s sentence: “it had fallen onto the sidewalk a few minutes earlier”, we would render it by first finding the main verb, which is FALL. Fall will be replaced by the 5th gesture, which is LEAVE. Then, follow this by the noun form of FALL + OF, which gives you many choices such as: (the) FALL OF, or (the) DROP OF, or (the) LANDING OF, etc.. When dealing with the Fiction Cycle, remember to use the double negative which is apparent in the following examples.

-(2>5) it had fallen onto the sidewalk a few minutes earlier = it hadn’t LEFT itself into no LANDING onto the sidewalk a few minutes earlier.

-(5) it had fallen onto the sidewalk a few minutes earlier = it hadn’t LEFT no LANDING OF itself onto the sidewalk a few minutes earlier.

Please NOTE: The case for Removal of the Mood is slightly different from that of Dropping of the Mood, which is described here: LANGUAGE > Basic Cycle > Chapter IV Dropping the Moods.

DEGREE OF REALITY

As my focus is increasingly on fiction contrasted with reality, i.e. the Fiction Cycle in contrast with the Graduated Cycle, I’ve come to an experimental area where this very contrast may replace the verb tenses. Instead of thinking in terms of relationships in time, here, one thinks in terms of the degree of reality. The cycles of course do deal with time, but in a metaphorical way. In Tapissary’s cycle, we describe things with the aspects of time rather than its timeline. My new concept started just shortly before the transition of 2018 to 2019. Ironically, at this moment when most of the world celebrates a large temporal event called New Years, I first thought of discarding the verb tenses. On the other hand, what better time? In the system described here, the degree of reality between the cycles is described in a little more detail. The added functions tell at what distance and speed the speaker is from reality or fiction.

DISTANCE

This is accomplished by inserting the positional articles for ‘the’ as an infix into the verb. That will give how far away from the cycle in question one has travelled. I am currently only using three coordinates: far away, mid distance, and no distance. But any of the six coordinates can be used.

The doctor buys a souvenir at the observatory.

If we keep it simple, using the Graduated Cycle formula +(1>1) , the sentence would be:

The doctor is a souvenir for purchase at the observatory.

Ze docarrtsër i biñ souveniprir putur tö dédeennexi.

It’s a real fact isn’t it? But what if this sentence were in the future, something which hasn’t happened yet. Or in the past where it is no longer happening, but is only being told as a story, or a conditional which is also a fiction? Without verb tenses you do not know for sure unless the overall context makes it clear. And if it isn’t clear, then you can add vocabulary such as ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘perhaps’, etc.

Let’s put this sentence into the Fiction Cycle which covers all those possibilities, and assume it is in context.

The doctor isn’t a souvenir for no purchase at the observatory.

Ze docarrtsër ri biñ souveniprir prutu tö dédeennexi.

Now, if more detail is desired, the sentence can reveal more. At present, it is a vague fiction. If the ‘far from’ article is placed inside the verb, then the phrase leads far from the fiction, almost approaching reality. It might give the feeling of the past, which is also a fiction, but not so fictive as the future which has never actually happened. It could also suggest possibility such as “perhaps the doctor is buying a souvenir”. Since the subject of the sentence is doctor, we can use the article that would describe him or her. Zev shows a far distance away. Inserting zev into the verb i, we get izevi. If the intent was to show extreme fiction, such as the future or unlikelihood, then the article zeç is appropriate because it is no distance away from the Fiction Cycle . Here’s an important difference between the positional articles when used as infixes; they do NOT speak of the position of the speaker, once embedded inside the verb, they service that verb, and tell at what distance one travels away from the currently used cycle.

For this example, I’ll use the ‘far distant’ from the fiction cycle so that the sentence might indicate something as mild as the near past, or a strong possibility. Depending on context, the sentence following might mean ‘the doctor just bought a souvenir at the observatory’, or ‘it’s probable that the doctor is buying a souvenir at the observatory’, etc...

Ze docarrtsër rizevi biñ souveniprir prutu tö dédeennexi.

When David Peterson wrote his post about Tapissary, he interpreted a living being such as a cat, not as a malleable creature, but a liquid one. After all we are mostly composed of water. Perhaps he would call the doctor a liquid being as well. In that case, zev would be replaced with lav. Whatever article fits the subject, is the one that will be embedded into the verb.

matters of the heart

Using the double negative in the fiction is all very fine, because you understand it to be an affirmative sentence. Double negatives cancel themselves out. I do NOT have NO books, means; I DO have books. However, there is a problem when it comes to certain situations such as intimacies or appreciation.

I love you.

Because this is an emotion, it goes into the Fiction Cycle. In -(4>4) it would give something like:

I don’t see you as my no love.

Yë dne siñbdiñ jda basmee.

Though the wording here certainly needs a lot of help, there is always a solution. It strikes me as sounding more direct and sincere were the double negative placed in another part of the sentence. A good way to do this is to precede the sentence with a prepositional phrase that can absorb the double negative in its place. If you place a prepositional phrase before the subject of the sentence, the prepositions take their full form and no longer are infixes. Any prepositional phrase can precede the subject, though the most common are expressions of time, such as ‘in the morning’, ‘for a year now’, and ‘at 2:30’. Of course with this said, the prepositional phrase can come after the main clause as is normal, but then the infixes would need to come into play, and the sentence would feel longer. By adding the prepositional phrase at the beginning of the sentence, it is like a brief intro, after which follows the main message of the sentence, now seeming more brief and to the point. Let’s precede the subject in our sample sentence with one of these possible prepositional phrases:

Not in untruth. Ouydr jouoñth.

Not in the unknown. Ouydr tö la’ahhnou.

By using a prepositional phrase like the one above, we can invigorate the sentence with a more positive light.

Not in the unknown, I see you as my love.

Ouydr tö la’ahhnou, yë den siñbdiñ jda baseem.

One more thing you might want to do with this sentence which is officially in the Fiction Cycle, is to apply some distance to it. In this way you can imply that while love is an emotion, it can fly towards objective reality. Let’s get as far away from the fiction as we can by choosing the farthest article we can: ‘zen’.

Not in the unknown, I very-far-distance see you as my love.

Ouydr tö la’ahhnou, yë dezenen siñbdiñ jda baseem.

Now for a passionate version, let’s put the sentence into -(2>2) with very-far-distance.

Not in the unknown, I very-far-distance awaken you into my love.

Ouydr tö la’ahhnou, yë mwashezenen siñytiñ jda baseem.

Working on the chemistry

of distance

Took some notes this morning concerning mapping out reality. Even though the past and future are stories, the past seems to have a little more sense of reality, because it did once happen. However, as we may all know, much of the past in our imaginations has been altered, and it cannot be relived in the way the present is lived. The future however is even more fiction, because it has not yet come into being and is unpredictable in its nature. Remembering that our cycles are based on the balance of reality and fiction, the past, present, volition, and possibility are not clearly defined. The chart above shows approximations. When using this system, there is only the equivalent of the present tense. To signal a specific time, you will need to insert words that describe time such as yesterday, tomorrow, in the past, etc. Again, the concept here is asking the speaker to consider how real something is.

A little extra info

In the first few days of November 2018, while on a family trip to San Diego (travel always loosens up my mind), I created the Fiction Cycle. Having discarded multiple cycle variations 10 years ago and leaving only the basic one (now called the Graduated Cycle), I found it fitting to allow one new companion once again. I believe the Fiction Cycle enhances the grammar in a meaningful way, and in the process, highlights duality: fiction and reality.

Setting up each preposition as a pair consisting of both agent and receiver, uniting gesture with mood, and allowing two patterns for the cycle, are some instances of grammar where Tapissary celebrates “the couple”.