Operators and nonpropositional content

8.1 Every utterance has a type

Core principle. Assertions take EF and evidence. Other utterances identify their act using an operator. An operator may take a proposition as its content without asserting that proposition: asking whether the door is open does not assert that it is open.

This is the sense in which the grammar is required for “nearly everything.” It requires epistemic marking for assertions and an appropriate act marker for other independent utterances. Vocatives, dependent phrases, pauses, and nonlinguistic sounds do not need their own credences. A spontaneous gasp is not an ungrammatical probability estimate.

8.2 Core operators

Writing convention: an utterance tag is followed directly by its content, separated by a space: Nem dos likht brent or נעם דאָס ליכט ברענט. No colon separates the tag from its content, including when a tag takes a label or topic: Rik H fun −3 tsu +1 and Boy-mod M […] oys. Ordinary context frames expire at paragraph end; ordinary freg questions instead close at their terminal ?. Oys closes the innermost still-open frame. Add lang immediately after an operator to extend its frame across paragraphs: Boy-mod lang M […] oys. Square brackets make grouping visible but do not alone extend a frame or replace its spoken closer.

Freg, nem, tu, heys, and oys specialize ordinary forms meaning approximately “ask,” “take,” “do,” “call,” and “out/end.” Tsit is a coined quotation particle associated with citation. Boy-mod is a contracted technical compound. Their discourse functions are stipulations of Yuddish.

8.3 Questions

Freg regnt es?

פֿרעג רעגנט עס?

“Is it raining?”

Core. An ordinary freg question closes automatically at its terminal ?, or completed interrogative intonation in speech. Its next sentence starts in the surrounding context, even within the same paragraph. No oys is needed after the question. A question word remains available: Freg vu iz dos likht? “Where is the light?” Its ordinary finite verb expresses questioned content, not an assertion.

A leading question may convey an expectation, but freg alone assigns no numerical credence. Add a separate EF clause to state that expectation. Rhetorical questions likewise do not silently become high-confidence assertions. Asking for dos bits fun H requests a numerical assessment rather than merely asking whether H is true.

Question followed by an assertion:

Question inside a supposition:

Here ? closes only the question. Nem remains active until oys or paragraph end; an assertion inserted before that oys would still be conditional on the supposition. An extra oys after a question closes its still-open parent, or is an error if no frame remains. It is not optional punctuation.

Two ordinary questions:

Each question has its own freg and closes itself. If a single extended inquiry is intended, mark that choice explicitly:

This deliberately keeps one question frame open across both question marks; oys ends it. It can also cross paragraph boundaries. This is a scoped inquiry, not a prediction that the speaker will continue wondering about the topic. The lang nesting restriction in section 9.2 still applies.

8.4 Supposition and conditional commitment

Nem dos likht brent. Dos tsimer ef⁺³=pon hel zayn. Oys.

“Suppose the light is on. The room is bright at +3 bits, conditional on that supposition.”

Nem creates a temporary context. Its initiating premise can use ordinary finite morphology. Subsequent EF assertions inside the frame receive conditional interpretations relative to that premise and the existing background. They do not assert the premise itself.

With H as the premise and Q as the consequent, the number is log₂(P(Q given H,K) / P(not Q given H,K)). It is not automatically the credence in the material implication H ⇒ Q, and it is not P(H and Q). This distinction prevents a conditional sentence from silently asserting three different things.

In extended prose, additional premises should receive another nem, a displayed list of assumptions, or a model declaration. Merely writing an unmarked factual sentence later in the frame does not make it a free extra assumption.

8.5 Quotation and mention

Tsit [dos likht brent] oys displays the wording “the light is on.” It does not assert the light's state. The same operator can quote an instruction, a question, or a fragment. The outer operator determines the present speaker's act.

Tsit [tu makh tsu dos tir] oys quotes “close the door”; it does not itself order the reader to close the door. This is why the directive inside the Hodgell quotation remains a quotation in the complete essay.

The core operator covers two uses: exact quotation and display of a formulation. Core precision suffixes tsit-genoy and tsit-fri distinguish exact wording from free representation when that distinction matters. Without an attribution or exactness flag, tsit does not establish that someone historically spoke those exact words.

8.6 Directives, requests, and politeness

Tu makh tsu dos tir. — “Close the door.”

Tu zay azoy gut, makh tsu dos tir. — “Please close the door.”

The operator is invariant. The imperative inside its content may retain ordinary singular/plural distinctions, including makh and makht. A request does not get a credence in the action's occurrence. A prediction about compliance is a separate assertion: “You will close it” is not grammatically identical to asking you to do so.

Statements about obligations do take EF because they make a claim about a rule, agreement, or norm. A directive instead attempts to guide action. Politeness, social standing, and authority are not encoded by bit strength.

8.7 Definitions and formal mathematics

Heys H tsit [morgn regnt es] oys.

“Let H name the proposition ‘it rains tomorrow.’”

Here heys is a short naming act. The nested tsit is explicitly closed with oys; a child frame cannot outlive its containing naming act. Giving H a name supplies no credence in H.

For a formal identity, place the mathematics in a declared model or calculation context. A deterministic equation may be exact within that setting. The empirical assertion that the equation correctly represents a physical process is separate and uses finite EF. A theorem and a person's confidence that the theorem was proved correctly should not be forced into one number.

8.8 Models, fiction, and counterfactuals

Boy-mod M tsit [a fair coin, independent tosses] oys. Oys.

This schematic technical utterance constructs M with displayed specifications. English inside the display is metalanguage here; an ordinary Yuddish text would supply Yuddish content. Model stipulations need no empirical endorsement. Claims that a physical coin matches M do.

Proposed counterfactual operator: volt / װאָלט. It opens an explicitly counterfactual frame with the paragraph default; oys can close it earlier and volt lang extends it until explicit closure. A counterfactual requires a rule for how the alternative world differs; it is not automatically identical to conditioning on an observed event. For causal work, attach a model and distinguish observing X = x from intervening to set X = x.

Fiction can use boy-mod for an extended imagined setting. The storyteller can narrate ordinary finite clauses inside the declared fiction without claiming that the events occurred. EF clauses inside it can mark a character's uncertainty or an inference from the fictional premises. A factual statement about the real author exits the frame or explicitly restores the external context.

8.9 Operators for wishes and interaction

Core. The following operators complete the treatment of everyday nonassertive speech in Version 0.

Short acts end at the sentence boundary, like short tu directives. These local acts do not make every later sentence in the paragraph a command, promise, or wish. A nested frame cannot outlive its containing short act. Extended versions explicitly use operator lang [ … ] oys. Section 9.2 defines the paragraph default for context frames and the spoken boundary convention.

Vintsh says what the speaker wishes, without predicting it. Fil expresses an affective response, without supplying a medical or psychological diagnosis. Halt refuses to make the selected judgment; it does not encode p = 1/2. Banem acknowledges an utterance without asserting comprehension or agreement. To assert understanding, use Ikh ef-av=zikh dayn verter farshteyn, with the speaker’s own numerical confidence. Zog-tsu makes a promise or commitment; forecasting whether it will be fulfilled requires EF. Shpil marks a mode of presentation; it does not make a harmful or false assertion cease to have social consequences.

The phrasebook gives everyday and rationalist examples. Greetings and thanks can use short expressive or interactional frames: Fil a dank! A full proposition inside a greeting, such as “your arrival makes me happy,” receives EF if offered as an assertion. An expression can be sincere or insincere, but sincerity is not itself the grammatical numerical field.

8.10 Why not make up a probability for every act

A command has an addressee and desired action, not a truth value of the same kind as a weather forecast. A definition establishes a convention. A question opens an issue. A promise changes a social commitment. A single universal probability slot would erase these differences.

The language instead marks the act first. Numerical annotations may be added when they have a clear object: expected compliance, a utility difference, a forecast about a promised action, or uncertainty about the best answer. Those are separate quantities with separate interpretations.

8.11 Translated voices and figurative frames

Core operators. Tsit-iber SOURCE introduces translated speech for the remainder of the paragraph, unless explicitly closed earlier. Tsit-iber lang SOURCE [ … ] oys extends that voice across paragraphs. Iber comes from iberzetsn, “translate.” First-person pronouns, EF values, and the source's historical present are interpreted within that voice. A translated quotation is not a claim to identical source wording.

Numerical commitments missing from a non-Yuddish source are reconstructed by the translator as part of translating its speaking voice. This is a constitutive feature of Yuddish translation, as specified in section 7.5. Assertions retain mandatory EF and evidence. An ordinary quotation frame may display source-language wording, but cannot be used to evade EF throughout a purported Yuddish translation. Nested speakers get their own attributed frames; questions, wishes, and stipulated models keep their distinct act types.

Do not treat an entire translated essay as one proposition with one credence. Do not use +0 to mean that the source omitted a number. A percentage may measure probability, population share, resource share, or rhetorical emphasis; only probability is converted to log-odds. Approximate shats values remain numerical. Translation notes document interpretive choices without changing whose reconstructed beliefs the clauses express.

Bild establishes a figurative interpretation through the paragraph; Bild lang [ … ] oys extends it. The inherited root means “picture.” Unlike a model stipulation, a figurative assertion still takes EF and evidence. Its number evaluates the intended figurative proposition.

Bild Molokh ef⁺³=pon undzer vertn tsemoln.

בילד מאָלאָך עף⁺³=פּאָן אונדזער װערטן צעמאָלן.

The end of each independent example paragraph closes bild. Here Moloch represents destructive competitive processes; the claim concerns their eroding the values under discussion. It does not assess whether a literal demon exists. A metaphor can establish a mapping once and reuse it within scope; technical prose should specify which features transfer and where the analogy stops. Closing the frame restores literal interpretation. A new analogy or changed mapping must be introduced explicitly.

A figurative frame can contain quoted speech. Close a nested quotation early with oys if the metaphor continues in the same paragraph. A vocative or expressive fragment can use fil without an invented empirical predicate. All tags remain colon-free.