Japanese
日本語
A Japonic language documented in the linguistic literature for, among other topics, honorific systems and lexical evidentiality strategies.
Documented mechanisms
Evidentiality
under reviewHow do we know this?
A single claim branches into four verifiability classes: observed, reported, inferred, disputed. Lexical evidentiality strategies rather than a full grammatical system.
Classifier Systems
under reviewWhat kind of thing is this in the current context?
A referent is categorised into semantic classes at reference or counting time. Relationship and Social Authority
under reviewWhat relationship exists between the participants?
Speech-level register climbs a ladder of relational stance, from intimate to deferential.
Each diagram is a schematic reading of how the mechanism divides meaning — not a rendering of the language's grammar.
What software could borrow from these mechanisms
Each row is a computational deficit reached through one or more capabilities documented above. Following an entry opens the code opportunity, not a claim about this language.
- 01Provenance and evidence
Systems record what a value is, but usually not how it came to be known.
viaEvidentiality - 02Contradiction detection
Systems accumulate claims from multiple sources without structurally noticing conflict.
viaEvidentiality - 03Semantic type systems
Type systems record machine shape but not the meaningful kind of a value.
viaClassifier Systems - 04Authority and permissions
Role-based access flattens social nuance to a small vocabulary of roles.
viaRelationship and Social Authority
Languages appear in the Atlas as places where a capability has been recorded. They are not scored, ranked, or characterised as "the language of" any property. Every entry begins as under review and moves only when a source is entered by hand.
Regions and family are included only when widely documented. Coordinates on the World View — Beta are broad regional centroids, never speaker-density claims.