Invented name inflection paradigms

One person can need a table of forms

A character’s name can appear differently in direct address, a dedication or an invented grammatical construction. If the production team treats every form as another identity, the cast grows by mistake. If the author replaces every form with the citation spelling, the fictional grammar disappears. This workbench builds an explicit table between those two failures.

Supply the people, the functions you want to write, the stems you have chosen and the literal rules for each class. The tool realizes the forms, keeps missing information visible, and records intentional coincidences between functions. It can also prepare exact reviewed forms for the dialogue workbench. The rules describe your fiction; they do not teach or certify the grammar of Japanese, English or any other real language.

Original fictional scene: the plum-bread dedication

Niko arrived at the shared kitchen with a borrowed recipe book. Beside the plum bread, someone had written Aldem. Niko asked whether Aldem would join them, then heard the host call “Alde” toward the flour table. Niko added another bowl, thinking the kitchen expected two people.

Alda laughed and moved the spare bowl back to the shelf. The book and the invitation referred to the same cook. In the invented language used by this kitchen, the possession label joined Ald to em; a direct call joined Ald to e. The kitchen ledger kept Alda as the citation name. None of those records required a second person.

The host opened the production sheet rather than dismissing the confusion. The address and topic forms both read Alde. That overlap was deliberate, but the possession label Aldem was different. The sheet kept address, topic and possessive as separate keys. A short note explained the relation for the scene, so the reader could learn the convention before needing to follow the dedication.

Bren brought another recipe with a locally retained whole form. The regular possession stem had not been supplied for Bren. The host declined to fill the gap by guessing from the citation name. Instead, the author explicitly entered Brenu as that particular possession form, recorded why the fictional convention kept it, and checked the resulting entry.

When the bread was ready, Niko wrote Aldem beside the recipe and used Alde to invite the cook to taste it. The distinction now helped the invitation feel like joining the kitchen’s shared practice. The original misunderstanding had not uncovered a secret identity. It had given the newcomer a way to participate without rewriting another person’s name.

This is an original fictional scene. The people and grammatical convention are authored examples, not a real language lesson. Alda, Alde and Aldem are chosen to leave the Ald material visibly related in this example; that is a creative explanation, not an etymological claim. The tool does not infer how these strings should be pronounced.

If the dedication used a wholly unrelated form such as Vesk instead of Aldem, the author would need a stronger explicit connection for this scene. A whole-form exception can record such a choice, but cannot make readers understand it automatically. If every function simply used Alda, the scene could be clearer immediately, while losing the particular fictional convention that Niko learns. Choose that tradeoff deliberately.

Keep identity, function and class separate

People have stable IDs, citation displays and class assignments. Citation is the editorial identity label, preserved independently of generated forms. A class is a set of realization instructions, not an inferred gender, ancestry or cultural category. Assign it explicitly; the spelling does not decide the class for you.

Functions have IDs, readable labels and required flags. The default functions are direct address, a possession label and a topic reference. These are author-defined roles in this worksheet. A label does not import a natural language’s complete case system. Function IDs also become literal downstream form keys, so they use a small safe identifier format. The key name is reserved for the dialogue tool’s citation field.

The languageKey identifies the fictional form set for handoff. It is not an automatic translation target. A dialogue template must use the same exact label. Revision is an explicit positive version number; it helps scope your work, but does not make a changed rule trustworthy merely because you forgot to increment it.

Choose what each rule actually does

An affix rule selects an explicitly supplied stem and joins prefix, stem text and suffix as literal strings. There is no inferred vowel change, automatic trimming or language-specific repair. Ald plus e produces Alde because those are the actual input components. A missing stem does not cause the citation name to be used instead.

A citation rule explicitly requests the unchanged citation display. That is an authored decision rather than fallback behavior. A whole rule explicitly supplies one literal text for that class and function. If every person in a class receives the same whole form, the program retains their IDs and reports cross-person overlap instead of merging the cast.

An absent rule, an absent stem and an explicitly empty stem are different states. Empty stem text can combine with a nonempty affix if you deliberately enter it. A final result containing no usable text remains unresolved. It is not replaced by a pleasant-looking candidate or described as an attested name.

The initial sheet gives Alda the base and possession stems Ald. Bren has a base stem but no possession stem. The result is a complete visible table with one unresolved required cell, not a claim that every requested form has been supplied. Adding evidence means adding the actual stem or an explicit whole-form decision, not hiding the missing row.

Declare an irregular form with its base

Use the form selector to choose the exact person and function, including an unresolved cell. Open the irregular-form controls, enter the whole form and a reason, then record the exception. The control captures the current citation, class, rule and available stem as its expected base. You do not need to construct that nested package by hand.

For bren@possessive, the initial base records that the regular rule exists but its possession stem is absent. Recording Brenu is an explicit fictional exception to that situation. It does not add a guessed stem to the source table and does not change Alda’s possession form. The default calculation remains visible in the proof even when an exception supplies the realized form.

Change the relevant rule or stem later and the expected base can stop matching. The exception then becomes stale and the realized cell is withheld. The program does not silently discard the exception and use a newly computed regular form. Reconsider the intended convention, then explicitly replace the record or remove it from the source worksheet.

Replacement requires its dedicated checkbox when a record already exists for that person/function. The guarded undo restores only the matching last edit for its record type. If somebody has changed the affected record since capture, undo refuses to overwrite it. Unrelated rows and later rule edits remain in place.

Equal forms need precise permissions

The same person can have two functions with identical forms. In the default class, address and topic both use the base stem plus e. The allowance declares that particular pair intentional. It does not collapse the two function keys; a template still chooses address or topic explicitly.

Allowances can target a person or a class, and require a reason. A person-specific declaration takes priority for its pair. Permissions are pairwise: allowing address with topic and topic with possessive does not silently allow address with possessive. A third overlap needs its own decision if you want it recorded as intentional.

Coincidence is not automatically a grammar error or a prediction of reader confusion. The worksheet distinguishes declared overlap from an unreviewed coincidence. Different people with the same realized string remain another comparison scope. A same-person allowance cannot establish that two people are one identity or settle how their shared form should work in dialogue.

The form review snapshot includes the actual coincidence context touching that form. If address changes while topic keeps the same letters, topic can lose its previous overlap. Its text is unchanged, but a review made under the old context is no longer an exact match. That is why the worksheet binds a decision to more than the displayed word.

Record the decision you actually inspected

Choose a resolved form and inspect the captured base and coincidence scope. Enter an editorial note and record the current review. This is your local authored record, not approval by a linguist, cultural reviewer or the person represented. Basic results remain available without review; recording is needed only for the specifically reviewed handoff.

The record binds the exact form, citation, selected function, realization source, exception and relevant overlaps, together with language key and revision. Changing the source can invalidate it even if revision stays the same. Changing an unrelated person’s stem need not invalidate the record when its own realization and coincidence context remain unchanged.

Do not use a review note as a substitute for checking the scene. “Looks fine” records an action but explains little. A more useful note identifies the intended construction or the production reference that was inspected. The software checks equality of the captured scope; it cannot verify the truth of a note or turn it into independent evidence.

A stale or unresolved row is withheld from reviewed dialogue data. Capturing a replacement requires an explicit choice. Undo also protects later edits to the affected review record. Restoring a project clears the live undo journals rather than allowing an earlier session’s action to overwrite restored data.

Hand off keys rather than a flat list

The reviewed-fixtures control copies an array that can be used in the dialogue workbench’s fixtures input. Each person retains a stable ID and citation name. The language set contains only function keys with exact current matching reviews. Pending, missing and stale keys are absent; the dialogue tool will report their absence rather than derive them again.

For example, review only Alda’s address form. The copied kitchen object contains address: Alde, with no possession entry. A kitchen template using {{address}} can render that form, while a template using {{possessive}} stays unresolved until the appropriate exact record is supplied. Copying the fixtures does not choose a sentence or certify the grammar of a whole line.

The dialogue workbench accepts at most twelve people in one fixture set. If this paradigm has reviewed entries for more people, the dedicated copy control is unavailable and asks you to split the scope explicitly. It does not take the first twelve and pretend the handoff is complete. The full private proof remains available for your production records.

Preserve context through revision

The main table separates realization state from review state. Result cards identify the person and function, explain the unchanged citation and show relevant overlaps. Ordinary copying includes that scope. Favorites preserve person/function identity even when two cards have the same heading. A display coincidence is not permission to deduplicate a cast.

A private proof includes the classes, stems, rules, exceptions, review records and withheld cells. A project export preserves the actual inputs. Neither is automatically anonymous or safe for a reader who should not know all of the author’s conventions. Inspect files and copied text before sharing them.

This version limits person/function combinations to 120, with at most thirty people, twelve functions and twenty classes. Realized forms have a 400-unit bound, and the combined serialized input has a 200,000-unit bound. Large review packages can require a narrower worksheet. These limits are explicit; failures do not justify dropping records silently.

Use historical derivation when the question is how a fixed root changes across eras. Use this paradigm when the question is which exact form realizes a grammatical function. Use dialogue templates when the question is which already supplied form belongs in a particular line. Keeping the three decisions separate preserves both the character and the reason the name looks different.

Does the tool infer an irregular stem from a name?

No. Missing stems remain missing. Supply an explicit stem or capture a whole-form exception with its expected base and reason. An empty stem must also be entered explicitly; it is not the same as absent information.

Does a matching authored review certify this grammar?

No. It records a local editorial decision about an exact form, source and coincidence context. It is not external linguistic or cultural approval, identity consent or a public-release signoff.

Why did a review become stale when the letters stayed the same?

The derivation, revision, citation, language key or relevant coincident-function context may have changed. The snapshot covers those details, not just a revision number or the final spelling.

Will the dialogue handoff fill keys I have not reviewed?

No. Only exact currently matching reviewed forms are inserted. Other keys remain absent so the dialogue tool can report them unresolved. More than twelve reviewed people must be split explicitly rather than silently truncated.