Loci: Writing Full Sentences in the Locus Language

Systems Economics Lexicon · Loci, Systems, Semiotics & the Theory of People

Chapter 2 introduced the Locus language’s nouns and verbs. This is where they combine into full, functioning sentences — and where the language starts doing real descriptive work.

Work Loci: describing what a system does

A Work Locus describes the function of an Economic System with a basic verb-object structure — an activity and a resource. The auto repair shop that “repairs cars” is written 2.3.2 B4ii. That’s the floor of the syntax; two additional parts of speech extend it when a plain verb-object pair isn’t precise enough. A distinguishing resource — written in parentheses before the verb — captures cases where the specific resource used is what actually separates two otherwise identical activities: a postal service and a satellite network both perform the same information-transport activity, but one does it by truck and the other electronically, and that difference is real enough to need its own notation. An information output captures the reverse situation, where a system both performs an activity and produces information as part of doing it.

Resource product and activity product work loci use the same 36-part activity system, but their verbs mean different things depending on which kind of product they’re describing. A car manufacturer that produces and sells its own cars is 2.2.2 RP; a dealership that sells cars without producing them is 3.1.2 RP; a rental agency is 1.3.2 RP; a leasing agency is 3.3.2 RP — four different verbs for four different relationships to the same underlying resource, distinguished by ownership and by how long the customer keeps the product.

Resource Loci: describing what a resource does

A Resource Locus describes the function of a resource directly, using a subject-verb-object structure where the resource itself is the grammatical subject. A passenger car’s resource locus, B4ii 1.2.2 F, reads “a car transports people” — the resource’s own primary function, coded the way it’s actually used by its owner rather than every way it theoretically could be used. Cars can technically “store” people too, but transportation is what the locus captures, because that’s the dominant real-world use.

The two locus types share the same 36-part verb system but carry different implied subjects. A resource locus names its subject explicitly; a work locus’s subject — the Economic System performing the activity — is generally left implicit, because that system isn’t one identifiable resource but all of its subject resources acting together. That’s why the same verb can mean something different depending on which kind of locus it appears in: 2.1.1 as a work locus for a detective agency reads “conducts research,” but the same 2.1.1 attached to a phone book’s resource locus reads “informs” — the verb is defined contextually to whatever is performing it, resource by resource, not fixed once and reused everywhere.

See also: Work Locus vs Resource Locus · Diversified: The Locus “Div” Notation

Part of Loci, Systems, Semiotics & the Theory of People, course 3 of 7 in the Locus Theory series. For the full term-by-term specification, see the Lexicon.