MERCURIAL ( paul atreides.. )

008. Implicatures of Hallowed Grounds..

While the Imperium is a space overflown by billions of languages in full bloom of circulation and constantly made available unanimously to all who desire to be understood and understand in the grander context of information and goods trading, the domes of linguistics have traditionally only been made available to the Great Houses, for their intellectual growth and the preservation of subtle culturalization amongst all worlds answering to the Golden Lion Throne. As communication had remained the consecrated unchanging factor in the apparent enrichment of human society, language, its conduit, and the study of it had turned into a sacred value as well, existing so it could be embraced by leaders, then forged into a mandatory virtue of their House.

The Approved Dome of Linguistics, carrying the seal of the Emperor, risen from House Corrino, formed itself out of the edicts following the Butlerian Jihad and the coalition of the socio-politically-religious reforming of the Known Universe. It consists of ten books, organized by specialty: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology I, Morphology II, Syntax, Semantics I, Semantics II, Pragmatics I, Pragmatics II and Pragmatics III.

Over the course of the ten thousand years since their approval and wide distribution across the Imperium, their mandatory nature diminished itself to the mere expectation of all heirs to be familiar with 'Morphology II' and 'Semantics I' only; the cult of the full study had only persevered amongst the Bene Gesserit and in the heart of House Corrino.

Why the two books? Mostly because the Pragmatics, though in direct correlation with the Semantics and therefore indispensable in properly grasping the full meaning behind a word, have been contested relentlessly by dozens of Great Houses before the rise of Yaranes fully scorned their historical inconsistencies. But in the notion by which the Emperor desired to remain seen as a dignified individual, in full control and understanding of past, present and future, the official reason was that the two selected books out of the ten were those which had proven themselves to weigh the most in the making of cultural foundations, in building traditions.

Through 'Semantics I' comes forth the abundance of unwritten laws all Great Houses must abide by, in civilized jurisprudence. As predictable, constitutions have been based on the freedom allowed only by words whose meanings and symbolism spread over entire paragraphs to be magnified for better understanding through the entirety of all the other books, offering context and color to their lonesome thinness on the yellowed paper. 'Engagement' was one of the letter arrangements turned into a conduit code by the end of the first century since the Great Crusade. It had turned into principle and cornerstone of monarchal politics before the demotion of eight of the Ten Approved Domes of Linguistics, therefore turning it into a folklore sediment everyone was bound to carry around, generation after generation, until the end of time.

But to understand how a law can be created out of a single word, one must enter the depths of its meaning: engagement.

'Semantics I' offers Engagement is the ritualistic, solemn agreement to the act of marriage. (See 'Marriage') which deliberately sends to the following completion Marriage is the legally and historically recognized union between two souls. (See 'union') There is where the loop of knowledge gets interrupted, because 'union' is discussed only in 'Semantics II', now a dome scarcely found on any young heir's table. If it was to be found there, they'd understand the heaviness with which 'engagement' exists: it is the vow to allow a soul to blend and merge into another.

To a world finding itself in the midst of a religious revolution, such airy concepts fascinated minds unanimously. But what turned admiration into law was the secondary meaning of 'engagement', presented in 'Pragmatics II': Early Old Earth civilizations have created -the word has been censored out of the official text, but replaced individually by all its silent readers- engagement evoking solely to denote pledges, as well as moral and legal obligations. To the passage of time, 'engagement' has been a synonym to 'battle' at least a century before it became commonly accepted as the period of sacred vow prior to the final union between souls.