Relations

The insect eats the flower.		The insect eats in the flower.		The flower eats the insect.

The "relation" in a rikchik word is the tentacle on the top. It indicates the semantic nature of the connection between the word's morpheme and the morpheme that collects it. The relation of a word is analogous to the case or sentence position of a word in many human languages.

Every relation has a range of related meanings. A collecting word may specify meanings for the relations of the words it collects: these are called its "roles".

The eight basic relations in standard rikchik are:

Source: The producer of an object, the origin of a movement, or the cause of an action.

Agent: The actor in an action. Similar to the subject of an English transitive verb, but not in all cases. (Compare Patient.)

Quality: The quality of a word. Analogous to both adjectives and adverbs.

Instrument: Any object, person, or action used for the purpose of the collecting word.

Patient: The acted-upon party in an action. Similar to the object of English transitive verbs, and to the subject of intransitive verbs. (Compare Agent.)

Destination: The destination of a movement or the purpose of an action.

Includes: The container of an object or the location of an action.

End: The end of a sentence. (Often the verb in simple sentences.) Indicates that the word is not collected.

All of these relations except End have reciprocals, which are relations that indicate the same connection but with the roles of the collecting and collected words reversed. Reciprocals are formed by horizontal reversal of the original relation, except for the Includes relation, which is vertically reversed instead, and the Instrument relation, which is a short vertical line instead of a long horizontal one.