#A.2.9 — U.SpeechAct (Communicative Work Kind, Occurrences, and Records)

Preface node heading:a-2-9-u-speechact-communicative-work-kind-occurrences-and-records:6782

#What this page is

This is generated FPF reference text from the specification preface or supporting sections. It helps interpret FPF; it is not FPF Reference product documentation.

#Methodology

Use it to understand how the specification wants to be read, then return to a route, pattern, or work packet for active work. Cite generated IDs only when the wording changes the task decision.

#Content

Status: Stable Type: Definitional work-ontic pattern

#Kind Settlement

U.SpeechAct is the admitted communicative-work kind under U.Work. One individual such as SA-Approve-4711 : U.SpeechAct is an actual temporally bounded speech-act occurrence. A SpeechActRecord : U.Episteme may state claims about that occurrence; it is neither the occurrence nor what makes the occurrence actual.

#Use This When

Use this pattern when a communicative event must be modeled as performed work: an approval, authorization, revocation, notice, declaration, publication, or similar act whose occurrence changes what a project can claim or do.

What goes wrong if missed. A document, interface, ticket, message, or log is treated as if it performed the act; approval, utterance content, evidence carrier, commitment, and performed work collapse into one governance phrase.

What this buys. Actual communicative Work occurrences become inspectable without collapsing them into a claim-bearing SpeechActRecord, an utterance description, or an evidence carrier.

Typical moments:

• a release, gate, or work step depends on whether a named approval or authorization was performed;
• a publication, notice, or revocation may have an institutional effect only under an exact current policy or procedure, while the communicative act and any resulting effect retain distinct intervals;
• a commitment must cite the act that instituted it, rather than only pointing at a document;
• a message, ticket, signed record, or API call log is being mistaken for the act itself.

Primary EntityOfConcern. The EntityOfConcern is one actual speech-act occurrence admitted under the kind U.SpeechAct: communicative Work performed by an admitted accountable U.System under an exact obtaining U.RoleAssignment and enacting an exact U.Method. The assignment independently supplies the role, role-taxonomy episteme, effective reference scheme, authority ground, and covering extent; it does not act. Speech-act recognition separately uses an exact recognition-taxonomy episteme and effective reference scheme, plus a current policy or procedure only when classification or institutional force depends on it. A SpeechActRecord, MethodDescription, utterance-description episteme, channel, and file, message, ticket, or log carrier are separate objects.

First useful move. Name the actual occurrence, performer system, exact obtaining assignment, and exact enacted Method. Recover the assignment's role taxonomy and scheme; then name the act's time window, recognition-taxonomy episteme and effective scheme, satisfied act type, optional channel, and any current policy or procedure. Keep the optional MethodDescription, utterance subject, policy-selected institutional target, and independently established effect separate. Create a SpeechActRecord only when a receiving use needs a persistent claim about that occurrence; add utterance or carrier references only when observation, audit, or source return needs them.

Not this pattern when. If the question is only what a document says, use A.7/C.2/E.17. If the question is who is accountable under a deontic relation, use A.2.8. If the question is evidence, use A.10/G.6. If the work has no communicative effect, use A.15.1 directly.

Type: Definitional (D) Normativity: Normative (unless explicitly marked informative) Placement: Part A → A.2 Roles & Agency Kernel Refines: A.2 (Role Taxonomy) Builds on: A.2.1 (RoleAssignment), A.2.6 (Γ_time and windows), A.7 (EntityOfConcern, Description episteme, and carrier), A.10 (SCR/RSCR carrier discipline), A.15.1 (U.Work) Purpose (one line): Admit communicative enactments under the U.SpeechAct kind, identify each actual Work occurrence, and provide a minimal optional SpeechActRecord for claims about it while keeping the act, record, utterance description, and evidence carrier separate.

FPF already treats communicative acts as observable events used in role-state checklists and grounding (“presence of act: AuthorizationSpeechAct exists…”); those checks cite actual occurrences admitted under U.SpeechAct, not the kind itself. The spec’s micro-examples and conformance gates distinguish communicative Work (“performed a SpeechAct”) from operational Work (“executed Work”) while keeping both inside U.Work (cf. CC‑A15‑10 GateSplit). F.18 can name U.SpeechAct in the promise/utterance/commitment triad; A.2.9 keeps the ontology and conformance discipline in Part A where communicative work, utterance description, and evidence carrier can be kept distinct.

#A.2.9:1 — Problem frame

FPF repeatedly needs to reference “someone said/did the approving/authorizing/declaring thing”:

• Role eligibility and enactability checklists often depend on the presence of an approval/authorization act within a freshness window.
• Governance patterns and boundary writing (A.6 stack) need provenance: “this obligation or commitment, or this separately represented granted permission, was instituted by that act”.
• Operational patterns need auditable notices (“depletion notice”, “override invoked”) whose existence and timing matter.

Without a first-class kind for such communicative Work and a separate way to describe each occurrence, authors tend to:

• attribute agency to descriptions (“the spec approves…”, “the interface guarantees…”),
• collapse “utterance text” and “speech act event”,
• leave provenance dangling as “if modeled”,
• encode gates as prose obligations, or treat obligations as gates.

This pattern admits U.SpeechAct as an explicit Work kind, identifies actual speech-act occurrences under it, and keeps their optional records separate from U.Commitment, utterance descriptions, and carriers.

#A.2.9:2 — Problem

How can FPF represent communicative enactments so that:

1. Agency is explicit: an admitted accountable U.System performs the act under a covering role assignment, not a role value, assignment, document, spec, or interface.
2. The act is locatable in time: the act has an explicit Window (and thus freshness can be evaluated).
3. The act is locatable in meaning: the act satisfies a type defined by an exact recognition-taxonomy episteme under an effective reference scheme; no generic bounded-context participant or Work judgement-context field substitutes for that basis, and U.ClaimScope remains only a claim-applicability object when a receiving claim needs one.
4. The act is auditable: it has at least one declared utterance description, evidence carrier, or both when used for gate checks or governance.
5. Institutional effects are linkable: the act can institute (or update/revoke) commitments, role assignments, statuses, etc., by reference.
6. Ambiguity is handled pragmatically: the model supports multi-function and multi-party communication without requiring full linguistic pragmatics.

#A.2.9:3 — Forces

#A.2.9:4 — Solution

U.SpeechAct is the admitted kernel kind for communicative Work. An individual SA : U.SpeechAct is the actual enactment performed by an admitted accountable U.System under an exact obtaining role assignment and enacting an exact U.Method. A separate recognition-taxonomy episteme and effective reference scheme make its act-type classification inspectable; an exact current policy or procedure governs any claimed institutional force. A SpeechActRecord may describe that occurrence and point to a MethodDescription, optional channel, utterance descriptions, or evidence carriers; none of those epistemic or representational objects is the act or the enacted Method.

#A.2.9:4.1 — Normative definition

U.SpeechAct <: U.Work is a kind declaration. An actual Work individual is admitted as SA : U.SpeechAct when its primary effect is communicative: it places an utterance through an optional channel in a way classified by an exact speech-act recognition taxonomy under an effective reference scheme and, when institutional force is claimed, by a current policy, procedure, or protocol rule as potentially:

• asserting/informing,
• requesting/directing,
• promising/committing (as an instituting act),
• declaring/authorizing/revoking (status-changing acts),
• notifying (event announcement relevant for downstream work).

Per A.7 and A.15.1, the actual speech-act occurrence is a Work individual; its SpeechActRecord and utterance descriptions are epistemes, while its carriers are utterance carriers, publication carriers, or traces that allow observation and audit. (Note: “Surface” is reserved for MVPK publication/interoperability surfaces; do not use it here.)

Whether a given act type institutes commitments, permissions, publication relations, or status changes depends on an exact current policy or procedure and on the direct obtaining conditions of the claimed effect. Absent that basis, treat SA : U.SpeechAct only as actual communicative Work; neither its kind membership, recognition classification, channel, MethodDescription, nor a complete-looking record licenses a deontic or status inference.

#A.2.9:4.2 — Minimal occurrence-description record (normative)

Use the following declaration schema only when a receiving use needs a persistent claim about an actual or candidate speech-act occurrence. The record fields state claims about the referenced occurrence; they are not fields stored in the Work individual and do not make it occur.

U.SpeechAct <: U.Work

SpeechActRef ::= U.EntityRef
  // resolves to one actual Work individual admitted as SA : U.SpeechAct

SpeechActRecord <: U.Episteme

SpeechActRecord ::=
    {
      speechActOccurrenceRef: SpeechActRef,
      performedBy: U.EntityRef,                     // resolves to the admitted U.System that acts
      performedUnderAssignment: RoleAssignmentRef,  // exact obtaining assignment; A.2.1 owns its role taxonomy and scheme
      enactsMethodRef: optional<U.EntityRef>,        // resolves to the exact U.Method enacted by the actual Work
      methodDescriptionRef: optional<U.EpistemeRef>, // separate C.2.1 episteme used only when it identifies, constrains, or justifies that Method or intended Work
      unresolvedEnactsMethodClaimRef: optional<ClaimIdRef>,
      methodRelationGapProvenanceRef: optional<U.EpistemeRef>,
      reliancePosture: observationOnly | relianceReady,
      executedWithin: U.EntityRef,                   // claim about the containing U.System
      window: [start, end | open],                   // the act occurrence's extent, never an instituted effect's validity interval
      recognitionTaxonomyRef: U.EpistemeRef,         // exact speech-act recognition taxonomy
      effectiveReferenceScheme: U.ReferenceScheme,  // scheme under which actTypes and cited policy/procedure are interpreted
      policyOrProcedureRef: optional<U.EpistemeRef>, // current policy/procedure only when recognition or institutional force depends on it
      channelRef: optional<U.EntityRef>,              // optional independently governed communication channel
      utteranceSubjectRefs: optional<set<U.EntityRef>>,
      institutionalTargetRefs: optional<set<U.EntityRef>>,
      actTypes: set<SpeechActTypeRef>,                // ≥1 satisfied classifications under the named taxonomy and scheme
      addressedTo: optional<set<AddresseeRef>>,       // optional: who is addressed / audience
      utteranceRefs: optional<set<DescriptionRef>>,   // where the utterance description is stated or recorded (A.7: Description)
      carrierRefs: optional<set<CarrierRef>>,         // evidence carriers/traces (A.7: Carrier; use A.10 when evidentiary)
      institutes: optional<InstitutedEffects>,        // references to separately obtaining objects/relations instituted or updated by this act
      notes: optional<InformativeText>                // explicitly informative
    }

DescriptionRef ::=
  ClaimIdRef | EpistemeRef
  // Pointer to an utterance description (e.g., spec clause claim ID, a policy episteme, a message-content episteme).

SpeechActTypeRef ::=
  RecognitionTaxonomyLocalTokenRef
  // Must be defined by recognitionTaxonomyRef and satisfied under effectiveReferenceScheme.

AddresseeRef ::=
  PartyRef | RoleRef | RoleAssignmentRef

GrantedPermissionRelationRef@Context ::= U.EntityRef
  // resolves only to one exact GrantedPermissionRelation@Context occurrence

EpistemePublicationRelationRef ::= U.EntityRef
  // resolves only to one exact E.24.PUB EpistemePublicationRelation occurrence

InstitutedEffects ::=
  {
    commitments: optional<set<CommitmentIdRef>>,
    permissions: optional<set<GrantedPermissionRelationRef@Context>>,
    roleAssignments: optional<set<RoleAssignmentRef>>,
    publicationRelations: optional<set<EpistemePublicationRelationRef>>
  }

Occurrence-side constraints:

• (SA‑C0) Actual Work conformance. The individual referenced by speechActOccurrenceRef MUST independently satisfy U.Work conformance under A.15.1: actual performer system, exact covering assignment and any current F.6 attribution, actual enactsMethod -> U.Method, containing system, and temporal extent. A complete record neither creates those facts nor substitutes for them. methodDescriptionRef, when present, cites a separate C.2.1 episteme used to identify, constrain, or justify that Method or intended Work; the description is not enacted.
• (SA‑C1) The accountable system performs; the assignment grounds. The occurrence's actual performer MUST be an admitted U.System. The exact obtaining U.RoleAssignment under which it acts MUST have that system in HolderSystemSlot and cover the act. Recover the assignment's role value, role-taxonomy episteme, effective reference scheme, and obtaining extent under A.2.1. The assignment supplies role, authority, and attribution ground; it does not perform the act.
• (SA‑C2) Act types are independently satisfied recognition classifications. The occurrence MUST instantiate at least one SpeechActTypeRef defined by the exact recognitionTaxonomyRef under the stated effectiveReferenceScheme. A token written into a record does not establish that classification. If a policy or procedure supplies an additional recognition condition, cite its exact current episteme and satisfy that condition separately.
• (SA‑C3) Time honesty and interval separation. The occurrence MUST have an actual temporal extent so freshness can be evaluated; the record's window is a claim about that act extent, not the extent itself. Every instituted commitment, grant, publication relation, status relation, or other effect keeps its own independently governed occurrence or validity interval. Coincident boundaries do not merge act and effect.
• (SA‑C3a) Policy, procedure, and channel remain neighbors. A cited policyOrProcedureRef is a separate current C.2.1 episteme; its currentness, applicability, and any edition relation must be established under their direct owners. An optional channelRef names an independently governed communication route or participating entity. Neither citation becomes the Method, the Work occurrence, an utterance description, a carrier, or an institutional effect merely by inclusion in the record.

Keep three questions separate. utteranceSubjectRefs answers what the utterance or claim is about. institutionalTargetRefs answers which object or relation the act is intended to institute or update under the cited current policy or procedure. Actual change or institutional effect is a third world-side fact and is stated only through its exact direct change/effect relation and the matching typed institutes.* reference when the record needs it. An informative notice or assertion may have a subject without any institutional target or changed entity. Shared reference values do not collapse these relation meanings.

Record- and reliance-side constraints:

• (SA‑C4) A relied-on occurrence must be observable. When a gate, checklist, commitment, or grant relies on a SpeechActRef, the SpeechActRecord SHALL identify that same occurrence and cite at least one applicable utteranceRef, carrierRef, or separately governed evidence relation. Evidence-critical uses SHOULD cite at least one carrier through A.10. Record completeness alone does not prove occurrence or institutional force.
• (SA‑C5) Institutional-effect claims are typed references to world-side effects. institutes.* may reference only the exact commitment or obtaining relation occurrence through its declared RefKind. Each institutes.permissions value MUST be an exact GrantedPermissionRelationRef@Context whose own participants, instituting policy, effective reference scheme, and validity interval satisfy A.2.8.PER; each institutes.publicationRelations value MUST resolve to an obtaining EpistemePublicationRelation under E.24.PUB. A status claim is an episteme about an effect, not an instituted effect; keep it and its A.10 evidence relation outside institutes.*. The cited current policy or procedure and the direct world-side obtaining conditions still decide whether any effect exists. A Bridge is added only if the receiving inference actually depends on translating or comparing local meanings across schemes.
• (SA‑C6) F.9 only for a real cross-locality dependency. Cite an F.9 Bridge when a receiving check, gate, provenance claim, or effect inference actually compares, substitutes, or transfers a speech-act type or policy meaning between different local taxonomies, schemes, or policies. A different consumer, organization label, repository location, or downstream use does not by itself create that dependency. The same token in two local schemes does not establish equivalence, and a Bridge does not transfer institutional force by itself.

#A.2.9:4.3 — SpeechActRef discipline (normative)

A SpeechActRef resolves to one actual Work individual admitted as SA : U.SpeechAct. It never denotes the kind itself or a SpeechActRecord.

• If another object (for example, U.Commitment.source.speechActRef) cites a SpeechActRef, the referenced occurrence MUST satisfy occurrence-side SA‑C0…SA‑C3a. A gate, audit, or provenance use additionally needs the record/evidence basis in SA‑C4 and needs SA‑C6 only when its inference really crosses local taxonomies, schemes, or policies.
• A SpeechActRef MUST NOT be replaced by an EpistemeRef (“see the document”) when occurrence provenance is needed. A SpeechActRecord or utterance-description episteme may make claims about the occurrence but is not the act.
• If a source cannot complete a SpeechActRecord, it may create an observation stub with the candidate speechActOccurrenceRef, known claims, provenance for those claims, and explicit unknowns. When the actual enactsMethod relation is not recoverable, leave enactsMethodRef absent, cite the exact unresolved claim and source-gap provenance, and set reliancePosture=observationOnly. The stub does not make the candidate actual, satisfy occurrence-side conformance, or support gate/deontic provenance. It becomes reliance-ready only after the exact enactsMethod -> U.Method relation is recovered. Never mint an AdHocCommunication or other U.MethodDescription solely to fill the gap; a description neither is the method nor enacts itself.

#A.2.9:4.4 — Separation rules with U.Commitment, GrantedPermissionRelation@Context, and U.PromiseContent (normative)

1. Speech act is not the enduring deontic relation. A speech-act occurrence may institute a U.Commitment for an obligation, recommendation-as-duty, or prohibition, or a GrantedPermissionRelation@Context for strong permission. The enduring relation is the separately governed object, not the act. Do not encode obligations or permissions as prose inside its SpeechActRecord: cite commitments in institutes.commitments and grants in institutes.permissions, each under the exact instituting policy (A.2.8, A.2.8.PER).

2. Speech act is not the service promise clause. U.PromiseContent is the promised-outcome statement; a speech act may be the act of offering or issuing that promise, but the promise content lives in the promise-content object and is referenced from the resulting commitments.

3. Speech act is not the carrier. A “signed approval PDF”, ticket, message, or API log is a carrier; it may carry an utterance-description episteme or a SpeechActRecord. The speech act is the Work occurrence described or evidenced, not either episteme and not the carrier.

4. Publishing a spec is not a commitment by default. Default interpretation rule (normative). A conformant model/interpreter MUST NOT infer a U.Commitment, GrantedPermissionRelation@Context, publication occurrence, or subject-specific status relation solely from a Publish/Approve speech-act occurrence or its record. Publication work may establish an EpistemePublicationRelation only when E.24.PUB's selected edition, audience, bounded use, form, carrier, and availability conditions obtain. A constitutive policy may let an act institute a subject-specific Approved, Published, or similar status relation; then cite that exact relation occurrence through the subject pattern and separately cite any C.2.1 status claim and A.10 evidence. The claim represents the status; neither its ID nor its publication makes the status obtain.

#A.2.9:4.5 — Multi-function and multi-party support (normative)

• Multi-function: actTypes is a set. If one utterance performs multiple recognizable acts (e.g., “approve + instruct + warn”), the model may either:

  • identify one speech-act occurrence and let its SpeechActRecord state multiple satisfied actTypes, or
  • identify multiple actual speech-act occurrences and give each its own SpeechActRef; their records may share the same carrierRefs/utteranceRefs. In either case, institutional effects must remain referenceable (SA‑C5).

• Multi-party: addressedTo is a set and may include roles/parties/assignments. If addressees matter for validity (e.g., “approval by CAB chair to deployment bot”), they should be explicit.

#A.2.9:5 — Archetypal Grounding (Tell–Show–Show)

#A.2.9:5.1 — Tell (universal rule)

When governance or gating depends on “someone said/did X”, identify that saying/doing as actual Work SA : U.SpeechAct, its exact enacted U.Method, performer System, and obtaining assignment. Add a SpeechActRecord only to state relied-on claims about it, and keep any MethodDescription, optional channel, utterance text, and carriers separate. If the occurrence creates obligations, recommendations-as-duty, or prohibitions, cite explicit U.Commitment objects; if it creates strong permission, cite an exact GrantedPermissionRelation@Context. The act institutes neither effect without an exact current policy or procedure and the effect owner's independently satisfied conditions.

#A.2.9:5.2 — Show #1 (system archetype: change-control approval gates a deployment)

Situation (messy prose): “Change is approved, so the pipeline may deploy.”

Conformant modeling sketch. The first line names the actual communicative Work. The record then states claims about that occurrence; the assignment, Method, recognition classification, policy and grant must each obtain independently.

• Actual occurrence: SA-Approve-4711 : U.SpeechAct.
• Exact performer and assignment: admitted system CAB_Chair_A performs SA-Approve-4711 under obtaining CAB_Chair_A_ApproverAssignment_2026 : U.RoleAssignment. That assignment independently exposes role value ApproverRole, role-taxonomy episteme ChangeControlRoles_v3, effective scheme ChangeControlReferenceScheme_2026, and an extent covering the act. The assignment grounds attribution; it does not act.
• Actual method relation: enactsMethod(SA-Approve-4711, ChangeApprovalMethod_v3) independently obtains, with ChangeApprovalMethod_v3 : U.Method.
• SA-Approve-4711-Record : SpeechActRecord states:
  • speechActOccurrenceRef = SpeechActRef(SA-Approve-4711);
  • performedBy = U.EntityRef(CAB_Chair_A);
  • performedUnderAssignment = RoleAssignmentRef(CAB_Chair_A_ApproverAssignment_2026);
  • enactsMethodRef = U.EntityRef(ChangeApprovalMethod_v3);
  • methodDescriptionRef = EpistemeRef(ChangeApprovalProcedure_v3), a separate C.2.1 episteme used here to identify and constrain the Method;
  • recognitionTaxonomyRef = EpistemeRef(ChangeControlSpeechActTaxonomy_v3);
  • effectiveReferenceScheme = ChangeControlReferenceScheme_2026;
  • policyOrProcedureRef = EpistemeRef(ChangeControlApprovalPolicy_v3), current for this approval and grant use;
  • channelRef = U.EntityRef(CAB_TicketChannel);
  • actTypes = {SpeechActTypeRef(Approval)} under that taxonomy and scheme;
  • reliancePosture = relianceReady, executedWithin = ChangeControlBoardSystem, and window = [2026-06-12T10:03Z, 2026-06-12T10:04Z];
  • utteranceSubjectRefs = {ChangeRequestId(4711)};
  • institutionalTargetRefs = {GrantedPermissionRelationRef@Context(PER-Deploy-4711)};
  • utteranceRefs = {EpistemeRef(ChangeTicket#4711)} and carrierRefs = {CarrierRef(TicketSystemRecord#4711)};
  • institutes.permissions = {GrantedPermissionRelationRef@Context(PER-Deploy-4711)}.

PER-Deploy-4711 : GrantedPermissionRelation@Context obtains separately under A.2.8.PER:

• beneficiaryRef = RoleAssignmentRef(OpsBot#DeployerRole:CD_Pipeline_v7);
• permittedActionSpecificationRef = EpistemeRef(DeployChange4711WorkSpecification);
• institutingSpeechActRef = SA-Approve-4711;
• grantorAssignmentRef = RoleAssignmentRef(CAB_Chair_A_ApproverAssignment_2026);
• grantValidityPolicyRef = EpistemeRef(ChangeControlGrantPolicy_v3) under ChangeControlReferenceScheme_2026; the separately cited ChangeControlApprovalPolicy_v3 supplies the act-to-grant instituting rule;
• scope, revocation stance, and validity interval [2026-06-12T10:04Z, 2026-06-19T10:04Z] are explicit.

The one-minute speech-act interval and seven-day grant interval are different facts even though the latter begins when the former ends.

The utterance is about ChangeRequestId(4711); its policy-selected target and demonstrated effect are the separately obtaining grant. Nothing here claims that the change-request entity itself changed. Gate predicate A-Gate-Deploy-4711 may check exists SpeechAct(type=Approval, utteranceSubjectRefs includes ChangeRequestId(4711), performedBy=CAB_Chair_A, performedUnderAssignment role=ApproverRole, within 90d), consume the current grant, and apply other prerequisites; passing the gate neither institutes nor equals the grant. No F.9 Bridge is needed merely because a pipeline consumes the result: this case uses one exact taxonomy, scheme and policy. A Bridge becomes current only if another receiving use actually translates or compares a different local meaning.

Near misses. A ticket row alone is a carrier-backed claim, not the act. ChangeApprovalProcedure_v3 is a MethodDescription, not what the act enacts. A current approver assignment does not prove that approval Work occurred. Without the exact current policies, the occurrence remains communicative Work but establishes no grant.

This case retains kind versus occurrence versus record, utterance versus carrier, explicit performer and grant beneficiary, exact act and grant intervals, current policy bases, provenance from grant to instituting act, and strong permission versus admissibility gate as independently judgeable distinctions.

#A.2.9:5.3 — Show #2 (episteme archetype: publishing a spec edition without making the spec an agent)

Situation (anti-pattern): “The interface spec declares MUST/SHALL requirements.”

Conformant modeling sketch. SA-Publish-API-v12 : U.SpeechAct is the actual occurrence. Admitted system StandardsEditor_A performs it under obtaining StandardsEditor_A_PublisherAssignment_v12; that assignment independently identifies PublisherRole, role-taxonomy episteme StandardsRoles_v12, effective scheme APISpecReferenceScheme_v12, and an extent covering the act. enactsMethod(SA-Publish-API-v12, SpecPublicationMethod_v12) independently obtains; SpecReleaseProcedure_v12 is only a separate description of that exact Method.

SA-Publish-API-v12-Record : SpeechActRecord states:

• speechActOccurrenceRef = SpeechActRef(SA-Publish-API-v12);
• performedBy = U.EntityRef(StandardsEditor_A) and performedUnderAssignment = RoleAssignmentRef(StandardsEditor_A_PublisherAssignment_v12);
• enactsMethodRef = U.EntityRef(SpecPublicationMethod_v12) and methodDescriptionRef = EpistemeRef(SpecReleaseProcedure_v12);
• recognitionTaxonomyRef = EpistemeRef(APISpecSpeechActTaxonomy_v12) and effectiveReferenceScheme = APISpecReferenceScheme_v12;
• policyOrProcedureRef = EpistemeRef(APISpecPublicationPolicy_v12) and optional channelRef = U.EntityRef(StandardsReleaseChannel);
• actTypes = {SpeechActTypeRef(Publish), SpeechActTypeRef(DeclareNorms)} under that taxonomy and scheme;
• reliancePosture = relianceReady, executedWithin = SpecPublicationSystem, and window = [2026-06-14T09:00Z, 2026-06-14T09:06Z];
• utteranceSubjectRefs = {EpistemeRef(APISpec_v12)}, institutionalTargetRefs = {EpistemeRef(APISpec_v12)}, utteranceRefs = {EpistemeRef(APISpec_v12)}, and carrierRefs = {CarrierRef(GitTag:v12), CarrierRef(SignedReleaseArtifact:v12)};
• institutes.publicationRelations = {EpistemePublicationRelationRef(APISpec-v12-Publication)}.

APISpec-v12-Publication : EpistemePublicationRelation separately names the selected APISpec_v12 edition, audience declaration, bounded-use declaration, publication form, exact carrier, availability interval and governing publication conditions under E.24.PUB. It obtains only while that exact edition remains available under those conditions. Its interval need not equal the six-minute publishing act. The same episteme can be both utterance subject and publication object without those relations becoming identical.

The act does not change the spec's claim content or make the episteme an actor. If D-StdStatus-APISpec_v12-Published is needed, keep it as a separate C.2.1 claim about the exact publication relation and cite its evidence through A.10; do not put the claim in institutes. Norms live in the published utterance description, while StandardsEditor_A performs the publishing Work. Another audience or scheme needs F.9 only when a receiving use actually translates or substitutes the local act or policy meaning.

Bounded non-use. If the only question is what APISpec_v12 says, stop at A.7/C.2/E.17. If the question is whether it is available to an audience, use E.24.PUB. If the question is evidentiary support for a status claim, use A.10. Keep A.2.9 only when the actual communicative Work occurrence itself matters.

#A.2.9:6 — Bias-Annotation

Lenses tested: Gov, Arch, Onto/Epist, Prag, Did. Scope: Kernel universal for speech-act usage that matters for governance, eligibility, gating, provenance, and protocol boundaries.

• Gov bias: favors explicit accountable performers and auditable records; increases clarity but adds modeling overhead.
• Arch bias: optimizes evolvability by keeping institutional effects referenceable rather than embedded in prose.
• Onto/Epist bias: enforces kind≠actual act≠record≠utterance≠carrier and prevents episteme-as-agent metaphors.
• Prag bias: models only what is needed for decisions/audit (not full intention/sincerity/perlocutionary psychology).
• Did bias: keeps the record minimal and queryable for state checklists and boundary reviews.

#A.2.9:7 — Conformance Checklist (normative)

1. CC‑A.2.9‑1 (Occurrence, performer, and assignment). One actual Work individual is admitted as SA : U.SpeechAct; its performer is an admitted accountable U.System, and the exact obtaining U.RoleAssignment has that system as holder and exposes its own role value, role-taxonomy episteme, effective reference scheme, and covering extent. Any SpeechActRecord states those as claims and MUST NOT make the assignment, role value, organizational label, episteme, or carrier the performer.
2. CC‑A.2.9‑2 (Exact Method and auxiliary description). The actual occurrence independently satisfies enactsMethod -> U.Method. A current methodDescriptionRef resolves to a separate C.2.1 episteme used to identify, constrain, or justify that Method or intended Work; neither the reference nor the description is enacted.
3. CC‑A.2.9‑3 (Recognition taxonomy and scheme). The actual occurrence satisfies at least one SpeechActTypeRef defined by the exact recognition-taxonomy episteme under the stated effective reference scheme. Merely writing a token into SpeechActRecord.actTypes is insufficient.
4. CC‑A.2.9‑4 (Actual extent versus effect interval). The occurrence has an actual temporal extent, and a record's window truthfully states it at the required precision. Every instituted relation keeps its own occurrence or validity interval; neither interval creates or absorbs the other.
5. CC‑A.2.9‑5 (Observable relied-on occurrence). If a checklist, guard, commitment, or grant cites the occurrence, one SpeechActRecord identifies it and cites an applicable utterance, carrier, or direct evidence relation. Evidence-critical uses SHOULD cite at least one carrier through A.10.
6. CC‑A.2.9‑6 (Current policy and typed world-side effects). A record's institutes.* branch references only an exact commitment or obtaining relation occurrence through its declared RefKind. The exact current policy or procedure and direct owner establish any institutional effect; a status claim and its evidence stay separate, and no record field makes an effect obtain.
7. CC‑A.2.9‑7 (F.9 only for actual cross-locality dependence). A receiving claim cites an F.9 Bridge only when it really compares, substitutes, or transfers speech-act or policy meaning across different local taxonomies, schemes, or policies. A new consumer or locality label alone neither requires a Bridge nor transfers force.
8. CC‑A.2.9‑8 (No fabricated method anchor). If the occurrence's actual enactsMethod -> U.Method relation cannot be recovered, the record names the unresolved claim and source-gap provenance, remains observationOnly, and is not used for gate or deontic provenance. A placeholder U.MethodDescription never closes the gap.
9. CC‑A.2.9‑9 (Subject, target, and effect stay distinct). A record uses utteranceSubjectRefs for aboutness and institutionalTargetRefs only for a policy-selected target. It claims actual change or institutional effect only through the exact direct relation; an informative act needs no changed target.
10. CC‑A.2.9‑10 (Optional channel stays separate). A channelRef, utterance description, carrier, or trace may support identification or observation but is not the speech act, Method, performer, assignment, or instituted effect.

#A.2.9:8 — Common Anti-Patterns and How to Avoid Them

#A.2.9:9 — Consequences

Benefits

• Makes approvals/authorizations/notices first-class and queryable, enabling clean RSG checklists and guard rules.
• Provides stable provenance: commitments, granted permissions, and status transitions can cite the instituting act explicitly.
• Prevents recurring category errors: “documents promise”, “interfaces commit”, “logs prove”.

Trade-offs / mitigations

• Reliance-bearing uses require a small structured SpeechActRecord plus adequate evidence; ordinary occurrence talk needs no record when no later claim must cite it.
• Requires one exact recognition-taxonomy episteme and effective reference scheme for SpeechActTypeRef; mitigated by starting with a small set (Approve, Revoke, Publish, Notify, Authorize) and extending that taxonomy deliberately.

#A.2.9:10 — Rationale

FPF already relies on communicative acts (approvals, notices, overrides) as operationally meaningful events. A.2.9 therefore admits U.SpeechAct as the Work kind, treats each actual act as a temporally bounded Work individual enacting an exact Method, and uses SpeechActRecord only for claim-bearing representation. That separation keeps performer, obtaining assignment, role and recognition taxonomies, effective schemes, any receiving claim scope, optional MethodDescription and channel, act interval, utterance descriptions, carriers, and separately governed effect intervals and deontic relations (U.Commitment or GrantedPermissionRelation@Context) inspectable without letting a record stand in for actuality.

This also improves modularity:

• F.18 can remain a lexical entry point for naming (why “SpeechAct” and “utterance” are useful labels),
• while A.2.9 carries the ontology and conformance discipline for the kind, its actual occurrences, their optional records, and their connections to commitments, granted permissions, and evidence.

#A.2.9:11 — SoTA-Echoing (informative; post-2015 alignment)

Informative. Alignment notes; not normative requirements.

• Adopt — ISO 24617‑2:2020 / multi-dimensional communicative functions. Modern dialogue‑act standards treat communicative behavior as potentially multi‑functional. A.2.9 mirrors this by allowing actTypes to be a set and by supporting shared carriers across multiple acts.
• Adapt — commitment-based semantics for communication (multi-agent/protocol practice, 2015+). A pragmatic way to avoid mental-state modeling is to track communication by its social/institutional effects, especially on commitments, permissions, and protocol states. A.2.9 reflects this via separate institutes.commitments and institutes.permissions links to U.Commitment and GrantedPermissionRelation@Context without modeling sincerity or intention.
• Adopt (warning) — illocutionary pluralism in multiparty discourse (2015+). One utterance commonly performs multiple recognizable functions. A.2.9 avoids the “single force” trap by permitting multi-type acts, multiple acts sharing the same utterance and carriers, or both.

#A.2.9:12 — Relations

Uses / builds on

• Uses A.15.1 (U.Work) for the occurrence backbone: actual performer system, exact covering assignment, actual enactsMethod -> U.Method, temporal extent, containing system, and a separate optional methodDescriptionRef.
• Uses A.7 for the strict actual-act≠record/description≠carrier split.
• Coordinates with A.2.6 for scope/window discipline.

Used by

• A.2.8 (U.Commitment) as a concrete target for source.speechActRef provenance, and A.2.8.PER for a GrantedPermissionRelation@Context grounded by institutingSpeechActRef.
• A.2.5 (RSG checklists/guards) when “presence of authorization/approval act” is a criterion.
• A.6.C (Contract unpacking) as the “utterance/instituting act” hook that prevents episteme-as-agent claims and improves provenance.

#A.2.9:End

Last Updated: 2026-08-03 — upstream FPF commit 9dd92159 (github.com/ailev/FPF)