Contents — Kanji Morphology

Stroke order is the order

Nested KanjiVG groups hold the formatives. The pen realizes them as a sequence that does not commute. Valence is how many component slots that frame opens — not how many strokes get drawn.

Chapter 1 Foundations
1. Strokes
  KanjiVG nested groups are a hierarchical containment of formatives. Path order — the -sN in each stroke id — is an ordered realization of those formatives. The two packagings are not the same, and the realization is non-commutative: order changes the form. Valence here is deep component-slot arity, not stroke count.
2. The rules of stroke order
  Japanese schools teach stroke order from a short list: two broad principles and eight narrower ones, set out by the Ministry of Education in 1958. Each rule below is animated from KanjiVG, with its exceptions. Alongside the rule we ask a second question: what does the rule do to the way the character is put together?
3. Same parts, different order
  Stroke order is a sequence. The finished character is what that sequence closes into. Sometimes the same strokes, or the same component, are written in a different order depending on the character or on where the component sits. Every plate on this page is a KanjiVG file, and every caption uses that file’s stroke numbers.
4. Rule audit
  Each rule on the Rules page, checked against the same 2,136 jōyō KanjiVG files the Gallery uses.
Chapter 2 Atlases
1. Closure distance
  How many strokes are written between the stroke that opens an enclosing frame and the stroke that closes it.
2. Leave-and-return atlas
  KanjiVG groups strokes into components. The stroke numbers are a separate order. Where a component is not written in one run, the file marks the pieces with kvg:part.
3. Valence atlas
  Valence is how many immediate slots a character’s top-level composition takes. It is not the stroke count.
4. Radical positions as ordering slots
  A component’s place in the character, and where that place falls in the stroke sequence.
Chapter 3 Comparisons
1. Alternate orders
  KanjiVG sometimes ships a second SVG for the same character. Some of those files write the same strokes in another order. Some redraw the strokes and leave the order where it was.
2. Japan vs China: where the official orders differ
  Jōyō characters whose glyph matches in both standards, and whose Japanese school order and mainland order are not the same sequence.
3. Order as meaning
  Near-identical stroke inventories that close into different characters, because a stroke is longer, sits elsewhere, closes further, or is written at another index.
Chapter 4 Tools
1. Stroke player
  Any jōyō character, one stroke at a time, from its KanjiVG file. The groups are the components. The numbers are the order. The character is that order, closed.
2. Gallery
  Every jōyō kanji, drawn in stroke order. Diagrams are KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0), loaded when a cell comes into view. This site does not vendor the twelve thousand files.
Chapter 5 Archive & Sources
1. Archive
  Classifier packaging, VN-suru Argument Transfer, and the morphography primers. Kept, and no longer the front of the site. The ordering phenomenon is Strokes and the Gallery.
2. Definitions
  Working terms for morphography, readings, packaging, and neighbors.
3. Morphology
  Kanji are orthographic units that characteristically align with morphemes via their phonological exponents.
4. Valency packaging
  A four-place sentence is still one geometry plus one packaging. Morphology is one of the places packaging freezes, with kanji as the orthographic correlate.
5. Examples
  Three packaging diagnostics. Classifiers and VN-suru earn high; opaque compounds illustrate fossil packaging only. Kanji = orthographic correlate throughout.
6. Sources
  Highlights from the Dig #1 literature map. Author–year + URL/DOI. Local PDF cache is under the workspace tree — license check before publishing mirrors.
7. Display notes
  KanjiVG stroke SVGs, KANJIDIC2 metadata, and native HTML <ruby>. KanjiVG is evidence for packaging analysis and a renderer.