Triadic representations that temporally order events and states are described, consisting of strings and sets of strings of bounded but refinable granularities. The strings are compressed according to J.A. Wheeler’s dictum it-from-bit, with bits given by statives and non-statives alike. A choice of vocabulary and constraints expressed in that vocabulary shape representations of cause-and-effect with deformations characteristic, Mumford posits, of patterns at various levels of cognitive processing. These deformations point to an ongoing process of learning, formulated as grammatical inference of finite automata, structured around Goguen and Burstall’s institutions.

Temporal notions based on a finite set A of properties are represented in strings, on which projections are defined that vary the granularity A. The structure of properties in A is elaborated to describe statives, events and actions, subject to a distinction in meaning (advocated by Levin and Rappaport Hovav) between what the lexicon prescribes and what a context of use supplies. The projections proposed are deployed as labels for records and record types amenable to finite-state methods.

Tests added to Kleene algebra (by Kozen and others) are considered within Monadic Second Order logic over strings, where they are likened to statives in natural language. Reducts are formed over tests and non-tests alike, specifying what is observable. Notions of temporal granularity are based on observable change, under the assumption that a finite set bounds what is observable (with the possibility of stretching such bounds by moving to a larger finite set). String projections at different granularities are conjoined by superpositions that provide another variant of concatenation for Booleans.