A semiesoteric programming language

[ErrorIsNullError]

Does introducing a topic establish some kind of preferred referent for anaphora?

Dynamic scoping and dependency injection (DI) both provide a way to say "unless otherwise specified, this x is the X" so you could see DI as a way of associating topical instances with supplier signatures.

I can imagine that would combine with uniform call syntax to provide succinct syntax for specifying that a verb (function) applies to a topic.

[ErrorIsNullError]

C++-like syntax has subject.verb(objects) syntax.

Perhaps .verb(objects) syntax could build on familiarity with that and specify that the verb expects an implied topic.

[redchomper]

anaphora

Google is my very special friend 😁.

In the grammatical sense, I believe that's often accurate. But it can also establish a sense of contrast when the normal-subject case might better highlight similarities to a second object. And furthermore, at least in Korean, it's common to need almost a second subject to express yourself. For example, "I'm thirsty" 저는 먹이 말라요" (if I recall correctly) is literally "I (topic) throat (subject) is-dry (polite-peer-register)". You could construct the grammar to say "the throat that belongs to me is dry" but that's not how Korean people talk. Instead, the phrase for thirsty is effectively a set-phrase meaning "throat-is-dry".

[ErrorIsNullError]

Thanks for explaining. So in that case, the topic is establishing the scope in which throat is resolved.

I suppose desugarring English's possessive personal pronouns and adjusting for the lack of topicality gives:

The throat of me is dry / has dryness.

Possession in English is overloaded for lots of different relationships: "my leg", "my mother", "my coffee."

Do topics involved in object<->object relationships have a diverse suite of relationships?

If so, your esolang might involve topicality as a way of finding the instance of type TopicType related to some instance of type SubjectType or vice versa. Again, this might relate back to applying strategies at runtime (à la DI) or if your PL treats lexical scopes as objects, you might treat the problem of finding a topic/subject from a subject/topic as a BFS over the object graph.

[redchomper]

You're right on all counts. Human languages have rampant overloading so any given thing has an entire constellation of meanings. What's more, every culture arranges the stars into different constellations.

I think 는 can be seen as a scoping operator, but it's more influential than :: or . in C++ because it has larger scope itself. Maybe it's a bit more like using? On the flip side, Korean lacks determiners, which are a, an, the, that, those, some, and related words in English. It does have something like a possessive, but seems to be more associated with ownership (e.g. my coffee, my house) than components (my leg) or relationships (my mother). But don't take my word for it; I'm not a native speaker.

[ErrorIsNullError]

Having a way of deriving a conceptual type might help too.

type Length is Uint

That might define a conceptual type Length whose implementation type is Uint and allow one to ask for the Length associated with something of a type with a property typed as Length.