In this paper we present the linguistic design aspects subTextile, a hardware platform and visual programming language created with the goal of distilling the domain of programming to a set of primitives that would allow novice users to create dynamic and interesting behaviors for interactive art, architecture, and industrial design artifacts. Design exists in every aspect of human society, but the knowledge structure we have moved towards makes it difficult to acquire expertise in a wide set of skills. This discrepancy suggests the need for tools which encapsulate expert knowledge while allowing endusers to design using these "packaged skills," and this is what the subTextile language attempts to explore. We show an approach for distilling out a minimal set of linguistic primitives that can succinctly encapsulate the full expressive capability of a lower-level language by focusing not on the end effects, but the activity we expect the user to perform with the tool.