Talk:L17-01: Difference between revisions

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#lo ve ciksi
#lo ve ciksi
#lo srana valsi
#lo srana valsi
What i ended in is this:                                         
1. object and event are separate variable types.
2. in {lo nu brife cu bacru} selbri wins and bacru1 is an object         
3. in {mi vecnu lo plise} selbri wins and vecnu2 is an abstraction thus the parser ends in {mi vecnu tu'a lo plise}


=Not fixed =
=Not fixed =

Revision as of 14:37, 21 August 2014

Prioritized ToDo list

gracefu's todo list

tasks suggestions

The main idea: clean up earlier sections moving the litter to the later sections

  • create tasks for the first chapters
  • explain sei / go'i interactions

Dictionary. Place structure

  1. Prepare dictionary.
  2. Explain tricky cases like with kau and nonce infinitives in the definitions themselves

In Lojban there are several types of nouns:

  • located: pronouns and those that are marked with la (names), lo, le, la, loi.
  • numbers: they are marked with li
  • infinitives: they start with lo ka, le ka, loi ka.
  • quotes:
  • any type: any type: infinitive, number, text, located can go into this place.
  • If x1 is not specially marked or marked as "any type" then you can use it as an infinitive and its ce'u will refer to x2 of that verb:
  • If any other place (starting from x2) is not specially marked or marked as "any type" then you can use it as an infinitive and its ce'u will refer to x1 of that verb:
  • But if a place is marked as "infinitive of ..." then ce'u refers to that specified by the infinitive place:
ckaji = x1 (infinitive of x2) is a property of x2
lo ka kukte cu ckaji lo badna
Bananas are characterized as being sweet.
Being tasty is a property of bananas. [literally]
mi kakne lo ka limna
I am able to swim.
  • If a place is marked as "number" then a number specified with li or a "number" place from another verb should go there: lo namcu, lo se mitre:
ti mitre li mu
This is 5 meters long.
  • If a place is marked as "text" then a quote like zo or lu ...li'u must go into that place.
  • Sometimes a place allows several types at once:
  • There can be other cases which are always specified in the dictionary:
mi zmadu do lo ka clani vau lo centre be li mu
I am 5 centimeters taller than you.
I am more than you in length by 5 centimeters. [literally]
zmadu = x1 (any type) exceeds or is more than x2 (any type) in x3 (property of x1 and x2 with {kau}) by amount x4

Dictionary

  1. le valsi - lo smuni
  2. lo mupli - lo te traduce
  3. lo ve ciksi
  4. lo srana valsi


What i ended in is this: 1. object and event are separate variable types. 2. in {lo nu brife cu bacru} selbri wins and bacru1 is an object 3. in {mi vecnu lo plise} selbri wins and vecnu2 is an abstraction thus the parser ends in {mi vecnu tu'a lo plise}

Not fixed

Just as a curiosity here are some exemplary sentences I might choose a couple from:

  • I don't drink alcohol for religious reasons. I drink it for other reasons.
  • A logician's wife is having a baby. The doctor immediately hands the newborn to the dad. The wife says, "Is it a boy or a girl?" The logician says, "Yes."
  • Me and my brother are getting married this summer.
  • The man knocked on the front door and housekeeper Sarah Lim came down the stairs in a nightgown and opened it to let the visitor in.
  • Mano met a woman with a wooden leg named Aminah.
  • The lady hit the man with an umbrella.
  • They are looking for teachers of French, German and Japanese.
  • Fred saw the plane flying over Zurich.
  • Fred saw the mountains flying over Zurich.
  • The police arrested the demonstrators because they committed violence.
  • The police arrested the demonstrators because they feared violence.
  • Mary saw the dog in the store window and wanted it.
  • Mary saw the dog in the store window and pressed her nose up against it.
  • Some children may not swim because they won't behave. May children who will go home?

  • clearly stated where is la bangu: "Modern trend in Lojban:"
  • a zmadu b lo ka mi nelci ce'u = mi nelci a semau b
  • ro loi re mei .i ro lo gunma be lo re mei=each pair
  • add not glossed words after examples
  • indirect question: The question is never actually asked in the indirect question, its answer is presumed.
  • boi
  • joi)
  • « pro-sumti. Repeats the most recently started complete sumti. In determining the most recent sumti, pro-sumti other than ti, ta, tu, ce'u, ma, zo'e and zu'i are skipped, meaning they cannot be repeated by ri. » pro-sumti. Repeats the most recently started complete sumti. In determining the most recent sumti, every pro-sumti are skipped except ti, ta, tu, ce'u, ma, explicit zo'e and zu'i, meaning they cannot be repeated by ri. »
  • explain rafsi
  • That's pretty much it. There's been a big move somewhat recently in trying to identify places like that, where {ce'u} is the right thing. Consider something like "You can swim, but I can't." It's really nice to be able to say {.i do .e nai mi kakne lo ka [ce'u] limna}.
  • < tsani> ri skips over all KOhA except the ri-series and the ti-series, and arguably zo'e zu'i ce'u ma. he ran screaming ---> ko'a bajra vau jo'u krixa. paint the fence red - ko skarygau lo bitmu lo ka xunre
  • 14:11 <@xalbo> http://selpahi.weebly.com/archive-pre-2014/the-x2-rule Both of the rules mentioned there are wrong. The correct rule is "if there are no sumti before the selbri, then counting starts at x2 instead of x1"
  • !!!tcika lo nu sau sipna

sau is also used to in such English constructs as:

ca tcika lo nu ei sipna
It is time to sleep.
tcika = x1 is the time of the event x2
sipna = x1 sleeps
  • 07:42 <@xalbo> {drata}(/{mintu}) doesn't have a property place, because that's {frica}(/{dunli}). {frica} compares a single property, while {drata} compares for object identity. My sister and I are the same height, but we are not the same person. Clark Kent and Superman have different admirers, but they are the same person.
    • 19:22 <@tsani> xatra: tell menli latro`a and I devised a hierarchy of equality/identity that goes dunli < mintu < du, where du is absolute identity in the mathematical sense only, mintu is identity in the common sense (Clark Kent and Superman, for those who know), and dunli is simple equality in some property.
  • 04:17 < Ilmen> As for lidne, it's pretty easy IMO: { mi do lidne zo'enoi porsi loka sutrymau kei lo'i bajra }
  • lo se ke melbi klama and lo melbi se klama
  • Consider:
 (1) mi dunda no da su'o de
 (2) mi dunda be no da su'o de
(1) means that I don't give anything to anyone, while I'm suggesting that (2) should mean that there's someone to whom I give nothing.

In other words, (1) is:

   no da su'o de zo'u mi da de broda

with broda = "dunda", whereas (2) should be:

 su'o de zo'u mi de brode

with brode = "dunda be no da", where "be no da" is part of the selbri, not part of the arguments of the main bridi.

  • 12:44 < gleki> how to express "if(broda){brode}else{brodi}" without repeating broda twice?

12:45 < b_jonas> tsanire: it is the start of {.i ga nai go'i gi brodu} 12:45 < b_jonas> tsanire: so the whole thing would be {.i brodi .i ja broda .i ga nai go'i gi brodu} 12:46 < b_jonas> and I'm asking whether that means the same as {.i brodi .i ja broda .i ga nai broda gi brodu} 12:47 < b_jonas> and if it doesn't mean that, then I wonder what you could say instead of "go'i" to refer back to just "broda", where "broda" here

                is placeholder for a whole bridi which could be long

12:49 < latro`a> if there's some dispute about boundaries between bridi, then you could circumlocute by reifying the selbri and assigning it 12:49 < latro`a> {.i brodi .i ja me'au lo du'u broda goi ko'a .i ga nai me'au ko'a gi brodu} 12:49 < b_jonas> latro`a: yes, you could certainly assign it with cei (if I understand it right what cei means) 12:50 < b_jonas> I don't think you have to reify it for that 12:50 < latro`a> if go'i has a problem than cei does too- 12:50 < b_jonas> just assign it to brodo with cei 12:50 < latro`a> they're essentially the same idea 12:50 < b_jonas> what... oh cr 12:50 < b_jonas> you're right 12:50 < b_jonas> it's because cei is too greedy 12:50 < b_jonas> it gobbles up more than you put it next to

  • {me'au} is fed with a property (a predicate), then the outside places of {me'au} can fill the {ce'u} places inside of the property
  • method: Let's try a game/technique to learn our own conlangs. Here's a picture. For this first time, simply describe who you see in the picture, in your conlang.
  • la'e ko'a = lo se sinxa be ko'a
  • < Ilmen> it's similar to selpa'i's proposal for a cmavo allowing
              "proprietor fronting" (split of a NU into an obect and a
              property)

09:14 < Ilmen> *object 09:15 < mukti> So the "part of" bit of your gloss of {jai cumki} has me

              interested.

09:15 < danr> mukti: It should be an easily accesible sumti 09:16 < mukti> Somehow x1 participates in xFAI ? 09:16 < Ilmen> "he's easy to trick" ---> ko'a jai frili loka se tcica 09:16 < gleki> quickly spltting an abstraction into an object+ its property is

              one of the highly needed features in lojban.

09:16 < Ilmen> in kind of nu-split is common in English

  • <@tsani> 1) moving sumti before and after the selbri does not alter the
              place structure, as long as there is at least one sumti in the
              bridi head.

08:01 <@tsani> 2) a be-clause produces a new selbri, by partially applying it

              to one or more sumti.

08:01 <@tsani> (the second premise is evidenced in the formal grammar)

  • Большинство исследователей предполагают, что у человека более 5 чувств — примерно 21, а может и больше. Общее определение чувства — это любая система, которая состоит из группы клеток сенсорного типа, которые реагируют на специфические физические явления и передают свою реакцию в отделы мозга, обрабатывающие полученный сигнал. Стандартные чувства человека — зрение, вкус, запах, звук, прикосновение, давление, зуд, ощущение тепла и холода, проприоцепция (способность определить, где сейчас находятся части тела относительно самого тела и других частей), напряжение (способность чувствовать напряжение в мускулах), чувство равновесия, рецепторы растяжения (ощущение растяжения кровеносных сосудов и головной боли), хеморецепторы (чувство, которое позволяет определять в крови наличие «родовых» гормонов и наркотиков), жажда, голод, способность ощущать магнитные поля и ощущение времени. Последнее все еще является объектом споров ученых. Тем не менее, экспериментальным путем было доказано, что у людей поразительное точное ощущение времени.
  • .i lo xendo jbopre cu cusku fi lo se ctuca fe lu do'a mi do ka'e ctuca lo se jmina li'u noi lo glico xe fanva cu du zoi gy. I could teach you some additional things .gy .i lo cusku cu me'oi generous (to mi lazni toi) ni'o dei lu do'a nai li'u srana .i plixau mutce .i mi so'i roi pilno .i mu'a lu do'a nai do no da zerle'a li'u .i panra zoi gy. At least you didn't steal anything .gy .i se jmina ke mupli jufra fa lu .a'o mi te dunda lo kargu karce ja do'a nai lo karce poi na spofu .i panra zoi gy. Hopefully, I'll be given an expensive car or at least one that isn't broken .gy
  • me'au. here is a bridi inside that sumti. it extracts it.
  • «lu no da zo'u: mi smàdi lo du'u da dùnda lo jdìni li'u» frìca «lu mi smàdi lo du'u no da zo'u: da dùnda lo jdìni li'u»
  • {fi'o gunma je fa lo tadni cu sruri}?

If ca'a modifies a selbri, why not inside a lo construct? 08:05 < latro`a> darsi: that would modify the wrong selbri 08:05 < darsi> oh, right. 08:05 < latro`a> we want {ko'a ca'a mruli .i ko'e ka'e se mruli} and then to somehow join these two

  • {lo da'a se srera} is "all minus one of the errors"
  • mi me da poi remna vs. mi me lo remna
  • za'uxo'eroi
  • no, I don't want erasure erasure is textual. I'd like semantic one, not syntactic erasure

23:51 erasure with {sa} is ok if I misspoke, but in this case I

                didn't misspoke, I was just wrong about some fact                     

23:51 < gleki> {mi bebna i go'i je'unai i do go'i} = I am a fool. Wait, it's

              not true. YOU are a fool.                                               

23:52 gleki: yes, that negates the previous statement, but then how

                do I tell the next statement is something of similar scope            
                that corrects the wrong statement, not just something                 
                unrelated?                                                            

23:53 < gleki> I need an example because .uinai I cant understand you yet. 23:55 ok, how about something like "The house is big. No, that's

                wrong. Actually, the house is small."                                 

23:56 now {.i go'i .uinai} could express the "No, that's wrong."

                part, but how do I say "Actually,"?                                   

23:58 < gleki> lo dinju cu barda i oi go'i je'unai i lo go'i cu cmalu je'u Day changed to 27 Mar 2014 00:00 < gleki> It might look tricky because {lo go'i} refers to the first sumti

              in the second sentence. And {go'i} in the second sentence refers        
              to the phrase in the first sentence.
  • You can't start a run of sumti with ke, for reasons of Lojban grammatical pedantry we won't go into here. WTH?
  • strange that {to ... toi} don't present optional parts of the bridi but instead create a separate bridi. but i do want to have a method of inserting non restrictive parts into a bridi. should i use {fu'e ta'o ... fu'o}?
  • Keep the text flowing. How you put the things you talk about in the foreground or the background;
  • how you deal with misunderstandings and errors. ki'a, si, sa
  • There is a way to say the desk is unique to the pair of Danny and Wilfred:lo gunjubme po la .danis. joi la .uilfred. You'll be meeting joi here and there in the coming lessons, but you'll be formally introduced to it in Lesson 11.
  • lo tamne pe ma
  • I know. I bash my head against that wall essentially in a daily basis. I really think that we need a gismu for "locally leftward, left turn, right hand rule, counterclockwise" (which are all basically the same thing, I think); physics cannot be done without it (and it comes up in many places other than just spinning- for example, coördinate systems are set up to be right-handed); I personally prefer «zucna» (rafsi: zuc, zu'a; BAI modal: zu'au; etymology: zunle carna) for this purpose and have used it (with explanation) in a few instances when I could not avoid doing so. "Chirality" might deserve another gismu, as might "clockwise" (although that is just negative counterclockwise mathematically, it would be weird not have both).
  • a prosumti for something actually unknown would be cool
    • 13:31 < acolotl> E.g. {mi broda Y} -> {mi broda zo'e noi ke'a ka'e se no'a}
    • 13:31 < acolotl> It can be used for a restricted "everything"
    • 13:32 < acolotl> {mi djuno ro da} could be understood as too extreme
    • 13:32 < acolotl> but {mi djuno ro Y} is "I know everything that is knowable"
    • 13:33 < acolotl> And {ro Y prami do} means "Everyone that can love you does"
    • 13:33 < acolotl> Y is just everything that could fill this place
    • 13:33 < xalbo> I think it's just more useful to assume that {da} is contextually bound, because otherwise it's completely useless.
  • a ka->nu cast is easy: lo nu X ckaji [ka]
  • What the place structure for verbs should be is often enough an involved philosophical issue. Place structures were debated exhaustively in the early 1990s, and the current place structures was finalized in 1994 and thus is not open for negotiation any more.
  • And there are selbri which *require* a sumti to be filled by something that is a state of being something. gleki = x1 is happy/merry/glad/gleeful about x2 (event/state). that's why [nu] is required
  • pagbu1 are in sum a complete pagbu2, whereas spisa2 does not need any concept of completeness, it's just "stuff"
  • nice example! lo pano ninmu cu cinba mi in which case I'd consider myself quite fortunate. However, if I say lu'o lo pano ninmu cu cinba mi, I mean that the ten women kiss me en masse, in which case I would consider myself either blessed or harrassed (maybe I'm a rock star or something.) It does not necessarily mean that each and every woman kisses me; simply that I was mobbed by a group of ten women and kissed by one or (probably) more in the process.
  • Because they are all tied up with predicate logic, da and its companions de and di are used a lot for talking about language — you see them frequently on the Lojban e-mail list, for example. By the way, there are no do and du in this series, because these already have other meanings: ‘you’ and ‘is the same thing as.’
  • All languages need ways to connect words, phrases and sentences. In English there are a host of words for this purpose: and, or, because, additionally, however, on the other hand ... the list seems endless, as foreign students of English know all too well.
    • Lojban also has a wide variety of words like this, known as conjunctions, but it is more systematic about it.
      There are two types of conjunctions: logical and non-logical. Logical conjunctions say something about whether and in what circumstances the two things connected are true; an example is je. Non-logical conjunctions do not deal with separate truth values, but group things together to form different kinds of units.
    • Lojban distinguishes between the logical component of conjunctions, and their attitudinal content. For example, most languages have different words for and and but. Logically, they both mean the same thing. In terms of attitude, however, they are different: but contains a connotation of contrast or unexpectedness, which and does not. So Lojban translates but in two parts: je ku'i = and however. This follows the Lojban principle of keeping content and attitude separate (e.g. .ui la .jasmin. cu klama ti has a content element — the information that Jasmine is coming here, and an attitude element — happiness).
    • Lojban also handles some of the functions of English conjunctions in other ways — as we saw, because and so are translated with prepositions, not conjunctions.
  • sumti - easy to remember, as it sounds a bit like someone saying 'something' and chewing off the end of the word.
  • Again cu does not mean ‘is’. It's there just to indicate that there's a verbtcidu coming up.
  • a verb in front of anywhere other than the beginning of the sentence. (We can't just put the selbri at the very beginning of the sentence, without fa before the x1 sumti, because this would imply ‘someone/something' for the first place: the selbri would become an observative.)
  • Negating prepositions. We can put nai after a preposition to negate it: ze'u nai = not for a very long time (may be for a short or medium length time but not long)
  • ro lo do vs. lo ro do
  • I understand now that that is how it works, but if "ro" and "pa" combine with other members of PA differently, then how can they be considered members of the same selma'o?
    • They behave the same way grammatically, but their interpretation, which is a semantic feature not governed directly by the grammar, depends on the exact words used. The CLL describes these interpretations:
    • Another possibility is that of combining definite and indefinite numbers into a single number. This usage implies that the two kinds of numbers have the same value in the given context:

8.18) mi viska le rore gerku

      I saw the all-of/two dogs.
      I saw both dogs.

8.19) mi speni so'ici prenu

      I am-married-to many/three persons.
      I am married to three persons (which is “many” in the circumstances).

(Chapter 18, section 8, at the bottom.)

Some lojbanists extend these interpretations in many different directions, but those usages are (sadly) nonstandard. The general rule that we can discern from this CLL excerpt is that when an exact number and an inexact number are sequenced, then the result is as if these numbers were logically connected with {.e}.

  • na

- xu lo pixra na srana = "Is it not true that the picture is relevant?"

- go'i = "Yes, it is not true." / - ja'a go'i = "No, it is true, it is relevant."

- xu lo pixra cu srana nai = "Is the picture not-relevant?"

- go'i = "No, it is relevant." {go'i} doesn't copy attitudinals {xu} and {nai} and we are left with {lo pixra cu srana}.

More about {na}: http://mw.lojban.org/extensions/cll/15/9/

It is nice to have so many style to chose from in the language. But Lojban might be too flexible for some people. Thus it is better to stick to one style, especially among newbies.

  • fruits/ shop (dinju zarci) / market (kalri zarci)
  • lo nei is fixed in what it refers back to and, unlike ri, can point back to ko'a — though, of course, you can also repeat ko'a if you prefer.

  • "Default place filling". When a place with a default value isn't explicitly filled, it is implicitely filled with the default value. When a place without default value isn't explicitely filled, it is implicitely filled with zo'e. When a place with a default value is explicitly filled with zo'e it is unspecified and the default value does *not* apply. Did I do it right?
  • go'i for Crash course

[16:34] Ilmen: actually go'i is a little more complicated [16:35] Ilmen: it copies the whole content of the last utterance, even the hidden tenses and all [16:35] Ilmen: but {go'i} is a selbri, an does have a place structure [16:36] Ilmen: if you say {mi go'i}, you repeate the previous sentence but replace its x1 with "mi" [16:36] Ilmen: example: [16:36] Ilmen: {mi mutce lo ka tatpi} - {mi ji'a go'i} = "I'm very tired" - "me too" [16:37] Ilmen: basically {mi ji'a go'i} becomes {mi ji'a mutce lo ka tatpi} [16:38] Ilmen: lo gerku ku melbi .i lo mlatu ku go'i ----> The dog is beautiful. The cat too [16:38] Ilmen: = the cat is beautiful (as well)

  • Note for logicians and computer programmers: For selbri, logicians can read ‘predicate’ or ‘relation’, and programmers can read ‘function’; for sumti, both can read ‘argument’.

  • after bridi: Although there is a lot more to Lojban sentences than this, you now have the basics of Lojban grammar; the rest is just a matter of adding things on to it — different articles, tags, times, numbers and so on.
  • .i tu'a zo du'i pu smuvanbi .i lo do kanla cu dunli lo nu lo lunra cu te gusni lo nicte kei lo ka ma kau ni melbi
  • There are many more cmavo to describe time and space (and a couple more for negation, for that matter), but they are only there if you need them. In fact, unless you want to be specific about time or space, you don't even need the ones in this lesson. Remember the golden rule of Lojban grammar: If you don't need it, don't use it! Lojban grammar is your servant, not your master.
  • lo guntrusi'o selpeicku - Communist manifesto.
  • !MOVE to LE and correct Actually, I cheated a little here; since this is the title of a specific book, not just any old manifesto, it would be better to say la'e lu guntrusi'o selpeicku li'uthe-referent-of quote Communist Manifesto unquote — but that would be tedious.
  • .i mu'a «lu lu'o mi jo'u do li'u» mìntu «lu mi joi do li'u» noi co'e «lu lo gùnma be mi .e do li'u»
  • pe vs. be: lo pe mi ([be mi mamta] je speni)
  • mi tcidu lo se cukta
  • {do noi la alis cu tixnu [ke'a] cu stati} - "you (whose daughter is Alice) is smart." Sorry for a not smart example.
  • It's time to sleep - ca tcika lo nu ei sipna
  • double negation
  • 你的逻辑语越来越好。(Ni de luoji yu yue lai yue hao) = Your Lojban is getting better and better.
  • more than
  • "regardless of" or "no matter..."
  • "to be mainly focused on..." or "to mainly value..." This is important if you want to describe the things that are important to you or the things your life is currently concerned with. 他以世界和平为主 (ta yi shi jie he ping wei zhu) = He is mainly focused on world peace. 政府以提高生活水平为主. (Zheng fu yi ti gao sheng huo shui ping wei zhu) = The government is mainly concerned with improving the quality of life.
  • ".i do ce'oi tu'a lo glico mi ce'oi tu'a lo fraso cu cremau" 12:12 <@tsani> (Or plain {ce'o} if you don't like ce'oi.)
  • Let du bu = lo ka ce'u makau du
  • nau bu = lo cabna je zvati be lo nu cusku dei
    • nau bu goi lo jai nau bu'a nau zu'i
  • fu'e for nai
  • lo du'u ti xunre cu bridi lo ka xunre kei ti {lo du'u} is "the fact that", except "the fact that 2+2=5" is silly and wrong, but {lo du'u li mu sumji li re li re} is fine, albeit false. You can think of it as "respectively"
  • PUrci, CAbna, BAlvi
  • we have bridi->adjective (NOI), bridi->selbri (NU), but no bridi->adverb
  • Explain lo nu broda pu brode - and use {lo nu broda cu pu brode}. so {lo} and {sei} require the selbri to be the last word. {nu} allows anything: prepositions, nouns, at the end
    • lo nu tcidu ca nandu - The current reading complication
    • lo nu tcidu cu ca nandu - The reading is now difficult
    • lo nu tcidu ca cu nandu - The current reading is difficult.
  • .e means each of them do it on their own, which makes no sense. I don't pedysi'u.
  • .i .a'o do se zdile tu'a lo ve ctuca gije ba gleki lonu pilno la .lojban.
  • ??? from where? Note: Remember the ‘error quote’ lo'u... le'u from Lesson 7.
  • more than: Frank likes Betty more than Mary, im stronger than last year.
  • u may remove spaces between cmavo!
  • rewrite the introduction, make it shorter. Remove SWH effects and sermon-like sentences.
  • show more consistency in place structure
  • Did you mention the syntactic unambiguity? That is a major aspect of Lojban, after all. "I see the man with the telescope".
  • Unambiguity, and Evidentials and Friends: I do not mean too much detail. You can just mention them in passing, as you did with the rest. They are important highlights of the language to me.
  • if pei is for yes/no why ji and ma/mo are not like that? The answer is that ja'ai - a perfectly logical answer.
  • xalbo: In your section "the simplest sentences", it might be beneficial to make one of your examples an "adjective" (colors are good), to show that they're verbs too.
    • gleki: wait, adjectives are NOI
      • [20:26] xalbo: I mean using {blanu} in addition to {mlatu} and {pinxe}
        • [20:26] gleki: lo blabi mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru?
          • [20:27] xalbo: I'm saying include {blanu}, which is simply translated as "blue", but is really also a verb "to be blue".
  • Wow, I really feel like your explanation of {cu} is not helpful at all. Reading that, I would have no idea what it really does, and when you'd need it and when you wouldn't.
  • First, for those who have never heard of Lojban, it would, I think, be valuable, to point out the advantages of learning Lojban in the first place. Until it becomes a compulsory course (which is kind of a race, since once mind synchronization becomes available, the need for languages may or may not disappear, but that's another discussion), everyone will be asking: "Learning a language is hard! Why should I spend so much time on this if nobody speaks it?"
  • Next, Lojban seems a very strange language to those who are just starting out. I still have many lingering doubts about how Lojban will deal with more complicated concepts (especially, I am wondering if the 1400+ rootwords will be enough to cover all the scientific terms without needlessly bloating each word with an attached explanation.). However, I promised myself that I would give it a go until I can rule out myself if the language has central deficits or not. Alleviating these fears a bit and explaining that while it's very different and has fewer words, it can actually describe more, I think would we worthwhile (for an introduction at least).
  • When you mention new concepts to non-linguists, I would suggest a few things. First, tell the reader (paraphrased) "some concepts may be new to you - don't panic!". It adds a friendliness just as they might begin to panic. Then, the next sentence or so is missing an "are". Lastly, for now, is the fact that philosophies and concepts cannot themselves be uttered per se. I would say something along the lines of the linguistic concepts and philosophies being incorporated into utterance. 15 minutes ago via mobile
  • the use of predicate logic: I would say that it is more than just a bridge- it is a versatile and powerful tool that frees up the grammar while simultaneously maintaining its well-defined syntactic structure.
  • Again, I know that this version is a draft, but do not be afraid to really flesh out the introduction. Textbooks can have lengthy introductions. They capture attention, describe important basic features, orient the reader's mind to the goal and means (to which they can refer multiple times as they learn) - and, really, there is no fear of being too "long" with this part. They are just preliminary remarks. Flesh them out without penalty.
  • When giving the alphabet, I would note a few things: 1) It is common practice, but not necessary, to use the Latin alphabet as presented. This textbook will follow suit with this standard. 2) Although there is no official order to the Lojban version of the (Latin) alphabet [to my knowledge], the typically presented order is the one provided and certain Lojban mnemonics and patterns follow from this ordering. Also, any terms in the glossaries or dictionaries provided, and any section titles (including appendices) that are denoted alphabetically will follow this order [or the more expanded version of the alphabet that English uses?]. 3) The reader should note that a few letters are missing from the Lojbanic alphabet and some letters are added. These changes will be covered in more detail shortly. [I do recommend calling it the Lojbanic alphabet, which is presented as a Latin derivative. I can justify this suggestion if you desire.]
  • Real life situations.
  • this chapter mostly describes Lojban that is based on usage and on the reference grammar. Therefore, many hard to understand features coming. Some of them are pretty useless.
  • lo ractu - a rabbit
  • danr: I don't particularly like the section that seems to becloud lambda calculus as something difficult. ji'a .u'i the example goes from xlura and a lambda function involving xendo
  • After quickly scanning the text and discussing briefly with la gleki, I know that xorlo and dotside have already been added to the text.
  • The modern interpretation of ZAhO tags.
  • Common na, i.e. that selbri-tag na is equivalent to negation of the bridi-tail (which itself is frequently equivalent to in-place naku, but not always.)
  • Obviously, we should make more examples and exercises, ideally drawing examples from the corpus. The problem I've personally had when trying to take corpus examples is that frequently, any given sentence combines too many yet-unseen constructs for the purposes of the textbook. For instance, when explaining tags, I'll look up an example of mu'i in the corpus, but a great deal of those uses also use logical connectives, more complicated tenses, more advanced quantifiers, etc. Of course, we'll have to sift through the corpus and edit out these things before using them as examples in their own right in L4N.
  • We have a decision to make: do we make L4N more "tutorial"-ish, or "textbook"-ish? What I mean is this: should each chapter be self-contained in such a way as that it depends as little as possible on other chapters, or should each chapter truly build on the knowledge of the previous chapter. Both have their pros and cons.
  • If we make self-contained chapters, then the book can be used more readily as a reference with regards to a particular topic. This means that the chapter on tanru will explain *everything* that a tanru can do and all the interactions of tanru with other parts of speech, while at the same time limiting its references to other parts of the grammar. The CLL is constructed in such a way, and I'm not sure if it does a good job at it or not. Its chapter on tanru refers to logical connectives within tanru. Is this something that we'd want to do in our textbook, or should we wait until we fully introduce logical connectives before saying that they can be used in tanru?
  • As for the corpus we also have Tatoeba. Doesn't matter if sentences there are bad Lojban. Sometimes sentences just test Lojban capabilities and if it's bad Lojban it's even better. It means that newbies don't understand exactly this part of Lojban!!! In such cases you ask me to change the sentence in Tatoeba, you add yourself the correct translation to L4N where needed.
  • Also may be we should teach zo'ei in {tu'a} section.
  • That if you want a Lojban name, it can be a selbri.
  • Also, I think that we should emphasize common useful constructs. The original L4B and to a lesser extent, the CLL, did this, but at the time of their publication, there was much less lojbanic "idiom" in existence, so doing so was understandable difficult. We should teach constructs such as zo'e ne, , and others. (I can't think of anymore off hand.)
  • I use it. It is fine for normal conversation and daily use. The biggest defects are exotic grammatical structures lacking some means of expression (although the reason for this is because they are not very well-understood and research is ongoïng; I would not even have known that they exist if it were not for thinking in Lojban) and the lack of some vocabularly in order to deal with certain meanings (the set of vocabularly is regularly expanding; I am working on many such projects). But on-the-fly word-invention is easily handled in Lojban so the latter is not a problem. The former is more difficult, but that is not really a fault of the language so much as of its youth. We are slowly improving it in both regards as well as working out more trivial kinks. Lojban helps me think about other language and to express ideäs. Just the other day, I was discussing garden-path sentences and reälized that all of the analysis would be easier and more revealing within a Lojbanic framework than simply trying to parse ambiguously within English. Types of garden-pathing were revealed by Lojban whereäs the English treated them clumsily.

(To be honest, I reälized this fact basically immediately and only later considered the possibility- and difficulty- of trying to handle it in English.) A lot of ideäs are expressed more easily in Lojban. It might be somewhat wordy, but at least it can be handled. English sometimes cannot even express a concept (or takes a lot of work to do so; sometimes even requiring many sentences and hard thought for a simple phrase in Lojban that only requires a few words, each of which is relatively short). Lojban is not meant to be brief, but it often is. When it is not, it is usually so as to add in extra detail, which is never required.

Fixed

  • fxd?The modern interpretation of ka and of other abstractors.
  • fxd?That if you want a Lojban name, it can be a selbri
  • fxd restore {le} explaining what it means? (we have {le} retaining in old l4b tables and unexplained)
  • fxd When you cover the vowels, put .ybu in the table. It is confusing otherwise and will be more useful that way for quick reference. You can still explain the vowels as you currently do after the table.
  • fxd? cmavo can be written without spaces
  • fxd? That vi does not mean "at location ..." (that's bu'u), but rather that it tags a spatial distance, like zi tags a temporal one.
  • fxd? me SUMTI moi
  • fxd? Then, I would also consider renaming the chapter a bit. Many concepts mentioned do not, technically, fall under "grammar" (such as pronunciation).
  • fxd? Also, I maybe wouldn't call it "newbies". I'm a computational scientist myself, so I understand where the term comes from, but it is not something that has really passed into the language. I never hear somebody calling somebody else on the street a "newbie" (the "for dummies" actually uses a more recognized word).
  • fxd? Other than that, it seems well structured, if a bit short at some points. Remember that concepts which probably seem natural and easy to you have never been seen before by your readers.
  • fxd? This is a problem I noticed with wave lessons continued: Some of the things mentioned (not many, thankfully), require quite a bit of thinking and research in figuring out, because the authors assumed the readers would just understand it right away.
  • fxd? When introducing zo «ti» and zo «tu», why not fill in the blank with zo «ta» and give them their first series? (You can also appeal to Spanish for differentiating betwixt these words, since English does not recognize such a distinction but many English speakers are familiar with Spanish, which does.)
  • fxd? When mentioning emotions in the introduction, I presume that you are referring to attitudinals? If so, are they completely novel to human language? Also, why not throw in reference to evidentials, discursives, vocatives, and erasure? Those are all sort of bundled together in my mind because they are rather simple and stand-alone in nature, but pack a mighty punch.
  • fxd? The introduction keeps beginning paragraphs with "Lojban". I am not sure whether it is stylistic or not. If so, leave it as it is if you want (although I would check to see that you have a prime number of "Lojban"'s at the beginning of new paragraphs- humans find such combinations aesthetically pleasing). If it was not intentional, you may consider revising the wording a bit. It can cone across as a bit clunky. (I know that this is a draft, but I thought that we might as well address it now.)
  • fxd I would give some mention to tenses and connectives, since Lojban is rather careful and unique in how it implements them in their totalities.
  • fxd Also, are you going to gloss translations, simply give colloquial English translations, or both? If the last, will both the gloss and the colloquial translation be italicized?

banzu

Standard:

  • banzu = x1 (object) suffices/is enough/sufficient for purpose x2 under conditions x3.
  • sarcu = x1 (abstract) is necessary/required for continuing state/process x2 under conditions x3.
  • dukse = x1 is an excess of/too much of x2 by standard x3.

Abandoned proposal:

  • banzu = x1 (nu) suffices/is enough/sufficient for purpose x2
  • sarcu = x1 (nu) is necessary/required for continuing state/process x2
  • dukse = x1 (nu) is an excess of/too much for continuing state/process x2
  • Math:
and sarcu? how would you say x1 is necessary and sufficient?
10:43 < latro`a_> sarcu gi'e se jalge
10:46 < latro`a_> or in a more material implication sense, jalge gi'e se jalge
10:46 < latro`a_> which is basically the nu version of {jo}
10:46 < latro`a_> but then, I haven't seen "necessary and sufficient" in an informal context in a long, long time
10:47 < latro`a_> whereas in a formal context {jo} is sufficient
    • New:
      • sufsi = x1 is enough in x2 (ka/ni) for purpose x3 (nu) to take place
      • dukse = x1 is too much in x2 (ka/ni) for purpose x3 (nu) to take place

the ka form is the same as the ni form after substitution, but with dukse2/banzu2 being zo'e

10:54 < latro`a_> for example, {mi dukse lo ka ma kau zdani ce'u} = {lo zdani be mi cu dukse zo'e}
10:54 < latro`a_> but with modified emphasis
      • barda and friends do the same

sensory verbs

Garden path

Questions.

What is your pose? What are your emotions? I vedli looking at flowers.

  • lo ka ma kau se skari ce'u = what color they are
  • lo ka ma kau tarmi ce'u = what form they are
  • lo ka ma kau sance ce'u = what they sound like
  • lo ka ma kau panci ce'u = what they smell like
  • lo ka ma kau vrusi ce'u = what they taste like
  • lo ka ma kau tengu ce'u = what they feel like
  • lo ka ma kau jvinu ce'u = what they look like

jvinu

  • pressure, friction, oiliness
  • Sight of shape: viska - sefta/jvinu
    • relative sizes
  • sensitivity to temperature: internal temperature, external temperature, muscular tension
  • balance (gravity), motion of self, stance
  • Time
  • General:
    • Rhythm
    • Shape
  • Emotions, endocrine states, hunger, Heartbeat; Blood circulation
  • awareness of ...
  • magnetic field (compass feeling) or solar position
  • Moisture (self)
  • imagination
  • having perceived: vedli

Super-Advanced: Negation

Lojban presents several words for expressing different shades of negation.

na

  1. na put immediately before the main verb negates the whole clause:

    lo speni be mi cu na ninmu
    It is not true that my spouse is a woman.

    speni = x1 is married to x2
    It states nothing about what my wife is, or if I even have a wife. It only states that I do not have a wife who is also a woman.
    Similarly, if someone asks you xu do pu viska la .ian. (Did you see Yan?) you can reply na go'i (No.) even you have never heard of any Yan in your life. And you won't be really lying.

na ku

  1. na ku in the beginning of a clause negates the whole clause:

    na ku lo speni be mi cu ninmu and lo speni be mi cu na ninmu mean the same.
    It is not true that my spouse is a woman.

  2. na ku in other positions negates everything to the right of itself within the current clause.
    If I say mi na sutra tavla bau lo glibau se ja'e lo nu mi dotco, I end up negating too much, and it is not clear that I wanted to only negate that I speak fast. The sentence could suggest that I in fact speak fast because of some other reason, for instance that I speak fast in French because I'm German. To express the sentence more precisely, I need to only negate that I speak fast, and not the other things. To only negate part of a clause, na ku can be moved around the clause and placed anywhere a noun can go. It then negates any noun, main verb and preposition placed after it.
  3. na ku at the rightmost end of the clause is the same as na before the the main verb of this clause.
    Often we need our negation to be a little less powerful. In particular, it is useful to be able to say, not that the whole clause is false, but only the main verb. This means that there is some relationship between the nouns — but this main verb isn't it.

Moving na ku from the left end of the sentence and rightwards effects any quantifiers in a certain way, as can be seen by this example:

na ku ro lo remna cu verba
It's not true that: All humans are children.
su'o lo remna na ku cu verba
For at least one human it's not true that: it's a child.

See that the na ku is placed before cu, since a noun can go only before, not after the cu. Had I only used na, it would have to go after cu — but that would have negated the entire clause, meaning "It's not true that: At least one human is a child".

When the na ku is moved rightwards, any quantifier is inverted — that is: ro is turned into su'o. This is, of course, only if the meaning of the clause has to be preserved. This means that when the na ku is placed at the end of the clause, only the main verb is negated but all the nouns and prepositions are preserved, as can be seen by these three identical clauses:

na ku ro lo verba cu tadni bu'u da poi ckule
It's not true that all children are students in a school.
ckule = x1 is a school at area x2
su'o lo verba cu tadni na ku bu'u da poi ckule
Some children study in not a single school.
su'o lo verba cu tadni bu'u ro lo ckule na ku
Some children are for all schools don't study in them.

It is possible to use clause negation in all clauses, even the implicit clause of descriptive nouns. lo na prenu can refer to anything non-human, whether it be a sphinx, a baseball or the property of appropriateness.

Note: Like cu, na can indicate that a main verb is coming up, so we can just say na instead of cu na. So you can say
lo ninmu na nelci la .ian. = A woman likes Yan
without adding cu before na nelci.


Interjections nai, ru'e, sai, cu'i and na'i

  1. nai being an interjection attaches to the right of a construct and negates it.

    tu bajra mlatu nai
    That is a running non-cat.

    tu bajra nai mlatu
    That is a non-running cat.

    As you can see nai is applied only to the last verb of a compound verb.
  2. When attempting to answer: “Is the king of the USA fat?”, all of these negations fail. While it's technically correct to negate it with na, since it makes no assumptions of that is true, it's mildly misleading since it could lead the listener to believe there is a king of the USA. For these scenarios, there is a metalinguistic negator, na'i.
    na'i — metalinguistic negator. Something is wrong with assigning a truth value to the clause.
    Because na'i has the grammar of interjections.

Scalar negation

na'e attaches to the left of a construct and negates it implying the existence of a scale:

tu na'e bajra mlatu
That is a other-than-running cat.
tu bajra na'e mlatu
That is a running other-than-cat.
(making us wonder what a non-cat might be)

My spouse is not a woman (meaning that he is a male).
lo speni be mi cu na'e ninmu or lo speni be mi cu to'e ninmu.

Using scalar negation here implies that he exists, which na did not.

Another unexpected effect compared to English not:

mi na nelci ro lo gerku means It is not true that I like each dog.

However,

mi na'e nelci ro lo gerku means I don't like any dogs.

While the mechanism of na ku resembles negation in English, it can be difficult to keep track of exactly what is negated and how that affects the clause. For that reason, the construct na ku is rarely seen anywhere other than the beginning of a clause. In most cases where more specific negation is needed people resort to a scalar negation using na'e. With na'e only a ceratin construcut is affected whereas with na ku everything to the right of it is negated. This is the reason na ku is used rather seldom and mostly at the beginning of the sentence. In

mi na'e nelci ro gerku
I other-than-like all dogs.

there is something that can be said about me and all dogs, but it's not that I like them.

I might hate them:

mi to'e nelci ro gerku
I anti-like (= dislike) all dogs.

to'e turns a main verb into its opposite: to'e nelci is pretty much the same thing as xebnito hate.

Or I just might be neutral to them. I might write poems about them, or prescribe medicine for them, imitate them in polite company, or just might be indifferent to them. Then we'll use no'e:

mi no'e nelci ro gerku
I am neutral-as-to-liking all dogs.

But as for liking them, I don't.

Thus na'e is not a negator in the same sense as na. It doesn't state that a clause is false, but makes a positive statement that a clause is true – the same clause, but with a different main verb. This distinction is mostly academic, though. If, for example, I state mi na'e se nelciI am non-liked, I actually state that some main verb applies to me, which is also on a relevant scale with the main verb nelci. Most of the time, we assume a scale where the positions are mutually exclusive like "like — dislike — hate", so mi na'e se nelci implies mi na se nelci. Therefore, the words no'e and to'e should only be used when the main verb is placed on some obvious scale: lo speni be mi cu to'e melbiMy spouse is ugly makes sense, since we immediately know what the opposite of beautiful is, while mi klama lo to'e zdani be miI go to my opposite thing of home, while grammatical, leaves the listener guessing what the speaker's opposite of home is and should be avoided.

My spouse is not really a woman.
lo speni be mi cu no'e ninmu

The scale here is presumed to be from woman to man.

I don't speak fast in English because I'm German.
mi na'e sutra tavla bau lo glibau se ja'e lo nu mi dotco

Chat

05:05 < plise> i ma drani gerna fi zo na
05:05 < plise> i ma drani gerna fi zo na fe lo cabna jbobau
05:05 < plise> sisi balvi jbobau
05:05 < markuja> ta'i ma mi spuda
05:05 < markuja> .i xu jarco lo me PEG javni
05:06 < plise> go'i
05:06 < plise> i ku'i au zgana lo balvi jbobau
05:06 < markuja> .oi
05:06 < plise> y i ku'i e'a do ciksi bau lo glico
05:06 < markuja> .i xu do na kakne lo ka catlu
05:06 < plise> i mi nitcu tu'a lo mi ctuca cukta
05:06 < nargavela> BTW I should ask on the mriste how to express the PEG '/' operator; it is a must for describing Lojban syntax in Lojban
05:06 < markuja> .e'a nai glico
05:06 < plise> i mi kanpe lo nu da ba fanva CC lo porto i seki'u bo mi xanka
05:07 < markuja> ma pe zo na nabmi
05:07 < markuja> .i pe'i zo na no'e cenba
05:07 < plise> markuja: xu dunlo zo na pe cylyly
05:07 < plise> dunli
05:07 < markuja> gerna dunli
05:07 < gerna> (0[dunli VAU])0
05:07 < markuja> .i gerna dunli
05:07 < nargavela> ta'o .ei mi retsku fi selmristepre fe su'u makau xe fanva zo'oi / pe PEG
05:08 < plise> markuja: xu gerna mintu zo na pe CLL
05:08 < markuja> go'i
05:08 < markuja> .i ku'i mi curmi lo nu zo ku na se cusku
05:08 < plise> mi tugni la ionac lo nu tai da'i la'edi'u zo fa ba plujygau lo gerna
05:09 < plise> markuja: xu lu i mi na broda  li'u smuni  mintu lu i naku mi broda li'u
05:09 < markuja> no'e go'i
05:10 < plise> i mintu ma
05:10 < nargavela> lo se stidi pe ma'oi fa na dirba mi .i ku'i la markuja pu cpedu fi tu'a lo pilno mupli
05:10 < markuja> lu mi broda na ku li'u
05:10 < plise> uanai
05:10 < nargavela> y .i lo nunpli mupli
05:10 < markuja> doi plise
05:10 < markuja> ju'i plise
05:10 < plise> markuja: mi mutce tatpi doi sy i e'o do ciksi do'e mu'a lo do blogo
05:10 < markuja> .i ko karbi lu na broda gi'e brode li'u
05:11 < markuja> .i lu na ku broda gi'e brode li'u frica sai
05:11 < markuja> ie pei
05:11 < plise> i mi na birti lodu'u lu i broda naku li'u cu se smuni makau 
05:11 < plise> y
05:11 < plise> ie
05:11 < markuja> smuni fa lo du'u lo du'u broda na jetnu
05:11 < nargavela> lu na broda gi'e brode li'u zo'u selbritcita
05:11 < plise> i na broda = i broda naku ?
05:12 < markuja> panra zo pu
05:12 < markuja> .i pu broda gi'e brode
05:12 < nargavela> na broda = broda be naku
05:12 < markuja> .i pu broda gi'e ba brode
05:12 < markuja> .i na broda gi'e ja'a brode
05:12 < plise> "naku" srana lo jufra, "na" srana lo bridi?
05:12 < markuja> .i .o'i doi nargavela
05:13 < markuja> .i lu na broda su'o da li'u na dunli lu broda be naku su'o da li'u
05:13 < nargavela> ie u'u
05:13 < plise> "naku" srana lo jufra, "na" srana lo bridi?
05:13 < nargavela> ki'e kajde
05:14 < markuja> zo na co'e lo pritu ke galfi valsi noi zo pu .e zo su'o mupli
05:14 < nargavela> lu naku li'u sumsmi
05:14 < markuja> .i zo na ku simsa
05:14 < markuja> sa
05:14 < markuja> .i lu naku li'u simsa
05:14 < markuja> .i ie
05:16 < plise> ei mi troci lo ka ciska ciksi
05:18 < nargavela> lu na broda li'u lu naku broda li'u frica va'o lo nu bridi         

                   konketiva                                                          
05:19 < markuja> mekso: -f broda su'o da na .i broda na su'o da                       
05:19 < mekso> ([broda {su'o da} na] [i {broda <na (¹su'o da¹)>}])

Negation and neutral meaning

nai is an interjection that makes a part of sentence negative in meaning. nai means no or not.

  • interjection in Lojban modifies the construct to the left of it.
mi nelci nai do
I don't like you.
I like-not you (literally). [literally]
mi nai nelci do
Not I like you.
(may be someone else likes you) [literally]
So when put after certain part of the phrase like pronoun or a verb it modifies that verb.
  • if put in the beginning of a phrase interjection modifies the whole phrase:
nai mi nelci do
It's not true that I like you.
So in the beginning of the phrase nai negates the whole phrase.
  • we can put an interjection after different parts of the same phrase shifting the meaning.

The interjection cu'i makes a part of sentence middle in its meaning.

mi nelci cu'i do
As for whether I love or hate you, I'm indifferent to you. I neither like nor hate you.

Double negation

Sometimes it's necessary to use double negation. Let's show how this works using examples from English and Chinese.

The structure 非...不可 (fēi … bùkě) is one of the most commonly used in Mandarin Chinese. It means "must"/"absolutely must"/"need to." 非 means "not"/"no" and 不可 means "not possible". It's literally translated as "not not possible."

mi na cfifa'i ra na fau da
我非批评她不可。
wǒ fēi pīpíng tā bùkě
I can't not to criticize her.
I absolutely must criticize her.
mi'ai na tadni na fau da
我们非学习不可。
wǒmen fēi xuéxí bùkě
We must study.
mi'ai tadni nai fau no da
We can't not study.

fau and if

There is some controversy about against using jo and ja nai for expressing if and only if. First you shouldn't use ja nai (if) when jo (only if) is meant. And in natural languages if is strongly tied up with notions of causality, precondition, or deduction — none of which is particularly emphasized by ja nai and jo as they are strictly logical conjunctions. For example, ja nai will give a poor rendering of It's not true that, if I'm rich, I'm happy — which is decidedly not the same thing as It's not true that I'm either not rich or happy! For that reason, you will see many Lojbanists avoiding jo and ja nai in ordinary speech, and instead using prepositions like fau - in the event of..., va'o - under conditions..., se ja'e - results from ... happening, or ni'i - logically caused by....

Better examples of using them in ordinary speech:

ja gi nai je gi ro da poi badna zo'u da pelxu gi mi citka lo badna gi mi citka lo pelxu
If everything for every banana it is true that it is yellow, and I am eating a banana, then I am eating something yellow.
ja gi nai je gi ro pipybanfi cu crino gi la .kermit. cu pipybanfi gi la .kermit. cu crino
If every frog is green, and Kermit is a frog, then Kermit is green.

Non-logical conjunctions

lo jisra joi lo djacu - the juice and the water, considered together

This is the same as lo gunma be lo jisra je lo djacu.

djacu = x1 is some water
jisra = x1 is some juice

Not all English sentences containing and are like this, though. Firstly, sentences like I had a bath and washed my hair are structurally different and will be dealt with later on. Secondly, I visited Ranjeet and Jasmine is slightly different from I visited Ranjeet and I visited Jasmine. In this case, you probably want to say that you visited Ranjeet-and-Jasmine as a unit on one occasion — not that you visited Ranjeet and Jasmine on (potentially) different occasions (It is true that I visited Ranjeet, and it is true that I visited Jasmine.) In this case you don't want je (which is true but potentially misleading), but joi, which means ‘in a mass with’. So what you have is

mi pu vitke la .ranjit. joi la .jasmin.
I past visit Ranjeet in-a-mass-with Jasmine.
I visited Ranjeet and Jasmine (together).

This is just like the difference between lo ci gerku and loi ci gerku which we looked at in Lesson 4 — considering the three dogs as individuals, or as a mass. Incidentally, it is not just Lojban which makes this distinction; Turkish, for example, would use ile (‘with’) rather than ve (‘and’) for joi here.

By non-logical conjunctions, we mean that the truth of the combined terms does not depend on the truth of the individual components. It may not be true that la .kris. cu bevri lo pipno. Chris carries the piano, or la .pat. cu bevri lo pipno Pat carries the piano, for example (to revisit an example from Lesson 4), even if it is true that la .kris. joi la .pat. cu bevri lo pipno Chris and Pat carry the piano.

Lojban has several other non-logical conjunctions; we'll cover the most frequently used ones:

  • fa'u carries the meaning of respectively: it relates pairs of sumti cross-wise. If I were to say
la .alis. je la .jasmin. cu tavla la .djang. je la .ranjit.

that means that both Alice and Jasmine talk to both Zhang and Ranjeet. If I want to say that Alice only talked to Zhang, and Jasmine only to Ranjeet (i.e. Alice and Jasmine talked to Zhang and Ranjeet, respectively'), a logical conjunction is not useful. Instead, I would use fa'u to connect both pairs of sumti:

la .alis. fa'u la .jasmin. cu tavla la .djang. fa'u la .ranjit.

Alice, cross-wise with Jasmine, talks to Zhang, cross-wise with Ranjeet.

  • If you're talking about a range, you use bi'i to describe the range between the first thing and the second thing; so it corresponds to English between. If you want to say I dropped my pencil somewhere between the office and the bar, you would describe the location somewhere between the office and the bar as lo briju ku bi'i lo barja. The whole sentence would come out as:
mi falcru lemi pinsi vi lo briju bi'i lo barja
This selma'o, BIhI, like selma'o JOI to which all non-logical conjunctions belong, can join both sumti and selbri.


  • If the order of the things defining the range matters, you use bi'o. This corresponds to from... to... in English (though between covers both ordered and unordered intervals.) For example, from 1 PM to 2 PM is an interval lasting an hour; but from 2 PM to 1 PM would normally be interpreted as a 23-hour interval (1 pm the following day), since times in English are assumed to be presented in order. Lojban follows suit with li pavo lo'o bi'o li paci as a 23-hour interval. If I said li pavo lo'o bi'i li paci, the order of the two times would not matter at all; so I could still be talking about a one-hour interval instead.
Tip: The selma'o BIhI needs all sumti terminated before it, not just normal sumti with lo or lo. Since numbers are also sumti, you have to use the terminator corresponding to li, which is lo'o.


Note: You can use non-logical conjunctions in forethought mode, too: the forethought conjunction is the non-logical conjunction followed by gi. So the forethought version of la .kris. joi la .pat. is joi gi la .kris. gi la .pat.


The word "logical" in "logical connective" refers to the association a logical connective has with a truth function. Not all useful connectives can be defined through a truth function, however, and so there are other connectives beside the logical ones.
The meaning of a logical connective is defined the same as two different bridi connected with that logical connective. For instance, mi nitcu do .a la .djan. is defined to be equivalent to mi nitcu do .i ja mi nitcu la .djan.. This definition is useful to bear in mind, because it implies that sometimes, sumti cannot be connected with logical connectives without chaning the meaning. Consider the sentence: "Jack and Joe wrote this play." One attempt at a translation would be: ti draci fi la .djak. e la .djous.
draci x1 is a drama/play about x2 by writer/dramatist x3 for audience x4 with actors x5
The problem with this translation is that it means ti draci la .djak. ije ti draci la .djous., which is not really true. Neither Jack nor Joe wrote it, they did so together. What we want here is of course a mass, and some way to join Jack and Joe in one mass. This has little to do with a truth function so we must use a non-logical connective, which are of selma'o JOI. We'll return to this Jack and Joe-problem in a little - first: Four of the known JOI:
The Lojban connective: ce ce'o joi jo'u
Joins sumti and forms a: set sequence mass group of individuals
The functions of these words are simple: lo'i remna jo'u lo'i gerku considers both the set of

Raising

tu'a - convert noun to vague abstraction involving the noun. Equivalent to lo nu + the noun + co'e vau

vau needed?

So you can translate tu'a as some abstraction associated with..., or more colloquially, some stuff about.... tu'a is easily the most popular way of dealing with abstractions you wish weren't there in Lojban; Lojban sentences using it come out fairly similar to the natural language sentences without abstractions that we're used to seeing.

The other function of jai is easier to explain. It simply converts the selbri such that the noun in the x1 gets a tu'a in front of it (ko'a jai broda = tu'a ko'a broda). In other words, it converts the selbri in a way such that it builds an elliptical abstraction from the noun in the x1, and then fills x1 with the abstraction instead of the actual noun. Again, the original noun place is accessible by fai. A very active Lojban IRC-user often says le gerku pe do jai se stidi mi, to use a random example of a noun in x1. What's he say?

stidi = x1 inspires/suggests x2 in/to x3

Answer: “I suggest (something about) your dog.”

When looking up words in the Lojban dictionary, you may have already noticed that, where languages like English have people or things as subjects and objects, Lojban often uses abstractions instead as gismu places. For example, in English, you say that someone is interesting, or something is interesting. In Lojban, you aren't really meant to say either. E.g.:

cinri - x1 (abstraction) interests/is interesting to x2; x2 is interested in x1

In other words, as far as Lojban is concerned, it's not things or people that are interesting, but actions or properties involving those things or people. For example, Jasmine cannot be said to be interesting simply by virtue of being Jasmine; the way Lojban puts it, it's the things Jasmine does (or is) that are interesting — the way she talks about British sitcoms, her choice of headgear, her tendency to break into '80s songs after she's had a few drinks.

fenki - x1 (action/event) is crazy/insane/mad/frantic/in a frenzy (one sense) by standard x2

People are called crazy. Only occasionally are actions also called crazy. In Lojban, however, the verb fenki describes events (or actions, which is the same). In other words, as far as Lojban is concerned, craziness lies in actions, not in people; a crazy person is by definition someone who does crazy actions.

Note: This means that someone suffering from the particular forms of mental illness loosely called ‘crazy’ wouldn't be called fenki in Lojban — since their condition is not primarily a matter of socially unacceptable actions — but rather menli bilma - mentally ill.

What if you want to say Jasmine is interesting, but you don't care or just unsure what verb to use? I should at least be able to say something like Jasmine {doing some stuff I'm not listing here} is interesting, or Some things about Jasmine are interesting. In other words, I have to say

lo nu la .jasmin. cu co'e cu cinri

or

tu'a la .jasmin. cu cinri

Saying Zhang is crazy (or berserk, probably a closer translation of fenki), I don't have to enumerate the various wacky stunts he has pulled over the years. I can simply say that some stuff about Zhang is crazy, which in Lojban comes out as

lo nu la .djang. cu co'e cu fenki

The value of co'e could be

  • dasni lo zirpu - wears purple
  • dansu la zgikrfanki jipci - dances the Funky Chicken
  • tavla bau la .lojban. - speaks Lojban

or whatever; we're just not bothering to name it here.

So the usual Lojban for Jasmine is interesting is

tu'a la .jasmin. cu cinri

and the usual Lojban for Kevin is crazy is

tu'a la .kevin. cu fenki

Lojbanists noticed how linguists have been analyzing these concepts in natural languages, and how they were coming up with their own versions of verbs. Often, what was a noun in one part of the sentence, and a verb in another part, were brought together and considered to be underlyingly part of the same abstraction noun.

A good example is the phrase I am difficult to annoy in English. At first sight, you might think that I is a noun of difficult. And grammatically it is: it's the subject. But logically it isn't: what we're describing as difficult is not me. We can't say:

  • Who is difficult?
  • Me (to annoy).

What's actually going on is that, underlyingly, what is difficult is to annoy me: the action of getting me annoyed is what is hard to achieve — not me! This is why English also allows you to say It is difficult to annoy me, and (if you squint a little) To annoy me is difficult. And sure enough, Lojban expresses this concept according to that ‘underlying’ form:

lo nu fanza mi cu nandu
The event of annoying me is difficult

So why did English pull that weird switcheroo with I am difficult to annoy? Basically, because when we talk, we aren't concentrating in our minds on intangible abstractions like the event of annoying me, let alone the state of Jasmine having certain unspecified properties. Instead, we run little stories in our head, with heroes and villains: concrete heroes and villains — people, for the most part. And as it happens, we make the subjects of our sentences be the heroes and villains we're concentrating on. (That's what a subject's ultimate job is: to present what we're concentrating on).

So by pulling a switcheroo like that, we're not talking about abstractions and events any more; the subject of the sentence is now our perennially favorite subject — namely me: it's me that is difficult to annoy. (Yes, it is all about me...) This process is called in linguistics raising, because it raises concrete subjects (and objects) we want to talk about, out of the haziness of an abstraction noun (or ‘clausal argument’, to use English logical terminology).

Another case is saying

Jasmine is interesting and beautiful.

We could say

tu'a la jasmin cu cinri .i la jasmin cu melbi

as melbi requires a noun as it's first (x1) place.

But that would be bulky. We have another method

tu'a la jasmin cu cinri = la jasmin cu jai cinri

So jai extracts a noun from the verb place containing an event. Thus, it's very useful:

la jasmin cu jai cinri vau je melbi
Jasmine is interesting and beautiful.

Now both verbs have the same noun in common.

Another example. How do I say that someone is a cheat, or a deceiver? The verb for "to deceive" is:

tcica - x1 (event/experience) misleads/deceives/dupes/fools/cheats/tricks x2 into x3 (event/state)

So lo tcica is a trick, not a trickster; a deception, and not a deceiver. To say that someone is a trickster or a deceiver, we need to use tu'a: tu'a zo'e tcica. But you can't put lo in front of tu'a da: the deceiver has to be the x1 of some verb, in order to get their own noun. So we say lo jai tcica.

jai changes the place structure of the verb involved. This works just like se changing the place structure of it's verb, swapping its first and second place. If we put jai in front of a verb, its x1 place changes from an event, to any noun contained within the event. Let's try this with a few sentences:

  • lo nu la .kevin. cu dasni loi zirpu cu fenki
  • la .kevin. cu jai fenki
  • lo nu la .jasmin. cu co'e cu cinri
  • la .jasmin. cu jai cinri
  • tu'a la .jasmin. cu tcica la .alis.
  • la .jasmin. cu jai tcica la .alis.
  • lo nu fanza mi cu nandu
  • mi jai nandu

You'll notice that, with these new place structures, the Lojban phrases sound pretty much like their English equivalents. For example,

la .jasmin. cu jai cinri
Jasmine is interesting.
la .jasmin. cu jai tcica la .alis.
Jasmine deceives Alice.

We can now do with jai those things we couldn't before. The Lojban for Jasmine is interesting and beautiful, for example, is

la .jasmin. cu jai cinri vau je melbi

That's because Jasmine goes in the x1 place of jai cinri, just as it goes into the x1 place of melbi. And if I want to make a noun meaning ‘deceiver’ or ‘trickster’, I can use jai to do it:

tu'a la .jasmin. cu tcicala .jasmin. cu jai tcicalo jai tcica

However, mi jai nandu does not correspond to I am difficult to annoy. In switching a concrete noun for the original x1 — the event that was difficult — we have lost the abstraction itself: there is nothing in mi jai nandu that means to annoy. But not to worry: Lojban allows you to keep the original event in the verb phrase by preceding it with fai. fai is a place tag like fa and fe. It effectively adds a new place to the verb phrase. So I am difficult to annoy is matched almost word-for-word by the Lojban sentence

mi jai nandu fai lo ka fanza mi

And we can apply this pattern further afield; for example, the book took three months to write is in Lojban properly

lo nu finti lo cukta cu masti li ci
To write the book had a month-duration of three.'

???what is raising? Raising allows the slightly more familiar-looking

lo cukta cu jai masti li ci fai lo ka se finti

jai allows you to talk about things in a way that is in many ways more natural.

Referring to main verb phrase

I use BAI in such a way that whenever their source predicate has a noun place that could integrate the main bridi, then they will do so (I explained the same thing in the {to'e ri'a} thread).

{du'i} is one such BAI. I define it thus:

broda du'i X ~= X dunli lo su'u broda

So, I would say, for example:

(1) do bajra du'i lo nu lo tirxu cu bajra "Your run is like that of a tiger."

It is seldom the case that a concrete object is {dunli} to an abstraction, although it is not impossible. But usually, replacing the X in the above equation with a concrete object will create "non-sense". But we can use {tu'a X} when we don't want to specify the full abstraction, or when it's obvious.

(2) do bajra du'i tu'a lo tirxu "You run like a tiger [runs]"

The expansion of this {tu'a X} is almost always {lo nu X no'a}, which corresponds to the English in []-brackets in (2).

.i tu'a zo du'i pu smuvanbi .i lo do kanla cu dunli lo nu lo lunra cu te gusni lo nicte kei lo ka ma kau ni melbi

Numbers

Trash

So the numbers from one to nine are as follows:

  1. pa
  2. re
  3. ci
  4. vo
  5. mu
  6. xa
  7. ze
  8. bi
  9. so

Notice that the numbers repeat the vowels AEIOU. zero is no (think yes, we have no bananas).

pano 10
zebi 78
xanoci 603
vomusore 4,592

4,592 has a comma in it (or a full stop in some languages, just to make things confusing). We can't use a comma in Lojban, because that means separate these two syllables (as we saw in Lesson 1 with Lojbanized names like .zo,is. for Zoe). What we say instead is ki'o. We don't have to use ki'o, but it can make things clearer. So 4,592 can also be read as vo ki'o musore. ki'o also has the advantage that if the following digits are all zeroes, we don't need to say them, so 3,000 is ci ki'o. You can remember ki'o easily if you think of kilo — a thousand. (The similarity is not coincidental).

Just as we have a word for a comma, we also have one for a decimal point: pi. So 5.3 is mupici. In fact, pi is not always decimal; it's the point for whatever number base you're using. But that's a more advanced topic.

Tip: Don't get this mixed up with the number pi (π): 3.14159..., which has its own word in Lojban: pai — oddly enough.

When you want to talk about numbers as sumti — that is to say, as things in and of themselves — you need to put an article in front of them. But that article cannot be la, and for reasons which hopefully will become clear soon, it cannot be lo either. In front of numbers, Lojban uses the article li. So li pareci means ‘the number one hundred and twenty three’. ‘One, two, three’, on the other hand, would be li pa li re li ci: each li introduces a brand new number.

Proportions

ci lo vo mensi pe mi cu nelci la .rikis.martin.
Three of my four sisters like Ricky Martin.

This states two facts:

  1. I have four sisters.
  2. Three of them like Ricky Martin.

But it doesn't actually state that my fourth sister hates him — she may be indifferent to him, or never have heard of him.

One way out of this problem is to use fi'u, which is like the Lojban slash sign. So two out of every three people is really 2/3 of people, or re fi'u ci lo prenu.

Of course, this is actually a fraction, and fractions have decimal equivalents. You could also say 0.75 - pi ze mu lo prenu.

WRONG! Yes, that's our new friend loi in that sentence. If I had said re fi'u ci lo prenu, that would have to be understood in the same way as re lo prenu or ci lo prenu (i.e. as a count of individuals), and I would have ended up talking about two thirds of a person. In most cultures, chopping up persons into thirds is not considered acceptable behavior even for pollsters or advertisers. On the other hand, chopping up populations into thirds is perfectly acceptable; and that's what lo prenu is. (A population, I mean, not an acceptable. Though on second thought...)

Here are some more proportions:

mi tcica pimu loi prenu
I fooled half of the people (treating the people as a mass, or population)
mi tcica pafi'ure lei prenu
I fooled one out of two people (which means exactly the same thing)
mi tcica pa lo re mlatu
I fooled one out of the two cats (treating the cats as individuals)
mi se slabu vopano lo pacivore gismu
I am familiar with 410 out of the 1342 (existing) gismu

mi na nelci ro lo gerku
It's not true that I like all dogs.

(This is not the same as I don't like any dogs, which would be mi nelci no lo gerku. There are other ways of saying this, but we haven't got enough grammar under our belt yet).

Summary

la that named
le that one previously mentioned or known from context or this speech
lo that which is/does
li the number

(lu is not an article, it's a quotation mark!)

la'e the referent of (not really an article, as it takes a full sumti or pro-sumti, as in la'edi'u, what the last sentence refers to, as opposed to di'u, the actual words of the last sentence).
le'e the typical previously mentioned or known from context
lo'e the typical
lai the mass named
lei the mass previously mentioned or known from context
loi the mass which is/does
la'i the set named
le'i the set previously mentioned or known from context
lo'i the set which is/does

(Sets turn out to be pretty useful in Lojban, as we'll see towards the end of this course).

We also looked briefly at lu'o, which turns a set into a mass, and lu'a, which turns a mass into a set of individuals (‘group’ and ‘ungroup’). Strictly speaking, these aren't articles, though.

More and more

The phrase "more and more" is very useful, usually it describes what is becoming better.

  • do lo ka se jbobau cu zenba sai
  • 你的逻辑语越来越好。
  • Ni de luoji yu yue lai yue hao
  • Your Lojban is getting better and better.

More than

  • mi poi zilkarbi do cu geltu
  • lo cabdei tcima poi zilkarbi lo prulamdei tcima cu glare
  • 今天的天气比昨天的天气热。(Jin tian de tian qi bi zuo tian de tian qi re) = The weather today is hotter than the weather yesterday.
  • 他的篮球比我的篮球好。(Ta de lan qiu bi wo de lan qiu hao) = He is better at basketball than me.

lujvo and Deep Gismu Structure

jvajvo or regular compound words don't differ much from other verbs. The point in having jvajvo is to quickly create new meanings from existing ones. For example, if kalri means to be open then kalrygau means to open (something)

The rule is that we drop the last vowel from the gismu (root verb), add y and then add the suffix -gau.

mi kalrygau lo canko = I open the window.

mi gasnu lo nu lo canko cu kalri

gau mi lo canko cu kalri

mi kargau lo canko

All four sentences mean the same. kargau is a synonym to kalrygau. What style you choose depends only on you. Thus you can safely speak without any jvajvo always resorting to prepositions like gau or full verbs like gasnu.

There is no need in memorizing kalrygau separately as it is easily derived from kalri once you know what the suffix -gau means.

Here are some most important suffixes:

  • -gau means "to bring about, to be the agent of (some event)" just like we have the preposition gau. Thus compound verbs with -gau describe animated being performing actions like with me opening the window in the last example.
  • -bi'o means "to turn"
  • -se'e means "to cause (some event)" and describes events causing other events. It corresponds to the preposition seja'e and the verb se jalge.
  • -dji means "to want", corresponds to djica
  • -mau means "to exceed", corresponds to zmadu, it creates comparative verbs. xamgu = good, xamgymau = better.
  • -me'a means "to be less", corresponds to mleca, it creates comparative verbs.
  • rai denotes extreme value. xamgyrai = best.

We also have prefixes that are put to the beginning of verbs.

  • nal- means not and corresponds to na'e
  • tol- means anti- and corresponds to to'e.
  • sel- corresponds to se, tel or ter to te, vel to ve and xel to xe.
    selycpacu = se spacu = to be received
    terymukti = telymukti = te mukti = to intend to (do something)
  • zil- corresponds to zi'o and removes the first place from the verb
  • mal- corresponds to mabla and gives a bad connotation of the verb
  • zan- corresponds to mabla and gives a bad connotation of the verb
  • nun- corresponds to nu and turns the verb into an event verb

If a verb starts with a vowel then you put a prefix, then y' and then the verb:

akti = to be active, in operation
aktygau = to activate
toly'aktygau = to deactivate

The y can be dropped if there is only one consonant from each side and both of them are either voiced or voiceless

Omitting y

Sometimes you can omit y when creating a lujvo. The condition is the following:

  1. The consonant from each side of the y is not adjacent to other consonants
  2. They are no the same consonant
  3. If one of the consonants is voiced (b,d,g,z,j,v) and the other one is voiceless (p,t,k,s,c,f) then y can't be omitted.

Examples:

  1. In kalrygau y can't be omitted as the rule 1 would be broken. There are two consonants to the left of y: lr. However, in nunycasnu n to the left and c to the right are adjacent to vowels, not to consonants so we can remove y getting nuncasnu

Negative lujvo

Note: na has its own rafsi, nar; but na'e is more useful in creating new words. na'e in a selbri still indicates an existing kind of relationship, which you would want to describe with a single lujvo; while na could mean anything, including non-existence — making it too broad a concept for most uses.

lo naljmi one who does not understand (from jimpe ‘understand’)
lo naljvi a non-competitor (from jivna ‘compete’)
lo nalkri a non-believer/skeptic (from krici ‘believe’)
lo nalyla'e an unlikely event (from lakne ‘be likely’)
lo nalre'a a non-human (from remna ‘be human’)

We can see that nal is like the English non-, but we need to remember that non-sometimes has other meanings or associations that nal does not have. lo naljvi is simply someone who is not taking part in a competition, not a ‘non-contender’ in the sense of someone who competes but doesn't stand a chance of winning. Similarly lo nalre'a is someone who is not a member of the species homo sapiens (e.g. a chimpanzee or Klingon), and cannot be applied to someone who is inhumane or perceived as subhuman in some way.

We can also use nal with sel and its relatives; for example,

lo naltertcu not a purpose/activity for which something is needed; something which has no requirements (from nitcu ‘x1 needs/requires/is dependent on/[wants] necessity x2 for purpose/action/stage of process x3')
lo nalveltu'i an area of disagreement; a controversial issue (from tugni ‘x1 [person] agrees with person(s)/position/side x2 that x3 (du'u) is true about matter x4')
lo nalselzi'e something you are not free to do (from zifre ‘x1 is free/at liberty to do/be x2 (event/state) under conditions x3')
lo nalselsanji something you are unaware of (from sanji ‘x1 is conscious/aware of x2 (object/abstract); x1 discerns/recognizes x2 (object/abstract)'; this gismu has no suitable short combining form)
lo nalselse'i someone who lacks a self/ego; an enlightened person according to Hindu/Buddhist philosophy (from sevzi ‘x1 is a self/ego/id/identity-image of x2')

As you'll have guessed, the companions of na'e, namely to'e and no'e, have rafsi of their own: tol- and nor-, respectively. So ‘disinterested’, ‘uninterested’ and ‘bored’ in Lojban are norselci'i, nalselci'i and tolselci'i.

lujvo can be much more interesting than this; interesting enough, in fact, that we won't be covering them any further here. You can make lujvo out of pretty much any tanru you can devise; this is the main way to introduce ‘new words’ into Lojban. But to make the lujvo you come up with work, you need some background knowledge:

  • how to make sure rafsi in a word stick together unambiguously in Lojban grammar (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 4.5–4.6, 4.10–4.12).
  • how to make sure the gismu inside your tanru group together properly (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 5).
  • how to derive the place structure of the lujvo from the place structures of the gismu that make it up (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 12).

It's worth your while to look into these issues if you'll be using the language seriously, and especially if you'll be writing in it. (lujvo are easier to deal with while writing than while speaking, because you have the time to reflect on how you'll be creating your new word.) At this stage, though, you don't need to go into all that just yet.

(See also: http://selpahi.weebly.com/17/post/2014/02/how-to-get-rid-of-formal-rafsi.html )

All of the following affixes produce a regularly derivable brivla with at most one added place. Some will add zero places, some one place.

(Note: The option to enter non-derivable definitions for words using a suffix should not be taken away entirely, as it would mean a restriction in what words we can make up. I would suggest to maintain at least a bit of freedom just in case. Still, in the vast majority of cases, the suffixes should yield easy to understand derivations. Extra note: In contrast, words that don't use any catalogued affixes are free to mean whatever their inventors choose. As long as it is morphologically a brivla, it can mean whatever. Lujvo/Gismu/Fu'ivla are no longer regarded as mutually exclusive groups, meaning that a "lujvo" shape can have a fu'ivla definition, or a fu'ivla can have gismu shape, etc. Another consequence is that type 3 fu'ivla and most kinds of type 4 fu'ivla have no reason to exist anymore. A word like {tcizbaga "cheeseburger" is a valid borrowing, because it's a brivla, and we no longer have to add annoying clusters to artificially change its type to fu'ivla.)


Prefixes:

These are always placed before a brivla.

Prefixes are preferably CCV- so that we don't have to worry about tosmabru. People are supposed to be able to use them spontaneously and creatively, and ideally tosmabru should not be a possible danger. CV[nlr]- is also tosmabru-safe.

affix source effect example


cfa- (cfari) beginning cfaviska "to catch sight of something" zan- (zabna) positive conn. ... mal- (mabla) negative conn. ran- ? (ranji) continuously ranbajra "run continuously" "keep running" ? (purci) ex- can- (canlu) around an area canbajra "to run around" xru- (xruti) re/back xrudunda "to give back"; xrudarxi "to hit back" pru- (purci) pre-/ahead ... bra- (barda) big cma- (cmalu) small rem- (remna) human

Suffixes:

These are always placed at the end of a brivla.

affix source effect example


-bi (binxo) become xunrybi "to become red" "to blush" -zu (zukte) action crezenzu "to practice" -mu (mukti) motive -ri (rinka) cause tatpyri "tiring" -ja (selja'e) result/outcome glekyja "result in being happy" -gau (gasnu) bring about jungau "tell" -dji (djica) want djunydji "to want to know" -ju (djuno) know klamyju "know that someone goes" -tce (mutce) very -ru (ruble) -mau (zmadu) -me (mleca) -rai (traji) -ze (zenba) -di (jdika) decrease glarydi "to cool down" -cu/ki (cumki) possibility cpacycu/cpacyki "available"/"acquirable" -kre (krefu) re-/again krezbasu "rebuild" -si/su/xu? (simxu) each other pramysi "to love each other" -sa? (simsa) -oid/-like remnysa "humanoid" -lu? (simlu) seem morsylu "to appear dead" -ni? (ckaji jibni) -almost -tu/ci?(tutci) tool/utensil ciskyci/ciskytu "writing utensil" ... -fe (fetsi) feminine baknyfe -na (nakni) masculine baknyna

      ()         group/crowd   remny-CV "a crowd", cinfy-CV "pride of lions"

-sra (srana) -ly/pertaining to cevnysra "godly"


+ ranji, tutci, vasru, stuzi, tcaci, cmima, simsa, troci...; prenu?? ... + diminutive and augmentative suffixes

Also consider "compound affixes" CVCV combining ideas from multiple other words to get a new affix, possible examples include "-bizu" from "-bi'ozu'e" and "-pazu" from "pagzu'e" (to participate).

-sebi (se bilga) obligatory plejysebi "must be paid for" -secu/seni (seltcu/se nitcu) required tcidysecu/tcidyseni "required reading"

lo bi'u nai se cukta cu tcidysecu "The book is required reading."

lo nu nerkla cu plejysecu "You have to pay to go in."

Another idea: A way to derive "easy to X" and "hard to X", e.g. "easy to provoke" or "hard to understand".


Make a list of shapes that are safe from tosmabru no matter what affix gets added. Those word shapes are the most robust and should be preferred over the others. Safe: CVC/CVCV CCVCVCV CCVCV CVC/CV ...

Unsafe: CVCCV ...

For safe zi'evla shapes, adding -CV suffixes is possible in two ways: Either by replacing the final vowel with -y- and adding -CV or by leaving the vowel alone and adding -CV. E.g. {delfinu} -> {delfinyfe}/{delfinufe}. Doing the latter with unsafe brivla shapes causes tosmabru. Doing it with CCVCV (safe) gismu shapes turns them into safe zi'evla shapes (e.g. gerkufe "female dog"), which could cause collisions with already existing zi'evla. Maybe what gets defined first wins.

zi'evla

loan words are a way of introducing new words into Lojban, comparable tolujvo.

You got a brief taste of lujvo in Lesson 8. As we said there, lujvo are the main way of introducing new words — more precisely, new brivla — into Lojban. The most important thing about lujvo is that, as selbri, they are meant to have very well-defined place structures; and there are guidelines in place for deriving them (see The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 12.) So, particularly when the concept you want to express is ‘verb-like’ (that is, when it's likely to have sumti of its own), lujvo are preferred.

There are some cases, though, when you do have to borrow a word from another language, creating a loan word (called in Lojban a fu'ivla). This can be because the thing you're talking about is very concrete or particular, and/or because the reference is quite culture-specific. In either case, it would be really cumbersome to describe it with a combination of gismu. (For example, how would you come up with a description for brie? Or rock 'n' roll? — which, we should point out, you would have to keep distinct from the later musical genre of rock!)

The problem with borrowing words into Lojban is, Lojban has a quite thorough set-up for working out what the words are in a stream of letters. This means that most words you import into Lojban (once you spell them in Lojban letters) are likely to mean something else already. For example, if I want to bring the ancient name of the river Danube - Istros into Lojban, the last thing I want to do is start saying .istero. That will get analysed as .i stero, which is something like ‘and steradian function’.

The sanctioned way to deal with loan-words (described in more detail in The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 4.7) is to stick a gismu (minus its final letter) in front of the word, showing what sort of thing the word is; and to put an r (or, if an r is already there, an n) between the gismu and the word. The gismu helps the reader or listener, who has likely never seen this word before, guess what the word might be. This is particularly handy if the source word might be ambiguous between two different meanings. And the combination of gismu minus final vowel, source word (which should start with a consonant, and end with a vowel), and r or n will hopefully produce a cluster of consonants crunchy enough that it cannot be mistaken for another Lojban word or phrase.

Tip: There is no standard consonant to put in front of the word to become a fu'ivla if it starts with a vowel. Two popular choices are x and n. Similarly, there is no set convention on where to get the vowel from, if your word ends in a consonant. In these lessons, we'll just repeat the preceding vowel; e.g. England  gugdrninglanda (from gugde ‘country’).

So what does all this look like in practice? Well, we've already seen curry:

  • take ‘food’, cidj[a];
  • take the word in Lojban garb (starting with a consonant and ending with a vowel), kari;
  • and wedge them together with an r: cidjrkari.

(The consonant cluster is also crunchy enough to be difficult to pronounce; the r is a syllable on its own, and the word should sound something like shidgerrrrrkari).

Loan words (in Lojban, fu'ivla) are still only sporadically used — particularly because, as of this writing at least, there is no Lojban dictionary where a standard list of them can be looked up. The problem of which language to borrow words from is also hard to settle, and the choices made can cause problems of their own. The most international solution for plant and animal names, for example, is Latin, and in particular the Latin of the Linnaean system of classification. But this means that, to come up with a word for ‘catnip’, say, you have to know Latin and your Linnaean taxonomy. (Or, like I did, look it up on the Internet — but you can't normally do that while you're having a conversation.) So fu'ivla are still largely unexplored terrain in Lojban.

Note: That said, you will occasionally see ‘Stage 4' fu'ivla in use. The fu'ivla we've seen are ‘Stage 3'; in Stage 4, you drop the initial ‘crunchy’ rafsi, reasoning that the word should already be well-known or recognisable enough — and making sure that the word still doesn't look like a normal brivla. (For example, The Complete Lojban Language suggests tci'ile for ‘Chile’, instead of gugdrtcile.) Not everyone likes them, so they're not yet all that common, and you'll usually get plenty of warning if someone is using them. P.S.: If you were wondering, by the way: cirlrbri, zgiknroknrolo, zgiknroko.

Sets

If you are referring to an ordered set — a sequence of things, in other words — then to connect members of that set instead of je you use the conjunction ce'o. For example, the Lojban alphabet is a sequence, and you'd list it saying

.abu ce'o by. ce'o cy. ce'o dy. ce'o .ebu...

and so on. This is what liste (list) and porsi (sequence) expect as their first place.

Other types of anaphora

he and she

Several letters have a defined meaning, a type of thing that it refers to, reliably. By adding a suffix xoi to the right of them we get corresponding pronouns that refer back to the most recent living thing, the most recent person, object, abstract thing and many more. The letters are based on the first letter of some gismu to make them easier to remember. Below is a list of possible referents.

fie fetsi "she", female, feminine
nue nakni "he", male, masculine
pie prenu "he/she/'ey/they", person
rie remna "he/she/'ey/they", human being
jie jmive (gi'e na remna) "it", animate, animal
due dacti (gi'e na jmive) "it", inanimate object
sue stuzi "it", place, location
mie mucti "it", abstract, immaterial, thoughts, ideas

Let us look at some of the amazing things we can do with this.

na go'i .i mi pu no roi zvati sue
No. I have never been there.
fie dunda lo kargu junla nue
She gave him an expensive watch.
mi je lo mensi be mi pu klama sue .i ku'i fie na nelci sue
Me and my sister went there, but she didn't like it.
ko xrugau due lo pu te tolcri be fi do
Put it back where you found it.
mie cinri sidbo
That is an interesting idea.

rixire

To refer to the next-to-last noun, the third-from-last sumti, and so on, ri may be subscripted using the particle xi:

lo smuci .i lo forca .i la rik. cu pilno rixire .i la .alis. cu pilno riximu
A spoon. A fork. Rick uses [repeat next-to-last]. Alice uses [repeat fifth-from-last].

Here rixire, or ri-Number 2, skips la .rik. to reach lo forca. In the same way, riximu, or ri-Number 5, skips la .alis., rixire, la rik., and lo forca to reach lo smuci. As can clearly be seen, this procedure is barely practicable in writing, and would break down totally in speech. That's why we have ra.

ko'a

Now there are plenty of KOhA sumti to go around. In fact, if you've run out of words by getting to ko'u, you can start over again with fo'a, fo'e ... fo'u. There is a problem, though: you have to remember (a) which sumti was assigned to which KOhA word, and (b) to assign the sumti in the first place. There's nothing to say that this will not become commonplace in future Lojban usage. Right now, however, there is a feeling that this is a little too calculated to work spontaneously. And Lojban cannot readily use the little hints natural languages pepper their grammar with (like gender and number), to keep track of who is who.

As a result, yet another strategy has been introduced to refer back to sumti. This strategy dates back from ‘Institute’ Loglan, before Lojban arose in its modern form. (Yes, Lojban has a history and a prehistory. No, we don't really have the time to go into them here.)

Assigning pronouns

If we're telling a story in English, the meaning of, say, she keeps changing. At the moment, it means ‘Alice’, but if Alice's friend Jasmine walks into the bar, she could very well mean start meaning ‘Jasmine’. In Lojban, we can keep on using lo go'i, ri and their relatives, but there is an easier way of dealing with a larger cast of characters.

What we do is assign pro-sumti as and when we need them, using the cmavo goi (which is like the Latin word sive, or the English also known as (aka)). The sumti assigned by goi are a series called KOhA, consisting of ko'a, ko'e, ko'i ... you get the idea?

Note for lawyers (and frustrated non-lawyers): The equivalent in legal documents of goi is henceforth referred to as, and ko'a is something like the party of the first part. Lojban has in fact been proposed as the ideal language for law, where precision is of utmost importance. It would also allow non-lawyers to understand legal documents, which would be something of a miracle.

OK, let's go back to Alice's story. We start by saying

la .alis. goi ko'a klama lo barja

This means that from now on, every time we use ko'a, we mean ‘Alice’. The man she sees can then be ko'e, so we say

.i ko'a zgana lo nanmu goi ko'e

Now every time we use ko'e, it means that particular man, so the full story so far reads:

la .alis. goi ko'a klama lo barja .i ko'a ze'a pinxe loi vanju .i ko'a zgana lo nanmu goi ko'e .i ko'e melbi .i caku ko'e zgana ko'a

(Note how the cus have disappeared: ko'a, like mi, doesn't need them, since it can't join with a selbri to form a new selbri).

Assigning ko'e to lo nanmu is actually better than starting the next sentence with lo nanmu. This is because lo nanmu simply means the thing I have in mind which I call ‘man’, which is not exactly the same as the man (it could, in theory, be something totally different). Some Lojbanists might even say that using lo like this is a bit malglico. (Or at least malrarbau ‘damned natural languages’: lots of languages have definite articles, and Lojban lo is no definite article).

Tip: If you combine ko'a/ko'e/ko'i/ko'o/ko'u with ri/ra/ru, don't count ko'a-type pro-sumti when you're counting back. For example
la .alis. cu rinsa ko'e .i ri cisma
doesn't mean that ko'e (the man, in this context) smiles, but that Alice smiles. Why? Because it is pointless to have a replacing word (anaphor), like ri, replace another replacing word, like ko'e. If you wanted the x1 of cisma to be ko'e, you would have simply said .i ko'e cisma, not .i ri cisma. It works out simpler to keep ri/ra/ru in reserve for more important things.

Let's continue by introducing Alice's friend Jasmine (if people are wondering where I get all these unusual names from, Jasmine is an old Gujarati friend of mine). We continue ....

la .jasmin. goi ko'i mo'ine'i klama .i ko'i rinsa ko'e
Jasmine (henceforth #3), goes into. #3 greets #2.
Jasmine comes in and says hello to the guy.

mo'ine'i is another space ‘tense’. mo'i indicates movement; ne'i means ‘inside’ (from the gismu, nenri). So mo'ine'i corresponds to the English preposition into (while ne'i on its own corresponds to inside or in.) The way Lojban grammar works, mo'ine'i on its own is treated as mo'ine'i ku: a preposition with an omitted sumti. (Remember caku, which is exactly the same. Just as baku means ‘afterwards’ (relative to the here-and-now), mo'ine'i [ku] means something like ‘in(to)wards' — but is nowhere near as weird in Lojban as it is in English).

mo'i is extremely useful, as it allows you to distinguish between location and motion. For example, I ran behind the bar in English is properly speaking ambiguous: are you running while behind the bar, or are you running with your final destination behind the bar? Lojban does not allow that ambiguity: mi bajra ti'a lo barja means the former, while mi bajra mo'i ti'a lo barja means the latter. In the example given above, ne'i klama would mean not that Jasmine comes in (from outside), but that she is going from somewhere to somewhere else, while inside. This kind of ambiguity may pass unnoticed by native English speakers, but speakers of languages which are more precise about direction find it extremely vague (Turkish, for example, has at least three words to translate ‘here’).

bo for linking sentences

bo has another use, which seems separate from selbri grouping: It can also bind a sumtcita to an entire bridi, so that the content of the sumtcita is not a sumti, but the following bridi. This is best explained with an example.
xebni x1 hates x2
mi darxi do .i mu'i bo mi do xebni – "I hit you, with motivation that I hate you." Here the bo binds mu'i to the following bridi.
This is where the technical difference between tense sumtcita and other sumtcita is relevant. You see, when binding a normal sumtcita to a bridi with bo, it means that the following bridi somehow fits into the sumti place of the sumtcita. For the reason of God Knows Why, binding one of the words ba or pu to a bridi has the exact opposite effect. For example, in the bridi mi darxi do .i ba bo do cinjikca, one would assume that the second bridi is somehow filled into the sumti place ofba, meaning that the bridi first uttered took place in the future of the second bridi. That's not the case, however, and the correct translation of that utterance would be "I hit you. Afterwards, you flirt". This weird rule is actually one of the main obstacles to a unification of all sumtcita into one single word class. Another difference is that tense-sumtcita can be elided, even though they apply. This rule makes more sense, since we often can assume bridi is placed in a time and space, but we can't assume that the sumtcita of BAI applies.

More interjections

One final thing: if you want to know how someone feels about something, once again Lojban provides a fill-in-the-slot question word. The word asking the listener to fill in the interjection that best applies is pei. You can fill pei in with any interjection or sei-phrase. So if I ask you

pei can also explicitly ask for NAI or CAI alone, by following a UI cmavo. So a response to

.i .u'ipei do farlu lo pesxu
You fell into the mud! Funny, eh?

could well be ru'e: Kinda... Then again, it could also be naicai: Absolutely not, and I shall thank you never to mention it in my presence again. (Allowing for some latitude in translation..).

Note: selma'o UI4 specifies what ‘part’ of you is feeling the emotion — whether it is a physical, social, mental response, and so on. selma'o UI5 has some ‘left-over’ modifiers; we already saw in passing ga'i, which indicates haughtiness.

Time journeys

How can I say "broda from morning to evening"? I doubt {broda co'a lo cerni co'u lo vanci} would work?

<latro`a> while I would say that, it is indeed wrong, because it says "the event of brodaing ending, which happens at the evening, begins at the morning"

<latro`a> that is, the co'a tag scopes over the co'u tag, while you want them at the same scope level; as far as I know there's nothing that can be done about this with tag syntax

<latro`a> you can, however, say, {lo nu broda cu cfari ca lo cerni gi'e se fanmo ca lo vanci}

<danr> it might be a bit too formal for my purposes. I'm considering {broda fi'o cfari lo cerni fi'o fanmo lo vanci}

<latro`a_> same problem. {fi'o} has the same scope phenomena

<tsani> you can use termsets to give terms equal scope

<tsani> {.i broda co'a ko'a ce'e co'u ko'e}

Scope

{mi na klama mu'i tu'a lo carvi} (“It is not true that [I go motivated by the rain]”), when they actually mean {mi na'e klama mu'i tu'a lo carvi} (“[I don't go], which is motivated by the rain”). 

Following Lojban usage, I observe an extremely high number of scope mistakes. It appears that people are generally unaware. Their sentences are usually still understood "thanks" to the human capability of letting context fix scope dependencies. That's why these mistakes tend to go unnoticed. Nobody corrects these mistakes, and they keep on being made. It's a problem, but it's not too late to get a new awareness of scope.One of the most common scope mistake is this:

(1) mi na terve'u lo stagi ki'u lo nu mi na bevri lo jdini "I did not buy vegetables because I didn't have money with me."

If you just read the English, your mind is likely to autocorrect the scope, causing you to miss the problem in the Lojban sentence. Though this might seem like an obvious mistake, I just saw someone make it again today.

Sentence (1) actually means: "That I bought vegetables because I didn't have money with me is false."

That's how the Lojban should be understood, but it often isn't. A practical fix is to use {.i ki'u bo}:

(2) mi na terve'u lo stagi .i ki'u bo mi na bevri lo jdini "I didn't buy vegetables. The reason for that is that I didn't have money with me."

The other method requires forethought, which might seem annoying, but you'll soon come to realize (if you haven't already) that forethought is needed in all of Lojban the moment you begin to scope-juggle.

(3) mi ki'u lo nu na bevri lo jdini cu na terve'u lo stagi "I, because [I] didn't have money with me, did not buy vegetables."

Case in point?

There are also cases of scope mistakes that I observe even among otherwise experienced Lojbanists. This is usually the case when multiple tenses are being used. Often, people just tack on an additional tense at the end of their already-tensed phrase, and the result is usually a sentence with incorrect scope, which the speaker doesn't notice.

There is a difference between {ca pu} and {pu ca}. There is a difference between {pu co'a} and {co'a pu}. You normally cannot reverse the order of phrase operators and expect to get the same result each time. While initially a difficulty, it's also one of the strong points of Lojban. It's the very thing Lojban is supposed to be good at. To neglect this aspect is to neglect Lojban.

Learning to use this feature correctly requires one to rethink. Lojban is not English. It's not even close. It just happens to sometimes be able to mirror the word order. It quickly stops doing that once the statements get more complex, at which time it drifts more towards SOV languages. It's not unnatural for a language to require constant forethoughts. Japanese and Turkish do it, just to name two. (Also note that when I say "forethought", I'm not talking about forethought connectives, although they can help. I'm talking about the general concept of thinking ahead).

Simply put, you have to learn (practically by rote, or by making the same mistake many times and correcting it until it sticks) what operators should precede what operators in what situation. Having some mental categories of different situations is very helpful and, I assume, inevitable. Well, to be sure, there are always other methods, but this one doesn't seem so painful. To give you an example, you need to simply know that a prenexed quantifier is required in this general instruction manual sentence:

(4) "Thirdly, everyone holds on to the rope."

Suppose this is a sentence that describes a hypothetical setup that the instruction manual is trying to explain to you. We can argue that the rope is not definite. It can be any rope (so {lo} fits more than {le}), but everyone is supposed to hold on to the same rope, that's the important part. The naive translation fails:

(4a) ci mai .ei ro lo prenu cu jgari lo skori

This doesn't tell us that everyone is supposed to hold on to the same rope. And we also cannot use {le} (and even if we could, it's not really the point of this example). (4a) is vague about the rope business. So what now? As I said, this type of situation needs a prenexed quantifier:

(4b) ci mai .ei pa da poi skori zo'u: ro lo prenu da jgari

This tells us explicitly that each person is supposed to hold on to the same rope.

Yes, you can also just reverse the order of the sumti as in (5), but it would be a different kind of word order (which proves my point, but messes up the example. If you want to mirror the English, (4b) is the way to go).

(5) ci mai .ei pa skori cu se jgari ro lo prenu

This one is shorter, not requiring an explicit prenex, and no explicit {da} binding. It does require one to change the order of the arguments, though, which might not always be desirable. Sometimes, placing a sumti in the x1 achieves a certain effect, e.g. topicalization and switching arguments can potentially ruin that.

It's also handy to know that generally location and time tags come before everything else, but you need to know in what types of situations they don't. For instance, try to figure out when you want {ca ... pu ...} and when {pu ... ca ...}.

Raise your awareness. But beware, you'll suddenly notice lots of mistakes! Maybe you don't want to eat of that tree.

Anyway, in this fashion every possible scenario can be put into a category.

I'm not going to lay out all those possibilities here. I think it's good to think about this topic for yourself and to compare the different meanings the different scopes produce.

Seeing so many scope mistakes every day is slightly painful for me, because I currently have a very high awareness of the subject matter. It's easy to overlook, and I wasn't always aware of it either. Heck, only recently did I realize that my staple {tai ... ja'e ...} has inccorect scope. I'm sure there are many more constructions out there that need to be reconsidered. I'm not afraid to re-adjust my Lojban, and I recommend everyone to do the same.

Lojban tends to be left-grouping, tanru and connectives for example are left-grouping. However, scope is ... "right-grouping". I'm not sure if others conceptualize it this way, but one way to parse multiple scopes is to consider each scope operator to create a sort of bubble to its right, and those bubbles are right-grouping. Abstractly: Abstractly:

⎛              ⎛                       ⎛          ⎞⎞⎞
.i op1⎜   A   op2 ⎜  broda   B  op3⎜  C   D  ⎟⎜⎜
⎝                   ⎝                      ⎝           ⎠⎠⎠

op = phrase operator, capital letters represent constants (i.e. unquantified sumti), the brackets should speak for themselves.

Obviously, I think scope should be given a lot more importance. It is the thing that determines the structure and word order of sentences. By acknowledging it, we can get closer to Lojban's true word order.

Vocatives

  • When it isn't your turn to speak, but you want to barge in anyway, you can say ta'a — though it probably won't make anyone any happier that you're interrupting.
  • Finally, to close communication (radio's Over and out!), you can use fe'o. (This is what people actually should be putting at the end of their e-mails; but it's not as well-known a word as co'o)

Lambda variable in infinitives for logicians and mathematicians

mekso saske

Likewise, you can attach a sumtcita: le nu darxi kei be gau do: “The event of hitting, which is caused by you”. Note that the presence or absence of kei makes it parse differently: With the fa'orma'o present, be attaches to nu, without the fa'orma'o, it attaches to darxi. So it decides what is being emphasised: Is the hitting, or the event of hitting caused by you? In this specific case, though, that's just about the same thing.

famyma'o Warning!: One could have description nouns inside description nouns, saying le le se cinjikca be mi ku gerku, = le gerku pe le se cinjikca be mi =“the dog of the man I'm flirting with”, but that's not very easy to read (or to understand when spoken), and is often being avoided.

One need also to learn tu'a, since it will make a lot of sentences much easier. It takes a sumti and converts it to another sumti - an elliptical abstraction which has something to do with the first sumti. For example, I could saymi djica lo nu mi citka lo plise, or I could let it be up to context what abstraction about the apple I desire and just say mi djica tu'a lo plise. One always has to guess what abstraction the speaker means by tu'a SUMTI, so it should only be used when context makes it easy to guess. Another example: gasnu “x1 does/brings about x2 (volition not implied)” za'a do gasnu tu'a lo skami - “I see that you make the computer do something”. Officially, tu'a SUMTI is equivalent to le su'u SUMTI co'e. Vague, but useful. There are situations where you cannot use tu'a, even though it would seem suitable. These situations are when I don't want the resulting sumti to be an abstraction, but a concrete sumti. In this case, one can use zo'e pe. tu'a convert sumti to vague abstraction involving the sumti. Equivalent to le su'u SUMTI co'e kei ku

Finally, one kind of sumti can be turned into another by the words of the class LAhE. lu'a -Convert individual(s)/mass/sequence/set to individuals. lu'i - Convert individual(s)/mass/sequence/set to a set. lu'o - Convert individual(s)/mass/sequence/set to mass. vu'i - Convert individual(s)/mass/sequence/set to sequence; the order is not stated. The use of these words is straight-forwardly: Placing them before a sumti of a certain type makes a new sumti of a new type. Notice, though, that as a fourth kind of sumti, a sequence has been introduced. This is not used very often (it doesn't have its own gadri, for instance), but just included here for completion. The last two members of LAhE do not convert between types of sumti, but allows you to speak of a a sumti by only mentioning something which references to it: If one sumti A refers to a sumti B, for instance because sumti A is a title of a book, or a name, or a sentence (which always refer to something, at least a bridi), ‘'la'e SUMTI A refers to sumti B. For instance, ‘'mi nelci la'e di'ufor “I like what you just said” (not mi nelci di'u which just means "I like your previous sentence") or ‘'la'e le cmalu noltru for the book “The Little Prince”, and not some little prince himself. The cmavo ‘'lu'e does the exact reverse – ‘'lu'e SUMTI refers to an object which refers to the sumti. la'e - “the thing referred to by” - extracts a sumti A from a sumti B which refers to A. lu'e - “the thing referring to” - extracts a sumti B from a sumti A, when B refers to A.


In order to clarify that all tenses are relative to the speaker's current position, the wordnau can be used at any time. Another word, ki marks a tense which is then considered the new standard. That will be taught way later. nau updates temporal and spacial frame of reference to the speaker's current 'here and now'.


In the Lojban tense system, all tenses are prepositions, which we have conveniently just made ourselves familiar with. Okay okay, technically, tenses are slightly different from other prepositions, but this difference is almost insignificant, and won't be explained until later. In most aspects they are like all other prepositions; they are terminated by ku, making it explicit that selma'o (the group) PU is terminated by ku.

  • Every time nu starts an abstraction — a phrase nested inside another phrase —kei ends it.
  • Every time an article like lo or loi starts a sumti, ku ends it.
  • Every time a string of numbers starts, boi ends it.
  • Every time a series of sumti follows a selbri, vau ends it.
  • The binding can be terminated with be'o - one instance of be'o for each selbri which has sumti bound by be. To list them: be binds sumti or sumtcita to selbri bei binds a second, third, fourth (etc.) sumti or sumtcita to a selbri be'o ends binding to selbri
  • li'u is one of the few terminators that can almost never be missed out, since that would make everything else that follows part of the quotation.
  • The elidable terminator for sei is “se'u” (of selma'o SEhU); it is rarely needed, except to separate a selbri within the sei comment from an immediately following selbri (or component) outside the comment.

For example, if we see cu in a sentence, we know that what is coming up is a selbri; so the sumti before it must now be over. So we can drop theku. (In fact, that's why cu exists in the first place: the beginning of a verb is a much more important structural break in natural languages than the end of a noun.) If a new sentence is beginning — as signalled by perhaps the most distinctively Lojbanic word, the ‘audible punctuation’ .i — then (have we covered .i yet?) there can be no more sumti from the old sentence; so we drop the vau. In fact, it is only in situations of potential ambiguity, like the sentence we've been looking at, that you'll get terminators appearing in normal Lojban usage at all.

Note: Remember those pesky possessive constructions from Lesson 3, when you couldn't flip lo tamne pe lo ninmu klama the other way around, because it was ambiguous? All you need is ku to resolve that ambiguity: lo lo ninmu klama ku tamne means 'the woman traveller's cousin', and lo lo ninmu ku klama tamne means ‘the woman's traveller cousin.’ Still, most Lojbanists think the flip-around is not worth the hassle of inserting that bothersome ku, so you rarely see it used when the ‘possessor’ sumti is not a one-word sumti.

(ping!)

be

lo mlatu cu sipna bu'u lo tuple be mi (a sentence from nintadni)

no need for su'u or something!

cmene

The final point is stress. As we've seen, Lojban words are stressed on the penultimate syllable, and if a name has different stress, we use capital letters. This means that the English and French names Robert come out differently in Lojban: the English name is.robyt. in UK English, or .rab,rt. in some American dialects, but the French is.roBER. .

To give an idea of how all this works, here are some names of famous people in their own language and in Lojban.

English
Margaret Thatcher .magryt.tatcys.

(no th in Lojban because most people around the world can't say it!)

Mick Jagger .mik.djagys.
French
Napoleon Bonaparte .napole,ON.bonaPART.
Juliette Binoche .juLIET.binOC.
Chinese
Laozi .laudz.
Mao Zedong .maudzyDYNG.
Turkish
Mustafa Kemal .MUStafas.keMAL.
Erkin Koray .erkin.korais.
German
Friedrich Nietzsche .fridrix.nitcys.
Clara Schumann .klaras.cuman.
Spanish
Isabel Allende .izaBEL.aiendes.
Che Guevara .tcegevaras.

tanru

The default grouping in Lojban is leftwards. This means that, if you have three things connected together in Lojban, the first two go together before you join in the third. For example, la .jasmin. je la .alis. jonai la .ranjit means not Jasmine and either Alice or Ranjeet, but Either Jasmine and Alice, or Ranjeet.

Does the distinction matter? Depends on your background; programmers, for example, are often driven to distraction in making sure their logical connectives work out in the right order (usually by copious use of brackets.) But there is often a real difference in meaning; the first interpretation given above describes a couple, for example, but the second doesn't.

melbi cmalu ractu kevna

Tatoeba-like. Examples of diff.words

Note: To assume that Lojban works like English in general is a sin Lojbanists are ever on the alert for. It is enough of a community obsession that the Lojban word for it —malglico - damned English — routinely turns up in the English of Lojbanists, even when they're not talking about Lojban. In this instance, it is malglico to assume that ninmu refers to an adult.

This is very Lojbanic — the English word good on its own is so vague as to be almost meaningless. It is also slightly malglico to put a person in the x1 place, which is normally filled by an object, state or event. For ‘morally good’ you would usually use vrude ‘virtuous’.

tu cipni la .serinus.serinus.kanarias.
That is a bird of species 'Serinus serinus canaria'.
mi pritu lo nixli lo nanla.
I'm to the right of the girl, facing the boy.
la .pybysys. cu tivni la .niksyn.in.tcainas. la .kycy,etys. la .telis.
PBS (the American Public Broadcasting Service) televises 'Nixon in China' (an opera) through KCET (the Los Angeles PBS affiliate) to Telly (a pet name for a particular television) (!).
do klama la .uacintyn. la .losandjeles. la .cikagos. la .amtrak.
Julia travels to Washington from Los Angeles via Chicago on Amtrak (the American inter-city train network).

How many sumti can a selbri describe? The number depends on the place structure of the word we use for the selbri. (There are ways of tagging on extra sumti, which we'll cover in later lessons). See jutsi!

Space

Remember the word ti? This is part of a series ti, ta, tu, meaning roughly ‘this’, ‘that’ and ‘that over there.’ If we're talking about places rather than things, we say vi, va, vu, meaning roughly ‘here’, ‘there’ and ‘yonder’ or ‘way over there’. Again, this is determined by the thing you're talking about. If you're telling a doctor where you feel pain, ti might be the end of your toe, while if you're talking about astronomy, ti could be the solar system. We can therefore say

There is a whole class of cmavo that work like ri'u, and they are called FAhA-type cmavo, so named after a (somewhat non-representative) member of their class, fa'a (in the direction of). These include to'o (away from), zo'i (to the same side as), zu'a (to the left of), ne'a (next to), ne'i (within) and so on. (Again, all the space cmavo are explained in Chapter 10 of The Complete Lojban Language).

Note: FAhA cmavo indicate direction, but not motion toward that direction. There is a separate cmavo for that; see Lesson 7.

Getting back to daily speech, these time and space cmavo are very useful for questions. ca ma is ‘simultaneous with what?', or in other words, ‘when?' (a simpler alternative to ti'u or di'e). Similarly, vi ma means ‘at the location of what?', or ‘where?'

Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

Combine the following pairs of sentences into single sentences. In each case, make the second sentence a relative clause modifying the underlined noun in the first sentence. The highlighted noun in the second sentence is the same as that in the first, and will turn into ke'a. You may omit ke'a if possible. Example:

.i mi viska lo botpi .i lo botpi cu culno
.i mi viska lo botpi poi culno

Watch out for vau which you may have to insert.

.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i lo nanmu cu citka loi cidjrkari
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i lo cifnu cu kakne loka citka
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i mi pu viska lo ninmu vi lo barja
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i lonu mi viska lo ninmu cu nandu
.i mi viska va lo barja lo ninmu .i mi klama lo barja lo briju
.i ca lonu mi klama lo barja lo briju kei mi penmi lo nanmu .i lo barja cu snanu lo briju
.i mi viska lo kansa be lo ninmu .i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo kansa be lo ninmu
.i mi kakne lo ka citka lo cidjrkari .i lenu citka loi cidjrkari cu nandu
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i lo nanmu cu citka loi cidjrkari
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i lo cifnu cu kakne loka citka
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i mi pu viska lo ninmu vi lo barja
.i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo nanmu .i lonu mi viska lo ninmu cu nandu
.i mi viska va lo barja lo ninmu .i mi klama lo barja lo briju
.i ca lonu mi klama lo barja lo briju kei mi penmi lo nanmu .i lo barja cu snanu lo briju
.i mi viska lo kansa be lo ninmu .i lo ninmu cu dunda lo cifnu lo kansa be lo ninmu
.i mi kakne lo ka citka lo cidjrkari .i lenu citka loi cidjrkari cu nandu

swadesh

Nouns animal ashes bark (of a tree) belly bird blood bone child (young) cloud day (not night) dog dust ear earth (soil) egg eye fat (substance) father feather (large) fire fish flower fog foot fruit grass guts hair hand head heart hold (inhand) husband ice lake leg liver long louse man (male) meat (flesh) moon mother mountain mouth name narrow neck night nose person river road root rope salt sand sea (ocean) skin (ofperson) sky smoke snake snow star stick (of wood) stone sun tail tongue tooth (front) tree water wife wind (breeze) wing woman woods worm year

Verbs to blow (wind) to breathe to burn (intransitive) to come to count to cut to die to dig to drink to eat to fall (drop)far to fear to bite to fight to float to flow to fly to freeze to give to hear to hit to hunt (game) to kill to know (facts) to laugh to lie (onside) to live to play to pull to push to rain to rub to say to scratch (itch) to see to seed to sew to sing to sit to sleep to smell (perceive odor) to spit to split to squeeze to stab (or stick) to stand to suck to swell to swim to think to throw to tie to turn (veer) to vomit to walk to wash to wipe

Adjectives back bad big cold (weather) dirty dry (substance) dull (knife) few good heavy here many near new old other red right (correct) right (hand) rotten (log) sharp (knife) short small smooth straight thick thin warm (weather) wet wide Pronouns he I we they thou/you Conjunctions and because if with (accompanying) Prepositions at in Numbers five four one three two Question how what when where who Particles Not Colours black white yellow

  • bilgygau, gau ko'a bilga

Basic vocab

Should be completely inside the course.

  1. прибывать, zukte, санки
    ralte, ponse, предоставлять
  2. fasnu
  3. направлять
  4. Sensory: viska - viskygau - viskyzgana, sance, tinju'i, tirnyzgana
  5. sisku - facki
  6. изволять
  7. ценить
  8. denpa
  9. stali
  10. наречия
  11. более
  12. po'o
  13. mutce
  14. ли
  15. Союзы
    • что; чтобы
    • если, если бы
    • то; же; итак; следовательно,
    • чем; как (при сравнении)
    • или; либо
  16. fa'a seka'a, bu'u, ne'i, sene'i, fa'a, to'o
  17. перед
  18. seba'i ? вместо
  19. вокруг / приблизительно (сколько)
  20. to'o
  21. ze'a
  22. до
  23. между
  24. против
  25. ka'ai, sepi'o - с
  26. по, согласно
  27. посредством
  28. для ; чтобы / за/на – «срок, сумма»
  29. позади ; после
  30. pe - about
  31. cau
  32. над
  33. на
  34. do'e - не имеет определённого значения / все остальные предлоги.
  35. mi, do, ra, mi'ai, do'o, mi, do, za'u ra мы / вы / они
  36. lo drata
  37. lo nei (self)
  38. неопределённо-личное местоимение
  39. 1- who, what, which
  40. 2- where, where to, whose, how
  41. 3- why, for how long, for how many
  42. После успеха с вопросительными запоминать группу утвердительных:
  43. этот, это, такое
  44. Дальше запоминается всё очень легко и быстро. Но оптимальные порядок с моей точки зрения:
  45. da, lo se cuxna be do, ro da, no da
  46. Приставки: anti-/co'a /za'ure'u/no'e/to'e
  47. Суффиксы:
  48. Покупки / Коммерция, банки и торговля
  49. judri
  50. cuxna
  51. заказывать товар/услугу
  52. предлагать товар/услугу
  53. количество
  54. sumji
  55. счёт бухг.
  56. papri, banxe karda лист / что-то плоское на чём можно писать(Бумага) или может быть что-то записано(Банковская карта, Страница Книги или Сайта)
  57. linto - tilju
  58. vikmi - выделять из организма
  59. sarcu
  60. jinsa - toljinsa, lumci / умывальня / умывальник / стиральная машина
  61. Числа и измерения: часть, многий, число
  62. Время дня, года: год, час, момент / моментально – immediately
  63. прояснить(сделать ярче)
  64. danlu: #cinki насекомое, #ползать,
  65. censa, cevni святой – табу,святое место,кошерная еда
  66. течь / жидкость / плавать
  67. дышать
  68. жить, моя жизнь
  69. tsali, ruble
  70. sepli
  71. jbena - рождать
  72. pruxi
  73. sligu/ranti/gapci
  74. barda/cmalu
  75. coi co'o ki'e je'e u'u
  76. sinma
  77. xamgu / tugni do ...
  78. извинять - je'e
  79. ckire, curmi
  80. cusku lo xajmi
  81. Общее, прочее и невошедшее в пред.группы
  82. возраст / совершеннолетний
  83. sraji clani
  84. darxi
  85. красивый
  86. продолжаться
  87. plana
  88. dinju - zdani
  89. sipna
  90. pacna - убеждать, доказывать
  91. оканчивать
  92. mlana
  93. tarmi
  94. tasmi
  95. vlipa - сильный
  96. закрывать (отверстие)
  97. сумасшедший
  98. весёлый
  99. жестикулировать
  100. слава
  101. помогать
  102. впадина
  103. начинать
  104. понимать
  105. сохранять
  106. страна
  107. читать
  108. связывать
  109. язык общения
  110. длинный
  111. играть
  112. светить
  113. кушать
  114. машина
  115. имя
  116. новый
  117. думать
  118. терять / глагол утраты объекта
  119. позволять / глагол соц. разрешения и запрещения
  120. полный
  121. близкий / приблизительный
  122. быстрый
  123. знать точно / извещать = информировать
  124. сухой
  125. значить
  126. simsa
  127. sampu
  128. ciska
  129. разновидность (сорт, вид, тип)
  130. верх / поверхность
  131. изменять (+Покупки(Обмен/Валюта)
  132. годиться
  133. время
  134. pinxe
  135. pilno
  136. одежда
  137. жить
  138. путь
  139. valsi

Free lunch coming.

'Lojban for Beginners' will meet you under a new name.

In better taste.

In less complexity.

Stay tuned!

Free lunch coming.

'The Crash Course in Lojban'. A classical work under a fresh name.

'Lojban for Beginners' redesigned to meet the new demands from the world community.

A better quality, a slimmer design.

Lojban as it is in year 2015.

Got your freebie pdf yet? Just click it.

http://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=L17-01

The original idea by Robin Turner.

Initially revised by Nick Nicholas, the first fluent speaker of Lojban on the planet.

Reworked by La Gleki with the help of Lojbanic community throughout year 2014.

Just one click away!

http://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=L17-01

Let the magic start here!

Not needed for Crash course (only to ELG)

Note: In natural languages, reflexives almost always refer back to subjects; and in Lojban, the x1 place is as close as you will get to a subject. The difference is, when you have this kind of embedding, the reflexive can refer back to the subject of the verb it is immediately tied to (short-distance reflexive like our lo nei), or it can refer all the way back to the subject of the entire sentence (long-distance reflexivelike our vo'a). Now, herself in English is a short-distance reflexive: if Jasmine knows that Alice loves herself, then Jasmine knows that Alice loves Alice, not Jasmine. In some languages reflexives are short-distance. In other languages like Chinese reflexives can be either long-distance or short-distance. Or languages may have long-distance reflexives distinct from short-distance just like in Lojban.

Native Americans generally translate their name when speaking English, partly because they have meaningful names, and partly because they don't expect the wasichu to be able to pronounce words in Lakota, Cherokee or whatever!

About the book

This textbook is or will be further inspired by:

Lojban textbook in Wikibooks, BASIC English, gua\spi, Pandunia lessons, toki pona with it's textbook, Sesperanto, Conceptual Semantic Categories of Lojban gismu, Viku lessons, Loglan3 textbook, Glosa textbook, Simple-E from Lognet'99, survival lingvo, Easy Loglan (Introduction and Description),N-paradigm, Standard Average European, Tok Pisin for beginners, Conlanger's Thesaurus, Introduction to Ceqli adapted for Lojban.

na'e fadni gerna

zoi .naljbo. la sampu .lojban. .naljbo. zo'u terzu'e xu

mu'o mi'e .iesk. 20:33, 4 septembero 2013 (UTC)

i ie mi ctuca lo xorxo gerna jenai lo catni gerna
Gleki (talk) 11:08, 5 septembero 2013 (UTC)
.i .e'o do jai gau tcita co kajde be fi lo du'u lo lobybau be do cu drata lo lobybau be lo'e se lobybau mu'o mi'e .iesk. 15:30, 8 septembero 2013 (UTC)

vi'o i ku'i caku le cukta pu'o mulno i e'anairu'e pilno ri lo nu cilre tu'a lo jbobau Gleki (talk) 17:23, 10 septembero 2013 (UTC)

poi porblems

Another method is to replace lo with zo'e and attach any number of relative clauses connecting them with je:

mi klama zo'e poi gusta lo kisto je poi berti lo tcadu
I go to something that is a restaurant of Pakistani cuisine and that is north of town.

You can use da/de/di if it is not used otherwise in the sentence (remember that the grammar of da and zo'e differs):

mi klama da noi gusta lo kisto je poi berti lo tcadu
I go to something which is a restaurant of Pakistani cuisine and that is north of town.

ke'a

We used ke'a in

do pu tavla lo be mi mensi poi ke'a nelci nai la .rikis.martin. vau lo dinske
You talked to my sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin about economics.

This ke'a replaces lo be mi mensi in the relative clause.

So ke'a is used in order not to repeat lo be mi mensi twice. We can't even use ri here instead of ke'a since ri refers to the last finished noun and then noun lo be mi mensi is not finished yet, since the relative clause is a part of the noun to which it is attached.

ra would be okay but it isn't particularly precise.

po and po'e

pe and ne are used as loose association only, like saying lo stizu pe mimy chair about a chair which you sit on. It's not really yours, but has something to do with you. There is just a relationshop between the two nouns.

stizu = x1 is a chair

If you want to say something is specific to that noun you can use po instead of pe.

lo gerku pe la alis can be applied to a street dog that Alice likes to play with.

But lo gerku po la alis can be applied only to a dog that, for example, was bought for her by her parents.

In many cases people prefer to use pe which is more vague rather than po.


Some other examples:

lo cukta po mi
My book
lo cipni po la .meilis.
Mei Li's bird
la .kokakolys. po do
Your Coca-Cola

Lastly, po'e is used for innate, intrinsic connections.

lo birka be mi or lo birka po'e mi = my arm
lo mamta be mi or lo mamta po'e mi = my mother
lo gugde po'e mi = my home country (a more precise analog is lo gugde poi mi pu jbena bu'u ke'a = country where .i was born)

As you can see, in many cases the second place of verb makes po'e unnecessary.

Because of all of that pe is used very frequent compared to po and po'e.

Resume. We have:

pe — restrictive relative clause. "which is associated with..."
ne — non-restrictive relative clause. "which is associated with..."
po — restrictive possessive relative clause. "which is specific to..."
po'e — restrictive innate relative clause. "which inherent to..."

L17-02

Not included into L17-01

  • ti .o ta = this if and only if that (both or none)
    • ti na .o nai ta = this if and only if that (both or none) (the same meaning as .o)
  • ti .u ta = this whether or not that (this, and perhaps that)
    • ti .u nai ta = this whether or not that (the same meaning as .u)
  • ti .o nai ta = either this or that
    • ti na .o ta = either this or that (the same meaning as .o nai)

independent nai is experimental

— nai xu do nelci lo gerku
— je'u

- You don't like dogs, do you?
— I don't.

more about be and relative clauses

How would we say You talked to my sister — the one who doesn't like Ricky Martin — about economics? Let's take it by steps:

do pu tavla lo be mi mensi lo dinske
You talked to my sister about economics.
lo be mi mensi cu nelci nai la .rikis.martin.
My sister does not like Ricky Martin.
do pu tavla lo be mi mensi poi ke'a nelci nai la .rikis.martin. vau lo dinske
You talked to my sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin about economics.

Notice that it is possible to move be mi to the left of the verb mensi. This allows to attach poi to lo be mi mensi. In lo mensi be mi poi... the word poi will attach to mi: the sister of me who (I) ....

Also notice that we need to close the relative clause with vau so that lo dinske belongs to the main verb of our clause: tavla, not the verb nelci inside the relative clause. Otherwise, lo dinske would be a noun of nelci and not tavla — which is not really what you want.

Here's another example:

mi klama lo gusta be lo kisto
I go to the Pakistani restaurant.
lo gusta be lo kisto cu berti lo tcadu
The Pakistani restaurant is north of town.

Here we can't attach poi berti lo tcadu (that is to the north of the city) to lo gusta as lo kisto doesn't allow us to do that. We also can't move lo kisto to the left as lo kisto gusta would create a a compound verb (tanru). In this case we just repeat poi twice so that the second poi attaches to lo gusta.

To attach two or more relative clauses use je (and) to connect them, since both clauses are supposed to be true. For example,

lo be mi mensi poi na'e nelci la .rikis.martin. je poi do viska ke'a ca lo prulamcte
My sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin and whom you saw last night.

sovda

Or maybe not? If the distinction is fertilization, I don't

              understand how {sovda} has both the egg and the sperm.

10:08 < bergu> sovda (notes) says "If fertilized, then tsiju or tarbi" 10:08 < mukti> ue sai 10:08 < menli> Hen eggs used as food are usually unfertilized 10:08 < bergu> an egg can't make an organism 10:08 < bergu> neither can a sperm 10:08 < bergu> so they are sovda 10:08 < menli> I officially declare than embryo-containing eggs are tsiju 10:08 < gleki> just dont use those terms 10:09 < menli> *that 10:09 < menli> gerna: daltsi 10:09 < gerna> (0[daltsi VAU])01 10:09 < mukti> Hmm. So sovda is some kind of incomplete reproductive unit? 10:09 < menli> Yeah


10:10 < menli> valsi caksova 10:10 < valsi> caksova = x1 is a bird/reptile egg (not simply the gamete)

              consisting of yolk x2, white x3 and shell x4 of species x5
              (default chicken).

10:10 < mukti> Ah, so this is why a spore is tsiju? 10:10 < menli> we'll finally be able to trow this zi'evla away 10:10 < menli> spore is tsiju, but pollen is sovda 10:10 < menli> pe'i

selmaho

Particles (cmavo) are short words like lo, cu, je, pu, ca, ba, mi, do, ti. They can be divided by their meaning and function into groups that are called selma'o. E.g. pu, ca, ba belong to the group PU. This is just an illustration, there is no need in memorizing the names of selma'o. But it's convenient to memorize them by those groups.

klama

Well, here is the full definition of klama:

klama = x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means/vehicle x5

So

lo klama = a goer
lo se klama = a destionation gone to
lo te klama = an origin, starting point gone from
lo ve klama = a route
lo xe klama = a vehicle

Time of day

<--Let's imagine, though, that the time is not ten past eleven, but ten to eleven. We can say li pa no pi'e pano (10:50), but we can also say li pa pa pi'e ni'u pano, where ni'u is the Lojban minus sign (for negative numbers, not for subtraction) — what we are saying is 11:−10.

For half past eleven we can also use pi and say li pa pa pimu 11.5. I don't particularly like this method, but it is perfectly good Lojban. If we are using numbers for times, it is normal to use the 24-hour system, so 6 PM is li pa bi (18:00).-->

objects dont exist

[15 May 13 20:31] * gleki * objects dont exist. if one postulates that "1. objects 2. exist" then that person automatically starts searching for objects in the universe. In propoerty languages u cant even ask "Do object exist?"

ze'u

ze'u and it's friends also combine with other tenses to form compound tenses. The rule for ze'u and the others are that any tenses preceding it marks an endpoint of the process (relative to the point of reference) and any tenses coming after it marks the other endpoint relative to the first:

do citka pu ze'u ba zu
You ate for a long time.
You eat beginning in the past and for a long time ending at some point far into the future of when you started [literally]

scope/hoisting

21:45 < agbakate> a bridi creates a new scope 21:45 < agbakate> but it inherits undeclared variables from parent scopes

tails

23:32 < durka42> gerna: broda gi'e ca da brode 23:32 < gerna> not grammatical: broda gi'e ca _da_ ⚠ brode 23:33 < zahlman> what were you trying to express? 23:33 < durka42> ko'a ge broda gi ca da brode 23:35 < durka42> I thought the tag shouldn't interact with the connective

                unless I used {gi'ecabo} which I didn't                        

23:37 < zahlman> aha 23:38 < zahlman> gerna mi ca da broda 23:38 < gerna> (0[{mi <ca da>} CU {broda VAU}])0 23:38 < zahlman> notice that {ca da} is not part of the selbri here 23:38 < zahlman> gi'e connects bridi-tails, so they have to start with selbri.

member vs. full set

10:04 < latro`a> gleki: I think in the gismu themselves, it is best if these are polymorphic
10:04 < latro`a> then you can specify later
10:05 < latro`a> unfortunately this does lead to odd interaction with quantifiers, because polymorphic selbri really are polyvalent
10:05 < latro`a> so {mi po'o se bangu la lojban} makes sense for one of the manifestations of {bangu}
10:06 < latro`a> in haskell this problem is solved by the typechecker: a polymorphic function comes with a dictionary that maps values of the variable input types to implementations
10:07 < latro`a> for example, if I define "f x = 3*x+1", I get a function that carries around a dictionary that tells it to use (*) and (+) from Int if x is an Int, from Double if x is a Double, etc.
10:08 < latro`a> it'd be interesting if we could somehow implement something like this
10:08 < latro`a> but we probably can't, which means you really shouldn't use quantifiers in polymorphic places
10:16 < latro`a> I suppose to a limited extent this could be done with SE, though this would get rather cumbersome if we had more distinctions than distributive/nondistributive and exhaustive/nonexhaustive
10:17 < latro`a> or NAhE
10:24 < gleki> latro`a: what should i use {poi se gunma} and {poi cmima}?
10:24 < latro`a> that's not enough, unfortunately, you have to tweak the selbri instead
10:25 < latro`a> because this isn't really about the type of the argument
10:25 < latro`a> skina with skina4=nonexhaustive and skina with skina4=exhaustive are different predicates
10:25 < gleki> to tweak? how?
10:26 < gleki> for skina i can say {mi catlu lo skina}
10:26 < latro`a> NAhE or SE are the syntax you want
10:26 < gleki> but about the other cases?
10:26 < latro`a> I'm imagining a NAhE for "x1 is exhaustive"
10:26 < latro`a> then "x2 is exhaustive" is {se NAhE* se}
10:26 < gleki> "this is a language of French people" = ko'a bangu lo fraso
10:27 < gleki> "this is a language of some French people (my friends)" = ko'a bangu lo fraso
10:27 < gleki> how to distinguish them?
10:30 < gleki> seriously i understood nothin from ur proposal
10:33 < latro`a> ko'a se NAhE* se bangu mi == ko'a is a language of me exclusively
10:33 < latro`a> where NAhE* is a new NAhE
10:33 < latro`a> this is a bit stronger than the {po'o} version
10:44 < Ilmen> coi. What do you mean by «exhaustive»?
10:48 < gleki> cipra: ko'a se na'e se bangu mi
10:48 < cipra> (ko'a [CU {se <na'e (¹se bangu¹)>} {mi VAU}])
10:53 < gleki> that would be nice ofc. to have them polymorphic but then what would be the difference between cmima and se gunma? ;)
10:59 < latro`a> cmima isn't really a thing in post-set jbo
10:59 < gleki> what is it then?
10:59 < latro`a> cmima?
10:59 < gleki> yes
10:59 < latro`a> it's the way you refer to sets
10:59 < latro`a> which we don't use
11:00 < gleki> so now we dont need {cmima} gismu at all?
11:00 < latro`a> not really no
11:00 < latro`a> se gunma is mass membership
11:00 < gleki> So "I am a member of this committee" would be ...
11:00 < gleki> en: kamni
11:00 < mensi> kamni = x1 (mass) is a committee with task/purpose x2 of body x3. |>>> Board of directors/trustees/cabinet (= trukamni, gritrukamni). See also bende, kagni. |>>> noralujv
11:01 < gleki> would be what?
11:02 < latro`a> mi se gunma ti noi kamni
11:02 < Ilmen> So, what is an exhaustive tersu'i? Do you mean things like gunma2 which doesn't require to list all the members of the mass?
11:02 < latro`a> being literal
11:02 < latro`a> maybe this will help
11:02 < gleki> latro`a: do you think i should remove {cmima} from my analog of L4B ?
11:02 < latro`a> mi se gunma mi joi do
11:02 < latro`a> mi na se NAhE* se gunma mi joi do
11:03 < latro`a> mi jo'u do se NAhE* se gunma mi joi do
11:03 < latro`a> this also gives you a way to extract the individual-blob from a mass, provided that makes sense
11:03 < gleki> why {na} in the first sentence?
11:03 < latro`a> {lo se NAhE* se gunma be ...} is unambiguously all of the individuals inside, in one lo-blob
11:04 < gleki> could u at least give translations?
11:04 < latro`a> {mi se gunma mi joi do} = I am a member of the mass {mi joi do}
11:04 < Ilmen> What means {lo ro se gunma be ko'a}?
11:07 < latro`a> {mi na NAhE* se gunma mi joi do} = I do not satisfy "x1 (individuals) is the collection of all individual members of x2"
11:05 < latro`a> it is a slightly more vague version of the same thing
11:05 < latro`a> "all of the members of ko'a that we are talking about"
11:05 < latro`a> but we might not be talking about *all* of them
11:05 < latro`a> this NAhE* is sort of an explicit UD-twiddler
11:06 < gleki> this is one of the three questions that stop me from completing a new gimste with examples, te sumti interactions, variable types, blackjack and hookers
11:06 < latro`a> {lo ro ve skina} may not contain the entire audience of the film, because we might just be talking about a small group of friends that watch movies together
11:07 < Ilmen> To me, skina4 is the *intended* audience, not the people who actually watch skina1
11:07 < Ilmen> ie pei
11:07 < gleki> as for "intended" te sumti this is actually my second question :D
11:07 < latro`a> to me that's the exhaustive skina4, but I regularly use ve skina for "watch"
11:08 < latro`a> I do not really like kinzga

Gricean

In natural languages, that kind of answer is liable to get you a clip around the ears. That is because natural languages are run not only by logic, but also by social conventions. And one of the most important social conventions about language (Gricean informativeness, for those taking third year linguistics courses) is that, whatever you say, you should say enough to fully inform your listener about what's going on. If I ask Do you drink tea or coffee?, I need that information in order to prepare you a cup of coffee to your liking. Answering me yes doesn't give me much to go on.

necessary and sufficient

13:38 < Ilmen> does banzunu = se sarcu?
13:41 < latro`a> this is muddled by classical logic shenanigans
13:41 < latro`a> in classical logic, p => q (that is, ~p v q) is the same as p |- q
13:41 < latro`a> the latter is "one can infer q from p"
13:42 < latro`a> this is the definition of |-, more or less
13:43 < latro`a> in general necessary/sufficient is about |-, not =>
13:43 < latro`a> and |- is different in nonclassical logics, and is also different in human discourse
13:44 < Ilmen> So in this paradigm sufficiency is janai?
13:45 < latro`a> in classical logic, "p is sufficient for q" is "p => q", which is to say "p na ja q"
13:45 < latro`a> while "p is necessary for q" is "p <= q" which is to say "p ja nai q"
13:45 < Ilmen> What about the lojban "sarcu", should it be a mere logical connective, or should it express causation?
13:46 < latro`a> in human discourse, |- is more complicated than any simple logical operator
13:46 < latro`a> because we do not say "if the sky is red then mars is blue"
13:46 < latro`a> even though under the classical definitions this is true
13:46 < Ilmen> I'm not very familiar with |-. It's a metalogical operator?
13:46 < latro`a> |- is inference
13:47 < latro`a> xatra: tell Ilmen the name for the symbol |- in english is "turnstile"
13:47 < latro`a> bah
13:48 < latro`a> Ilmen: the name for the symbol |- in english is "turnstile"
13:48 < Ilmen> got disconnected .oi
13:48 < Ilmen> did I miss something?
13:48 < latro`a> Ilmen: the name for the symbol |- in english is "turnstile"
13:51 < Ilmen> je'e
13:51 < Ilmen> So, what {sarcu} means?
13:52 < latro`a> there's causality there, definitely
13:52 < latro`a> but it's event-causality
13:53 < Ilmen> nibli is more a sufficient condition or a necessary conditiont?
13:53 < latro`a> nibli is "x1 is logically sufficient for x2"
13:53 < Ilmen> ba'a ie
13:54 < Ilmen> {banzunu} is the sufficient version of sarcu
13:55 < Ilmen> We lack a necessary-nibli
13:55 < Ilmen> ja'o
13:59 < Ilmen> X sarcu Y = lonu X tolfau cu banzunu lonu Y tolfau  (if I'm not mistaken)

take any apple (not more than one)

14:01 < menli> {lo ro plise goi ko'a zo'u ge ro da poi me ko'a zo'u do zifre lo ka lebna da gi ko'oi do lebna pa ko'a} -- what's wrong with this?

Lojban doesn't force you to use any particular philosophy, religion or political beliefs.

Explain nai

Unlike when used after verbs and pronouns nai after interjections means not just "no" but the opposite attitude.

But explain after BAI

Variable types

12:32 <@xalbo> Some object/event places are events with possible raising, but some (what I've called Objects of Cognition) really aren't. Although those hold a lot more than just object/event. 12:34 < zahlman> "objects of cognition"? 12:38 < menli> For example, zmadu-1&2, drata-1&2, melbi-1, simsa-1&2 have no requirement on the sumti type 12:42 <@xalbo> pensi2 is the prototype OoC, for me. Similarly, melbi1. "Anything the human mind can conceive of and opine about." 12:43 <@xalbo> {zmadu} is a more complicated thing, since zmadu1 and zmadu2 do have some more restrictions (namely, that they're both compatible with the open place in the zmadu3)