Selbri constructor

From Lojban
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

A selbri constructor is a grammatical construct that produces a selbri from something other than a selbri. Predicates are essential to Lojban, so being able to construct them from things that are not selbri is extremely useful in practice. Usually, for each set of objects to be converted into a selbri, the selbri operators performing that conversion form a selma'o.

Sumti to Selbri

The primary means for constructing a selbri from a sumti is with cmavo from the class ME:

  • me sumti = x1 is among the referents of sumti
  • me'au sumti = x1, x2, ..., xn are claimed to fill the consecutive open places in predicate sumti.

me is effectively the membership relation for plurals, formed with lo, as defined by the relevant BPFK section. It is also used in conjunction with cmavo from MOI to construct association selbri.

me'au is a predicate unboxing tool, invented for Fancy Lojban. It is best explained with an example.

ko'a ko'e ko'i me'au lo ka ce'u ce'u ce'u broda .ijo ko'a ko'e ko'i broda
mi lo plise cu me'au lo ka ce'u ce'u citka .ijo mi citka lo plise

This allows users of Fancy Lojban to treat predicates as sumti, pass them around to other, higher-order predicates, and construct arbitrarily complex predicates thanks to all the tools that exist already for working with sumti.