lo selma'o ca'irvei (selma'o Documentation)

Purpose of this document

To explain each of the selma'o (grammatical classes for function words); to give a detailed, readable explanation of each selma'o-'s purpose, syntax, and scope. It is intended for intermediate-to-advanced students of Lojban, and as a reference.

Glossary

bridi: Clause. Each bridi represents a particular predicate relation.

brivla: Predicate-word / content-word. brivla are a rather unique feature of Lojban. Each brivla is defined by a particular concept or relation, and has a defined place structure. Depending on position, brivla can act as nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs; they tend to hold most of the semantic content of Lojban text.

cmavo: Structure/function word. cmavo in Lojban may begin with a consonant or a vowel, but have no consonants otherwise. They perform many purposes, including but not limited to articles, prepositions, pronouns, and numbers. Each cmavo belongs to a selma'o, which defines its grammatical nature.

famyma'o: Terminator cmavo. These cmavo are rather unique to Lojban, and act to "close off" expressions started by other cmavo, in order to maintain syntactic unambiguity. Each famyma'o is designed to close expressions from one particular selma'o. famyma'o are typically omitted when they are not needed. Due to their nature, famyma'o tend to be the sole member of its selma'o.

selbri: Predicate; roughly "verb / verb phrase". Each bridi is centered around exactly one selbri, but may contain other bridi that have their own selbri. The selbri defines how the sumti are related to each other.

selma'o: cmavo class. All cmavo in each selma'o are grammatically interchangeable -- a cmavo can be replaced by another cmavo in the same selma'o without affecting the syntactic structure of the sentence. selma'o are each named after an archetypical member cmavo, and conventionally is written in all caps, e.g. BAI. Apostrophes are "capitalized" to lowercase h, e.g. ZAhO. Since in some cases cmavo may be grammatically interchangeable but perform significantly different functions, selma'o may be further divided into sub-selma'o for convenience, denoted by numbers after the selma'o name, e.g. UI2.

sumti: Argument; roughly "noun / noun phrase". sumti are the subjects and objects of the bridi-clause.

tanru: A phrase that contains more than one brivla, acting as a single selbri. One can think of it like an adjective+noun phrase, or an adverb+verb phrase. The brivla modify each other from left-to-right by default, but certain cmavo can change the order.

BAI

Roughly equivalent to prepositions. More specifically, it adds a new place for a sumti to the current bridi. This is useful if the place-structure of the selbri lacks a place for a concept you want to express.

Each cmavo in BAI is an abbreviation of fi'o X [fe'u]. X is unique to each BAI-cmavo, and is a defined selbrivla from the Lojban lexicon. For mnemonic purposes, each BAI-cmavo resembles its parent. For example, the parent of bai is bapli ("to force/compel"), while the parent of ja'e is jalge ("result"). Example sentences:

do plipe bai mi = do plipe fi'o bapli mi : I force you to jump. [lit. you jump, forced by me]

do plipe ja'e lo nu do farlu = do plipe fi'o jalge lo nu do farlu : You jump, causing you to fall.

By default, the "imported" place is always the first place of the parent selbrivla. If a different place is desired, BAI-cmavo can be preceded by SE-cmavo. For example, se ja'e would instead take the second place from jalge, which would be a cause instead of a result. For example:

do farlu se ja'e lo nu do plipe = do farlu fi'o se jalge lo nu do plipe : You fell because you jumped.

One can use BAI even if there is already a suitable place in the structure; perhaps you don't remember it, or perhaps you don't think your listeners do.

do tavla bau la .lojban. = do tavla fi'o bangu la .lojban. : You talk in (with language) Lojban.

is acceptable even though the fourth place of tavla already specifies the language talked in (do tavla fo la .lojban.) .

There is a BAI-cmavo, do'e, that is unlike the others; its "parent selbrivla" is co'e ["unspecified bridi-relation"]. Thus:

do plipe do'e mi = do plipe fi'o co'e mi : You jump [... with me being involved... somehow or other. The true meaning would depend on context.]

BAhE

BAhE-cmavo modify / mark the immediately-next word; they otherwise do not affect the syntactic structure of the text.

There are only two cmavo in BAhE: ba'e, which emphasizes the next word, and za'e, which marks the next word as "nonce / slang", i.e. either a non-standard word made up for the occasion, or an existing word not quite used the way that it is officially defined.

la ba'e .djordj. cu klama le zarci: George goes to the store / It's George who goes to the store.

u'e ko catlu lo va za'e cifnu: Wow! Look at that baby! [za'e marks the slang-word "baby", thus it probably isn't a literal infant! Its true meaning would depend on context and the shared culture of the speakers]

BE

Contains a single member, be. Attaches to the previous selbrivla, and fills its place structure with a new sumti. This is typically used to further specify the brivla within a LE phrase or a tanru.

Part of the selma'o series BE ... BEI ... BEhO . The famyma'o for BE is be'o.

lo tavla be lo skepre cu cliva: The one talking to the scientist leaves.

Note how lo skepre fills the second place of tavla , which contains the person being talked to; logically breaking down to: ty tavla lo skepre .i ty cliva [T talks to the scientist. T leaves.] This is a more precise than saying lo tavla pe lo skepre cu cliva "The scientist's talker leaves", which leaves the relation between lo tavla and lo skepre open to context.

Note that by default, be fills the second place of its attached brivla. If a different place is desired, FA-cmavo can be used. One can even use a BAI or even a FIhO phrase to define a new place entirely. Note these examples:

Using FA: lo tavla be fo la .lojban. cu cliva

Using BAI: lo tavla be bau la .lojban. cu cliva

Using FIhO: lo tavla be fi'o bangu la .lojban. cu cliva

All mean the same thing: "The one who talks in (with language) Lojban leaves."

Note that be can only fill one place; if you wish to attach more sumti to the same brivla, bei must be used. See BEI for details.

BEI

Contains a single member, bei. Part of the selma'o series BE ... BEI ... BEhO .

bei is used if you want to attach more than one sumti to a given brivla. For example:

lo tavla be lo skepre bei loi bangu cu cliva: The one talking to the scientist about language leaves. Logically, it breaks to: ty tavla lo skepre loi bangu .i ty cliva [T talks to the scientist about language. T leaves.]

It is important to use bei here, as lo tavla be lo skepre be loi bangu cu cliva means something completely different! The second be will attach to skepre and not tavla. It will instead logically resolve to: sy skepre loi bangu .i ty tavla sy .i ty cliva [S is a linguist (a scientist who studies language). T talks to S. T leaves.] Thus, you end up saying, "The one talking to the linguist leaves"!