Message-Id: <199601291634.SAA03217@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Mon, 29 Jan 1996 11:57:53 -0500
Reply-To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
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From: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Subject:      JVOPLACE.TXT part 1 of 2
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
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Determining lujvo Place Structures
$Revision: 1.1 $


1.  Why have lujvo?

The purpose of lujvo is to extend the Lojban vocabulary. To see how they
do this, let us look at how we might try to express the notion "taller"
in Lojban. There is no single gismu in Lojban capable of expressing
the concept. Therefore, we have three alternatives for expressing the
concept compositionally, as a combination of gismu. We can translate the
English sentence "The ice is 5 Celsius degrees colder than the water" using
a fully expanded bridi, a tanru, or a lujvo. Each of these possibilities
is illustrated below.  First, the fully expanded bridi:

1.1)    le bisli cu zmadu le djacu
                le ka lenku zu'i kei
                le ni kelvo li mu
        The ice exceeds the-water
                in-the property-of (being-cold by-the-typical-standard
                 in-amount-what-is measured-in-kelvins-as 5

(Since we are concerned only with the size of the degrees and not the
setting of the zero point, we can use kelvins instead of Celsius degrees.)
Example 1.1 is a fully explicit expression of the English sentence, but
it still contains a "zu'i", because the English sentence simply doesn't
contain any indication of the standard of coldness.

Note, however, that while Example 1.1 expresses the notion of "colder" as
required, the Lojban vocabulary has not been extended. In particular,
if a gismu were being designed from scratch to express the notion "colder",
it would certainly include the following places: the entity which is
colder, the entity which is warmer, and the difference in temperature. Neither
of the two gismu used in Example 1.1 have such a place structure. Instead,
they express an equivalent notion by sharing out the required places, as well
as information like "kelvins" and "more", between the places of "zmadu" and
"lenku".

Here is the same expression translated using a tanru:

1.2)    le bisli cu lenku zmadu le djacu zo'e
                lo kelvo be li mu
        The ice is a cold type-of-exceeder of-the-water by-the-obvious-property
                in-amount what-is in-kelvins the-number 5.

Example 1.2 goes a lot further towards increasing Lojban vocabulary:
the tanru "lenku zmadu" is a unit that can correspond directly, as a
selbri, to the notion of "colder" --- which the gismu "zmadu" and "lenku"
in isolation could not. But tanru have certain problems:
they are inherently ambiguous, they cannot be entered into anything
like a dictionary because of the on-the-fly way in which they are
created, and they do not express a straightforward syntactic relation
between their arguments.

We need three arguments for our notion of "colder" --- but they are
scattered into the x1, x2, and x4 places of "zmadu", while the x3 place of
"zmadu" has ended up totally superfluous, and the x2 place of "lenku" turns
out to be undesirable.  In other words, a new concept has been created
semantically; but it has brought with it a host of alternative interpretations,
and the resulting creation is not a single lexical unit with a reasonable
distribution of places.  So tanru do not extend Lojban vocabulary
in the way we require.

Which brings us to

1.3)    mi lekmau do lo mitre be li pimu
        I cold-exceed you by-amount-what-is measured-in-meters-as 0.5

which uses the lujvo "lekmau", and which --- no surprise --- is exactly what
is required: it is a new, single brivla, with a well-defined meaning of
its own. It has its own place structure, which corresponds to the place
structure intuitively required for "colder", without introducing extraneous
places or syntactic convolutions.  In short, the lujvo "lekmau" is a new
Lojban brivla.  How "lekmau" is created from "lenku zmadu" is discussed
elsewhere; the purpose of this chapter is to understand how "lekmau"
receives its place structure.


2.  The meaning of tanru: a necessary detour

The meaning of lujvo is controlled by --- though not the same as --- the
meaning of the tanru from which the lujvo was constructed.  The tanru
corresponding to a lujvo will in this chapter be called its "veljvo".
Furthermore, the left (modifier) part of a tanru will be called the
"seltanru", and the right (modified) part the "tertanru", following the
usage elsewhere.  For brevity, we will speak of the seltanru or tertanru
of a lujvo, meaning of course the seltanru or tertanru of the veljvo
of that lujvo.

The meaning of a tanru is a modified version of the meaning of its tertanru.
Therefore, as a selbri the tanru will have the place structure of its
tertanru, and will typically refer to a set of things that is a subset of
what its tertanru refers to.

As a simple example, consider "klama zdani", or "goer-house".  The gismu
"zdani" has two places; "klama" has five.  The tanru "klama zdani" will also
have two places, namely those of "zdani"; and since a "klama zdani" is a type
of "zdani", we can assume that the set of all goer-houses --- whatever they
may be --- is a subset of the set of all houses.  Thus:

2.1)    ti klama zdani la spot.
        This is a goer-house for Spot.

derives its place structure from

2.2)    ti zdani la spot.
        This is a house for Spot.

and not from

2.3)    la spot. klama la vin. la berLIN. la poi banli .AUtoban.
                lo la trabant. karce
        Spot goes to Vienna from Berlin via The Great Autobahn
                in a Trabant car.

since a "klama zdani" is a type of house, and not a type of goer.

But are the places of the tertanru everything that is involved in the meaning
of a tanru?  No.  To see why, let us try to express the meaning
of the tanru "gerku zdani", literally "dog house".  A tanru expresses a very
loose relation: a "gerku zdani" is a house that has something to do with
some dog.  What the precise relation might be is left unstated.  Thus, the
meaning of "lo gerku zdani" can include all of the following: houses
housing dogs, houses shaped by dogs, dogs which are also houses (e.g. for
fleas), houses named after dogs, and so on.

For something (call it z1) to qualify as a "gerku zdani",
it's got to be a house, first of all. For it to be a house, it's
got to house someone (call that z2).  Furthermore, there's got to be a dog
out there (called g1).  For g1 to count as a dog in Lojban, it's got to have
some breed as well (called g2).  And finally, for z1 to be the x1 of "gerku
zdani", as opposed of any old kind of "zdani", there's got to be some
relationship (called r) between some place of "zdani" and some place of
"gerku".  It doesn't matter which places, because if there's a relationship
between some place of "zdani" and any place of "gerku", then that
relationship can be compounded with the relationship between the places of
"gerku" --- namely, "gerku" itself --- to reach any of the other "gerku"
places.

Doubtless to the relief of the reader, here's an illustration. We want
to find out whether the White House counts as a "gerku zdani". We go
through the variables. The White House is the z1. It houses Bill Clinton as
z2, as of this writing, so it counts as a "zdani". Let's take a dog --- say,
Spot (g1). Spot has to have a breed; let's say it's a Saint Bernard (g2).
Now, the White House counts as a "gerku zdani" if there is any relationship
(r) at all between the White House and Spot. (We'll choose the g1 and z1
places to relate by r.)

The sky is the limit for r; it can be as complicated as "The other day,
g1 (Spot) chased Socks, who is owned by Bill Clinton, who lives in z1
(the White House)" or even worse.  If no such r can be found, well, you take
another dog, and keep going until you run out of dogs.  Only then can we
say that the White House cannot fit into the x1 place of "gerku zdani".

As we have seen, no less than five elements are involved in the definition
of "gerku zdani": the house, the house dweller, the dog, the dog breed
(everywhere a dog goes in Lojban, a dog breed follows), and the relationship
between the house and the dog.  Since tanru are explicitly ambiguous in
Lojban, the relationship cannot be expressed within a tanru (if it
could, it wouldn't be a tanru anymore!)  All the other places, however, can
be expressed --- thus:

2.4)    la blabi zdani cu gerku be fa la spot. bei la sankt. bernard. be'o
                zdani la bil. klinton.
        The White House is-a-dog (namely Spot of-breed Saint Bernard)
                type-of-house-for Bill Clinton.

Not the most elegant sentence ever written in either Lojban or English.
Yet if there is any relation at all between Spot and the White House,
Example 2.4 is arguably true. If we concentrate on just one type of relation in
interpreting the tanru "gerku zdani", then the meaning of "gerku
zdani" changes.  So if we understand "gerku zdani" as meaning "doghouse",
the White House would no longer be a "gerku zdani" with respect to Spot.


3.  The meaning of lujvo

This is a fairly long way to go to try and work out how to say "doghouse"!
The reader can take heart; we're nearly there. Recall that one of the
components involved in fixing the meaning of a tanru --- the one left
deliberately vague --- is the precise relation between the tertanru and the
seltanru. Indeed, fixing this relation is tantamount to giving an
interpretation to the ambiguous tanru.

A lujvo is defined by a single disambiguated instance of a tanru. That is
to say, when we try to work out the meaning of a lujvo, we don't need
to try to discover the relation between the tertanru and the seltanru.
We already know what kind of relation we're looking for; it's a given.

The insight driving the rest of this chapter is this.  While the relation
expressed by a tanru can be very distant (e.g. Spot chasing Socks, above),
the relationship singled out for disambiguation in a lujvo will be
quite close.  This is because lujvo-making, paralleling natural language
compounding, picks out the more salient relation between tertanru and seltanru
to be expressed in a single word.  The relationship of "dog chases cat
owned by person living in house" is too distant, and too incidental,
to be likely to be expressed as a single short word; the relationship of
"dog lives in house" is not.

In fact, the relationship will almost always be so close that the predicate
expressing the relation between seltanru and tertanru will be either the
seltanru or the tertanru predicate itself.  This should come as no surprise,
given that a word like "zdani" in Lojban is a predicate. Predicates express
relations; so when you're looking for a relation to tie together "zdani"
and "gerku", the most obvious relation to pick is the very relation named by
the tertanru, "zdani": the relation between a home and its dweller. (There
are some exceptions to this rule; they will be addressed in Section 16.)
As a result, the occupant of the x1 place of "gerku", the dog, is the
occupant of the x2 place of "zdani", the house-dweller.

Which leads to a conclusion, and a corollary. The conclusion is that,
since the relationship between the seltanru and the tertanru of the
veljvo is expressed by the seltanru or tertanru itself, at least one of the
places supplied by the seltanru is always going to be equivalent to a place
supplied by the tertanru --- and is thus redundant, and can be dropped from
the place structure of the lujvo. The corollary is that the precise
relationship between the veljvo components can be made implicit by finding
one or more places to overlap in this way.

So what is the place structure of "gerzda"? We're left with three places,
since the dweller, the "se zdani", turned out to be identical to the dog,
the "gerku". We can proceed as follows.

The notation introduced casually in Section 2 will be useful in the
rest of this chapter.  Rather than using the regular x1, x2, etc. to
represent places, we'll use the first letter of the relevant gismu
in place of the "x", or more than one letter where necessary to resolve
ambiguities.  Thus, z1 is the first place of "zdani", and g2 is
the second place of "gerku".

The place structure of "zdani" is:

        z1 is a house for dweller z2

The place structure of "gerku" is:

        g1 is a dog of breed g2

But z2 is the same as g1; therefore, the tentative place structure for
"gerzda" now becomes:

        z1 is a home for dweller z2 of breed g2

which can also be written

        z1 is a home for dog g1 of breed g2

or more concisely

        z1 is a home for dog z2=g1 of breed g2

Our task is not yet done: we still need to decide whether any of the
remaining places should also be eliminated, and what order the lujvo
places should appear in. These concerns will be addressed in the
remainder of the chapter; but we are now equipped with the terminology
for those discussions.


4.  Selecting places

The set of places of a lujvo are selected from the places of its component
gismu.  More exactly, the places of a lujvo are derived from the set of
places of the component gismu by a process of eliminating places, until just
enough places remain to give an appropriate meaning to the lujvo.

It would be possible to design the place structure of a lujvo from scratch,
treating it as if it were a gismu, and working out what arguments contribute
to the notion to be expressed by the lujvo. There are two reasons arguing
against doing so and in favor of the procedure detailed in this chapter.

The first is that it might be very difficult for a hearer or reader, who
has no preconceived idea of what concept the lujvo is intended to convey,
to work out what the place structure actually is. Instead, he or she would
have to make use of a lujvo dictionary every time a lujvo is encountered in
order to work out what a "se jbopli" or a "te klagau" is. But this means
that, rather than having to memorize just the 1300-odd gismu place structures,
a Lojbanist will also have to memorize myriads of lujvo place structures
with little or no apparent pattern or regularity to them.  The purpose of
the guidelines documented in this chapter is to apply and enforce such
regularity where possible.

The second reason is related to the first: if the veljvo of the lujvo
has not been properly selected, and the places for the lujvo are formulated
from scratch, then there is a risk that some of the places formulated
may not correspond to any of the places of the gismu used in the veljvo of
the lujvo.  If that is the case --- that is to say, if the lujvo places are
not a subset of the veljvo gismu places --- then it will be very difficult
for the hearer or reader to understand what a particular place means, and
what it is doing in that particular lujvo. This is a topic that will be
further discussed in Section 16.

However, second-guessing the place structure of the lujvo is useful in
guiding the process of subsequently eliminating places from the veljvo.
If the Lojbanist has an idea of what the final place structure should look
like, he or she should be able to pick an appropriate veljvo, to begin with, to
 express the idea,
and then to decide which places are relevant or not relevant to expressing
that idea.


5.  Parallel and non-parallel lujvo

A common pattern, perhaps the most common pattern, of lujvo creation forms
what is called a "parallel lujvo".  A parallel lujvo is one based on a tanru
interpretation such that the x1 of the seltanru is equivalent to the x1 of
the tertanru: each component of the tanru describes the same object.  As an
illustration of this, consider the lujvo "balsoi": it is interpreted as
"both great and a soldier" --- that is, "great soldier", which is
the interpretation we would tend to give its veljvo, "banli sonci".

In this case the s1 of "sonci" is redundant, since it is equivalent to the
b1 of "banli". Therefore the place structure of "balsoi" cannot include
places for both s1 and b1, as they refer to the same thing. So the place
structure of "balsoi" is at most

        b1=s1 is a great soldier of army s2 in property b2 by standard b3

Some parallel lujvo have equivalent places in addition to the x1 places.
Consider "tinju'i", "to listen" ("to hear attentively, to hear and pay
attention"). Its place structure is:

        j1=t1 listens to j2=t2 against background noise t3

Why so?  Because not only is the j1 place (the one who pays attention)
equivalent to the t1 place (the hearer), but the j2 place (the thing
paid attention to) is equivalent to the t2 place (the thing heard).

In principle almost any lujvo could be expressed as a parallel lujvo.
Consider "gerzda", discussed in Section 3, where we learned that the
g1 place was equivalent to the z2 place.  In order to get the places
aligned, we could convert "zdani" to "se zdani" (or "selzda" when
expressed as a lujvo).  The place structure of "selzda" is

        s1 is housed by nest s2

and so the three-part lujvo "gerselzda" would have the place structure

        s1=g1 is a dog housed in nest s2 of dog breed g2

However, although "gerselzda" is a valid lujvo, it doesn't translate
"doghouse"; its x1 is the dog, not the doghouse.  Furthermore, it is more
complicated than necessary; "gerzda" is simpler than "gerselzda".
A substantial minority of lujvo have the property that the x1 of the
seltanru ("gerku" in this case) is equivalent to a place other than
the x1 of the tertanru; such lujvo are said to be "non-parallel".


6.  Eliminating places

In order to understand which places, if any, should be completely
removed from a lujvo place structure, we need to understand the concept of
dependent places.  One place of a brivla is said to be dependent on another
if its value can be predicted from the values of one or more of the other
places.  For example, the g2 place of "gerku" is dependent on the g1 place.
Why?  Because when we know what fits in the g1 place (Spot, let us say,
a well-known dog), then we know what fits in the g2 place ("St. Bernard",
let us say).  Each dog has only one breed, but each breed contains many dogs,
so the g1 place is not dependent on the g2 place.

For "zdani", on the other hand, there is no dependency between the places.
When we know the identity of a house-dweller, we have not determined the
house, because a dweller may dwell in more than one house.  By the same
token, when we know the identity of a house, we do not know the identity of
its dweller, for a house may contain more than one dweller.

The rule for eliminating places from a lujvo is that dependent places
provided by the seltanru are eliminated.  Therefore, in "gerzda" the
dependent g2 place is removed, leaving the place structure:

        z1 is the house dwelt in by dog z2=g1

The g2 place shown in the tentative place structure given in Example 3.5
didn't give us any information we didn't already have from the z2=g1 place.

The reason this has happened --- and it happens a lot with seltanru places
--- is that the third place was describing not the doghouse, but the
dog. The sentence

        la mon. rePOS. gerzda la spat.
        Mon Repos is a doghouse of Spot.

really means

        la mon. rePOS. zdani la spat. noi gerku
        Mon Repos is a house of Spot, who is a dog.

since that is the interpretation we have given "gerzda". But that in turn
means

        la mon. rePOS. zdani la spat noi ke'a gerku zo'e
        Mon Repos is a house of Spot, who is a dog of unspecified breed.

Specifically,

        la mon. rePOS. zdani la spat. noi ke'a gerku la sankt. bernard.
        Mon Repos is a house of Spot, who is a dog of breed St. Bernard.

and in that case, it makes little sense to say

        la mon. rePOS. gerzda la spat. noi ke'a gerku la sankt. bernard. ku'o
                la sankt. bernard.
        Mon Repos is a doghouse of Spot, who is a dog of breed St. Bernard,
                of breed St. Bernard.

The dog breed is redundantly repeated, and (intuitively speaking) is repeated
in the wrong place, since the dog breed is supplementary information about
the dog, and not about the doghouse.

As a further example, take "cakcinki", the lujvo for "beetle", based on the
tanru "calku cinki", or "shell-insect".  The gismu place structures are:

        "calku": ca1 is a shell/husk around ca2 made of ca3
        "cinki": ci1 is an insect/arthropod of species ci2

This example illustrates a cross-dependency between a place of one gismu
and a place of the other.  The ca3 place is dependent on ci1, because all
insects (which fit into ci1) have shells made of chitin (which fits into ca3).
Furthermore, ca1 is dependent on ci1 as well, because each insect has only a
single shell.  And since ca2 (the thing with the shell) is equivalent to ci1
(the insect), the place structure is

        ci1=ca2 is a beetle of species ci2

with not a single place of "calku" surviving independently!

(Note that there is nothing in this explanation that tells us just why
"cakcinki" means "beetle" (member of Coleoptera), since all insects in
their adult forms have chitin shells of some sort.  The answer, which is
in no way predictable, is that the shell is a prominent, highly noticeable
feature of beetles in particular.)

What about the dependency of ci2 on ci1?  It would seem that the
ci2 place of "cakcinki" could be eliminated on the same reasoning that
allowed us to eliminate the g2 place of "gerzda" above.  However, it is a
rule that dependent places are not eliminated from a lujvo when they are
derived from the tertanru of its veljvo.

In general, the desire to remove places coming from the tertanru is a sign
that the veljvo selected is simply wrong. Different place structures imply
different concepts, and the lujvo maker may be trying to shoehorn the
wrong concept into the place structure of his or her choosing. This is
obvious when someone tries to shoe-horn a "klama" tertanru into a "litru"
or "cliva" concept, for example: these gismu differ in their number of
arguments, and turning of "klama" places in a lujvo doesn't make any
sense if the resulting place modified place structure is that of "litru"
or "cliva".

Sometimes the dependency is between a single place of the tertanru and
the whole event described by the seltanru.  Such cases are discussed
further in Section 14.


7.  lujvo place ordering.

So far, we have concentrated on selecting the places to go into the place
structure of a lujvo. However, this is only half the story.  In using selbri
in Lojban, it is important to remember the right order of the sumti ---
particularly since Lojban does not use a case grammar in the same way most
natural languages do: there is a lot of difference between "fi" and "fu"!
With lujvo, the need to attend to the order of sumti becomes critical: the
set of places selected should be ordered in such a way that a reader
unfamiliar with the lujvo should be able to tell which place is which.
The ordering of places should somehow be reproducible and follow a
consistent pattern.

If we aim to make understandable lujvo, then, we should make the order
of places in the place structure follow some conventions. If this does not
occur, very real ambiguities can turn up. Take for example the lujvo
"jdaselsku", meaning "prayer". In the phrase

        di'e jdaselsku la dong.
        This-utterance is-a-prayer ???-Dong.

we must be able to know if Dong is the person making the prayer, giving the
meaning

        This is a prayer by Dong

or is the entity being prayed to, resulting in

        This is a prayer to Dong

We could resolve such problems on a case-by-case basis for each lujvo, but
this makes the task of learning lujvo place structures unmanageable.  People
need consistent patterns to make sense of what they learn. Such patterns
can be found across gismu place structures, and are even more necessary in
lujvo place structures.  Case-by-case consideration is still necessary; lujvo
creation is a subtle art, after all. But it is helpful to take advantage of
any available regularities.

The place structures of gismu tend to be ordered according to some notion
of psychological saliency or importance. There is an implication within
the place structure of "klama", for example, that "lo klama" will be
talked about more often, and is thus more important, than "lo se klama",
which is in turn more important than "lo xe klama". A similar tendency may
be observed in lujvo; but this criterion is too subjective and
context-dependent to use by itself as the primary ordering criterion.

Instead, we use two different ordering rules for parallel lujvo and for
non-parallel ones.  A parallel lujvo like "balsoi" (from Section 5)
has the places of its tertanru followed by whatever places of the seltanru
survive the elimination process.  For "balsoi", the surviving places of
"banli" are b2 and b3, leading to the place structure:

        b1=s1 is a great soldier of army s2 in property b2 by standard b3

just what appears in Example 5.1.  In fact, all place structures shown
until now have been in the correct order by the conventions of this section,
though the fact has been left tacit until now.

Non-parallel lujvo like "gerzda", on the other hand, employ a different
rule.  The seltanru places are inserted not at the end of the place
structure, but rather immediately after the tertanru place which is
equivalent to the x1 place of the seltanru.  Consider "pemsa'a", meaning
"bard": its veljvo is "pemci sanga", or "poem singer", and its place
structure is:

        s1=p3 sings sung-poem s2=p1 about p2 by author p3 for audience s3=p4

Since the most important shared place is the poem, which is both s2 (the
thing sung) and p1 (the poem), the p1, p2, and p3 places are inserted into
the lujvo place structure at that point.  Since p4 (the audience) is
equivalent to s3, naturally that place is not inserted.


8.  lujvo with more than two parts.

The theory we have outlined above is an account of lujvo with two parts.
But often lujvo are made containing more than two parts.  An example is
"bavlamdei", "tomorrow": it is composed of the rafsi for "future", "adjacent",
and "day".  How does the account we have given apply to lujvo like this?

The best way to approach such lujvo is to still classify them as based
on binary tanru, the only difference being that the seltanru or the tertanru
or both is itself a lujvo. So it is easiest to make sense of "bavlamdei"
as having two components: "bavlamji", "next", and "djedi". If we know
or invent the lujvo place structure for the components, we can
compose the new lujvo place structure in the usual way.

In this case, "bavlamji" is taken as having the place structure

        b1=l1 is next after b2=l2

We combine this with "djedi", which has the place structure:

        duration d1 is d2 days long (default 1) by standard x3

The d2 place should have its default value of 1 here, and doesn't provide us
with new information; so it is omitted.  Otherwise, "bavlamji" is an
ordinary parallel lujvo with one additional anomaly:  While parallel
lujvo normally put any trailing tertanru places before any seltanru places,
the day standard is a much less important concept than the day the tomorrow
follows, in the definition of "bavlamdei".

(This is an example of how the guidelines presented for selecting and
ordering lujvo places are just that, not laws that must be rigidly adhered
to.  In this case, we choose to rank places in order of relative importance.
Alternatively, one might contend the concept really intended to be conveyed
is "djebavlamji", literally "day-future-adjacent".)

The resulting place structure is:

        d1=b1=l1 is the tomorrow of/is the day after b2=l2 by standard d3

Here is another example: "cladakyxa'i", meaning "long sword".  The gismu
place structures are:

        "clani": c1 is long in direction c2 by standard c3
        "dakfu": d1 is a knife for cutting d2 with blade made of d3
        "xarci": xa1 is a weapon for use against xa2 by wielder xa3

Since "cladakyxa'i" is a parallel lujvo based on "cladakfu xarci", and
"cladakfu" is itself a parallel lujvo, we can do the necessary analyses
all at once.  Plainly c1 (the long thing), d1 (the knife), and xa1 (the
weapon) are all the same.  Likewise, the d2 place (the thing cut) is the
same as the xa2 place (the victim of the weapon), given that swords are
used to cut people.  Finally, the c2 place (direction of length) is always
along the sword blade, and so is dependent on c1=d1=xa1.  Dumping the
places of the remaining gismu in right-to-left order (most important first),
we get:

        xa1=d1=c1 is a sword for use against xa2=d2 by wielder xa3,
                with a blade made of d3, measured by standard c3.

(If the last place sounds unimportant to you, notice that what counts
legally as a "sword", rather than just a "knife", varies in different
jurisdictions.  This fifth place of "cladakyxa'i" may not often be explicitly
filled, but it is still useful on occasion.)


9.  Eliding SE rafsi from seltanru

It is common to form lujvo that omit the rafsi based on cmavo of selma'o SE,
as well as other cmavo rafsi.  Doing so makes lujvo construction easier,
but puts more strain on the listener who has not heard the lujvo before.
However, lujvo that omit a SE cmavo from the seltanru are very common.

Consider as an example the lujvo "ti'ifla", meaning "bill, proposed law".
The gismu place structures are:

        "stidi": agent st1 suggests idea/action st2 to audience st3
        "flalu": f1 is a law specifying f2 for community f3
                under conditions f4 by lawgiver f5

This lujvo does not fit any of our existing molds: it is the second
seltanru place, st2, that is equivalent to one of the tertanru places,
namely f1.  However, if we understand "ti'ifla" as an abbreviation for
the lujvo "selti'ifla", then we get the first places of seltanru and
tertanru lined up.  The place structure of "selti'i" is:

        "selti'i": idea/action se1 is suggested by agent se2 to audience se3

Here we can see that se1 (what is suggested) is equivalent to f1 (the law),
and we get a normal parallel lujvo.  The final place structure is:

        f1=se1 is a bill specifying f2 for community f3 under conditions f4
                by lawgiver/suggester f5=se2 to audience se3

or, relabeling the places,

        f1=st2 is a bill specifying f2 for community f3 under conditions f4
                by lawgiver/suggester f5=st1 to audience se3

where the last place (se3) is probably some sort of legislature.

Abbreviated lujvo like "ti'ifla" are more intuitive (for the lujvo-maker)
than their more explicit counterparts like "selti'ifla", since they don't
require the coiner to sit down and work out the precise relation involved in
the veljvo: he or she can just rattle off a gismu pair.  But should the
lujvo get to the stage where a place structure needs to be worked out, then
the precise relation does need to be specified.  And in that case, such
abbreviated lujvo form a trap in lujvo place ordering, since they obscure
the most straightforward relation between the seltanru and tertanru.  To give
our lujvo-making guidelines as wide an application as possible, and to
encourage analyzing the seltanru-tertanru relation in lujvo, lujvo like
"ti'ifla" are given the place structure they would have with the appropriate
SE added to the seltanru.

Note that, with these lujvo, an interpretation requiring SE insertion
is safe only if the alternatives are either implausible or unlikely to
be needed as a lujvo.  This may not always be the case, and Lojbanists
should be aware of the risk of ambiguity.


10.  Eliding SE rafsi from tertanru

Eliding SE rafsi from tertanru gets us into much more trouble. To understand
why, recall that lujvo, following tanru, describe a type of tertanru.
Thus, "posydji" describes a type of "djica", "gerzda" describes a type
of "zdani", and so on. What is certain is that "gerzda" does not describe
a "se zdani" --- it is not a word that could be used to describe a dog,
say.

Now consider how we would translate the word "two-sided". Our first impulse
might be to translate each element literally, and come up with "relmla".
But try using this lujvo. It seems plausible to translate

        the board is two-sided

as

        le tanbo cu relmla

but is it?  The place structure of "mlana" is

        x1 is a side of x2

A board is not a side, a "mlana"; it is something that has sides, a
"se mlana". The one thing a naive reader should be sure of, coming
across the lujvo "relmla", is that it is a kind of "mlana"; that's what
the tertanru ("remei mlana") says. To have "relmla" turn out to be a
kind of "se mlana" is something no one could guess without a dictionary;
and even then, they'd scarcely believe it. If the lujvo has nothing to do
with its tertanru, one of the two is wrong.

All is not lost, of course; all we need do is insert the cmavo "se",
producing

        le tanbo cu se relmla

While we can get away with this here, however, consider another example:
"dark-skinned".  Let's translate this word as "xekskapi"

As we have seen, we cannot say

        la djak. cu xekskapi
        Jack is-black-skin

because Jack is not skin, "skapi", but someone with skin, "se skapi". So we
say

        la djak. cu se xekskapi
        Jack is-the-bearer-of-black-skin

But look now at the place structure of "xekskapi": it is a parallel lujvo,
so the place structure is:

        xe1=s1 is the black skin of xe2=s2

We end up being most interested in talking about the second place, not the
first (we talk much more of people than of their skins), so "se" would
almost always be required.

What is happening here is that we are translating the tertanru wrongly,
under the influence of English. The suffix "-sided" does not refer to a
side, but something with sides, which in Lojban is a "selmla"; similarly,
"-skinned" does not mean "skin", but someone with skin, which is "selskapi".

Because we've got the wrong tertanru (eliding a "se" that really should be
there), any attempt to accommodate the resulting lujvo into our guidelines
for place structure is fitting a square peg in a round hole. Since they can
be so misleading, lujvo with SE rafsi elided from the tertanru should be
avoided in favor of their more explicit counterparts; in this case,
"relselmla" and "xekselskapi".


11.  Eliding KE and KEhE rafsi from lujvo

People constructing lujvo usually want them to be as short as possible. To
that end, they will discard any cmavo they regard as niceties. The first
such cmavo to get thrown out are usually "ke" and "ke'e", the cmavo used
to structure and group tanru. We can usually get away with this, because
the interpretation of the tertanru with "ke" and "ke'e" missing is less
plausible than that with the cmavo inserted, or because the distinction
isn't really important.

For example, in "cladakyxa'i", the veljvo is

        [ke] clani dakfu [ke'e] xarci
        ( long knife ) weapon
        long dagger

because of the usual Lojban left-grouping rule. But there doesn't seem to be
much difference between that veljvo and

        clani ke dakfu xarci [ke'e]
        long ( knife weapon )

On the other hand, the lujvo "zernerkla", meaning "to sneak in", almost
certainly was formed from the veljvo

        zekri [ke] nenri klama [ke'e]
        crime ( inside go )
        to go within criminally

because the alternative,

        [ke] zekri nenri [ke'e] klama
        (crime inside) go

doesn't make much sense. (To go to the inside of a crime? To go into a place
where it is criminal to be inside --- an interpretation almost identical
with Example 11.3 anyway?)

There are cases, however, where omitting a KE or KEhE rafsi can lead to
misunderstanding, particularly if the lujvo contains a SE or NAhE rafsi.
An example of this is "selxagmaugau", which was intended to mean "improved":
this would give it the veljvo

        se ke xamgu zmadu gasnu
        2nd-conversion-of ( (good more) act)
        better type-of action

in other words, "acting so that something becomes better."  If we interpret
the lujvo with default tanru bracketing, however, we come up with

        ke ke se xamgu ke'e zmadu ke'e gasnu
        ( ( beneficiary ) more ) act

which means "acting ("gasnu") so that something is more ("zmadu") of a
beneficiary ("se xamgu")". This seems to mean "making someone benefit more
from something", and is not at all an implausible reading of the veljvo.
It can describe, for example, what I am doing for you in building a better
oil well for you on your site: I am making you benefit more from your site's
resources.

Such misinterpretation is more likely than not in a lujvo starting
with "sel-" (from "se"),  "nal-" (from "na'e") or "tol-" (from "to'e"):
the scope of the rafsi will likeliest be presumed to be as narrow as
possible, since all of these cmavo bind only to the following selbri
or "ke...ke'e" group. If "selxagmaugau" meant the same as Example 11.5,
there would be no possible lujvo to express "se xamgu zmadu gasnu".
For that reason, if we want to modify a lujvo by putting "se", "na'e" or
"to'e" before it, it's better to leave the result as two words, or insert
"ke", than just stick the SE or NAhE rafsi on: use "se xagmaugau" or
"selkemxagmaugau", but not "selxagmaugau".

Note that, if the lujvo we want to modify with SE has a seltanru already
starting with a SE rafsi, we can take a shortcut. For instance, "gekmau"
means "happier than", while "selgekmau" means "making people happier
than, more enjoyable than". If something is less enjoyable than something
else, we can say it is "se selgekmau". But we can also say it is
"selselgekmau", because since two "se" in a row cancel each other ("se se
gleki" means the same as just "gleki"), there would be no good reason to
have "selsel" in a lujvo with that meaning. So we can feel free to interpret
"selsel-" as "selkemsel-". The rafsi combinations "terter-", "velvel-" and
"xelxel-" work in the same way.

Other SE combinations like "selter-", although they might conceivably mean
"se te", more than likely should be interpreted in the same way, namely
as "se ke te", since there is no need to re-order places in the way
that "se te" provides.  (See elsewhere.)


12.  Abstract lujvo

All lujvo based on a NU rafsi and a gismu, known as abstract lujvo, require
regular place structures, since "nu" makes sense in front of any selbri
whatsoever, and since there is so little information in the rest of the
veljvo to help decide the place structure on any other basis. Such a regular
place structure is already outlined elsewhere; in summary, the place
structure patterns are:

        "nunbroda": n1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
        "dumbroda": d1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 d2
        "jezbroda": j1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 j2
        "kambroda": k1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
        "lizbroda": l1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 l2
        "mufbroda": m1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
        "nilbroda": n1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 n2
        "puvbroda": p1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 p2
        "sizbroda": s1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 s2
        "suvbroda": s1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 s2
        "zazbroda": z1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
        "zumbroda": z1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 z2

(For the definition of d2, j2 etc. see the place structures of NU cmavo
as defined elsewhere.)


13.  Eliding NU and KEI rafsi from lujvo

Eliding NU rafsi involves essentially the same considerations as eliding
SE rafsi, plus additional ones.  In general, NU rafsi should not be elided
from the tertanru, but may be elided from the seltanru if no reasonable
ambiguity would result.  For example, "zvaju'o" is a reasonable shortening
of "nunzvaju'o", meaning "to know something is there, to be aware of
something". The latter lujvo is an expansion of the former, and is less
ambiguous.

In addition, there is a further possible ambiguity resulting from the elision
of "kei" from the veljvo. Thus, "nunzvaju'o" is itself only an abbreviation
of "nunzvakezju'o", which directly represents the veljvo "nu zvati kei djuno".
It could, however, also be interpreted as "nu zvaju'o".  The issues are the
same as with the elision of KEhE, considered in Section 11.

Both potential interpretations are actually used in different lujvo: for
example, "nunclapi'e" means "nu clapi'e" (long jump), whereas "nunmrostu"
means "nunmro stuzi" (place of death). As before, factors of plausibility
and succinctness enter into the equation. In a case like "nunclapi'e", the
interpretation "nuncla plipe" (length jump) is much less plausible than the
interpretation given.

Even though the cmavo of NU are long-scope in nature, governing the
whole following bridi, the NU rafsi are generally interpreted as short-scope,
like the SE and NAhE rafsi discussed in Section 9.  Note that, unlike the
case of "ke'e", there are disambiguating longer forms available for both
interpretations.  Thus, "nu morsi kei stuzi" can be rendered as
"nunmrokezystu", while "nu ke morsi stizu" can be rendered as "nunkemymrostu"
or equivalently as "nu mrostu".

A major difference, however, between SE elision and NU elision is that the
former is a rather sparse process, providing a few convenient shortenings.
Eliding "nu", however, is extremely important in producing a class of words
called "causatives", which are discussed in Section 14.