On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 8:12 PM, David Imel <david.a.imel@gm= ail.com> wrote:

All,

I've been really enjoying studying your respons= es -- thanks to all of you: =A0to Stela for the nice { fi'i }, to Pierr= e and Jonathan for pointing me to the current online CLL -- very helpful! -= - and to those and Jorge for the sipna(x1) discussion.

I admit to still being a bit confused, though reading t= hrough all your answers and looking up words I don't know is good pract= ice!=A0

Specifically,

a) Stela wrote that you can add sumti beyond the specified number for a gis= mu, but in the following conversation it seemed to be the case that you alw= ays needed a cmavo such as { fi'o }. =A0Do you? =A0Or is that "eli= dable"?

{fi'o} allows one to add an extra sumti place tha= t doesn't normally exist for a word. The extra place is the x1 of whate= ver selbri comes after the {fi'o}, such as {se nenri}. (The x1 of {se n= enri} is the x2 of {nenri}.) As an example The word {cusku} (x1 says x2 for= audience x3 via medium x4) doesn't have a place for language. We can u= se {fi'o} to add that with {bangu} (x1 is a language used by x2 to comm= unicate x3), so {mi ca cusku fi'o bangu la.lojban.} means "I am no= t expressing in the language Lojban."

It is allowable to fill in unspecified places of a word, as in the exam= ple you pointed out, but I don't think I've ever seen that done exc= ept by mistake. As Stela pointed out, any sumti in an undefined place has a= n undefined relationship with the selbri.
=A0

b) Jonathan and Jorge (sorry for using English, eventually = I'll be able to do this in Lojban I hope!) discussed the relative merit= s of { fi'o se nenri } and { ne'i }. =A0For the life of me, I canno= t find { ne'i } defined anywhere. =A0The closest thing I could find was= here: =A0htt= p://dag.github.com/cll/9/17/ where the CV'V cmavo seem to be contra= ctions of gismu. =A0Is this one of those for { nenri }? =A0And if so, does = the argument of { ne'i } refer to the x1 or x2? =A0Jonathan wrote "= ;{ ne'i } =3D { fi'o se nenri }" -- is that "definitional= " or just a paraphrase?

{ne'i} is one of the many BAI cmavo. The BAI cmav= o are all cmavo that are basically {fi'o} shortcuts, so instead of {fi&= #39;o se nenri}, one can say merely {ne'i}, because it has the same mea= ning. Similarly, {bangu} has a BAI, {bau}, so in my example above I could h= ave said {mi ca cusku bau la.lojban.}, which means the same thing. The most= useful gismu have a BAI cmavo for them, and they operate, in most cases, t= he same way as {fi'o <gismu>} would, including using {se}, {te}, = {ve}, and {xe} (the SE cmavo) to get to the x2, x3, x4, and x5 places.

If you're interested, there is a list of all of these BAI cmavo at = http:= //www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=3DBPFK+Section%3A+sumtcita+Forman= ts&no_bl=3Dy#Some_selbri_with_a_short_fi_o-form:, which also shows = which gismu it is based on, and what it means with the various SE as well.<= br> =A0

Thanks again -- I'm really enjoying both the language a= nd this list.

--David. =A0{ la deivyd. }
=

I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that we = are happy to help in any way you need, and we are all more than happy that = you're here.