[lojban-beginners] Re: Everyone should speak lojban?

[Tasci <pubsynx7hye@pacbell.net>]

Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 16, 2005 at 02:49:44PM -0800, Tasci wrote:
>  
>
> > cmavo always confuse me because of their priveleged status outside
> > of any kind of restrictive grammar.  
> >    
>
> Umm, what?
>
> "mi ke co" is quite illegal.  Those are all cmavo.  Perhaps you had
> a particular sub-set of cmavo in mind.
>  
I probably used too strong of wording.  I am still learning after all 
and it gets frustrating sometimes.  cmavo are... they don't have well 
defined arguments as far as I can tell.  With any brivla in a bridi, you 
/know/ what the sumti around it mean, by definition, in regards to 
itself.  You also know they are sumti.  With cmavo, what the cmavo 
affects, and therefore the meaning of the cmavo, seems to vary depending 
on where it is in the sentence, and what type of cmavo it is.

Putting aside for now the many unrelated (AFAICT) subsets of cmavo, the 
nearest guidelines I can figure are along the lines of
1) If in front of a bridi, it modifies the entire bridi after it.
2) If inside the bridi, it modifies the sumti-or-selbri before it.
3) To some purely grammatical cmavo  (cu, bo, .i) the previous rules do 
not apply.