All Lojban words beginning with a vowel are supposed to have "." prepended, however, they are not /required/ in text as long as the word boundaries are clearly defined.
It is assumed that in such cases the reader knows that the pause normally indicated by "." is implicitly there, so in practice, many jbopre don't write it, either because of aesthetics, laziness, or possibly other reasons.
For example, {coi djeims mi e do klama lo vecnu} is the same as {coi.djeims. mi .e do klama lo vecnu}.
Personally, I feel that omitting /any/
"." is a bad practice that is potentially confusing, especially to newbies, so I endeavor not to do so.to pu benji di'u fo lo mi me la.android. fonxa toi
mu'o mi'e.aionys.
Here are the definitions of consonants and vowels from the PEG file:
consonant <- voiced
/ unvoiced
/ syllabic
syllabic <- l / m / n / r
voiced <- b / d / g / j / v / z
unvoiced <- c / f / k / p / s / t / x
vowel <- a / e / i / o / u
You'll have to ask another question. :-)
ybu is valid, it being the y letteral in selma'o BY (I believe it has
also been two words, Y+BU, in the past though I could be wrong about
that. For your purposes either definition is probably ok.)
Will you quote the phrase you're referring to regarding pauses? I
see this one:
The cmavo “.u'e” begins with a vowel, and like all words
beginning with a vowel, requires a pause (represented by “.”)
before it.
I understand "represented" to be different than "required." In
particular, these lines are all the same:
.a'e.i'o
a'e.i'o
a'e i'o
.a'e i'o
In that '.' and ' ' are the same. In section 3.3 there is this:
Technically, the period is an optional reminder to the reader of a
mandatory pause that is dictated by the rules of the language;
because these rules are unambiguous, a missing period can be
inferred from otherwise correct text. Periods are included only as
an aid to the reader.
A period also may be found apparently embedded in a word. When
this occurs, such a written string is not one word but two,
written together to indicate that the writer intends a unitary
meaning for the compound. It is not really necessary to use a
space between words if a period appears.
Given my understanding of the above, I believe your requiring a
period to represent this pause to be in error.
I will rerun my baseline and reply back with it.
-Alan