[lojban-beginners] Re: cmavo can be selbri?

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 01:56:41AM -0700, Starling wrote:
> "Adam D. Lopresto" <adam@pubcrawler.org> writes:
> 
> > Well, if you really wanted to say "xu is a member of the set of
> > cmavo" that would be {zo xu cmima lo'i cmavo}, but I think what
> > you really want to say is "xu is a cmavo" which is very simply
> > {zo xu cmavo}.
> 
> Actually my question had to do with whether all cmavo could be
> used as the selbri in a bridi.  'xu' cannot, while 'du' can it
> seems.  

Correct.  As I said in this thread before, only cmavo belonging to
selma'o GOhA (i.e. the same grammatical category as go'a) can be
used as selbri.

List of GOhA:

bu'a      GOhA     some selbri 1
bu'e      GOhA     some selbri 2
bu'i      GOhA     some selbri 3
co'e      GOhA     unspecif bridi
du        GOhA     same identity as
go'a      GOhA     recent bridi
go'e      GOhA     penultimate bridi
go'i      GOhA     last bridi
go'o      GOhA     future bridi
go'u      GOhA     earlier bridi
mo        GOhA     bridi ?
nei       GOhA     current bridi
no'a      GOhA     next outer bridi

Other similar cases:

Any two words joined by "zei" are a selbri.  I often use ".u'i zei
cinmo" and similar to, effectively, turn a UI cmavo into a selbri.

The cmavo "me" converts a sumti directly into a selbri, which has
little to do with cmavo but is grammatically related.

Numbers or letters followed by a cmavo of selma'o MOI are selbri.  A
list:

cu'o      MOI      probability selbri
mei       MOI      cardinal selbri
moi       MOI      ordinal selbri
si'e      MOI      portion selbri
va'e      MOI      scalar selbri

The cmavo "nu'a" turns a mekso operator into a selbri.

That seems to be it.  In case you're wondering where this came from,
the following (pulled from my PEG grammar) is a more-or-less
complete list of the things that can be selbri.  Anything in
capitals is a selma'o (except BRIVLA, which is exactly what it
sounds like).  Feel absolutely free to ignore it, it's not
important.

tanru-unit-2 <- any-word spacing-no-absorb-opt (ZEI any-word
spacing-no-absorb-opt)+ indicators* / BRIVLA !BU free* / GOhA RAhO?
free* / KE free* selbri-3 KEhE? free* / ME free* (sumti /
lerfu-string) MEhU? free* MOI? free* / (number / lerfu-string) MOI
free* / NUhA free* mex-operator / SE free* tanru-unit-2 / JAI free*
tag? tanru-unit-2 / NAhE free* tanru-unit-2 / NU NAI? free*
(joik-jek NU NAI? free*)* subsentence KEI? free*

> Thus "zo xu cmavo" makes good sense.  And to go full circle, this
> might make sense as well to equate 'xu' as a cmavo-thing.
> 
> zo xu du le cmavo

General beginner's tip:  If your language has (aka the verb "to
be"), and you find yourself using "du" in Lojban for anything than
math, you've made a mistake.  Take whatever time you need to
re-write it.  Same goes for "dunli" most of the time.

> Not sure if that also means all cmavo are 'xu'

No.  It means that the word "xu" is exactly identical with some
cmavo that you have in mind.  Since "le" is non-veridical (i.e. you
can call something a cmavo using "le" when it really isn't), this
provides very little information to the listener.  I think it's safe
to say, though, that most of us would take this as being something
like "goi", i.e. I would take it to mean "OK, the cmavo I have in
mind when I say/said {le cmavo} is actually {xu}.".  Which is fine,
but not what you had in mind.

-Robin

-- 
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