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

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

On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 08:44:16PM -0800, Tasci wrote:
> 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.  

They don't have *any* arguments (except go'i and friends; the ones
in selma'o GOhA).  They don't carry meaning in that fashion.  This
is like complaining that the English word "of" doesn't refer to
anything.

cmavo are particles designed to fullfil various grammatical
functions.  Other than their morphology, they have nothing in
common.

> 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.

Yes, that would be the point of cmavo.  Again, like the English
words "of", "and", "if", "the", and so on.  The meaning is
determined by how they relate to the rest of the sentence.  They
modify the rest of the sentence, they are not the central meaning.

> 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.

I have no idea where you got these rules from.  #1 applies to
selma'o UI and CAI only, as does #2.  That's about 220 cmavo out of,
umm, about a thousand.  So #3 covers the vast majority of cmavo.  A
few of the more important ones in #3, just off the top of my head:
.i je gi'e .e .a lo le la cu bo.

-Robin

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