[lojban-beginners] Parts of speech, parts of sentence

[Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com>]

When I was a kid studying English grammar, I was a little confused
at first about the parts of speech and the parts of a sentence.

"Noun" is an example of the former and "predicate nominative" is an
example of the latter. To add to the confusion, a "verb" is both.

To further add to the confusion, some words can be used in more
than one way.

  Did you scratch your arm?  (scratch, verb used as a verb)
  I see a scratch there.     (scratch, noun used as direct object)

Although I caught on, I think a lot of people didn't. And I don't
think the teachers even realized this was a potential problem.

If we say "All predicate nominatives are nouns, but not all nouns
are predicate nominatives" -- well, in a way, we've said the truth,
and in a way, we've spoken nonsense. It disregards the fact that
these are different categories. It sounds like the statement we make
in geometry about squares and rectangles, but it isn't analogous.

This is all to say: I think this is one thing tripping me up in
Lojban. It's not possible to draw a simple Venn diagram or anything
if you're mixing parts of the sentence with parts of speech. (Not
that it's necessarily possible anyway.)

I perceive a "gismu" to be a part of speech, and a "sumti" to be a
part of the sentence. I also see a "cmene" as a part of speech.
Is that reasonable?

Some of these may necessarily be the same -- a cmavo is a cmavo, I
suppose. I would guess it might be in either/both categories.

So, can we come up with definitive lists of these? I think it would
help me (and possibly others).


Hal