Re: lujvo making and the 'tosmabru failure' test

["Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 10:56 PM 12/20/98 +0000, you wrote:
>From: Richard Curnow <richard@curnow.demon.co.uk>
>I am trying to get to the bottom of the lujvo-making algorithm
>described in chapter 4, section 11 of the reference manual, in
>particular the test in 5) for 'tosmabru failure'.
>
>If the candidate lujvo starts CVC CVC CVC ..., and would break into a
>cmavo and a shorter brivla, I am struggling to see how it can break
>other than after the first CV, leaving the shorter brivla being all
>but the initial 2 letters.

If a lujvo will fail the "tosmabru" test, then that is the location at
which it will break.  The test is therefore to determine whether the
remainder of the word, after taking off the first CV, is a valid lujvo of
its own.

I believe the three failure cases can be generalized by representing them as

*tosmabru       but tofmabru OK
	requires tosymabru
*tostosmabru    but toftosmabru OR tostofmabru  OK
  requires tosytosmabru
*tostodydru     but toftodydru OK
  requires tosytodydru

You should be able to see that a valid lujvo exists if you remove the first
two letters in each of the above asterisked words, but that changing ANY of
the consonant pairs that would make it seem like a string CVC rafsi makes
the word remainder NOT a valid lujvo, as shown in the second example above.  

If the tosmabru test fails, you MUST stick the y between the first two
rafsi; the y may NOT be placed there if the lujvo is valid after checking
for tosmabru breakup.

Hope this helps.
lojbab