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''zoi'' Next cmavo is begin all-purpose quote and close all-purpose quote.

- When using ''zoi'', you pick any morphologically correct lojban word at will (called the delimiter), which then opens a quote. To close is, use that word again. This way, you can quote anything except the delimiter, which shouldn’t be a problem because you can pick it yourself. Usually, the word picked is either ''zoi'' itself, or a letter which stands for the language which the quote is written in. Example: “I liked The Phantom of the Opera” is ''mi pu nelci la’e zoi zoi. The Phantom of the Opera .zoi'' Notice two things: Firstly, I need a ''la’e'', since I didn’t like the quote, but rather what it referred to. Secondly, between the chosen delimiter and the quote, there are pauses, optionally represented by a full stop in writing. This pause is necessary to correctly identify the delimiter.
+ When using ''zoi'', you pick any morphologically correct lojban word at will (called the delimiter), which then opens a quote. To close it, use that word again. This way, you can quote anything except the delimiter, which shouldn’t be a problem because you can pick it yourself. Usually, the word picked is either ''zoi'' itself, or a letter which stands for the language which the quote is written in. Example: “I liked The Phantom of the Opera” is ''mi pu nelci la’e zoi zoi. The Phantom of the Opera .zoi'' Notice two things: Firstly, I need a ''la’e'', since I didn’t like the quote, but rather what it referred to. Secondly, between the chosen delimiter and the quote, there are pauses, optionally represented by a full stop in writing. This pause is necessary to correctly identify the delimiter.

Try to translate the above sentence concerning “What’s up?”




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!Lojban Wave Lessons Continued (part two):

!!!by la klaku with help from la .kribacr., la xalbo and others, autumn 2011.



This is the second installment of the Wave Lessons Continued. If you didn't catch the first part, or want to go back for some reason, just click ((wavelessonscontinued|here.))



!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson seventeen (cute assorted words)

And with that, third chapter, you know a lot about Lojban sumti. After such a long time of rigorous systematic learning, what could be more fitting that this lesson where I speak about some words which I could not, or wanted not to fit into any other lessons? So here are a few small and really useful words:



The following cmavo are all elliptical words. You should already be familiar with the first.

__''zo’e''__ - elliptical sumti

__''co’e''__ - elliptical selbri

__''do’e''__ - elliptical sumtcita

__''ju’a''__ - elliptical evidential

__''do’i''__ - elliptical utterance variable

__''ge’e''__ - elliptical attitudinal



All of these act grammatically as a cmavo of the kind they represent, but they contain no information, and can be quite handy when you’re lazy and don’t need to be specific anyway. There are, however, a few things which need to be cleared up:



    ''zo’e'' have to refer to something which is claimed to have a value. “zero cars” or “nothing”, for instance, has no value, and therefore cannot be referred to by ''zo’e''. This is because, if it could mean “nothing” by ''zo’e'', then any selbri could be identical to its negation, if one of the elided sumti were filled with a ''zo’e'' with no value.

    ''ge’e'' does not mean that you feel no emotion, just that you feel nothing special or worth to mention at the moment. It’s similar to “I’m fine.”. ''ge’e pei'' ask about an elliptical emotion and is a good translation for: “How are you feeling?”.

    ''co’e'' is handy when needing a selbri in a construct for grammatical reasons, like in the definition of ''tu’a'' in the previous lesson.

    ''ju’a'' does not change the truth value or subjective understanding of the bridi or anything like that. In fact, it’s mostly does nothing. However, ''ju’a pei'', “What is your basis for saying that?” is handy.

    ''do’i'' is really useful. A lot of times when you refer to utterances or conversations by words like “this” or “that”, you want ''do’i''.

    If you fill in more sumti than a selbri has places for, the last sumti have implied ''do’e'' sumtcita in front of them.



Furthermore, there is a word, ''zi’o'', that you can fill a sumti place with to delete it from any selbri. ''lo melbi be zi’o'', for instance, is just “Something beautiful”, and does not include the usual x2 of ''melbi'', which is the observer who judges something to be beautiful. Thus, it can mean something like “Objectively beautiful.” It does not state that nothing fills the sumti place which is being deleted, just that the sumti place is not being considered in the selbri. Using ''zi’o'' with a sumtcita gives weird results. Formally, they should cancel each other out. Practically, it would probably be understood as an explicit way of saying that the sumtcita does not apply, as in: ''mi darxi do mu’i zi’o'' - “I hit you, with or without motivation.”



Then there is the word ''jai''. It’s one of those cool, small words which are hard to grasp, but easy to work with once you know it. It has two distinct, but similar functions. Both have something to do with converting the selbri, like ''se'' does.

__''jai''__ Selbri conversion: Converts sumtcita or unspecified abstraction to x1. Use with ''fai''

__''fai''__ Marks sumti place. Works like ''fa''. To be used with ''jai''.

The first grammatical construction it can make is "''jai'' {sumtcita} {selbri}". It changes the sumti places such that the sumti place of the sumtcita becomes the selbri’s x1, and the selbri’s old x1 is removed, and only accessible by using ''fai'', which works like ''fa''. You can see it with this example:

__''gau''__ - sumtcita (from ''gasnu'') “bridi has been brought about by/with active agent {sumti}”

''do jai gau jundi ti fai mi''. - “You bring about attention to this by me”. The new selbri, ''jai gau jundi'', has the place structure of “x1 brings about attention paid to x2”. These are then filled by ''do'' and ''ti''. The ''fai'' then marks the place for the old x1, the one who was paying attention, and it is filled with ''mi''. This word can be very convenient and has tons of uses. A good example is descriptive-like sumti. One can, for instance, refer to “the method of volitional action” by ''lo jai ta’i zukte''.

__''ta’i''__: sumtcita (from ''tadji'') “Bridi is done with the method of {sumti}”

Can you deduce what the ordinary Lojban phrase ''do jai gau mo'' means?



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“What are you doing?”~~



The other function of ''jai'' is easier to explain. It simply converts the selbri such that the sumti in the x1 gets a ''tu’a'' in front of it (''ko’a jai broda'' __=__ ''tu’a ko’a broda''). In other words, it converts the selbri in a way such that it builds an elliptical abstraction from the sumti in the x1, and then fills x1 with the abstraction instead of the actual sumti. Again, the original sumti place is accessible by ''fai''.

A very active Lojban IRC-user often says ''le gerku be do jai se stidi mi'', to use a random example of a sumti in x1. What’s he say?

__''stidi''__ x1 inspires/suggests x2 in/to x3”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“I suggest (something about) your dog.”~~



So far you’ve learned how to convert bridi to selbri, selbri to sumti, and selbri into bridi, since all selbri by themselves are also bridi. You only need one last function: convert sumti to selbri. This is done with the word ''me''. It accepts a sumti and converts it into a selbri with the place structure “x1 is specific to {sumti} in property x2”.

__''me''__: Generic convert sumti to selbri. x1 is specific to SUMTI in property x2



When screwing a sentence up, knowing how to correct yourself is a good idea. There are three words in Lojban which you can use to delete your previous word(s)

__''si''__ - deletion: Deletes last word only.

__''sa''__ - deletion: Deletes back until next cmavo spoken.

__''su''__ - deletion: Deletes entire discourse.

The function of these words are obvious: They delete words as if they have never been spoken. They do not work inside certain quotes (all quotes except ''lu..li’u''), though, as that would leave it impossible to quote these words. Several ''si'' in a row deletes several words.





!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson eighteen (quotes)

One of the key design features of Lojban is that it’s supposed to be audio-visual isomorphic, meaning that everything expressed in text should also be expressed in speech and vice versa. Therefore, there cannot be any punctuation which is not pronounced. This means that Lojban has a wide range of words to quote other words. All Lojban quotes take some input of text and converts it to a sumti. Let’s begin with the most simple:



__''lu''__ Quote word: Begin quote of grammatical Lojban content

__''li’u''__ Quote word: End quote of grammatical Lojban content



The text inside this construct must by itself be grammatical. It can quote all Lojban words with some few exceptions, most notably, obviously, ''li’u''.



Try to translate the following sentence. Take your time.

''mi stidi lo drata be tu’a lu ko jai gau mo li’u''

__''drata''__ x1 is different from x2 by standard



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“I suggest something different than something about “ko jai gau mo”.”~~



These quote words cannot quote ungrammatical text. This is sometimes useful, when you want to only pick out part of a sentence, as in: “ is “gi’e” a Lojban sumtcita?”



For this, you need these two cmavo

__''lo’u''__ Quote word: Begin quote of ungrammatical but Lojban content

__''le’u''__ Quote word: End quote of ungrammatical but Lojban content



The text inside must be Lojban words, but need not be grammatical. Try to translate the above example (the one with ''gi'e'') into Lojban



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''xu lo’u gi’e le’u lojbo sumtcita''~~



This quote can be used to quote all Lojban words except ''le’u''. However, this is not enough. If we want to translate “is ”do mo” a correct translation of “What’s up?””, we might be slightly wrong about what we here state, since ''do mo'' also can mean “What are you?”, but let’s roll with it for a second. What we need here is the word ''zoi''.



''zoi'' Next cmavo is begin all-purpose quote and close all-purpose quote.



When using ''zoi'', you pick any morphologically correct lojban word at will (called the delimiter), which then opens a quote. To close it, use that word again. This way, you can quote anything except the delimiter, which shouldn’t be a problem because you can pick it yourself. Usually, the word picked is either ''zoi'' itself, or a letter which stands for the language which the quote is written in. Example: “I liked The Phantom of the Opera” is ''mi pu nelci la’e zoi zoi. The Phantom of the Opera .zoi'' Notice two things: Firstly, I need a ''la’e'', since I didn’t like the quote, but rather what it referred to. Secondly, between the chosen delimiter and the quote, there are pauses, optionally represented by a full stop in writing. This pause is necessary to correctly identify the delimiter.



Try to translate the above sentence concerning “What’s up?”



__''drani''__ x1 is correct/proper in aspect x2 in situation x3 by standard x4



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''xu lu do mo li’u drani xe fanva zoi gy. What’s up? .gy''. Here the delimiter ''gy'' is chosen because it's short for ''glico'', meaning "English"~~



Closely analogously, there is ''la’o''. It works exactly like ''zoi'', but turns the resulting quote into a name. It is needed because normally, only selbri and cmevla can be names, not quotes.

__''la’o''__ Next cmavo is begin all-purpose quote and close all-purpose quote – use as name.



Last of the official quote words, there is ''zo''. ''zo'' always quotes the next Lojban word, no matter what it is. It’s pretty handy.

''zo'' Quote next Lojban word, no matter what.

Example: ''zo zo zo’o plixau'' = “ “zo” is useful, hehe”

__''zo’o''__ attitudinal: discursive: Humorously, “kidding you”

__''plixau''__ x1 is useful for x2 to do purpose x3



Lojban users have found it useful to supplement with four additional quote words. They are all experimental, and the formal grammar does not support it. Nonetheless, they are used often, and it’s good to be able to recognize them. The most used is:



__''zo’oi''__ Quote next word only. Next word is identified by pauses in speech or whitespace in writing:



Example: ''ri pu cusku zo’oi Doh! .u’i'' “Ha ha, he said “Doh!” “



It’s very easy to use. Again, note that all grammar bots will consider the sentence not grammatical, because these words do not exist in the formal grammar.



Analogous to ''zo'oi'' and ''la’o'', there is also the word ''la’oi'', which works just like ''zo’oi'', but treats the quote as a name:

__''la’oi''__ Quote next word only, use as name. Next word is identified by pauses in speech or whitespace in writing:



How would you say: “My English name is “Safi””?

__''glico''__ x1 is English/pertains to English culture in aspect x2

__''cmene''__ x1 is the name of x2 as used by x3



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi glico se cmene la’oi Safi''. Notice the necessary se. We don’t what to say that we’re a name!~~



Thirdly, ''ra’oi'' quotes the next rafsi. Since rafsi are not words, they would usually have to be quoted by ''zoi''. Furthermore, several rafsi are also cmavo. To avoid confusion of which is meant, ''ra’oi'' always refer to a rafsi, and is wrong in front of any text string which are not rafsi.



What does ''ra’oi zu’e rafsi zo zukte .iku’i zo’oi zu’e sumtcita'' mean?

__''ku’i''__ attitudinal: discursive: However / though (contrasts to something previously said)

__''rafsi''__ x1 an affix for word/concept x2 with properties/of form x3 in language x4



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“The rafsi “zu’e” is a rafsi for “zukte”. But “zu’e” is a sumtcita”~~



And finally the useful word ''ma’oi''. ''ma’oi'' quotes any cmavo, but treats the quote as a name for the word class (selma’o) to which that word belongs. So, for instance, ba’o belongs to the wordclass called ZAhO, so ''ma’oi ba’o'' is unofficial Lojban for “ZahO”



Try it out. Say that ''pu'' and ''ba'' are in the same selma’o!

__''cmavo''__ x1 is a grammatical word of class x2 in language x3



(One possible) Answer:  ~~grey,grey:''zo pu cmavo ma’oi ba''~~





!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson nineteen (numbers)

When learning a language, one of the things which are usually taught very early on is how to count. This really makes little sense, because it’s not necessary to know numbers if you don’t know how to speak about those things to which they apply. This is partly the reason why I have left it for lesson number nineteen. The other reason is that while the numbers themselves are easy to learn, how they apply to sumti can get very confusing indeed. That, however, we will save for a later lesson.

Before learning the words themselves, you should know that numbers do not have any internal grammar. This means that any row of number words (henceforth referred to as a "number string") are treated identically to any other number string to the Lojban grammar, even if the string makes no sense. Therefore, one can never answer unambiguously whether a number construct makes sense or not. There are, however, intended ways of using the number words, and confusion will probably result if you deviate from the standard.

Learning all the number words of Lojban are way beyond the scope of this lesson, so you will only be introduced to what is normally used in text. The wide range of Lojban mathematical cmavo are called ''mekso'' (Lojban for "mathematical expression"), and is widely disregarded because of its complexity and questionable advantage over so-called bridi math.

Let’s begin with the ordinary Lojban numbers, from zero to nine:

||zero|one|two|three|four|five|six|seven|eight|nine

no|pa|re|ci|vo|mu|xa|ze|bi|so||

Notice how the vowels are alternating (with the exception of ''no''), and how no consonant is used for two digits.

In order to express numbers higher than nine, the numbers are just strung together:

''vo mu ci'' – four hundred and fifty three (453)

''pa no no no no'' ten thousand (10 000)

There is also a “question-digit”, which is used like other fill-in-the-blank question words. It’s ''xo''. The answer to such a question may be just the relevant digit(s) by itself, or they can be numerical constructs, as shown later.

''ci xo xo xo'' – "Three thousand and how many?" (3???)

__''xo''__ question digit – use like any other digit to ask for the correct digit.

The experimental word ''xo'e'' is sometimes used to mean an unspecified, elliptical digit. Its definition is not official, though.

''ci xo’e xo’e xo’e'' – Three thousand and something

__''xo'e''__ elliptical digit.

Since all number strings are treated grammatically the same, one might also answer several digits to one ''xo'e''



Furthermore, there is also a set of hexadecimal digits A through F. By default, Lojban operates in base 10, but when using hexadecimal digits, it can be safely assumed that you use base sixteen:

||dau|fei|gai|jau|rei|xei |vai|

10(A)|11(B)|12(C)|13(D)|14(E)|14(E)|15(F)||

Yes, I know there are two words for E. The official one is ''rei'' (all three-letter cmavo beginning with x is experimental). ''xei'' was invented to avoid confusion with ''re''.

The base can be explicitly stated using ''ju'u'': Any number before ''ju'u'' the number being spoken of, any number after is the base of the number:

''dau so fei no ju’u pa re'' – A9B0 in base 12 (notice here that base 12 is always in decimal. It is possible to permanently change the base you speak in, but since it has never been used in practice, it has not been standardized how one should do it)

Fractions are also useful to learn how to express. They are usually expressed via a decimal point, ''pi''.

__''pi''__ Decimal point (or point in whichever base you are talking in)

''pa re pi re mu'' – twelve point two five (12.25). 

Like in mathematics, when no number string is placed before or after ''pi'', zero is assumed. 

Related to this, the number separator ''pi'e'' is used to separate numbers, either to separate digits when speaking in a base larger than sixteen, or when a decimal point is not applicable, for instance, when talking about time in hours, minutes, seconds:

''pa so pi'e re mu pi'e no ju'u re ze'' – Nineteen, twenty-five, zero in base 27 (JP0 base 27)

''re re pi’e vo bi'' – twenty-two, fourty eight (22:48)



There is also a range of number words which are not mathematically exact but rather subjective or relative. The behaviors of these words are almost exactly like the behavior of digits, except they cannot be combined to make bigger numbers the way digits can:

|| ro|so'a|so'e|so'i|so'o|so'u|

all|almost all|most|many|some|few||

When combined with any of the digits, these words are assumed to give a second verdict about the size of the number:

''mu bi so'i sai'' –Fifty eight, which is really many.

They should therefore not be placed in the middle of a number string. When placed after ''pi'', they are assumed to convey the size of a fraction:

''pi so'i'' – a good part of it:

''pi so'o'' – some of it 

''pi so'a'' – almost all of it



These are some hightly subjective numbers - they work just like the previous ones.

||du’e|mo'a|rau

too many|too few|enough||

The following five are context-based numbers – these work like the previous ones, with the exception that they take the next number in order to assign them meaning:

||da'a|su'e|su'o|za'u|me'i

all except n |At most n|At least n|more than n|less than n||

If no number string follow them, “one” is assumed.

''so’i pa re da'a mu'' – Many, which is twelve, which is all but five.

The two last number words you should know have slightly more complicated grammar:

__''ji'i''__ - number rounding or number approximation

When ''ji'i'' is placed before a number, the entire number is approximated:

''ji'i ze za'u rau ju'o'' – "About seventy, which is more than enough, certainly”

Placed in the middle of the number, only the following digits are non-exact. At the end of a number, it signifies that the number has been rounded off. 

__''ki'o''__ Number comma  - separates digits within one string; Thousands.

It is not incidential that ''ki'o'' sounds like “kilo”. At its simplest, ''ki'o'' is used to separate three digits at a time in large numbers, much like commas are used in English:

''pa ki'o so so so ki'o bi xa ze'' – 1,999,867

If less than three digits are put before a ''ki'o'', the digits are assumed to be the least significant ones, and zeros are assumed to fill in the rest:

''vo ki'o ci bi ki'o pa ki'o ki'o'' – 4,038,001,000,000

''ki'o'' is used similarly after a decimal point.



That concludes the common Lojban numbers themselves. How they apply to sumti is a science in itself, and we leave that for lesson twenty-two. Now we focus on how these numbers can be used in a bridi.

A string of number words by themselves are grammatical, since they can act as an answer to a ''xo''-type of question. In this case, however, they cannot be considered part of any bridi. In general, if numbers fill part of a bridi, they do so in one of two forms: Pure numbers and quantifiers.

A pure number is any row of number words prefixed with ''li''. This makes a sumti directly from the number, and refers to the mathematical concept of, for instance, “the number six”. Its fa'orma'o is ''lo'o''

__''li''__ convert number/mekso-expression to sumti.

__''lo'o''__ fa'orma'o: end convert number/mekso-expression to sumti.

These pure sumti are usually what fills the x2 of brivla such as ''mitre'' or ''cacra''

__''mitre''__ x1 is x2 metres in dimension x3 by standard x4

__''cacra''__ x1 is x2 hours in duration (default 1) by standard x3



Try to translate the following:

''le ta nu cinjikca cu cacra li ci ji'i u'i nai''

Answer: ~~grey,grey: ”*sigh* That flirting has been going on for around three hours.” ~~

How do you count to three in Lojban?

Answer: ~~grey,grey: ''li pa li re li ci'' ~~



The last thing we’ll go through in this lesson is the words of the selma’o MAI and those of MOI.

MAI only contains two words, ''mai'' and ''mo'o''. Both of these convert any number string to an ordinal, which has the grammar of attitudinals. Ordinals are used to divide a text into numbered segments, like chapters or parts. The only difference between ''mai'' and ''mo'o'' is that ''mo'o'' quantifies larger subdivisions of text, allowing you to divide a text on two different levels, for example enumerating chapters with ''mo'o'' and sections with ''mai''. Notice that these as well as the MOI take any number string directly, without any need for ''li''.

__''mai''__: Lower-order ordinal marker: Convert number to ordinal

__''mo’o''__: Higher order ordinal marker: Convert number to ordinal.



There are five MOI, and they all convert any number string to selbri. We’ll take them one at a time:

__''moi''__ - Convert number n to selbri: x1 is the n’th member of set x2 by order x3

Example: ''la lutcimin ci moi lo'i ninmu pendo be mi le su'u lo clani zmadu cu lidne lo clani mleca'' – “Lui-Chi Min is third among my female friends by the order: The more tall ones precedes the less tall ones”.

(When specifying a sequence, it is widely understood that if a ''ka''-abstraction (lesson twenty-eight) is used as a sumti, the members of the set are ordered from the one with most of the property to the one with less of the property, so the x3 of the following sentence could have been shortened to ''lo ka clani'')

__''lidne''__ x1 is before x2 in sequence x3

__''clani''__ x1 is short in dimension x2 by standard x3

__''zmadu''__ x1 exceeds x2 in property x3 by amount x4

__''mleca''__ x1 is less than/is less characterized than x2 by property x3 by amount x4



__''mei''__ - Convert number n to selbri: x1 is the mass formed from the set x2, which has the n members of x3

Notice here that x3 are supposed to be individuals, x2 a set and x1 a mass.

What would ''mi ci mei'' mean? 

Anwer: ~~grey,grey:“We are group of three.”~~



__''si'e''__ - Convert number n to selbri: x1 is one-nth of mass x2

Example: ''le vi plise cu me'i pi pa si'e lei mi cidja be ze'a lo djedi'' – “This apple here is less than one tenth of my food for one day”

__''cu'o''__ - Convert number n to selbri: x1 has n probability of occurring under conditions x2

Example: ''lo nu mi mrobi'o cu pa cu'o lo nu mi denpa ri'' – ”An event of me dying has probability 1 under the conditions: I wait for it” = ”Me dying is completely certain if I wait long enough.”

__''denpa''__ x1 waits for x2, being in state x3 until resuming/doing x4

__''va'e''__ - Convert number n to selbri: x1 is at the n’th position on the scale x2

Example: ''li pa no cu ro va’e la torinon'' – “10 is the highest value on the Torino-scale”





!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty (bo, ke, co and more cuteness)

Say you’re an important American buyer of computers. How do you express this? For constructs like these, tanru are ideal: ''mi vajni merko skami te vecnu''. No wait, that’s not right. Tanru are grouped from left to right, so this tanru is understood: ((''vajni merko'') ''skami'') ''te vecnu'', a buyer of computers for important Americans. You can’t change the order of the selbri to get a useful tanru. Neither can this be solved with logical connectives, which you will first learn about later anyway. The only way to make a fitting tanru is to force the selbri to group differently.



To bind two selbri close together in a tanru, the word ''bo'' can be placed between them: ''mi vajni bo merko skami bo te vecnu'' is read ''mi'' (''vajni bo merko'') (''skami bo te vecnu''), which is useful in this context. If bo is placed between several selbri in a row, they are grouped from right to left instead of the usual left to right: ''mi vajni merko bo skami bo te vecnu'' is read ''vajni'' (''merko bo'' (''skami bo te vecnu'')) an “important (American computer-buyer)”, which is even more appropriate in the situation.

__''bo''__ Binds two selbri together strongly.



How would you say “That’s a tasty yellow apple”?

__''kukte''__ x1 is tasty for x2



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''ti kukte pelxu bo plise''~~



What about ”That’s a big, tasty yellow apple”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''ti barda kukte bo pelxu bo plise''~~



Another approach to this is to use the words ''ke…ke’e''. These can be considered as equivalent to the parenthesises used in the paragraph above. ''ke'' begins strong selbri grouping, ''ke’e'' ends it.

__''ke''__ – begin strong selbri grouping.

__''ke’e''__ – end strong selbri grouping.

The strength of the binding is the same as that of ''bo''. Therefore, ''mi vajni merko bo skami bo te vecnu'' can be written ''mi vajni ke merko ke skami te vecnu {ke’e} {ke’e}''.

How could you say “I’m a German seller of yellow homes?”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi dotco ke pelxu zdani vecnu''~~



While we’re at messing with the ordinary tanru structure, there is another word worth paying attention to. If I want to say that I’m a professional translator, I could say ''mi fanva se jibri''.

__''jibri''__ x1 is a job of x2

__''dotybau''__ x1 is German used by x2 to say x3

__''glibau''__ x1 is English used by x2 to say x3

If I wanted to say that I’m a professional translater from English to German, I’d have to mess around with ''be'' and ''bei'': ''mi fanva be le dotybau bei le glibau be’o se jibri'', and the fact that it was a tanru could quickly be lost in speech due to the complicated structure of the sentence. Here, we can use the word ''co''. it inverts the tanru, making the rightmost selbri modify the leftmost instead of the other way around:

''mi se jibri co fanva le dotybau le glibau'' is the same bridi as the previous Lojban one, but much more easy to understand. Notice that any sumti before the tanru fills ''se jibri'', while any following it only fills the modifying selbri: ''fanva''.

__''co''__ Invert tanru. Any previous sumti fill the modified, any following fill the modifier.



The strength by which two selbri are bound together with co is very weak – even weaker than normal tanru grouping without any grouping words. This makes sure that, in a co-construct, the leftmost selbri is always the selbri being modified, and the rightmost always modifies, even if any of those parts are tanru. This makes a co-construct easy to parse:

''ti pelxu plise co kukte'' is read ''ti'' (''pelxu plise'') ''co kukte'', which is the same as ''ti kukte pelxu bo plise''. This also means that a ''ke…ke’e'' cannot encompass a ''co''.

The cmavo of the selma'o GIhA, the bridi-tail afterthought logical connectives, however, binds even looser than ''co''. This is in order to totally avoid confusion about which selbri binds to which in a GIhA-construct. The answer is simple: The GIhA never emcompasses any selbri-groups.



How can you express ”I am an important American buyer of computers” using a ''co''?



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi skami te vecnu co vajni merko''~~



If it’s of any use, this is the list of different kind of selbri groupers ranked by strength:



1.    ''bo'' and ''ke..ke’e''



2.    logical connectives other than bridi-tail afterthought logical connectives (explained in lesson twenty-five)



3.    no grouping words



4.    ''co''



5.    bridi-tail afterthought logical connectives (also in lesson twenty-five)



The rest of this lesson will not be on selbri grouping, but much like lesson seventeen mention assorted words, which can be of use.



''bo'' has another use, which seems separate from selbri grouping: It can also bind a sumtcita to an entire bridi, so that the content of the sumtcita is not a sumti, but the following bridi. This is best explained with an example.

__''xebni''__ x1 hates x2

''mi darxi do .i mu’i bo mi do xebni'' – “I hit you, with motivation that I hate you.” Here the ''bo'' binds ''mu’i'' to the following bridi.

This is where the technical difference between tense sumtcita and other sumtcita is relevant. You see, when binding a normal sumtcita to a bridi with ''bo'', it means that the following bridi somehow fits into the sumti place of the sumtcita. For the reason of God Knows Why, binding one of the words ''ba'' or ''pu'' to a bridi has the exact opposite effect. For example, in the bridi ''mi darxi do .i ba bo do cinjikca'', one would assume that the second bridi is somehow filled into the sumti place of ''ba'', meaning that the bridi first uttered took place in the future of the second bridi. That's not the case, however, and the correct translation of that utterance would be "I hit you. Afterwards, you flirt". This weird rule is actually one of the main obstacles to a unification of all sumtcita into one single word class.



The unofficial word ''me’oi'' is equivalent to me la’e ''zo’oi'', which means that it converts the content of the next word into a selbri. It is used to invent brivla on the fly: ''mi ca zgana la me’oi X-files'' for “I now watch X-files”. Like all quote next word-cmavo, it is not supported by the official grammar, but to the lazy Lojbanist, it’s invaluable.



The word ''gi'' is strage kind of bridi separator, analogous to ''.i'', but to my knowledge, it is used in only two different kinds of constructs: Most often with logical connectives, explained in lesson twenty-five, but also with sumtcita. With sumtcita it creates a useful, but hardly seen, construct:

''mu’i gi BRIDI-1 gi BRIDI-2'', which is equivalent to ''BRIDI-2 .i mu’i bo BRIDI-1''. Therefore, the example above, which explained why I hit you, can be written ''mu’i gi mi xebni do gi mi darxi do'', or to preserve the same order as the original sentence, we can convert ''mu’i'' with ''se'': ''se mu’i gi mi darxi do gi mi xebni do''.

It is in examples like this that ''gi'' really can show its versatility. It does not just separate two bridi like ''.i'' does, but can also separate two constructs within a bridi, making all constructs outside the scope of ''gi'' apply to both bridi, as this example demonstrates:

__''cinba''__ x1 kisses x2 at locus x3



''mi gi prami do gi cinba do'' leaves mi outside the construct, making it apply to both bridi. This can also be done with ''do'', which is also present in broth bridi: ''mi gi prami gi cinba vau do''. Note that ''vau'' is needed to make do appear outside the second bridi.



Thus, we can write the original sentence shorter: ''mi mu’i gi xebni gi darxi vau do'', or, to omit even the ''vau'', we can write it even shorter and more elegantly: ''mi do mu’i gi xebni gi darxi''





!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-one (COI)

In this lesson, you will familiarize yourself with vocatives, or ''ma’oi coi''. They get their own lesson, not because understanding these provides a basis for understanding Lojban grammar in general, or because they are hard to understand, but rather because they are very often used in casual speech, and there are a lot of them.

A vocative is used partly to define who ''do'' refers to. If the vocative is followed by a cmevla, the cmevla gets an implied la in front of it. If a selbri follows, a ''le'' is used as a gadri instead.

In these examples, I will use the vocative ''coi'', with means “Hi” or “Hello”.

If a person is called ''la + SELBRI'', using a vocative with only the selbri to address that person will mean you refer to her as actually being the x1 of that selbri, which is often wrong. If, for instance, a person is called ''la tsani'', “Sky”, saying ''coi tsani'' refers to her as a ''le tsani'', meaning “Hi, you sky”, while ''coi la tsani correctly'' refers to her as someone called "Sky", meaning “Hi Sky”. This is a frequent mistake, especially among new Lojbanists.

All vocatives have a fa'orma'o which is sometimes required. This is ''do’u''. It’s mostly used if both the first word after the vocative phrase and the last word of the phrase is a selbri, so that it prevents forming a tanru:



__''do’u''__ End vocative phrase. Usually elidable.

__''klaku''__ x1 cries x2 (tears) for reason x3

''coi la gleki do’u klaku fi ma'' ”Hello Happy. Why cry?”



The generic vocative, ''doi'', does nothing except defining who is being referred to by ''do'':

''doi .ernst. xu do dotco merko'' “Ernst: Are you a German-American?”



All the other vocatives have some content beside defining ''do''. ''coi'', which you know, also means “Hello”, for example. Many of the vocatives have two or three definitions like the attitudinals. Like attitudinals, this is because they can be modified with ''cu’i'' and ''nai'', though only one vocative has the ''cu’i''-form defined.

Some important vocatives are listed in the table below. There are others, but those are not used much.

||vocative|Without suffix|-cu’i|-nai

coi|Hello|-|-

co’o|Goodbye	|-|-

je’e|Understood / OK|-|Not understood

fi’i|Welcome|-|Not welcome here

pe’u|Please|-|-

ki’e|Thanks|-|Disappreciation

re’i|Ready to recieve|-|Not ready

ju’i|Hey!|At ease|Ignore me

ta’a|Interruption|-|-

vi’o|Will do|-|Will not do

ke’o|Please repeat|-|No repeat needed

ki'ai|well-wish|-|curse||

Notice that ''ki'ai'' is experimental





What would ''coi co’o'' mean?



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“Greetings in passing” or “Hello and Goodbye”~~



''je’e'' is used as “OK”, but also the appropriate response when receiving praise or thanks (at least, if you want to be modest), as it indicates that the praise or thanks was successfully understood.



Translate ''ki’e sidju be mi bei lo vajni .i je’e .jenifyn.''

__''sidju''__ x1 helps x2 do x3



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“Thanks, you helper of me to do something important.” “No problem, Jennifer”~~



And ''fi’i te vecnu .i pe’u ko citka''



Answer: ~~grey,grey:”Welcome, buyer. Please eat!”~~



''re’i'' is used to signal that you are ready to be spoken to. It can be used as the Lojban equivalent of “What can I do for you?” or perhaps replace “Hello”, when speaking on a phone. ''re’i nai'' can mean “AFK” or “Be there is a second.”



Translate: “Hello, what can I do for you, Interpreter/Translater?”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''coi re’i la fanva''~~



''ta’a'' is used when attempting to politely interrupt someone else. What would be good responses to this?



Translate: ''ta’a ro do mi co’a cliva''

__''cliva''__ x1 leaves x2 via route x3



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“Excuse me for interrupting, everyone. I begin to leave now” Notice that no fa'orma'o or ''.i'' is needed.~~



''ke’o'' is used a lot when inexperienced Lojbanists speak together vocally. It’s quite a handy word

__''sutra''__ x1 is quick at doing x2



Translate: ''.y ke’o sutra tavla''



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“Uh, Please repeat, you quick speaker.”~~



And “Okay okay, I got it already! I’ll do it!”



An answer: ~~grey,grey:''ke’o nai .ui nai vi’o''~~



!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-two (quantifying sumti)

Most other learning materials such as The Complete Lojban Language and Lojban for Beginners were written before the official adoptation "xorlo", a change in the rules about gadri definition and gadri quantification. The obsoleteness of some of the text in the older learning materials was a major cause for the motivation to write these lessons. Unfortunately for me, quantification of sumti can become a very complex topic when the implications of certain rules are discussed in detail. In order to fulfill the goal of this text being accurate enough to represent the official "gold standard" BPFK rules, this chapter was among the last ones finished and the ones most frequenty rewritten. I strongly encourage anyone who finds mistakes in this text to contact me in order for them to be corrected.

Having said that disclaimer, let's get started:

The first concept you should know about is "distributivity". In lesson fourteen i used the word "individuals" about a group of objects considered distributively. A distributive group ''ko'a'' is for any selbri ''broda'' a group such that, if ''ko'a broda'' is true, it means that every member of the group also is characterized by ''broda''. This stands in contrast to non-distributivity (which masses have), in which the group has other properties than each of the individuals do. The distinction between distributivity (individual-like) and non-distributivity (mass-like) is of relevance when quantifying sumti.

Let us first consider how one can quantify decription sumti, which are sumti of the form GADRI BRIVLA. The number string which does the quantification can be placed before the gadri, in which case it is referred to as an __outer quantifier__, and it can be placed between the gadri and the brivla, in which case it's an __inner quantifier__. Any kind of number string can act as a quantifier.

The rules for how inner and outer quantifiers affects sumti depend on the kind of gadri which is used:



- -''lo'' and ''le''- - An inner quantifier tells us how many objects are being spoken of - how many objects are in the discourse total. If an outer quantifier is present, the sumti is distributed over that amount of objects. As stated earlier, if no outer quantifier is present, it's vague how many objects the selbri applies to (though not none), and whether it does so distributively or non-distributively. Examples are always a good idea, so here they are:

''mu lo mu bakni cu se jirna'' - The inner quantifier of five Tells us that we speak about five pieces of cattle, and the outer quantifier of five tells us that the selbri is true for each of the five. Therefore, it means "All the five cows had horns". 

__''bakni''__ x1 is a cow/ox/cattle/calf etc of breed x2

__''jirna''__ x1 is the horn of x2 (metaphor: any pointed extremity)



What does the following bridi mean?

''lo ru'urgubupu be li re pi ze mu cu jdima lo pa re sovda''

__''ru'urgubupu''__ x1 is measures to be x2 British pounds (GBP)

__''jdima''__ x1 is the price of x2 to buyer x3 set by vendor x4

__''sovda''__ x1 is a gamete (egg/sperm) of x2

Answer: ~~grey,grey: "Twelve eggs cost 2.75 British pounds" which, as the English translation, could mean both that they cost 2.75 each (distributively) or that all twelve together cost 2.75 (non-distributively)~~



''so le ta pa pa ci'erkei cu clamau mi'' (notice that the ''ta'' goes before the inner quantifier)

__''ci'erkei''__ x1 plays game x2 govenerd by rules x3 interrelating game parts x4 {this is used to translate "play" in the sense "play a game" rather than, for instance "playing pretend" or "playing House"}

__''clamau''__ x1 is taller/longer than x2 in direction x3 my marigin x4

Answer: ~~grey,grey:The inner states there are 11 players in the discourse, and the outer states that the selbri applies to nine of them distributively. Thus it means "Nine of the eleven players are taller than me"~~



There are a few points that needs to be raised regarding quantification of ''lo''/''le'':

Firstly, ''lo'' is unique in that "{number} {selbri}" is defined as "{number} ''lo'' {selbri}". Therefore, ''ci gerku cu batci re nanmu'' is defined to be ''ci lo gerku cu batci re lo nanmu'', which considers both the group of dogs and the group of men distributively. Therefore, each of the three dogs bit each of the two men, with six biting events in total.

__''batci''__ x1 bites/pinches x2 at locus x3 using x4 as pinching tool.

Secondly: What if there is no outer quantifier? Does this mean that it __is__ there, but it's elided? Nope. If there is any kind of outer quantifier, elided or not, it would force the sumti to be distributive, which would mean that neither ''lo'' nor ''le'' could be used to describe masses. Therefore, if no outer quantifier is present, it's not only elided - it's simply not there. Sumti without an outer quantifier can be referred to as "constants", even though I won't.

Thirdly, it makes no sense to have an outer quantifier which is larger than the inner one. It means that the selbri holds true for more sumti than are present in the discourse - but since they appear in a bridi, they __are__ part of the discourse. It's grammatical to do it, though.

Lastly, placing a ''lo'' or a ''le'' in front of a sumti is grammatical, if there is an inner quantifier present. "''lo''/''le'' {number} {sumti}" is defined as "''lo''/''le'' {number} ''me'' {sumti}".

So what would this mean? ''mi nelci loi mi briju kansa .i ku'i ci lo pa mu ji'i ri cu lazni''

__''briju'''__ x1 is an office for worker x2 at location x3

__''kansa''__ x1 accompanies x2 in action/state/enterprise x3

__''lazni''__ x1 is lazy, avoiding work concerning x2

Answer: ~~grey,grey:"I like my co-workers, but three out of about twenty five of them are lazy"~~



- -''la''- - An inner quantifier is grammatical if the name is a selbri - in this case, it's considered part of the name. An outer quantifier is used to quantify distributively over such individuals (much like ''lo''/''le'') It's grammatical when placed in front of {number} {sumti}, in which case, the both the number and the sumti is considered the name.



Translate this: ''re la ci bargu cu jibni le mi zdani''

Answer: ~~grey,grey: Two "The Three Arches" are located close to my house" (Perhaps The Three Arches are a kind of restaurant?)~~



- -''loi'' and ''lei''- - An inner quantifier tells us how many members there are in the mass/masses in question. An outer quantifier quantifies distributively {!} over these masses

Notice here that while masses consist of a number of objects considered non-distributively, an outer quantifier always treats each of these masses as an individual.

When placed before a number string, then a sumti, ''loi''/''lei'' is defined as "''lo gunma be lo''/''le'' {number} {sumti}" - "The mass consisting of the {number} of {sumti}".



Attempt to translate this: ''re dei gunma re loi ze valsi .i ca'e pa dei jai gau jetnu''

__''gunma''__ x1 is a mass of the individuals x2

__''valsi''__ x1 is a word, meaning x2 in language x3

__''ca'e''__ Attitudinal: Evidential: I define

__''jetnu''__ x1 is true according to metaphysics/epistemology x2

Answer: ~~grey,grey: "These two utterances are a mass, consisting of two individual masses each of seven words. I define: This one utterance causes {it} to be true."~~



- -''lai''- - Much like ''la'', an inner quantifier (when name is a selbri) is part of the name. An outer one quantifies distributively. Before a number+sumti, both the sumti and the number make up the name.

When a fraction is used as an outer quantifier to quantify ''loi'', ''lei'' or ''lai'', one speaks about only part of the mass (for instance, "half of the Johnsons" - ''pi mu lai .djansyn.'').



- -''lo'i'' and ''le'i''- - An inner quantifier describes the amount of members of the set. An outer quantifies distributively over several of such sets. When placed before a number and a sumti, it's defined as "''lo selcmi be ''lo''/''le'' {number} {sumti}" - "The set of {number} {sumti}".



Translate ''lo'i ro se cinki cu bramau la'a pa no no lo'i ro se bogykamju jutsi''

__''cinki''__ x1 is an insect of species x2

__''la'a''__ Attitudinal: Discursive: Probably

__''bramau''__ x1 is bigger than x2 in dimension x3 by marigin x4

__''bogykamju''__ x1 is the spine of x2

__''jutsi''__ x1 is the species of genus x2, family x3 ... (open ended classification)

Answer: ~~grey,grey: "The set of all the species of insects is probably bigger than one hundred sets of all species of vertebrates"~~



- -''la'i''- - As with ''lai''

Like with the mass gadri, an outer quantifier before a set gadri enables one to speak about a fraction of a set. In front of a number and a sumti, it's defined as "''lo selcmi be la'' {number} {sumti}" - "The set consisting of The {Number} {Sumti}" (considered a name)



- -''lo'e'' and ''le'e''- - Are for some reason not included in the currently accepted gadri proposal. If one were to extend the rules of another gadri, ''lo''/''le'' would probably be the best choice (since both operates with individuals rather than groups), and so one would expect the outer quantifier to force distributivity over the amount of typical/stereotypical things given by the inner quantifier.



When quantifying sumka'i representing several objects, it is useful to remember that they are usually masses. By definition, "{number} {sumti}" is defined as "{number} ''da poi ke'a me'' {sumti}". You will not be familiar with ''da'' until a few lessons later, so take it on faith that is means "something" in this context. Therefore, ''ci mi'' means "Two of those who belong to "us"". When quantifying such masses, it can safely be assumed that the relation implied by ''me'' is membership of the mass, and therefore ''ci mi'' is "Three of us".



Some important uses of quantification requires you to be quantify selbri or objects whose identity is unknown. This is done by "logically quantified variables". These, as well as how to quantify them will be covered in lessons twenty-seven.



Lastly, how can you quantify uncountable substances like sugar or water? One solution is to quantify it using inexact numbers. This use is vague, not only because the value of the number is vague, but also because it's not specified on what scale you're counting: The sugar could be considered a group of many crystals, counted one at a time, and the water could be quantified by the amounts of raindrops it took to make the body of water in question. While this way of counting is legitimate, it's not very exact and can easily confuse or mislead.

A way to be explicit about non-countability is to use the null operand ''tu'o'' as an inner quantifier.

__''tu'o''__ Null operand ( Ø ). Used in unary mekso.

This solution is elegant and intuitive, and also gives me an excuse to quote this horrifying, yet comical example from the original ''xorlo''-proposal:

''le nanmu cu se snuti .i ja'e bo lo tu'o gerku cu kuspe le klaji''

__''snuti''__ x1 is an accident on the part of x2

__''ja'e''__ sumtcita: BAI: (from ''jalge''): Bridi results in {sumti} 

__''kuspe''__ x1 spans/extends over x2

__''klaji''__ x1 is a road/avenue/street at x2 accessing x3



What does it mean?

Answer: ~~grey,grey: "The man had an accident and so there was dog all over the road"~~



A second method of quantifying substances is to use the tenses ''ve'i'', ''ve'a'' and ''ve'u'' as mentioned in lesson ten:

''ti ve'i djacu'' - This is a small amount of water

__''djacu''__ x1 is an expanse of water/is made of water/contains water



Thirdly, of course, you could use a brivla to give an exact measurement:

''le ta djacu cu ki'ogra be li re pi ki'o ki'o'' - "That water has a mass of 2.000 000 kilograms"

__''ki'ogra''__ x1 measures in mass x2 kilograms by standard x3



!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-three (negation)

Sometimes, just saying what’s the truth is not enough. Often, we want to specify what’s not the truth, and we do this by using negation.

Negation in English mostly involves “not”, and is completely arbitrary and ambiguous. We, as Lojbanists, can’t have that, of course, so Lojban contains an elegant and unambigious system for negating.



The first you need to know about is bridi negation, so called because it negates the bridi it’s in, saying it’s not true. The way to negate a bridi is to place ''na'' either just before the selbri (after any ''cu''), or first in the sentence with a ''ku'' after it.

__''speni''__ x1 is married to x2 under convention x3

Thus: ''le mi speni cu na ninmu'' states that “My spouse is not a woman”. It states nothing about what my wife is, or if I even have a wife. It only states that I do not have a wife who is also a woman. This has an important implication: If the negation of a bridi is false, the bridi must be true: ''na ku le mi speni cu na ninmu'' must mean that I have both a spouse, and that she is a she.

It is possible to use bridi negations in all bridi, even the implicit bridi of descriptive sumti. ''lo na prenu'' can refer to anything non-human, whether it be a sphinx, a baseball or the property of appropriateness.



__''bau''__ sumtcita, from bangu: using the language of {sumti}

__''se ja’e''__ sumtcita, from se jalge: because of {sumti}



Often when using ''na'', it’s a problem that negates the entire bridi. If I say ''mi na sutra tavla bau le glibau se ja’e le nu mi dotco'', I end up negating too much, and it is not clear that I wanted to only negate that I speak fast. The sentence could suggest that I in fact speak fast because of some other reason, or that I speak fast in French because I’m German. To express the sentence correctly, I need to only negate that I speak fast, and not the other things.

To only negate part of a bridi, ''na ku'' can be moved around the bridi and placed anywhere a sumti can go. It then negates any sumti, selbri and sumtcita placed after it.



Moving ''na ku'' from the left end of the bridi and rightwards effects any quantifiers in a certain way, as can be seen by this example:



''na ku ro remna cu verba'' “It’s not true that: All humans are children”

''su’o remna na ku cu verba'' “For at least one human it’s not true that: It’s a child”. See that the ''na ku'' is placed before ''cu'', since a sumti can go only there. Had I only used ''na'', it would have to go after ''cu''.



The quantifier is inverted, ''ro'' is turned into ''su’o''. This is, of course, only if the meaning of the bridi has to be preserved. This means that when the ''na ku'' is placed at the end of the bridi, only the selbri is negated but all the sumti and sumtcita are preserved, as can be seen by these three identical bridi:

__''ckule''__ x1 is a school at location x2 teaching x3 to students x4 and operated by x5



''na ku ro verba cu ve ckule fo su’o ckule'' – “It’s not true that all children are students in a school.”

''su’o verba cu ve ckule na ku fo su’o ckule'' – “Some children are students in not a single school.”

''su’o verba cu ve ckule fo ro ckule na ku'' – “Some children are for all schools not students in them.”



The opposite of ''na'' is ''ja'a''. This is barely ever used, since it is default in most bridi. One exception is repeated bridi (next lesson). Sometimes it's used to put more weight on the truth of the bridi, as in ''la .bab. ja'a melbi'' = "Bob is indeed beautiful".



While the mechanism of ''na ku'' resembles natural language negation, it can be difficult to keep track of exactly what is negated and how that affects the bridi. For that reason, the construct ''na ku'' is rarely seen anywhere other than the beginning of a bridi. In most cases where more specific negation is needed people resort to a different method. This method, called scalar negation, is an elegant and intuitive tool. Using it, you effect only the selbri, since the words used in scalar negation binds to the selbri much like the word ''se''.

The name “scalar negation” is derived from the fact that the words which bind to the selbri can be placed along a scale from affirmation over negation and to stating that the opposite case is true:

||Word|Meaning

je’a|“Indeed”; scalar affirmer

no’e|“Not really”, scalar midpoint

na’e|“Non-“, scalar negator

to’e|“Il”, “Dis-“, “Mis” ect; scalar opposer||





These words are not negators in the same sense as ''na''. They do not state that a bridi is false, but makes a positive statement that a bridi is true – the same bridi, but with a different selbri. This distinction is mostly academic, though. If, for example, I state that ''mi na'e se nelci'' "I am non-liked", I actually state that some selbri applies to me, which is also on a relevant scale with the selbri ''nelci''. Most of the time, we assume a scale where the positions are mutually exclusive (like love-like-dislike-hate), so ''mi na'e se nelci'' implies ''mi na se nelci''

Therefore, the words ''no’e'' and ''to’e'' should only be used when the selbri is placed on some obvious scale:

''le mi speni cu to’e melbi'' – ”My spouse is ugly” makes sense, since we immediately know what the opposite of beautiful is, while

''mi klama le mi to’e zdani'' – ”I go to my opposite thing of home”, while grammatical, leaves the listener guessing what the speakers “opposite-home” is and should be avoided.



So how can you negate only the selbri without also implying that the selbri is correct at some other position on a truth-scale? Simple: Moving the ''na ku'' to the rightmost end of the bridi, as demonstrated a few lines above. This feature is very useful. Some lojbanists prefer to prefix the rafsi ''nar-'' (the rafsi of ''na'') in front of the selbri - this has the same effect, but I advise against it, because it makes familiar brivla seem alien, and it's harder to understand when spoken casually.



Try to translate these sentences:

“My spouse is not a woman” (meaning that he is a male)



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''le mi speni cu na’e / to’e ninmu''. Using scalar negation here implies that he exists, which na did not.~~



“My spouse is not really a woman”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''le mi speni cu no’e ninmu''. The scale here is presumed to be from woman to man.~~



“I don’t speak fast in English because I’m German”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi na’e sutra tavla bau le glibau se ja’e le nu mi dotco''~~



Also, note that whenever these words are used together with a tanru, they only affect the leftmost selbri. In order to make it bind to the whole tanru or parts of the tanru, the usual tanru-grouping words can be used.



Try to say “I sell something which is not yellow homes” using the tanru ''pelxu zdani vecnu''



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi na’e ke pelxu zdani ke’e vecnu or mi na’e pelxu bo zdani vecnu''~~



When attempting to answer: “Is the king of the USA fat?”, all of these negations fail. While it’s technically correct to negate it with ''na'', since it makes no assumptions of that is true, it’s mildly misleading since it could lead the listener to believe there is a king of the USA. For these scenarios, there is a metalinguistic negator, ''na’i''.

''na’i'' Metalinguistic negator. Something is wrong with assigning a truth value to the bridi.

Because ''na’i'' can be needed anywhere it has been given the grammar of the attitudinals, which means it can appear anywhere, and it attaches to the previous word or construct.



__''palci''__ x1 is evil by standard x2

''le na’i pu te zukte be le skami cu palci'' – ”The sought goal {mistake!} of the computer was evil”, probably protests that computers can seek a goal volitionally.



Since this is a lesson on negation, I believe the word ''nai'' deserves a short mention. It is used to negate minor grammatical constructs, and can be used in combination with attitudinals, all sumtcita including tenses, vocatives and logical connectives. The rules for negating using ''nai'' depend on the construct, and so the effect of ''nai'' has been discussed when mentioning the construct themselves. The exception is sumtcita, where the rules for negation are more complex, and will not be discussed here.

__Note:__ At the time of writing, it has been proposed to move ''nai'' to the selma'o CAI, which means the semantics of ''nai'' depend on which selma'o it follows. 





!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-four (brika’i/pro-bridi and ko’a)

If I say that I’m called Mikhail, ''la .mikail. cmene mi'', and you have to say the exact same bridi, what would that be? One of the many answers is ''do se cmene la .mikail.''. For the bridi to be the same, you have to replace ''mi'' with ''do'', and it doesn’t matter which if you say the bridi with the ''se''-converted selbri or not. This is because a bridi is not the words which express it – a bridi is an idea, an abstract proposition. The word ''mi'' when I say it and the word ''do'' when you do refers to the same sumti, so the two bridi are identical.

This lesson is on ''brika’i'', the bridi equivalent of sumka’i. They are word which represent entire bridi. Here it is important to remember that a bridi consists only of sumti and the things which contain the sumti, selbri and sumtcita. Neither attitudinals, nor the semantic layer of ''ko'' or ''ma'' are part of the bridi proper, and so these are not represented by a ''brika’i''.



There are much fewer ''brika’i'' than there are sumka’i. We will begin by going through some of the words in the most used series, called GOhA:

Word:	Definition:

__''go’u''__	Repeats remote past bridi

__''go’a''__	Repeats past bridi

__''go’e''__	Repeats next-to-last bridi

__''go’i''__	Repeats last mentioned bridi

__''go’o''__	Repeats future bridi

__''nei''__	Repeats current bridi

__''no’a''__	Repeats outer bridi



Some of the GOhA-''brika’i''. Notice the familiar i, a, u-pattern for close in past, medium in past and distant in past.





These are very much like the sumka’i ''ri'', ''ra'' and ''ru''. They can only refer to main bridi of jufra, and not those contained in relative phrases or description sumti. The main bridi can contain a relative phrase, of course, but a ''brika’i'' can never be used to refer to only the relative phrase.

A GOhA acts grammatically much like a selbri, any construct which can apply to selbri can also apply to these. The place structure of a GOhA is the same as that of the bridi it represents, and the sumti are by default the same as in the bridi it represents. Filling the sumti places of a GOhA explicitly overwrites the sumti of the bridi it represents. Contrast:

A: ''mi citka lo plise'' B: ''go’i'' – “I eat an apple.” “You do.” with

A: ''mi citka lo plise'' B: ''mi go’i'' – “I eat an apple.” “I do, too.”



These ''brika’i'' are very useful when answering a question with ''xu'':

A: ''xu do nelci le mi speni'' B: ''go’i / na go’i'' – “Do you like my wife?” “Yes./No.”. The ''xu'', being an attitudinal, is not copied.

When repeating bridi negated by ''na'', that is: Bridi where ''na'' is placed in the prenex (lesson twenty-seven), in the beginning of the bridi or right before the selbri, the rules for copying over ''na'' are different from what one might expect. Any ''na'' is copied over, but any additional ''na'' in the pro-bridi replaces the first na. Let me show you with an example:

A: ''mi na citka lo plise''

B: ''mi na go'i'' = ''mi na citka lo plise''

C: ''mi na na go'i = ''mi citka lo plise'' = ''mi ja'a go'i''



''nei'' and ''no’a'' are not used much, except for “mind-breaking purposes”, which is making up bridi which are hard to parse, like ''dei na se du’u le no’a la’e le nei''. Since ''nei'' repeats the current outer bridi, however, ''le nei'' can be used to refer to the x1 of the current outer bridi, ''le se nei'' the x2 and so on.



When using ''brika’i'', one must always be wary of copying sentences with the personal sumka’i like ''mi'', ''do'', ''ma’a'' ect, and be careful not to repeat them when they are in the wrong contect, as shown in the two examples with apple eating above. Instead of replacing them one by one, though, the word ''ra’o'' anywhere in the bridi updates the personal sumka’i so that they apply for the speaker’s perspective:

A: ''mi do prami'' B: ''mi do go’i'' is equivalent to A: ''mi do prami'' B: ''go’i ra’o''

__''ra’o''__ Update all personal sumka’i so that they now fit the speaker’s point of view.



The only other series of brika’i are very easy to remember:

__''broda''__	Bridi variable 1

__''brode''__	Bridi variable 2

__''brodi''__	Bridi variable 3

__''brodo''__	Bridi variable 4

__''brodu''__	Bridi variable 5

__''cei''__	Define bridi variable (not a brika'i and not in BRODA)





The first five are just five instances of the same word. They can be used as shortcuts to bridi. After saying a bridi, saying ''cei broda'' defines that bridi as ''broda'', and ''broda'' can then be used as ''brika’i'' for that bridi in the following conversation.

While we’re at it, there is an analogous series of sumka’i, which probably does not belong in this lesson, but here they are anyway:

__''ko’a''__	Sumti variable 1	__''fo’a''__	Sumti variable 6

__''ko’e''__	Sumti variable 2	__''fo’e''__	Sumti variable 7

__''ko’i''__	Sumti variable 3	__''fo’i''__	Sumti variable 8

__''ko’o''__	Sumti variable 4	__''fo’o''__	Sumti variable 9

__''ko’u''__	Sumti variable 5	__''fo’u''__	Sumti variable 10



as well as the ''cei''-equivalent for this series:

__''goi''__ Define sumti variable





These are used like the ''brika’i''-series. Just place, for instance, ''goi ko’u'' after a sumti, and that sumti can be referred to by ''ko’u''.



Strangely, these series are rarely used for their intended purpose. They are, however, used as arbitrary selbri and sumti in example texts:

“So, is it true that the truth conditions of ''ko’a ko’e broda na ku'' are always the same as ''na ku ko’a ko’e broda''?” “Nope, it isn’t.”





!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-five (logical connectives)

“If you ask a Lojbanist: “Do you want milk or sugar in your coffee?” she’ll answer: “Correct.””



Witty as this joke might be, it illustrates a weird property of the English way of asking this question. It is phrased as a true/false question, but it really isn’t. In Lojban, we can’t have this kind of inconsistency, and so we must find another way of asking this kind of question. If you think about it, it’s pretty hard to find a good and easy way, and it seems Lojban have picked a good way instead of an easy way.



To explain it, let us take two separate bridi: Bridi 1: “I like milk in my coffee” and bridi 2: “I like sugar in my coffee”. Both of these bridi can have the state true or false. This yields four combinations of which bridi is/are true:

A ) 1 and 2	B ) 1 but not 2

C ) 2 but not 1	D )neither 1 nor 2



I, in actuality, like milk in my coffee, and I’m indifferent as to whether there is sugar in it or not. Therefore, my preference can be written A ) true B ) true C ) false D ) false, since both A and B yields true for me, but neither C nor D does. A more compact way of writing my coffee preferences would be TTFF for true, true, false, false. Similarly, a person liking his coffee black and unsweetened would have a coffee preference of FFFT. This combitation of "true" and "false" is called a “truth function”, in this case for the two statements “I like milk in my coffee” and “I like sugar in my coffee”. Note that the order of the statements matters.

In Lojban, we operate with 4 truth functions, which we consider fundamental:

A: TTTF (and/or)

O: TFFT (if and only iff)

U: TTFF (whether or not)

E: TFFF (and)



In this example, they would translate to something like: A:”Just not black coffee”, O: “Either both milk or sugar, or nothing for me, please”, U: “Milk, and I don’t care about if there’s sugar or not” and E: “Milk and sugar, please.”.



In Lojban, you place the word for the truth function between the two bridi, selbri or sumti in question. That word is called a logical connective. The words for truth functions between sumti (and just for sumti!) are  ''.a'' ''.o'' ''.u'' and ''.e''. How nice. For instance: “I am friends with an American and a German” would be ''lo merko .e lo dotco cu pendo mi''.

How would you say: “I speak to you and no one else?”



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi tavla do .e no drata'' Note that this actually states that it's true that "I speak to you".~~



One more: “I like cheese whether or not I like coffee”

__''ckafi''__ x1 is a quantity/contains coffee from source/of grain x2



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi nelci lo’e cirla .u lo’e ckafi''~~



You can perhaps deduce that there are sixteen possible truth functions, so we need to learn twelve more in order to know them all. Eight more can be obtained by negating either the first sentence or the second. The first is negated by prefixing the truth function word with ''na'', the second is negated by placing ''nai'' after the word. For example, since ''.e'' represents TFFF, ''.e nai'' must be “both 1 is true and 2 is false”, which is FTFF. Similarly, ''na .a'' is “Just not: 1 is true and 2 is false”, which is TTFT. Doing this type of conversion in the head real-time is very, very hard, so perhaps one should focus on learning how logical connectives work in general, and then learn the logical connectives themselves by heart.



Four functions cannot be made this way: TTTT, TFTF, FTFT and FFFF. The first and the last cannot be made using logical connectives at all, but they are kind of useless anyway. Using a hypothetical logical connective in the sentence “I like milk FFFF sugar in my coffee” is equivalent to saying “I don’t like coffee”, just more complicated. The last two, TFTF and FTFT, can be made by prefixing ''.u'' with good ol’ ''se'', which just reverts the two statements. ''se .u'' , for instance is “B whether or not A”, which is TFTF. The final list of all logical connectives can be seen below.



TTTT: Cannot be made

TTTF: ''.a''

TTFT: ''.a nai''

TTFF: ''.u'' OR ''.u nai''

TFTT: ''na .a''

TFTF: ''se .u''

TFFT: ''.o'' OR ''na .o nai''

TFFF: ''.e''

FTTT: ''na .a nai''

FTTF: ''na .o'' OR ''.o nai''

FTFT: ''se .u nai''

FTFF: ''.e nai''

FFTT: ''na .u'' OR ''na .u nai''

FFTF: ''na .e''

FFFT: ''na .e nai''

FFFF: Cannot be made



Logically, saying a sentence with a logical connective, like for instance ''mi nelci lo’e cirla .e nai lo’e ckafi'' is equivalent to saying two bridi, which are connected with the same logical connective: ''mi nelci lo’e cirla .i {E NAI} mi nelci lo’e ckafi''. This is how the function of logical connectives is defined. We will get to how to apply logical connectives to bridi in a moment.



By putting a “j” in front of the core word of a logical connective, it connects two selbri. An example is ''mi ninmu na jo nanmu'' “I am a man or a woman, but not both”

__''ninmu''__ x1 is a woman



This is “tanru-internal”, meaning that it loosely binds selbri together, even when they form a tanru: ''lo dotco ja merko prenu'' means “a German or American man”, and is parsed ''lo'' (''dotco ja merko'') ''prenu''. This binding is slightly stronger that normal tanru-grouping (still weaker than specific grouping-words), and as such, ''lo dotco ja merko ninmu ja nanmu'' is parsed ''lo'' (''dotco ja merko'') (''ninmu ja nanmu''). The selbri logical connectives can also be attached to ''.i'' in order to connect two sentences together: ''la .kim. cmene mi .i ju mi nanmu'' “I’m called Kim, whether or not I’m a man”. The combination ''.i je'' states that both sentences are true, much like we would assume had no logical connective been present.



Unfairly hard question: Using logical connectives, how would you translate “If you’re called Bob, you’re a man.”?



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''la .bab. cmene do .i na ja do nanmu'' or “Either you’re not named Bob and a man, or you’re not named Bob and not a man, or you’re named Bob and a man. But you can’t be named Bob and not be a man.” The only combination not permitted is: “You’re called Bob, but not a man.” This must mean that, if it’s true that you’re called Bob, you must be a man.~~



If we try to translate the sad, sad event of “I cried and gave away my dog”, we run into a problem.

Attempting to say the sentence with a ''je'' between the selbri “gave” and “cried”, would mean the same word for word, but unfortunately mean that “I cried the dog and gave away the dog”, cf. the definition of logical connectives. One can cry tears or even blood, but crying dogs is just silly.

However, we can get around by using bridi-tail logical connectives. What they do is that any previous sumtcita and sumti attaches to both selbri bound by the bridi-tail logical connective, but any following sumti or sumtcita only applies to the last mentioned: The bridi splits up from one head to two tails, to speak metaphorically.

The form of a bridi-tail logical connective is gi’V, with the V for the vowel of the truth function.

How could you correctly translate the English sentence to Lojban?



Answer: ~~grey,grey:''mi pu klaku gi’e dunda le mi gerku''~~



What does ''ro remna cu palci gi’o zukte lo palci'' mean?

__''palci''__ x1 is evil by standard x2



Answer: ~~grey,grey:“People are evil if and only if they do evil things.”~~



Furthermore, there is a forethought all-but tanru internal group of connecters made by prefixing “g” in front of the truth function vowel. “Forethought” in this context means that they need to go in front of the things they connect, and thus you need to think about the grammatical structure of the sentence before saying it. All-but tanru internal means that it serves both as a connective between sumti, bridi, selbri and bridi-tails, but not between two selbri of one tanru. Let me show you how it works, rewriting the Lojban sentence above:

''go lo remna cu palci gi lo remna cu zukte lo palci''

The first logical connective in these kinds of constructs are what carries the vowel which signal what truth function is being used. The second logical connective is always ''gi'', and like ''.i'', it has no truth function. It simply serves to separate the two terms being connected. If you want to negate the first or second sentence, a ''nai'' is suffixed to either the first (for the first sentence) or second (for the second sentence) logical connective.

Provided that the constructs are terminated properly, it has remarkable flexibility, as the following few examples demonstrate:

''mi go klama gi cadzu vau le mi zdani'' “I go, if and only if walk, to my home” or “I can only go to my home by walking.” Notice that the ''vau'' is needed to make le mi zdani apply to both ''cadzu'' and ''klama''.

''se gu do gi nai mi bajra le do ckule'' “Whether or not you, then not I, run to your school” or “I won’t run to your school no matter if you do or not”



The tanru-internal equivalent of gV is gu’V. These are exactly the same, except that they are exclusively tanru-internal, and that they bind a selbri to the ''gi'' tighter than normal tanru-grouping, but weaker than explicit binding-sumti:

''la xanz.krt. gu’e merko gi dotco nanmu'' is equivalent to

''la xanz.krt. merko je dotco nanmu''



And so you’ve read page up and page down just to get the necessary knowledge in order to be able to learn how to ask “Would you like milk or sugar in your coffee?” in Lojban. Simply place a question logical connective instead of another logical connective, and like ''ma'', it asks the listener to fill in a correct response. Unfortunately, these question-logical connectives don’t always match the morphological pattern of the logical connectives they ask for:

__''ji''__ Logical connective question: Asks for a sumti logical connective (A)

__''je’i''__ Logical connective question: Asks for a tanru-internal selbri logical connective (JA)

__''gi’i''__ Logical connective question: Asks for a bridi-tail logical connective (GIhA)

__''ge’i''__ Logical connective question: Asks for a forethought all-but tanru internal logical connective (GA)

__''gu’i''__ Logical connective question: Asks for a forethought only tanru internal logical connective (GUhA)



So... how would you ask if the persons wants milk or sugar in her coffee?

__''ladru''__ x1 is/contains milk from source x2

__''sakta''__ x1 is/contains sugar from source x2 of composition x3



Possible answer: ~~grey,grey:''sakta je’i ladru le do ckafi'' though I guess something more English and less elegant could also suffice like ''do djica lenu lo sakta ji lo ladru cu nenri le do ckafi''~~



!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-six (non-logical connectives)

The word "logical" in "logical connective" refers to the association a logical connective has with a truth function. Not all useful connectives can be defined through a truth function, however, and so there are other connectives beside the logical ones.

The meaning of a logical connective is defined the same as two different bridi connected with that logical connective. For instance, ''mi nitcu do .a la .djan.'' is defined to be equivalent to ''mi nitcu do .i ja mi nitcu la .djan.''. This definition is useful to bear in mind, because it implies that sometimes, sumti cannot be connected with logical connectives without chaning the meaning. Consider the sentence: "Jack and Joe wrote this play." One attempt at a translation would be: ''ti draci fi la .djak. e la .djous.''

__''draci''__ x1 is a drama/play about x2 by writer/dramatist x3 for audience x4 with actors x5



The problem with this translation is that it means ''ti draci la .djak. ije ti draci la .djous.'', which is not really true. Neither Jack nor Joe wrote it, they did so together. What we want here is of course a mass, and some way to join Jack and Joe in one mass. This has little to do with a truth function so we must use a non-logical connective, which are of selma'o JOI. We'll return to this Jack and Joe-problem in a little - first: Four of the known JOI:



||The Lojban connective:|''ce''|''ce'o''|''joi''|''jo'u''

Joins sumti and forms a:|set|sequence|mass|group of individuals||

The functions of these words are simple: ''lo'i remna jo'u lo'i gerku'' considers both the set of humans and the set of dogs distributively (as individuals). Remember from lesson twenty-two (quantifiers) that "distributivity" means that what is true for the group is also true for each of the individuals alone. Similarly ''loi ro gismu ce'o loi ro lujvo ce'o loi ro fu'ivla'' is a sequence consisting of the mass of all gismu, followed by the mass of all lujvo, followed by the mass of all fu'ivla.

As with all of the JOI which has an inherent order, ''se'' may be put before ''ce'o'' to inverse the order: "A ''ce'o'' B" is the same as "B se ''ce'o'' A".



How can you correctly translate "Jack and Joe wrote this play"?

Answer: ~~grey,grey: ''ti draci fi la .djak. joi la .djous.''~~ 



The cmavo of JOI are very flexible: They can act both as sumti connectives and tanru-internal connectives, so they can be used to connect sumti, selbri and bridi. This flexibility means that one must be careful to use fa'orma'o correctly when using a JOI. 

What is wrong with the bridi ''lo dotco jo'u mi cu klama la dotco gugde''?

Answer: ~~grey,grey: ''jo'u'' is put after a selbri, so it expects a selbri after it to connect to, but none is found. Had  a ''ku'' been present before the connective, it would have been grammatical~~



If several JOI are used, ''bo'' and/or ''ke'' may be used to override the usual left-grouping: ''mi joi do ce'o la .djak. joi bo la .djous. cu pu'o ci'erkei damba lei xunre'' "Me and you, and then Jack and Joe are about the play against the reds". Contrast with ''mi joi do ce'o la .djak. joi la .djous. cu pu'o ci'erkei damba lei xunre'' - "First me and you, then Jack will together with Joe play against the reds". 

Connecting bridi with JOI can make some interesting implications of the relationship between the bridi: ''la .djak. morsi ri'a lo nu ri dzusoi .i joi le jemja'a po ri cu bebna'' - "Jack is dead because he was a infantry soldier and his general was an idiot", implying that these two bridi massed together was the physical cause of his death: Had he only been in an armored vehicle or with a competent commander, he might had survived.

__''dzusoi''__ x1 is an infantry soldier of army x2

__''jemja'a''__ x1 is a general of army x2 in function x3

__''bebna''__ x1 is foolish/idiotic in property x2



Non-logical connectives may also be negated with ''nai'', indicating that some other connective is appropriate: ''lo djacu ce'o nai .e'o lo ladru cu cavyfle fi le mi tcati'' - "Please don't pour first water then milk in my tea". This, of course, says nothing about which connective is appropriate - one might guess ''se ce'o'' (first milk, then water), only to find out that ''.e nai'' (only water, no milk at all) was the correct one.

__''cavyfle''__ x1, consisting of x2, flows into x3 from x4

Just like a logical connective is a plausible negation of a non-logical connective, answers to questions of the type ''ji'' or ''je'i'' can be both logical and non-logical: A: ''ladru je'i sakta le do ckafi'' B: ''se ce'o'' ("Milk or sugar in you coffee?" "First the latter, then the former"). In this case ''ce'' would make no sense at all, since sets can't be contained in coffee, and ''joi'' (both mixed together) would mean the same as ''jo'u'' (both of them), unless the respondant preferred unmixed sugar in his coffee.



The fifth JOI I present here is a bit of an oddball:

__''fa'u''__ Non-logical connective: Unmixed ordered distribution (A and B, respectively)

When only one ''fa'u'' is placed within a bridi (or several bridi connected together with connectors), ''fa'u'' may be assumed to be identical to ''jo'u''. When several ''fa'u'' is used within one bridi, however, the constructs before ''fa'u'' each apply to each other, and the constructs after ''fa'u'' each apply to each other. Let's have an example:

''mi fa'u do rusko fa'u kadno'' - "You and I are Russian and Canadian", implying that ''mi'' goes with ''rusko'' and ''do'' goes with ''kadno'', and implying nothing about any other combination. Of course, in this example, it would be much easier to say ''mi rusko .i do kadno''.



These last three JOI connects two sets to make new sets:

__''jo'e''__	A union B

__''ku'a''__	A intersection B

__''pi'u ''__	Cross product of A and B



These are probably not very useful for the average Lojbanist, but I might as well include them here.

The first one, ''jo'e'', makes a new set from two sets. This new set contains only those members which are in both sets.

A set made with ''ku'a'' contains all the members of set A and those of set B. If anything is a member of both sets, they are not counted twice.

''pi'u'' is a little more complicated. A set "A ''pi'u'' B" contains all the possible combinations of "a ''ce'o'' b", where a is a member of A and b is a member of B. It is thus a set of sequences of members. If, for instance, set A contained the members p and q, and set B contained members f and g, then A ''pi'u'' B would be a set consisting of the four members p ''ce'o'' f, p ''ce'o'' g, q ''ce'o'' f and q ''ce'o'' g.



!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-seven (lojban logic: da, bu’a, zo’u and terms)

The stated topic of this lesson needs some justification: This lesson is not really about how do to logic in Lojban, since firstly, logic is presumably the same in all languages, and secondly, actually teaching logic would be totally impractical in one single lesson. Rather, this lesson is explains some constructs which resembles those which logicians use. It turns out they have a remarkable wide range of uses in Lojban.



Getting involved in the more obscure details of these logical constructs can be mind-warpingly difficult, and there will always be some disagreement in the corners of this part of the language.



Learning these logical constructs requires one to learn a bit about constructs which are not logical in nature. Let's begin with ''zo'u''



__''zo'u''__ Separates prenex from bridi



Before any ''zo'u'' is the prenex, after ''zo'u'' is the bridi. Informally, a prenex is a place in front of the bridi, where you put a bunch of terms. A term is an English word given to some kinds of Lojban constructs: Sumti, sumtcita with or without sumti attached, ''na ku'' and an abomination called __termsets__, which I refuse to include in these lessons. The prenex is not part of the bridi, but any terms put inside it gives us information about the bridi. One can, for example, use it to state a topic as shown thus:



''lo pampe'o je nai speni zo'u mi na zanru'' - "Concerning lovers who are not spouses: I do not approve". The benefits of kind of sentence structuring is questionable, but it's always good to have some variation to play with. Furthermore, constructing sentences this way resembles Mandarin (and other languages) closely, meaning it might seem more intuitive for speakers of that language.

__''pampe'o''__ x1 is a lover of x2

__''zanru''__ x1 approves of x2 (plan, event or action)



Of course, the relation between the terms in the prenex and the bridi is vague. One can imagine any sumti in the prenex bearing the same relevance to the bridi as if they were put in the bridi after a ''do'e'' sumtcita, and any sumtcita in the prenex doing pretty much the same as if they were in the bridi. It is quite possible to put terms in prenexes without any clear hints as to how the term may relate to the bridi:

''le vi gerku zo'u mi to'e nelci lo cidjrpitsa'' - "Concerning this dog here: I dislike pizza." It leaves you guessing about the reason for mentioning the dog.

__''cidjrpitsa''__ x1 is pizza with topping/ingredients x2



If the prenex contains ''na ku'', it's pretty straight forward: The entire bridi is negated, just as if the bridi itself began with ''na ku''.



So how long does a prenex last? It lasts until the following bridi is terminated. If that is not desired, there are two ways to make it apply to several bridi: One is to put some kind of connective after the ''.i'' separating the bridi, and another method is to simply include all of the text in ''tu'e'' ... ''tu'u''-brackets. These brackets work pretty much by gluing all the bridi together and makes all sorts of construct apply to several bridi.



Now that we covered ''zo'u'', the first "logical" words we can use it with are these:

__''da''__ logically quantified existential pro-sumti 1

__''de''__ logically quantified existential pro-sumti 2

__''di''__ logically quantified existential pro-sumti 3



These words are all the same, like the mathematical variables x, y and z. Once you have defined them, however, they keep refering to the same thing. These words are defined in the prenex of bridi, meaning that when the prenex stop applying, the definition of these three words are cancelled.



The words ''da'', ''de'' and ''di'' can refer to literally any sumti, which makes them kind of useless unless restricted in some way. The first and foremost way to restrict them is to quantify them: They are not called "logically quantified existential pro-sumti" for nothing. They are pro-sumti, they are most useful when quantified, and they are existential. What does it mean, being "existential"? It means that if they are used, that implies that they actually refer to something which exists. An example:



The statement ''pa da zo'u da gerku'' has ''pa da'' in the prenex, which means "Concerning one existing thing:", and then ''da'', now defined, is used in the bridi ''da gerku''. Translated to English, this means: "There exists one thing which is a dog". This is obviously false, there are around 400,000,000 of them in the world. If ''da'' and its sisters are not quantified, the number ''su'o'' is the default. Thus ''da zo'u da gerku'' means "There exist at least one thing which is a dog", which is true. Notice here, that any quantification must be more or less exact in order to be true: Of course one dog exists, but in Lojban, ''pa da zo'u da gerku'' means not only that does one dog exists, but also that no more than one does. 



There are a few specific rules to these existential pro-sumti:

- If the quantifier ''ro'' is used before ''da'', it instead refers to "all which exists".  

- If the same variable is quantified several times, the first quantification is the one which sticks: Any later quantified instance of that variable can refer only to things which are also being referred to by the first instance of that variable, and any later non-quantified instance of that variable will gain the first quantifier. To use an example: ''ci da zo'u re da barda .ije da pelxu'' means "There exists three things such that two of them are big and all three are yellow". ''re da'', being after ''ci da'', can only refer to two of the already stated three things. When ''da'' appears without a quantifier, ''ci'' is assumed.

- If there are several terms in the prenex, the terms are always read left to right. Sometimes, this matters: ''ro da de zo'u da prami de'' means "Concerning all the things X that exists, concerning at least one thing Y: X loves Y". This is the same as "All things love at least one thing.", where the "thing(s)" can be anything, including the thing itself. Note here that ''de'' can refer to different things for each ''da'' - the thing which is referred to by ''de'' is dependent on the ''da'', since it came before it in the prenex, therefore each thing might love something different. If we switched the places of ''da'' and ''de'' in the prenex, a different result would arise: ''de ro da zo'u da prami de'' = "Concerning at least one thing Y, concerning all X which exists: X loves Y", meaning "There exists at least one thing which everything loves".



Of course, both claims are completely false. There are many things which loves nothing - rocks, or abstract concepts, for example. Likewise, it's impossible to concieve of something which everything loves, since "everything" also encompasses non-sentient things. We need better ways to restrict what these variables can point to. One good way of doing it is to make them the subject of a relative clause:

''ro di poi remna zo'u birka di'' = "Concerning all X that exists, which is human: X has one or more arms." or "All humans have arms", which is true, at least when speaking in a potential, timeless sense.

__''birka''__ x1 is an arm of x2

When restricting claims using this kind of logical "existential" variable, it's very important to remember that unless there is an explicit ''no'' as a quantifier, these kind of statements always imply that there __actually exists__ something which can be referred to by ''da''. Therefore, any kind of non-negated statement where ''da'' points to something which does not exist is false, as in this example: ''ro da poi pavyseljirna zo'u da se jirna'' - "All unicorns have horns". This is wrong because, since ''da'' is existensial, it also means that there must exist at least one unicorn.

Interestingly, when using a relative clause, the variable is being restricted regardless of whether you use ''poi'' or ''noi''. This is because ''re da noi gerku'' still only can refer to two things which are humans. Therefore, ''noi'' makes little sense with ''da''/''de''/''di''. Any clause is always restrictive, unless it's really stupid and obvious like ''de noi gerku cu gerku''.



In fact, you don't really need the prenex to define the variables. You can use them directly as sumti in the bridi, and quantify them there. You only need to quantify them the first time they appear, though. Thus, the sentence about humans having arms could be turned into ''birka ro di poi remna''. The order of the variables still matters though, and so the prenex can be used to avoid having to mess up your bridi to place the variables in the correct order. When having more variables, a prenex is usually a good idea.



The second kind of logical words are basically the same as the three we have already been though, but these are pro-bridi instead of pro-sumti:



__''bu'a''__ logically quantified existential pro-bridi 1

__''bu'e''__ logically quantified existential pro-bridi 2

__''bu'i''__ logically quantified existential pro-bridi 3



These work pretty much the same way as the other three, but there are a few points which are important to mention:

Since only terms can go in the prenex, these pro-bridi need to have a quantifier in order to make them into sumti. When quantified in the prenex, however, the quantifier works very different from quantifiers with normal selbri: Instead of quantifying the amount of things which fits the x1 of the selbri variable, it directly quantifies the amount of selbri which applies. Again, the default quantifier is ''so'u''. Thus, instead of ''re bu'a zo'u'' meaning "Concerning two things which is in relationship X:", it means "Concerning two relationships X:"



It's probably good to see an example pf ''bu'a'' put to practice:

''ro da bu'a la .bab.'' = "Considering all X which exists: X is in at least one relationship with Bob" = "Everything is related to Bob in at least one way.". Notice again the order matters: ''bu'a ro da zo'u da bu'a Bob'' means: "There is at least one relationship such that everything that exists is in that relationship with Bob". The first statement is true - for any one thing, one can indeed make up some selbri which relates any guy called Bob and it. But I'm not sure the latter is true - that one can make a selbri which can relate anything, no matter what it is, and Bob.



Let's have an example which quantifies selbri:

''ci'i bu'e zo'u mi bu'e do'' - "Concerning an infinite amount of relationships: I am in all those relationship with you." or "There exists an infinite amount of relationships between us"

You can't quantify the selbri variables in the bridi itself, though. Then it will act as a sumti: ''mi ci'i bu'a do'' is not a bridi.



!!Lojban Lessons - Lesson twenty-eight (notes on abstractors)

The notion of abstractions and abstractors is quite fundamental to Lojban, and you have already learned the mechanism twenty-two lessons ago. There are, however, many abstractors with slightly different semantic meaning to explore, as well as a single important mechanism which has not been covered yet. In this lesson, all twelve abstractors will be elaborated on. The fa'orma'o for all of these is ''kei''.



The first and most basic abstractor is ''su’u'', which you already know.

You might remember from lesson six that ''su'u'' had a place structure with two sumti places. The second sumti place of ''su'u'' makes the word versatile, as the x2 can be used to specify how the abstraction should be considered.

The English phrase “that I love you” is definitely a sumti, since it’s meant to function as a subject or object in a sentence. It’s also clearly made from an abstraction. It can therefore be translated (''lo''/''le'') ''su’u mi do prami''. Without the context of the English sentence, though, it’s hard to guess what kind of abstraction was meant. “I will die happy by the time that I love you.” treats the abstraction like an event happening in time. “The truth is that I love you.” treats the abstraction like a bridi, which can be considered true or false. In the sentence “The most beautiful thing in the world is the idea that I love you”, the abstraction is considered an abstract concept. Using the second sumti place of ''su’u'', these can be explicitly distinguished between:

''le su’u mi do prami kei be lo fasnu'' is an event.

''le su’u mi do prami kei be lo bridi'' is a bridi.

''le su’u mi do prami kei be lo sidbo'' is a concept.



Using ''su’u'' this way, the semantic, though not grammatical, range of all abstractors can be covered. More usually, though, other abstractors are used. ''nu'', which you also know, treats the abstraction as an event.

__''nu''__ x1 is an event of BRIDI



There are many ways to view an event, and so there are four other abstractors whose semantic are all covered by nu, but more specific.

__''mu’e''__ x1 is a point-like event of BRIDI happening

__''za’i''__ x1 is a state of BRIDI being true

__''pu’u''__ x1 is a process of BRIDI unfolding through stages x2

__''zu’o''__ x1 is an activity of BRIDI consisting of the repeated event of x2



The understanding of these abstractors is tied to the understanding of event contours. ''mu’e'' is akin to the event contour ''co’i'' in the sense that both treat the bridi as point-like in time and space:

''le mu’e mi kanro binxo cu se djica mi'' – ”Me becoming healthy is desired by me” has the semantic meaning that the process of becoming healthy is not being considered. If it consists of chemotherapy, it is plausible that this process is not desired at all. “Becoming healthy”, in a point-like sense is desired, however.



''za’i'' is like the event contour ''ca’o'' in the sense that ''le za’i BRIDI'' begins to apply when the bridi begins and sharply ends when the bridi ceases to be true, much like ''ca’o''.

''za’o za’i mi kanro binxo'' means that the state of me becoming healthy took too long time; that the time between my health beginning to improve and be actually being healthy was long-winded.



The actual treatment is perhaps better caught by ''pu’u'', which, like event contours in general, puts emphasis on the entire event as unfolding through time. ''.ii ba zi co’a pu’u mi kanro binxo vau .oi'' expresses fear that the painful process of becoming healthy is about to begin.The x2 is filled by a sequence of stages, which can be made by interspacing the stages with the non-logical connective ''ce’o'': ''ze’u pu’u mi kanro binxo kei le nu mi facki ce’o le nu mi jai tolsti ce’o mi renvi'' means “something is a long process of me becoming healthy consisting of the stages A ) I find out B ) something about me begins C ) I endure.”



Finally, the semantics of ''zu’o'' treats the abstraction as consisting of repeated actions: ''jibri mi fa lo zu’o mi zbasu lo karce'' – “The activity of me making cars is my job” is accurate if, for instance, the speaker works at a car-producing factory. Here, her activity of producing cars consists of the repeated actions A ) she lowers frame 1 onto car 1 B ) she welds frame 1 to car 1, C ) repeat with car 2. The x2 here is also a sequence.



Note the difference between ''mu’e bajra'', ''za’i bajra'', ''pu’u bajra'', ''zu’o bajra'' and ''nu bajra''. The point-like event of running puts emphasis on the event happening, but nothing else. The state of running begins when the runner begins and stops when the runner stops. The process of running consists of a warm-up, keeping a steady speed, and the final sprint. The activity of running consists the cycles of lifting one foot, moving it forward, dropping it down, repeat with the other foot. All of these are covered by the event of running.



The abstractor ''du’u'' has nothing to do with events and only considers the bridi inside the abstraction as a bridi:

''.ui sai zi facki le du’u zi citka lo cidjrpitsa'' – “Yes! I just found out that pizza will be eaten soon!”. What is being discovered is the truth of an abstract bridi, not an event. In general, abstractions like truths, lies, things being discovered or believed are all pure bridi, so ''du’u'' is appropriate. 

__''du’u''__ x1 is the bridi of BRIDI expressed in sentence x2

For bridi to exist (or at least to have any relevance), they must be expressed in some medium, whether this is speech, thought or writing. The term “expressed” is misleading if it is expressed only in the mind of someone but the term nonetheless applies. Specifying which medium the bridi is expressed in is what the x2 of ''du’u'' is used for:  ''.ui facki le du’u jai cidjrpitsa kei zo’e pe le mi mamta'' – “Yay, discovered that something about pizza, expressed in something that had to do with my mother!”. The translation is clumsy, but probably means that the speaker’s mother told him that pizza was coming.



The next abstractor, ''si’o'', is derived from the gismu ''sidbo'' meaning “idea”. It’s relatively easy to understand: ''le si’o mi mamta'' is the very idea that I am a mother. Similarly, ''le si’o prami'' is “The concept that someone loves someone”, which can be translated as merely “Love itself.” All ideas need someone to reflect on them, and the second sumti place of ''si’o'' mirrors this:

__''si’o''__ x1 is an idea of BRIDI as imagined by x2

''le si’o nanmu kei be do cu xlali vau pe’i'' – “Your idea of manliness is harmful, I think,”



The abstractor ''jei'' is very different from those covered so far, because of its place structure:

__''jei''__ x1 is the truth value of BRIDI under epistemology x2

The first sumti place is not an abstracted bridi, but a verdict of truth, which lies between 0 (false) and 1 (truth) inclusive. These two numbers are used to represent falsehood or truth, and while the x1 of the abstraction is technically a number (''li''), it's not very useful to do mathematics on statements such as "true" or "false", so they should probably not be considered mathematical quantities.

The x2 is often left vague.

''.y li pi so’u jei go’i kei tu’a mi'' – “Uuh, that’s not very true, according to me.”



''ka'' is glossed "property", which is not clear at all. It refers to the essence of fitting to a certain selbri, thus ''lo ka clani'' is "tallness", and ''lo ka djica'' is "desire". In fact, for any selbri, "X satisfies the selbri" is the same as "X is characterized by the property of the selbri".

This selbri may have some sumti places filled out, allowing very specific properties to be expressed: ''le ka pendo la xanz.krt gi'e badri'', "The property of being a friend of Hans Kurt and being depressed". This gives rise to strong ambiguity: Since ''ka'' is about fitting to a selbri (or even an entire bridi), one must be able to specify which sumti place we are talking about: "The property of swimming in something" is very different from "The property of something swimming in you". 

Of course, this cannot always be up to context, and so we have a word, ''ce'u'', which identifies which sumti place is being focused on:

__''ce'u''__ Sets focus on sumti place in abstraction.



''ka''-constructs are used in all kinds of selbri, ''zmadu'' and ''mleca'' introduced in lesson nineteen is examples of such selbri. So: what is the difference between ''mi do zmadu lo ka la liz prami ce'u'' and ''mi do zmadu lo ka ce'u prami la liz''?

Answer: ~~grey,grey: The first one means "Liz loves me more than you", the second "I love Liz more than you do"~~

The ''ce'u'' can be elided, in which case it is understood to fill the first unfilled sumti place of the abstraction.



Lastly, we have the word ''ni'', the definition of which is much contested and discussed among Lojbanists. At least two slightly different meanings can be conveyed with ''ni'', possibly more, and it has not been settled which one is the correct use of ''ni''. Let's first see how the word is glossed:

__''ni''__ x1 is the quantity of BRIDI as measured at scale x2

Unlike the x1 of ''jei'', the x1 of ''ni'' __is__ useful to treat as a number. The discussion arises because it's possible to quantify bridi in several ways. The following four examples show two different ways:

__''xamsi''__ x1 is the/a sea/ocean of planet x2 made of fluid x3

__''cenba''__ x1 varies in property/amount x2 by amount/degree x3 under conditions x4

''le xamsi cu cenba le ni ce'u blanu'' - "The ocean varies in blueness" (meaning that it might be less or more blue, contrast with ''le xamsi cu cenba le ka ce'u blanu'', which means that it varies in whether it's blue or not)

''mi zmadu do lo ni pendo ce'u''- "I have more friends than you"

Where the first example uses ''ni'' to quantify how much an object is characterized by a selbri, and the second example to quantify how many x are characterized by a selbri.

This is, of course, a problem to a language like Lojban, which prides itself with unambigiuty. This problem have not been solved yet, and so as of now, we are stuck with ''ni'' having dual meanings.  

There is also slight disagreement about what it makes sense to quantify, though this is a philosophical rather than linguistic debate. Some texts stress that those things which are not easily quantifiable like ''le ni mi tunba do'', the amount of me being your sibling, makes no sense i a ''ni''-construct. For others this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say, even though actually measuring it is not practical, similarly to the English quantification of love in the sentence "I didn't know how much I loved you until now".

Both ''ka'' and ''ni'' always has an explicit or implicit ''ce'u''.



!!!End of lessons

Sorry, but as of now, there are no more lessons in this series. Perhaps more will be added later.


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