John Woldemar Cowan

“ The syntax of vocative phrases Vocative phrases are not sumti, but are explained in this chapter because their syntax is very similar to that of sumti. Grammatically, a vocative phrase is one of the so-called “free modifiers” of Lojban, along with subscripts, parentheses, and various other constructs explained in Chapter 19. They can be placed after many, but not all, constructions of the grammar: in general, after any elidable terminator (which, however, must not then be elided!) ”

“ Individuals and masses The following cmavo are discussed in this section:
lei LE the mass I describe as loi LE part of the mass of those which really are lai LA the mass of those named All Lojban sumti are classified by whether they refer to one of three types of objects, known as “individuals”, “masses”, and “sets”. The term “individual” is misleading when used to refer to more than one object, but no less-confusing term has as yet been found. All the descriptions in Sections 1 and 2 refer to individuals, whether one or more than one. ”

“ Personal pro-sumti (“mi”, “do”, “mi'o”, “mi'a”, “ma'a”, “do'o”, “ko”) refer to the speaker or the listener or both, with or without third parties:
13.1) mi prami do I love you. The personal pro-sumti may be interpreted in context as either representing individuals or masses, so the implicit quantifier may be “pisu'o” rather than “ro”: in particular, “mi'o”, “mi'a”, “ma'a”, and “do'o” specifically represent mass combinations of the individuals (you and I, I and others, you and I and others, you and others) that make them up. ”

“ Lojban gismu are defined as broadly as possible, allowing tanru and lujvo to narrow down the definition. There probably are no necessary and sufficient conditions for defining what is and what is not a bear that can be pinned down with complete precision: the real world is fuzzy. In borderline cases, “le” may communicate better than “lo”.)
So while Example 2.6 could easily be true (there is a real writer named “Greg Bear”) , and Example 2.8 could be true if the speaker is sufficiently peculiar in what he or she describes as a bear, Example 2.9 is certainly false. ”

“ All persons love a fish (each his/her own) . (This is not the same as “All persons love a certain fish”; the difference between the two is one of quantifier order.) The implicit quantification rules for quantificational pro-sumti are particular to them, and are discussed in detail in Chapter 16. Roughly speaking, the quantifier is “su'o” (at least one) when the pro-sumti is first used, and “ro” (all) thereafter. ”

“ In place of a name, a description may appear, lacking its descriptor, which is understood to be “le”:
11.6) coi xunre pastu nixli Hello, (red-type-of dress) -type-of girl. Hello, girl with the red dress! The listener need not really be a “xunre pastu nixli”, as long as she understands herself correctly from the description. (Actually, only a bare selbri can appear; explicit quantifiers are forbidden in this form of vocative, so the implicit quantifiers “su'o le ro” are in effect.)
Finally, a complete sumti may be used, the most general case. ”

“ Example 10.2 allows us to use a symbol (namely the title of a book) to represent the thing it is a symbol of (namely the book itself) .
This operation turns out to be needed often enough that it’s useful to be able to say:
10.3) mi viska la'e lu le xunre cmaxirma li'u [lu'u] I see the-referent-of [quote] the red small-horse [unquote] . So when “la'e” is prefixed to a sumti referring to a symbol, it produces a sumti referring to the referent of that symbol. (In computer jargon, “la'e” dereferences a pointer.) ”

“ Some men are women. must be false in Lojban, given that there are no objects in the real world which are both men and women. Pointing at some specific men or women would not make Example 2.5 true, because those specific individuals are no more both-men-and-women than any others. In general, “lo” refers to whatever individuals meet its description.
The last descriptor of this section is “la”, which indicates that the selbri which follows it has been dissociated from its normal meaning and is being used as a name. ”

“ For in fact pianos are heavy, and very few persons can carry a piano all by themselves. The most likely factual situation is that person 1 carried one end of the piano, and person 2 the other end, while person 3 either held up the middle or else supervised the whole operation without actually lifting anything. ”

“ Another common practice is to use one or more rafsi, arranged to end with a consonant, to form a name: thus the rafsi “loj-” for “logji” (logical) and “ban-” for “bangu” (language) unite to form the name of this language:
12.7) lojban. Lojban When borrowing names from another language which end in a vowel, or when turning a Lojban brivla (all of which end in vowels) into a name, the vowel may be removed or an arbitrary consonant added. It is common (but not required) to use the consonants “s” or “n” when borrowing vowel-final names from English ”

“ A Lojban word which does not appear within the quotation is used before and after it to set it off from the surrounding Lojban text.
14.4) mi cusku zoi kuot. I’m John .kuot I say “I’m John”. The implicit quantifier for all types of quotation is “su'o” (at least one) , because quotations are analogous to “lo” descriptions: they refer to things which actually are words or sequences of words.
Number summary The sumti which refer to numbers consist of the cmavo “li” (of selma'o LI) followed by an arbitrary Lojban mekso, or mathematical expression. ”

“ The-mass-of it-last-mentioned is-a-mass. The-sequence-of it-last-mentioned is-a-sequence The set of you and me is a set. The mass of you and me is a mass. The sequence of you and me is a sequence. (Yes, I know these examples are a bit silly. This set was introduced for completeness, and practical examples are as yet hard to come by.)
Finally, the four sumti qualifiers formed from a cmavo of NAhE and “bo” are all concerned with negation, which is discussed in detail in Chapter 15. ”

“ So Example 6.1 and Example 6.4:
6.4) ro do cadzu le bisli All-of you walk-on the ice. turn out to mean exactly the same thing. This is a safe strategy, because if one of my listeners doesn’t turn out to be walking on the ice, I can safely claim that I didn’t intend that person to be a listener! And in fact, all of the personal pro-sumti such as “mi” and “mi'o” and “ko” obey the same rule. We say that personal pro-sumti have a so-called “implicit quantifier” of “ro” (all) . ”