John Woldemar Cowan

“ The cmavo “ra” repeats a recently used sumti, and “ru” one that was further back in the speech or text. The use of “ra” and “ru” forces the listener to guess at the referent, but makes life easier for the speaker. Can “ra” refer to the last sumti, like “ri”? The answer is no if “ri” has also been used. If “ri” has not been used, then “ra” might be the last sumti. Likewise, if “ra” has been used, then any use of “ru” would repeat a sumti earlier than the one “ra” is repeating. ”

“ The green thingy is large. The red thingy is small. The pro-bridi “broda” has as its antecedent the selbri “slasi je mlatu bo cidja lante gacri”. The cmavo “cei” performs the role of “goi” in assigning “broda” to this long phrase, and “broda” can then be used just like any other brivla. (In fact, “broda” and its relatives actually arebrivla: they are gismu in morphology, although they behave exactly like the members of selma'o GOhA. The reasons for using gismu rather than cmavo are buried in the Loglan Project’s history.) ”

“ There is all the difference in the world between:
1.2) John picked up a stick and shook it. and
1.3) John picked up a stick and shook a stick. Example 1.3 does not imply that the two sticks are necessarily the same, whereas Example 1.2 requires that they are.
In Lojban, we have sumti rather than nouns, so our equivalent of pronouns are called by the hybrid term “pro-sumti”. A purely Lojban term would be “sumti cmavo”: all of the pro-sumti are cmavo belonging to selma'o KOhA. In exactly the same way, Lojban has a group of cmavo (belonging to selma'o GOhA) which serve as selbri or full bridi. ”

“ In other words, once we know the referent of a pro-sumti or pro-bridi, how long can we be sure that future uses of the same cmavo have the same referent? The answer to this question depends on which series the cmavo belongs to.
Personal pro-sumti are stable until there is a change of speaker or listener, possibly signaled by a vocative. Assignable pro-sumti and pro-bridi last indefinitely or until rebound with “goi” or “cei”. Bound variable pro-sumti and pro-bridi also generally last until re-bound ”

“ Certain sumti are ignored by “ri”; specifically, most of the other cmavo of KOhA, and the almost-grammatically-equivalent lerfu words of selma'o BY. It is simpler just to repeat these directly:
6.3) mi prami mi I love me. I love myself. However, the cmavo of the ti-series can be picked up by “ri”, because you might have changed what you are pointing at, so repeating “ti” may not be effective. Likewise, “ri” itself (or rather its antecedent) can be repeated by a later “ri”; in fact, a string of “ri” cmavo with no other intervening sumti always all repeat the same sumti:
6.4) la djan. ”

“ If Example 7.4 is true, then Examples 7.5 through 7.7 must be true also. However, Example 7.3 does not correspond to any sentence with three regular (non-“zi'o”) sumti.
The pro-bridi “co'e” (which by itself constitutes the co'e-series of selma'o GOhA) represents the elliptical selbri. Lojban grammar does not allow the speaker to merely omit a selbri from a bridi, although any or all sumti may be freely omitted. Being vague about a relationship requires the use of “co'e” as a selbri place-holder:
7.8) mi troci le nu mi co'e le vorme I try the event-of my [doing-the-obvious-action] to-the door. ”

“ Finally, the cmavo “zi'o” represents a value which does not even exist. When a bridi fills one of its places with “zi'o”, what is really meant is that the selbri has a place which is irrelevant to the true relationship the speaker wishes to express. For example, the place structure of “zbasu” is
zbasu: actor x1 makes x2 from materials x3 Consider the sentence
Living things are made from cells. ”

“ You don’t like cats. That is untrue. Here “that” does not refer to something that can be pointed to, but to the preceding sentence “You don’t like cats”. In Lojban, therefore, Example 4.1 is rendered:
4.2) do na nelci loi mlatu .i di'u jitfa jufra You (Not!) like the-mass-of cats. The-previous-utterance is-a-false-sentence. Using “ta” instead of “di'u” would cause the listener to look around to see what the speaker of the second sentence was physically pointing to. ”

“ What I am saying (at this moment) is true. 4.5) do'i jetnu jufra Some-utterance is-a-true-sentence. That’s true (where “that” is not necessarily what was just said) . The cmavo of the di'u-series have a meaning that is relative to the context. The referent of “dei” in the current utterance is the same as the referent of “di'u” in the next utterance. The term “utterance” is used rather than “sentence” because the amount of speech or written text referred to by any of these words is vague. Often, a single bridi is intended, but longer utterances may be thus referred to. ”

“ There are ten cmavo in the ko'a-series, and they may be assigned freely to any sumti whatsoever. The English word “he” can refer only to males, “she” only to females (and ships and a few other things) , “it” only to inanimate things, and “they” only to plurals; the cmavo of the ko'a-series have no restrictions at all. Therefore, it is almost impossible to guess from the context what ko'a-series cmavo might refer to if they are just used freely:
5.1) la .alis. klama le zarci .i ko'a blanu Alice goes-to the store. It-1 is-blue. ”

“ A correct Lojban translation of Example 3.1 is
3.2) le vi bloti the here boat the nearby boat using a spatial tense before the selbri “bloti” to express that the boat is near the speaker. (Tenses are explained in full in Chapter 11.) Another correct translation would be:
3.3) ti noi bloti this-thing which-incidentally is-a-boat There are no demonstrative pro-bridi to correspond to the ti-series: you can’t point to a relationship. ”

“ Example 14.2, however, predicates; it is used to make a claim about the identity of “ko'a”, which presumably has been defined previously.
Note: “du” historically is derived from “dunli”, but “dunli” has a third place which “du” lacks: the standard of equality.
lujvo based on pro-sumti There exist rafsi allocated to a few cmavo of selma'o KOhA, but they are rarely used. (See Section 16 for a complete list.) The obvious way to use them is as internal sumti, filling in an appropriate place of the gismu or lujvo to which they are attached ”

“ Thus “donta'a”, meaning “you-talk”, would be interpreted as “tavla be do”, and would have the place structure
15.1) t1 talks to you about subject t3 in language t4 since t2 (the addressee) is already known to be “do”. ”