The Complete Lojban Language
- Example 2.20
| melbi | ||
| unspecified-x1 | is-beautiful | to someone by some standard |
- Beautiful!
It's beautiful!
Omitting the x1 adds emphasis to the selbri relation, which has become first in the sentence. This kind of sentence is termed an observative, because it is often used when someone first observes or takes note of the relationship, and wishes to quickly communicate it to someone else. Commonly understood English observatives include “Smoke!” upon seeing smoke or smelling the odor, or “Car!” to a person crossing the street who might be in danger. Any Lojban selbri can be used as an observative if no sumti appear before the selbri.
The word cu does not occur in an observative; cu is a separator, and there must be a sumti before the selbri that needs to be kept separate for cu to be used. With no sumti preceding the selbri, cu is not permitted. Short words like cu which serve grammatical functions are called cmavo in Lojban.
2.7 Varying the order of sumti
For one reason or another you may want to change the order, placing one particular sumti at the front of the bridi. The cmavo se, when placed before the last word of the selbri, will switch the meanings of the first and second sumti places. So
- Example 2.21
| mi | tavla | do | ti |
- I talk to you about this.
has the same meaning as
- Example 2.22
| do | se tavla | mi | ti |
- You are talked to by me about this.
The cmavo te, when used in the same location, switches the meanings of the first and the third sumti places.
- Example 2.23
| mi | tavla | do | ti |
- I talk to you about this.
has the same meaning as
- Example 2.24
| ti | te tavla | do | mi |
- This is talked about to you by me.
Note that only the first and third sumti have switched places; the second sumti has remained in the second place.
The cmavo ve and xe switch the first and fourth sumti places, and the first and fifth sumti places, respectively. These changes in the order of places are known as “conversions”, and the se, te, ve, and xe cmavo are said to convert the selbri.
More than one of these operators may be used on a given selbri at one time, and in such a case they are evaluated from left to right. However, in practice they are used one at a time, as there are better tools for complex manipulation of the sumti places. See Section 9.4 (p. 185) for details.
The effect is similar to what in English is called the “passive voice”. In Lojban, the converted selbri has a new place structure that is renumbered to reflect the place reversal, thus having effects when such a conversion is used in combination with other constructs such as le selbri [ku] (see Section 2.10 (p. 23)).
