The Complete Lojban Language
expects the listener will also know about). Similarly, the speaker has a particular blue-green thing in mind, which is described using le to mark blari'o, a selbri whose first sumti is something blue-green.
It is safe to omit both occurrences of ku in Example 2.45 (p. 23), and it is also safe to omit the cu.
2.11 Examples of brivla
The simplest form of selbri is an individual word. A word which may by itself express a selbri relation is called a brivla. The three types of brivla are gismu (root words), lujvo (compounds), and fu'ivla (borrowings from other languages). All have identical grammatical uses. So far, most of our selbri have been gismu or tanru built from gismu.
gismu:
- Example 2.46
| mi | [cu] | klama | ti | zo'e | zo'e | ta |
| Go-er | - | goes | destination | origin | route | means. |
- I go here (to this) using that means (from somewhere via some route).
lujvo:
- Example 2.47
| ta | [cu] | blari'o |
| That | - | is-blue-green. |
fu'ivla:
- Example 2.48
| ti | [cu] | djarspageti |
| This | - | is-spaghetti. |
Some cmavo may also serve as selbri, acting as variables that stand for another selbri. The most commonly used of these is go'i, which represents the main bridi of the previous Lojban sentence, with any new sumti or other sentence features being expressed replacing the previously expressed ones. Thus, in this context:
- Example 2.49
| ta | [cu] | go'i |
| That | - | too/same-as-last selbri. |
- That (is spaghetti), too.
2.12 The sumti di'u and la'e di'u
In English, I might say “The dog is beautiful”, and you might reply “This pleases me.” How do you know what “this” refers to? Lojban uses different expressions to convey the possible meanings of the English:
- Example 2.50
| le gerku | [ku] | cu | melbi |
- The dog is beautiful.
The following three sentences all might translate as “This pleases me.”
- Example 2.51
| ti | [cu] | pluka | mi |
- This (the dog) pleases me.
- Example 2.52
| di'u | [cu] | pluka | mi |
- This (the last sentence) pleases me (perhaps because it is grammatical or sounds nice).
