The Complete Lojban Language
- or a two-syllable vowel pair with an apostrophe separating the vowels, one of the following:
a'a a'e a'i a'o a'u e'a e'e e'i e'o e'u i'a i'e i'i i'o i'u o'a o'e o'i o'o o'u u'a u'e u'i u'o u'u - C represents a single Lojban consonant, not including the apostrophe, one of b, c, d, f, g, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, x, or z. Syllabic l, m, n, and r always count as consonants for the purposes of this chapter.
- CC represents two adjacent consonants of type C which constitute one of the 48 permissible initial consonant pairs:
pl pr fl fr bl br vl vr cp cf ct ck cm cn cl cr jb jv jd jg jm sp sf st sk sm sn sl sr zb zv zd zg zm tc tr ts kl kr dj dr dz gl gr ml mr xl xr - C/C represents two adjacent consonants which constitute one of the permissible consonant pairs (not necessarily a permissible initial consonant pair). The permissible consonant pairs are explained in Section 3.6 (p. 38). In brief, any consonant pair is permissible unless it: contains two identical letters, contains both a voiced (excluding r, l, m, n) and an unvoiced consonant, or is one of certain specified forbidden pairs.
- C/CC represents a consonant triple. The first two consonants must constitute a permissible consonant pair; the last two consonants must constitute a permissible initial consonant pair.
Lojban has three basic word classes – parts of speech – in contrast to the eight that are traditional in English. These three classes are called cmavo, brivla, and cmene. Each of these classes has uniquely identifying properties – an arrangement of letters that allows the word to be uniquely and unambiguously recognized as a separate word in a string of Lojban, upon either reading or hearing, and as belonging to a specific word-class.
They are also functionally different: cmavo are the structure words, corresponding to English words like “and”, “if”, “the” and “to”; brivla are the content words, corresponding to English words like “come”, “red”, “doctor”, and “freely”; cmene are proper names, corresponding to English “James”, “Afghanistan”, and “Pope John Paul II”.
4.2 cmavo
The first group of Lojban words discussed in this chapter are the cmavo. They are the structure words that hold the Lojban language together. They often have no semantic meaning in themselves, though they may affect the semantics of brivla to which they are attached. The cmavo include the equivalent of English articles, conjunctions, prepositions, numbers, and punctuation marks. There are over a hundred subcategories of cmavo, known as selma'o, each having a specifically defined grammatical usage. The various selma'o are discussed throughout Chapter 5 (p. 79) to Chapter 19 (p. 447) and summarized in Chapter 20 (p. 467).
Standard cmavo occur in four forms defined by their word structure. Here are some examples of the various forms:
V-form .a .e .i .o .u CV-form ba ce di fo gu VV-form .au .ei .ia o'u u'e CVV-form ki'a pei mi'o coi cu'u
