The Complete Lojban Language
(In fact, blaci has none of these short rafsi; they are all assigned to other gismu. Lojban speakers are not free to reassign any of the rafsi; the tables shown here are to help understand how the rafsi were chosen in the first place.)
There are a few restrictions: a CVV-form rafsi without an apostrophe cannot exist unless the vowels make up one of the four diphthongs ai, ei, oi, or au; and a CCV-form rafsi is possible only if the two consonants form a permissible initial consonant pair (see Section 4.1 (p. 49)). Thus mamta, which has the same form as salci, can only have mam, mat, and ma'a as possible rafsi: in fact, only mam is assigned to it.
Some cmavo also have associated rafsi, usually CVC-form. For example, the ten common numerical digits, which are all CV form cmavo, each have a CVC-form rafsi formed by adding a consonant to the cmavo. Most cmavo that have rafsi are ones used in composing tanru.
The term for a lujvo made up solely of short rafsi is “fully reduced lujvo”. Here are some examples of fully reduced lujvo:
- Example 4.32
- cumfri
- from cumki lifri
- “possible experience”
- Example 4.33
- klezba
- from klesi zbasu
- “category make”
- Example 4.34
- kixta'a
- from krixa tavla
- “cry-out talk”
- Example 4.35
- sniju'o
- from sinxa djuno
- “sign know”
In addition, the unreduced forms in Example 4.27 (p. 56) and Example 4.28 (p. 56) may be fully reduced to:
- Example 4.36
- mampa'u
- from mamta patfu
- “mother father” or “maternal grandfather”
- Example 4.37
- lerste
- from lerfu liste
- “letter list” or a “list of letters”
As noted above, CVC-form rafsi cannot appear as the final rafsi in a lujvo, because all lujvo must end with one or two vowels. As a brivla, a lujvo must also contain a consonant cluster within the first five letters – this ensures that they cannot be mistaken for compound cmavo. Of course, all lujvo have at least six letters since they have two or more rafsi, each at least three letters long; hence they cannot be confused with gismu.
When attaching two rafsi together, it may be necessary to insert a hyphen letter. In Lojban, the term “hyphen” always refers to a letter, either the vowel y or one of the consonants r and n. (The letter l can also be a hyphen, but is not used as one in lujvo.)
