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:
11.1) 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:
11.2) ta [cu] blari'o That is-blue-green.fu'ivla:
11.3) 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:
11.4) ta [cu] go'i That too/same-as-last selbri. That (is spaghetti), too.