18. Lojban grammatical terms

Here is a review of the Lojban grammatical terms used in this chapter, plus some others used throughout this book. Only terms that are themselves Lojban words are included: there are of course many expressions like “indicator” in Chapter 16 that are not explained here. See the Index for further help with these.

bridi:

predication; the basic unit of Lojban expression; the main kind of Lojban sentence; a claim that some objects stand in some relationship, or that some single object has some property.

sumti:

argument; words identifying something which stands in a specified relationship to something else, or which has a specified property. See Chapter 6.

selbri:

logical predicate; the core of a bridi; the word or words specifying the relationship between the objects referred to by the sumti. See Chapter 5.

cmavo:

one of the Lojban parts of speech; a short word; a structural word; a word used for its grammatical function.

brivla:

one of the Lojban parts of speech; a content word; a predicate word; can function as a selbri; is a gismu, a lujvo, or a fu'ivla. See Chapter 4.

gismu:

a root word; a kind of brivla; has associated rafsi. See Chapter 4.

lujvo:

a compound word; a kind of brivla; may or may not appear in a dictionary; does not have associated rafsi. See Chapter 4 and Chapter 12.

fu'ivla:

a borrowed word; a kind of brivla; may or may not appear in a dictionary; copied in a modified form from some non-Lojban language; usually refers to some aspect of culture or the natural world; does not have associated rafsi. See Chapter 4.

rafsi:

a word fragment; one or more is associated with each gismu; can be assembled according to rules in order to make lujvo; not a valid word by itself. See Chapter 4.

tanru:

a group of two or more brivla, possibly with associated cmavo, that form a selbri; always divisible into two parts, with the first part modifying the meaning of the second part (which is taken to be basic). See Chapter 5.

selma'o:

a group of cmavo that have the same grammatical use (can appear interchangeably in sentences, as far as the grammar is concerned) but differ in meaning or other usage. See Chapter 20.