Lujvo paper part 3 of 4

[Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>]

the influence of English. "-sided" does not mean "side", but something
with sides, {selmla}; "-skinned" does not mean "skin", but someone with
skin, {selskapi}. Because we've got the wrong tertanru (eliding a {se}
that really should be there), any attempt to accomodate the resulting lujvo
place structure into the mold of our desired concept is fitting a square
peg in a round hole. Since they can be so misleading, lujvo with SE rafsi
elided from the tertanru are frowned upon in the jvoste. The two concepts
mentioned appear in the jvoste with more appropriate tertanru: {relselmla}
and {xekselskapi}.

4.3. Eliding KE and KEhE rafsi from lujvo.

People constructing lujvo usually want them to be as short as possible. To
that end, they will discard any affixes they regard as niceties. The first
such affixes to get thrown out are usually {ke} and {ke'e}. We can usually
get away with this, because the interpretation of the veljvo with {ke}
and {ke'e} missing isn't as obvious as that of the original, or because
the distinction isn't really important. For example, in {cladakyxa'i},
the veljvo is {clani ke dakfu xarci}, "long knife-weapon, long dagger". But
it doesn't seem to really matter whether the veljvo is this, or {ke clani
dakfu ke'e xarci}, "long-knife weapon". {zernerkla}, "to sneak in", has
the veljvo {zekri ke nenri klama}; we can guess this is the veljvo intended,
because the alternative, {ke zekri nenri ke'e klama}, "to crime-inside go",
doesn't make much sense.

There are cases, however, where omitting a KE or KEhE rafsi can lead to
misunderstanding, particularly if the lujvo contains a SE or NAhE rafsi.
An example of this is {selxagmaugau}, which was intended to mean "improved":
this would give it the veljvo {se ke xamgu zmadu gasnu}. If we interpret the
lujvo with default tanru bracketing, we come up with {ke ke
se xamgu kei zmadu kei gasnu}, which means "acting ({gasnu}) so that something
is more ({zmadu}) of a beneficiary ({se xamgu})". This looks like meaning
"making someone benefit more from something", and is not at all an implausible
reading of the veljvo. It can describe, for example, what I am doing for
you in building a better oil well for you on your site.

Such misinterpretation is more likely than not in a veljvo starting
with {se ke}, {na'e ke} or {to'e ke}. For that reason, if we want to
modify a lujvo by putting {se}, {na'e} or {to'e} before it, it's better
to leave the result as two words, or insert {ke}, than just stick the
SE/NAhE rafsi on: {se xagmaugau} or {selkemxagmaugau}, but not {selxagmaugau}.

Note that, if the lujvo we want to modify with SE has a seltanru already
starting with a SE rafsi, we can take a shortcut. {gekmau} means "happier
than...", while {selgeimau} means "making people happier than..., more
enjoyable than...". If something is less enjoyable than something else,
we can say it is {se selgeimau}. But we can also say it is {selselgeimau}.
Since two {se} in a row cancel each other ({se se gleki} means the same
as just {gleki}), there would be no good reason to have {selsel-} in
a lujvo. So we can interpret {selsel-} as {selkemsel-}. {terter-},
{velvel-} and {xelxel-} work in the same way. Other SE combinations, however,
like {selter-}, can't work like this, because {se te} does make sense in
a veljvo.

4.4. Eliding NU and KEI rafsi from lujvo.

Eliding {nu} rafsi, as we have seen, is the whole reason why a distinct
"belenu" category of lujvo exists. As we also said earlier, whether the
{nu} is elided or not depends on how confident you are that the veljvo
will be understood. This is why both {zvaju'o} and {nunzvaju'o} are listed
in the jvoste: the latter is an expansion of the former, and is less
ambiguous.

It does, however, introduce a second ambiguity --- whether KEI rafsi should
be elided or not. {nunzvaju'o} is really an abbreviation of {nunzvakezju'o},
but it could also be interpreted as {nu zvaju'o}. The issues are the same
as with the elision of KEhE, considered above. The jvoste contains entries
with both possible interpretations of the veljvo: {nunclapi'e} means
{nu clapi'e}, whereas {nunmrostu} means {nunmro stuzi}. As before, factors
of plausibility and succinctness enter into the equation. It is harder
to point out a default interpretation for such lujvo: the rafsi {nun-}
nests leftwards, while the cmavo {nu} brackets together all brivla to
its right. Disambiguating mechanisms do exist ({nunkem-} versus
{nun-...-kez-...}, and should be used when felt appropriate.


5. Some common lujvo patterns.

Many of the lujvo we have collected are based on a small number of tertanru
or seltanru. These lujvo fall into natural patterns, so it is makes sense
to use these regularities as much as possible, to make their place structures
consistent. In lujvo-making in general, the specific meaning and context of
use of a lujvo may alter its place structure from the patterns we encourage.
These patterns, however, which often correspond to other languages' affixed,
rather than compound, words, are so prevalent that the need for such
subtlety is reduced.

We list the most common such patterns below.

5.0. NU-based lujvo.

Lujvo based on a {nu} rafsi and a gismu need to have regular place structures,
because there are so many lujvo which can be made, and so little information
in the veljvo to help decide the place structure on any other basis. Such
a regular place structure has already been suggested in _ju'i lobypli_
for {nu}, reflecting the veljvo place structure, and can easily be generalised
for all rafsi of grammeme NU:

{nunbroda}: n1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
{dumbroda}: d1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 d2
{jezbroda}: j1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 j2
{kambroda}: k1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
{lizbroda}: l1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 l2
{mufbroda}: m1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
{nilbroda}: n1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 n2
{puvbroda}: p1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 p2
{sizbroda}: s1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 s2
{suvbroda}: s1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 s2
{zazbroda}: z1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5
{zumbroda}: z1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 z2

5.1. {rinka}- and {gasnu}- based lujvo.

These lujvo have a long history in Lojban. They have been an impetus to
lujvo place structure investigation, through their well-defined place
structures as belenu-lujvo, and their similarity to transitivising
and causative affixes in other languages. They are extremely productive,
and help make Lojban more speakable, by simplifying the structural
representation of complex GDS's.

By looking only at the keywords in the gismu lists, Lojban users may be
unaware that English often expresses two distinct concepts with the same
verb, where Lojban must use two different bridi. As discussed above, the
English verb "to sink" has two meanings. The intransitive meaning, as in
"The boat sinks", is that something is lowered. The transitive, as in
"The Biddleonian sunk two ships", is that some agent cause something to
be lowered.

Lojban gismu usually express intransitive concepts. For example, the
related concept of "immersion" is expressed by {jinru} as: entity x1 is
immersed
in liquid x2. The related transitive concept is expressed by the GDS
{tu'a da cu rinka lenu de jinru di}, or {da gasnu lenu de jinru di}. As
we discussed in section 1, it makes more sense to speakers of many
languages to express this transitive concept as a single selbri: {jinryri'a} or
{jinrygau}.

{broda zei rinka} lujvo have the place structure: r1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 r3;
{broda zei gasnu} lujvo have the place structure: g1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5: these
are belenu-lujvo *par excellence*. With the old gismu place structures, {le
rinka} was an agent, and {rinka}-based lujvo were prevalent. When
sumti-raising was
elminated from the place structure of {rinka}, {le rinka} became a cause
rather than a causer. As a result, {gasnu} became the preferred tertanru.
This is because
people prefer to speak of relations between agents ({lei gasnu no'u lei jai
rinka}) and patients ({lei jai se gasnu no'u lei jai se rinka}), rather than
causes ({lei rinka}) and effects ({lei se rinka}).

These lujvo can not only do the equivalent of transitivising an
intransitive, or making an already transitive verb a causative. (Eg. basti: x1
replaces x2 in circumstances x3 -> basygau: x1 (agent) replaces x2 with x3 in
circumstances x4. The transitive/intransitive dichotomy is, of course,
irrelevant in Lojban). They can also affect what we would consider nouns
or adjectives in English. (In Lojban, everything is a predicate, so adjectives,
nouns and verbs are all treated in the same way.) This is consistent with
similar affixes in other languages.

For example, {glare}: x1 is hot by standard x2, can give {glagau},
to heat: x1 (agent) makes x2 hot by standard x3. Or {litki}: x1 is a liquid
of composition x2 under conditions x3, can give {likygau}, to liquefy:
x1 (agent) causes x2 to be a liquid of composition x3 under conditions x4.
(This particular case is problematic: x2 seems redundant, and this may
indicate that {gasnu} is the wrong tertanru. {galfi} is a more appropriate
tertanru in some such cases.)

Note that, particularly with {gasnu}, the seltanru need not
be in a {belenu} relation with the tertanru. It may specify
the manner of the tertanru instead. {kalsygau}, for example, may not
mean "to make somethic chaotic (to mess something up)"; it may simply
mean "to act chaotic, to do something chaotically". In such cases,
the lujvo-maker may have to augment the lujvo
to disambiguate it. Such disambiguation could be left to a dictionary entry,
without augmenting the lujvo, but that seems an excessive complication.

5.2. {zmadu}- and {mleca}- lujvo.

5.2.1. {zmadu} and {mleca} as tertanru.

These lujvo also mirror a frequent construct in languages: comparatives.
They express the concept of exceeding, in a way more familiar to
speakers of other languages than the corresponding GDS. Compare:

I am six years younger than you.
{.i mi citmau do lo nanca be li xa}
{.i mi zmadu do leni da citno kei lo nanca be li xa}

The {da} in the {leni citno} phrase corresponds to a bound variable in
a lambda expression; it is substituted
in turn by {mi} and {do}. Its place is not included in the place structure
of the corresponding lujvo.

These lujvo are also extremely productive, {zmadu} much more so than {mleca}.
They are used much more frequently than {zmadu} and {mleca} themselves as
selbri. Type ambiguity in such lujvo (ie. the seltanru having a relation other
than {belenu} with the tertanru) is unlikely. But there is another type of
ambiguity relevant to these lujvo. Consider {nelcymau}:
does it mean "X likes Y more than s/he does Z", or "X likes Y more than Z
does"? Or: does {klamau} mean: "X goes to Y more than to Z", "X goes to Y
more than Z does", "X goes to Y from Z more than from W", or what?

We answer this by putting regularity above any considerations of concept
usefulness. A {klamau} is a kind of {zmadu}; it relates two things, one
greater than the other. The only clue about what these things are, and
how they are related, is the seltanru. The seltanru is {klama}, so, if we
assume no SE has been elided, this is either a be-lujvo ({le zmadu be le
klama}), a je-lujvo ({le zmadu noi klama}), or a belenu-lujvo ({le zmadu
befi lenu klama}, where the x1 of {klama} and {zmadu} would typically be
the same, as happens most often with nested abstract sumti).

In all cases,
it makes the most sense to interpret {klamau} as: "X is a goer, and exceeds
Y in being a goer, by quantity Z". This brings lujvo like {klamau} in line
with lujvo like {citmau}, which we have no problem in interpreting as: "X
is young, and exceeds Y in being young, by quantity Z". This is precisely
the place structure we have given {citmau}.

Thus, a {broda zei zmadu} lujvo has the place
structure: z1=b1 z2=b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 z4, and a {mleca zei zmadu} lujvo has the
place structure: m1=b1 m2=b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 m4. (But see Section 2.2.1 for an
instance where not all the seltanru places can go into the final lujvo.) This
makes comparatives based
on what we consider adjectives have the right meaning: {tsamau} means
"stronger", {ninmau} means "newer", and so forth. Since Lojban has no
verb/adjective distinction, making a different rule for seltanru that are
adjectives in English (like {citno}) and seltanru that are verbs in English
(like {klama}) doesn't make much sense. So we apply this place structure
to {klamau} in the same way as we do to {citmau}.

The place structure we have given is that of a {belenu}-lujvo, as the GDS
above shows. Unfortunately, it displaces the {ve zmadu} place by an indefinite
number of places, different for each lujvo. This may eventually
justify jumbling the places, treating this as a je-lujvo, and
placing z4 *before* the seltanru places. For now, we have
left the place structure in {belenu}-arrangement.

5.2.2. {zmadu} and {mleca} as seltanru.

So we use a lujvo with a {zmadu} tertanru, to say that {xy. noi ke'a broda
cu zmadu .y'y lenu da broda}. If we want to express different concepts
involving "more" (one of the most difficult words to translate
into Lojban's propositional logic), it is easiest to use {zmadu} as a
seltanru.

To illustrate: {nelcymau} ends up having the meaning "X likes Y more than
Z does" ("X exceeds Y in being a liker of Z"). If we want to express the
concept "prefer" ("X likes Y more than he does Z"), we should pause to
check what exceeds what. X is not being greater than anything in this
sentence, so it makes little sense to
make X the x1 of a lujvo with a {zmadu} tertanru. A tanru like {nelci
zmadu} specifies that its x1 is a kind of exceeder ({le zmadu}), but that
is not an accurate description of X. It is Y, as it turns out, which is
greater than Z in being liked by X. So Y is the {zmadu} in the sentence,
and we express "X likes Y more than Z" with the lujvo {selnelcymau} ({se nelci
zmadu}): {.y'y selnelcymau zy. xy.} ("Y is liked by X more than Z is; Y
exceeds Z in how much it is liked by X".)

But this place order isn't quite what we want: we think of "preferring" as
something people do, not as a property of things to which people are
ancillary. This means the preferrer should be x1 in the place structure. But
if we make {zmadu} the seltanru, we will have the lujvo {zmanei}, which
fulfils our requirements. A preferrer is a kind of {nelci}, so it fits
naturally into x1; the preferred
thing is a kind of {zmadu}, as well as a {se nelci}, so it fits into x2;
and the seltanru indicates that some kind of
exceeding is going on, but is vague as to which places are involved.

So the
whole concept comes out nicely as a be-lujvo: {le nelci cu zmanei le se nelci
poi zmadu le se zmadu lenu le nelci cu nelci da ku'o le se zmadu} ("The liker
more-likes the liked thing, which exceeds the lesser thing in being liked
by the liker, than the lesser thing.") Or, taking away the verbiage: "X
prefers Y to Z (Y is something more than Z)".

5.3. {zenba}- and {jdika}-based lujvo.

There are some concepts in which the {se zmadu} is somewhat hard to
specify. Typically, these involve comparisons to a former self, and are
the shadowy parts of "more" which Lojban has to struggle with. We really
can't translate "I'm going to 78th Street more nowadays" into something with
a {zmadu} selbri: {zmadu} selbri require a {se zmadu}, and it's
not clear what we would put in. {mi pe pu ku}, perhaps, but that looks
very klunky. And if we leave the {se zmadu} place blank, we end up implying
something the English original doesn't: that I go to 78th Street more than
someone else does --- an entirely different concept.

In such cases, it is best not to leave any comparisons like
{zmadu} hanging, but use {zenba} instead (and {jdika} for {mleca}). {zenba}
was included in the language precisely to catch those types of increases
which {zmadu} can't quite cope with: we know what {le zenba} is being
compared to, even if we can't express it elegantly; and we don't have to
waste a space in lujvo or tanru on what we'd never fill in with a value
anyway. So, while {mi ca zmadu fi lenu mi klama la 78moi klaji} means
something like "I'm going to 78th Street more than X does", {mi ca zenba lenu
mi klama la 78moi klaji} means just what "I'm going to 78th Street more
nowadays" does. Accordingly, {klaze'a} would mean exactly the same
thing. The phrase "I'm stronger now" would be translated, not as {mi ca
tsamau}, which implies that I'm stronger than somebody else, but {mi ca
tsaze'a}.

The place structure of {broda zei zenba} lujvo is: b1=z1 b2 b3 b4 b5 z3;
for {broda zei jdika}, it is: b1=j1 b2 b3 b4 b5 j3. These are belenu-lujvo,
and the same issues concern their use as with {zmadu}- and {mleca}-based
lujvo.

5.4. {traji}-based lujvo.

Just like {zmadu}-based lujvo are used to convey comparatives, {traji}-
based lujvo are used to convey superlatives. Thus {xagrai} is
taken to mean "best". Since the place structure of {xagmau} is x1 z2 x2 x3
z4, we would expect the place structure of {xagrai} to somehow mirror that:
x1 is the best of all x2 as far as x3 is concerned, in quality x4. (The place
in {traji} for property is made redundant by the seltanru, and the place for
the extreme of {traji} (the most, or the least) is presumed to be "the most".

But the place structure of {traji} is not parallel
to that of {zmadu}. The set against which x1 is compared is not x2 (which
would make it parallel to {zmadu}), but x4. This decision has been
reaffirmed by the gismu list editors, who argue that {traji is}
semantically closer to {mutce} than to {zmadu}. This makes the resulting
lujvo place structure counterintuitive.

The place structure given above is: x1 t4 x2 x3. {belenu}-place ordering,
which has the remaining places of {xamgu} *replace* place t2, calls for the
place structure x1 x2 x3 t4. This has the same disadvantage
as {le ve zmadu} in {zmadu}-based lujvo, only compounded. t4 is intuitively
the most important place of such a lujvo, after x1; we think of the seltanru
places as less important. For that reason, we want to put t4 second in the
place structure, translating phrases like "Thou art happiest of all
women" as {do .iore'e gekrai le'i ro ninmu}.

Instead, not only are we forced
by belenu-ordering to put t4 after relatively unimportant places; t4 also
ends up occuring in different places for
different lujvo, depending on the place structure of the veljvo seltanru.
Thus "Conan is the strongest of all barbarians" ends up translating as
{la konan. cu tsarai fi ro cilcyre'a}, while "Judy is the youngest of
all Lojbanists" translates as {la djudis. cu citrai ro lobypli}, and
"Einstein was the greatest of all scientists" as {la ajnctain. cu balrai
fo ro skegunka}. This is obviously unsatisfactory.

What can be done about this is unclear. One option (consistent with Jim
Carter's philosophy on lujvo) is to change the gismu place structure to
match our lujvo; but this is unlikely, and inconsistent with current
thinking on how gismu place structures should be decided. Another is
to change the tertanru --- but it is not clear which other tertanru will do
the job. A third option (in our view the most sensible) is to flex the
principles outlined here, and allow t4 to take the position in the place
structure we want it to: to allow x1 t4 x2 x3. This is in fact how
these place structures appear in the jvoste; but we have done this only
reluctantly.

5.5. PA-based lujvo.

Lujvo containing numerals tend to play havoc with our predictions of lujvo
meaning. This is because numerals are not brivla, to enter into tanru
relations with tertanru; they quantify the tertanru directly. Even
if we presume a cmavo of grammeme MOI making them brivla, the choice
of cmavo is ambiguous. So {pavjbe} is ambiguous, and in fact only appears in
the jvoste as its disambiguated alternatives {pavmemjbe}: ({pamei jbena} ---
"only-begotten") and {pavmomjbe} ({pamoi jbena} --- "first born"). Both
alternatives have been presumed in the jvoste: thus {relselmla}, "two-sided"
({se mlana lo remei}) and {so'ipre}, "crowd" ({so'imei co prenu}) versus
{relpru}, "second-last" ({remoi le'i purci leka jibni le se purci}) and
{cibdei}, "Wednesday" ({cimoi le'i djedi krefu}).

{ro}-based lujvo, in particular, often display eccentric behaviour.
{roldei}, meaning "daily", properly has a place
structure which has little to do with that of {djedi}. Its real
place structure has more to do with its GDS, {ckaji leka se krefu ca ro
djedi}. With {roldei} (and {rolgu'e}, "worldwide",
{rolsliparbi}, "white (of noise, containing all frequencies)", etc.), the
tertanru itself, presumably {ckaji}, is missing.
These lujvo are being constructed to mirror natural language use
of numeric prefixes (bi-, mono-, omni-, all-, etc.). They do not fit
comfortably with a Lojbanic analysis, although this does not automatically
make them invalid: for example, the list accepts {roldei} for daily, but
with the place structure: ckaji1 --- i.e. a {roldei} is a {ckaji}. The lujvo
is analysed as an abbreviation of {djerolmemcabrefkai}.

5.6. {simxu}-based lujvo.

{simxu} occurs in the jvoste as both a tertanru and a seltanru. As far as
we can tell, both cases are equivalent, and correspond to a GDS which makes
{simxu} the tertanru. Thus {simcatra}, "kill each other", corresponds to:
{da ce de simxu lenu da catra de soivo'avo'e di}. This gives the place
structure: s1 = c1&c2, c3. For example, "Mercutio and Tybalt kill each other
with daggers" translates to {.i la merkucos. ce la tibalt. simcatra tu'a loi
dakfu}.

The reason why {simxu} usually occurs as a seltanru, when analysis says it
should be a tertanru, is that natural languages do not treat the
word "reciprocally" as a head, but a modifier. Before condemning this as
muddy thinking, we should remember that, in some ways, the Lojbanic
way of expressing reciprocality in GDS ({.i da ce de simxu lenu brode}) is
counter-intuitive. Predicate analysis finds it easier to
concentrate on {simxu} as the tertanru. But {simxu}, or its natural language
equivalents ("each other", "inter-", reflexives, passives, reciprocal verb
forms etc.) are mere grammatical machinery to our intuitions. Instead, we
concentrate on the seltanru action as the gist of the meaning. While we
can't form an explicit GDS with {catra} as the tertanru, we know intuitively
that {simcatra} is a kind of {catra}. We don't care that it is also a kind
of {simxu}, since {simxu} is a fairly abstract relation. So it isn't
that Lojban is uncovering something natural languages are missing in its GDS
analyses. Rather, it is merely imposing its own sense of
order in an environment that typically runs along quite different rules;
and lujvo place structures do reflect this conflict.

{simxu} is handy in that it can make a 2-way relation into an n-way relation.
For example, {penmi} is something two people do to each other: {la drakulys.
penmi la godzilys.}. But what if we want to say that Dracula, Godzilla
and Frankenstein meet? {la drakulys. penmi la godzilys. e la frankenstain.}
doesn't imply that D. meets the other two together; {la drakulys. penmi la
godzilys. joi la frankenstain.} does, but doesn't imply that G. and F. meet.
But since we can say {la drakulys. ce la godzilys. simpenmi}, there is
no reason we can't say {la drakulys. ce la godzilys. ce la frankenstain.
simpenmi}.

This is a neat way of extending a 2-way relation if the relation
is reciprocal, giving us n-way relations for concepts like {simpencu},
{simtavla}, {simdanre}, {simgle} and so forth. But if the relation
is not reciprocal, {simxu} won't do. An example is {vlina}, "logical
disjunction": {la'elu .abu .a by. li'u vlina .abu by.}, "'A or B' is
the disjunction of A and B". But suppose we make 'OR' an operator taking
not two arguments, but as many as we like. How can we describe OR(a,b,c)?

We might say {ma'o tau .abu .abu ge'a by. cy. vlina .abu by. cy.}; but
adding in places to gismu at will is risky, and probably won't work for
most such gismu. The best solution we can come up with is using {selkampu}
as a tertanru somehow: maybe {.abu ce by. ce cy. vlinyselkampu ma'o tau
.abu .abu ge'a by. cy.}, "A, B and C have in common the disjunction
OR(a,b,c)".

5.7. {mintu}-based lujvo.

As with {simxu}, {mintu} occurs as both seltanru and tertanru in
lujvo; as with {simxu}, both cases seem to mean the same thing, with a GDS
where {mintu} is the tertanru. Thus {mitmo'a}, "having the same
pattern as", is analysed as equivalent to {selmo'ami'u}: the first two
places in the place structure are {le mintu} and {le se mintu}, both of which
turn out to be {se morna}. The entire place structure is: mi1=mo2 mi2=mo2 mo1
mo3. The place mi3, the way in which the two entities are similar, is presumed
to be implicitly the sharing of the pattern. (Note that {mitmo'a} is another
example of SE elision in tertanru; for that reason, we would recommend
using {mitselmo'a} instead.)

{vlami'u}, "synonym", has a more
straightforward analysis: v1=m1 v1=m2 m3. The {te mintu} is left in because
two words can be "the same" in a number of ways: pronunciation, semantics
(exactly or approximately so), spelling, etc. We have left out places v2 and
v3 (the meaning and language of the words) as information that properly belongs
in m3: if the English words "horse" and "steed" are synonyms, part of their
{te mintu} is that they mean the same thing in English. On the other hand,
the English word "curve" and the Lojban word {curve} are also {vlami'u}, but
their {te mintu} is that they are spelt the same. It would make no sense to
have a language or a meaning as part of the place structure of {vlami'u},
since {curve} and "curve" have neither in common.

{mintu}-based lujvo are productive in constructing expressions equivalent
to those in English using the prefix "con-", or "fellow-". For example:
"Mahler was a contemporary of Klimt" can be translated as {la maler. cedrymi'u
la klimt.}; "Zamenhof appealed to his coreligionists" (or in more modern
parlance, "fellow Jews") as {la ZAmenxof. cpedu tu'a lei seljdami'u be ri};
"My fellow Lojbanists!" as {doi jbomi'u be mi}.

Incidentally, there is a
contrast between {seljdami'u} and {cedrymi'u}: Zamenhof was a {seljda}, but
Mahler was not a {cedra}. Mahler and Klimt are in fact {simymi'u ba'e
tu'a le cedra}. It can be argued that {cedrymi'u} is an abbreviation for
{cedrycabzasmi'u}. Such abbreviations are frequent in lujvo-making.
We also shouldn't be surprised to see SE elision from the seltanru of
such lujvo, like {jdami'u} ("same in religion") for {seljdami'u},
and {lazmi'u}, "person in the same family as, a relative of", for the more
fully descriptive {selylazmi'u}.

5.8. {cmalu}- and {barda}-based lujvo.

These correspond to augmentatives and diminutives when {cmalu} or
{barda} are the seltanru, and are treated as je-lujvo: {cmalu zei broda}
has place structure c1=b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 [c2] c3. Sometimes c2, the way in
which {le broda} is small (or big), is obvious, and can be left out. Thus
{cmalalxu}, "small lake", has place structure: l1 l2 c3; it is obvious the
lake will be small in area. Were it small in, say, depth, a different lujvo
would be used. Similarly, {barda zei broda} has place structure ba1=br1 br2
br3 br4 br5 [ba2] ba3.

5.9. {stuzi}- and {zdani}-based lujvo.

When {stuzi} is the teltanru, these are either be-lujvo or belenu-lujvo; in
either case, the place structure of {broda zei stuzi} is s1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5.
Thus {depstu}, "waiting-place" (eg. bus-stop) has the place structure:
s1 d1 d2 d3. The same holds for {zdani}: eg. {ckuzda}, "library": z1 z2=c1.
This kind of lujvo place structure can be
extended to analogous gismu, even when their place structure doesn't
immediately support it. An example is {kumfa} in lujvo like {jupku'a},
"kitchen": there is no place in {kumfa} corresponding to {se zdani} or
{se stuzi}.

5.10. {carmi}- and {milxe}-based lujvo.

*******************************************************************************
 A freshman once observed to me:         Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz.
 On the edge of the Rubicon,             nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 men don't go fishing.                   CogSci and CompSci & wannabe Linguist.
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