NOTE: Draft version

This is a work in progress.

Selma'o to be covered: FAhO NIhO I MAI TUhE TUhU ZOhU

FAhO

fa'o

NIhO

ni'o no'i

I

i

MAI

mai mo'o

TUhE

tu'e

TUhU

tu'u

ZOhU

zo'u

I think i is the only cmavo in I, but cmavo.txt is a bitch to search in. Help wanted.

Prior usage and discussion

fa'o

Evidently intended only for machine input.

ni'o

Seems to be used mostly parallel to paragraph breaks in natural languages. See http://www.lojban.org/, http://www.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9312/msg00394.html, and http://www.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9107/msg00052.html. On IRC, which is indicative of spoken language, this appears to have more of a meaning of changing the subject. Examples: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/lojban/irclog/lojban/2004_06_02-02_21.txt, http://www.digitalkingdom.org/lojban/irclog/lojban/2002_05_12--2002_11_28.txt.

i

Ubiquitous. This is used mostly in front of sentences that are not the first sentence in the text. Sometimes also the first sentence in the text is prefixed with .i.

no'i

Does not appear to have had any usage.

tu'e - tu'u

tu'e - tu'u seems to be used mainly to be used to set off a large block of text and refer to it metalinguisticially. For instance, there is a (very large) mailing list thread called loi preti be fi lo nincli zo'u tu'e. Also lots of poetry are prefixed with titles that uses di'e to refer to the body of the poem, set of with tu'e.

• Confusion as to the fact that tu'e clauses don't fit into relative clauses

zo'e

Marks the end of a prenex. A prenex can have one or more terms, which may constrain the instantiation of logical variables in the main sentence. Prenexes are also used as a topic field.

Text structure cmavo

MAI is postfix, this was probably decided to make it analogous to mei, moi, roi, and re'u. However, this serves to make the grammar of Lojban non-LALR(1), because the parser may have to look through an arbitrarily large numeral string to decvide that it actually belongs in a free modifier. This should not be a problem if Robin's PEG parser is made official. If Robin's PEG parser is not made official, however, extensive pre-processing will be required.

fa'o

Marks the end of input to be parsed.

i

Starts a new sentence.

mai

Enumerates a point in the text. Combines with the preceding numeral to make a free modifier.

mai

Enumerates a higher-level section in the text. Combines with the preceding numeral to make a free modifier.

ni'o

Marks the start of a parapgraph and a change of subject. Multiple "ni'o" in a row means higher-level section breaks.

no'i

Marks the start of a paragraph and change back to the previous subject.

tu'e

Starts a group of sentences. The group acts as a single sentence externally, for purposes such as logical operators.

tu'u

Terminator for tu'e.

zo'u

Marks the end of a prenex. A prenex can consist of one or more terms. This is understood from the YACC grammar. Do I need to define a term here?

Draft keywords

fa'o

The End. parsing ends here. end parsing here.

i

and then.

mai

-stly. -ndly. -thly.

mo'o

-st section. -nd section. -rd section.

ni'o

continuing to the next topic.

no'i

returning to the previous topic.

zo'u

so that. such that.