This is a work in progress

Remaining issues:

• the meaning of multiple consecutive ni'o.
• usage survey of no'i.

Prior usage and discussion

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

Described as unconditional end of parsing. Evidently intended only for machine input. Sometimes used in the sense of "the end". Some erroneous uses, such as inside of tu'e — tu'u groups. See 1 I see no reason to legalize this practice, since fe'o is available for this purpose.

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'u

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.

Proposed dictionary entries

fa'o (FAhO)

Marks the end of input to be parsed. Any remaining text is to be disregarded.

i (I)

Starts a new sentence.

mai (MAI)

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

mo'o (MAI)

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

ni'o (NIhO)

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

no'i (NIhO)

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

tu'e (TUhE)

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

tu'u (TUhU)

Ends a text scope. Elidable terminator for tu'e.

zo'u (ZOhU)

Marks the end of a prenex. A prenex can consist of one or more terms.

Proposed 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.

Interaction with other sections

The word fa'o, as defined here, currently contradicts an example described as valid in BPFK Section: Nonce Connectives

Impact

• Requires either preprocessing prior to YACC, or a PEG grammar.