History: Lojban and linguistic universals

Source of version: 3 (current)

http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/Korean/Artikel02/ has a list of universals and lists various languages and their types.

1. Lojban doesn't have subject and object, it has sumti in various places of a selbri. More often than not, though, the sumti corresponding to the subject in other languages precedes the one corresponding to the object.

2. Lojban has prepositions (sumtcita precede). The genitive construction (pe/po/ne) can be stated either way, though if the genitive is before the word for the thing possessed, the pe/po/ne distinction is lost..

3. Dominant order is SVO. You can't make a VSO sentence without using {fa}.

4. SOV is not uncommon but not dominant either.

5. See 4.

6. See 3.

7. See 4.

8. Lojban uses a particle, not an intonation.

9. {xu}, when referring to the sentence as a whole, is initial, and Lojban is prepositional.

10. {xu}, when referring to a word, follows that word, and the dominant order is not VSO.

11. Inversion doesn't make questions in Lojban.

12. Neither of those is the dominant order.

13. Object usually follows the verb.

14. This one is iffy;)

15. This construction in Lojban is {tezu'e lonu broda}. It normally follows the main verb, but can precede.

16. Lojban doesn't have inflected auxiliaries and neither of those is dominant.

17. Not the dominant order.

18. Lojban doesn't have adjectives, so I'm taking "descriptive adjective" to mean a seltau, since an adjective+noun construction generally translates as a tanru. The seltau precedes the tertau. The demonstrative and numeral precede.

19. Seltau precede, except in the {co} construction. There are no exceptional seltau.

20. Lojban violates this one. The order is numeral-demonstrative-descriptive, because the descriptive word is a verb, and the demonstrative is a tense marker.

21. Lojban doesn't have adverbs.

22. Lojban uses a word for "surpass" ({zmadu}), often compounded with the "adjective". The construct adjective-marker-standard ({ti noi zdani cu barda semau ta}) is possible but rare, the language is prepositional, and the marker is in fact a preposition.

23. Not clear what Lojban construction corresponds to this.

24. The relative expression follows.

25. Pronominal objects and nominal objects usually follow.

26. Lojban doesn't have discontinuous affixes.

27. This is talking about derivational, not root, affixes. Derivational affixes (tol-, sel-, zaz-, etc.) usually precede. The comparative (-mau) is a suffix, but being the rafsi of a gismu, it's a root morpheme.

28. Lojban doesn't have inflectional affixes.

29. Ditto.

30. Ditto.

31. Lojban doesn't have gender.

32. Lojban verbs don't agree in number.

33. Ditto.

34. Lojban has no trial or dual number.

35. Lojban has no grammatical number, except for 1st and 2nd person pronouns, where it's optional (you can say {mi} for "we", unless you want to indicate whether it's exclusive).

36. See 31.

37. Ditto.

38. Lojban doesn't have case inflections.

39. Ditto.

40. "Adjective" precedes "noun" and neither inflects.

41. Not the dominant order.

42. {mi do ko'a ma'a mi'a mi'o do'o}

43. Lojban has no gender.

44. Ditto.

45. Ditto.
History: Lojban and linguistic universals

Source of version: 3 (current)

Search Lojban Resources
