easy to see that these two sumti are not of the same kind: “mi” is a pro-sumti ( the Lojban analogue of a pronoun) referring to the speaker , whereas “le An argument, one of those things that fills the places of simple Lojban sentences like: 1.1) mi klama le zarci I go-to the market In Example 1.1, “mi” and “le zarci” are the sumti. It is easy to see that these two sumti are not of the same kind: “mi” is a pro-sumti (the Lojban analogue of a pronoun) referring to the speaker, whereas “le zarci” is a description which refers to something described as being a market. 2.11) lo remna pu finti le lisri A human being wrote the story. Some human beings wrote the story. Example 2.10 says who the author of the story is: one or more particular human beings that the speaker has in mind. If the topic of conversation is the story, then Example 2.10 identifies the author as someone who can be pointed out or who has been previously mentioned; whereas if the topic is a person, then “le remna” is in effect a shorthand reference to that person. Example 2.11 merely says that the author is human. The elidable terminator for all descriptions is “ku”. It can almost always be omitted with no The difference between “lei” and “loi” is that “lei cinfo” refers to a mass of specific individuals which the speaker calls lions, whereas “loi cinfo” refers to some part of the mass of all those individuals which actually are lions. The restriction to “some part of the mass” allows statements like Example 3.3 to be true even though some lions do not dwell in Africa — they live in various zoos around the world. On the other hand, Example 3.3 doesn’t actually say that most lions live in Africa: equally true is 3.4) loi glipre cu xabju le fi'ortu'a Part-of-the-mass-of-those-which-really are-English-persons dwell in-the African-land. The English dwell in Africa. Another common practice is to use one or more rafsi, arranged to end with a consonant, to form a name: thus the rafsi “loj-” for “logji” (logical) and “ban-” for “bangu” (language) unite to form the name of this language: 12.7) lojban. Lojban When borrowing names from another language which end in a vowel, or when turning a Lojban brivla (all of which end in vowels) into a name, the vowel may be removed or an arbitrary consonant added. It is common (but not required) to use the consonants “s” or “n” when borrowing vowel-final names from English; speakers of other languages may wish to use other consonant endings. The implicit quantifier for name sumti of the form “la” followed by a name is “su'o”, just as for “la” followed by a selbri. Pro-sumti summary [ edit ] The Lojban pro-sumti are the cmavo of selma'o KOhA. They fall into several classes: personal, definable, quantificational, reflexive, back-counting, indefinite, demonstrative, metalinguistic, relative, question. More details are given in Chapter 7 ; this section mostly duplicates information found there, but adds material on the implicit quantifier of each pro-sumti. The following examples illustrate each of the classes. Unless otherwise noted below, the implicit quantification for pro-sumti is “ro” (all). In the case of pro-sumti which refer to other sumti, the “ro” signifies “all of those referred to by the other sumti”: thus it is possible to restrict, but not to extend, the quantification of the other sumti. Personal pro-sumti (“mi”, “do”, “mi'o”, “mi'a”, “ma'a”, “do'o”, “ko”) refer to the speaker or the listener or both, with or without third parties: 13.1) mi prami do I love you. Reflexive pro-sumti (“vo'a”, “vo'e”, “vo'i”, “vo'o”, “vo'u”) refer to the same referents as sumti filling other places in the same bridi, with the effect that the same thing is referred to twice: 13.4) le cribe cu batci vo'a The bear bites what-is-in-the-x1-place. The bear bites itself. Back-counting pro-sumti (“ri”, “ra”, “ru”) refer to the referents of previous sumti counted backwards from the pro-sumti: 13.5) mi klama la frankfurt. ri I go to-Frankfurt from-the-referent-of-the-last-sumti I go from Frankfurt to Frankfurt (by some unstated route). Indefinite pro-sumti (“zo'e”, “zu'i”, “zi'o”) refer to something which is unspecified: 13.6) mi klama la frankfurt. zo'e zo'e zo'e I go to-Frankfurt from-unspecified via-unspecified by-means-unspecified. The implicit quantifier for indefinite pro-sumti is, well, indefinite. It might be “ro” (all) or “su'o” (at least one) or conceivably even “no” (none), though “no” would require a very odd context indeed. Demonstrative pro-sumti (“ti”, “ta”, “tu”) refer to things pointed at by the speaker, or when pointing is not possible, to things near or far from the speaker: 13.7) ko muvgau ti ta tu You [imperative] move this-thing from-that-nearby-place to-that-further-away-place. Move this from there to over there! Metalinguistic pro-sumti (“di'u”, “de'u”, “da'u”, “di'e”, “de'e”, “da'e”, “dei”, “do'i”) refer to spoken or written utterances, either preceding, following, or the same as the current utterance. 13.8) li re su'i re du li vo .i la'e di'u jetnu The-number two plus two equals the-number four. The-referent-of the-previous-utterance is-true. The implicit quantifier for metalinguistic pro-sumti is “su'o” (at least one), because they are considered analogous to “lo” descriptions: they refer to things which really are previous, current, or following utterances. Thus Example 15.1 and Example 15.2 above have the same meaning, the number four, whereas 15.4) me'o vo the-expression four “4” and 15.5) me'o re su'i re the-expression two plus two “2+2” refer to different pieces of text. The implicit quantifier for numbers and mathematical expressions is “su'o”, because these sumti are analogous to “lo” descriptions: they refer to things which actually are numbers or pieces of text. In the case of numbers (with “li”), this is a distinction without a difference, as there is only one number which is 4; but there are many texts “4”, as many as there are documents in which that numeral appears.