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The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology - The Lojban Reference Grammar
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The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology
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The Lojban Reference Grammar
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<h2>Chapter 4<br />
The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology</h2>
<h3><a id="s1" name="s1">1. Introductory</h3>
<p>Morphology is the part of grammar that deals with the form
of words. Lojban's morphology is fairly simple compared to that
of many languages, because Lojban words don't change form
depending on how they are used. English has only a small number
of such changes compared to languages like Russian, but we do
have changes like ``boys'' as the plural of ``boy'', or
``walked'' as the past-tense form of ``walk''. To make plurals
or past tenses in Lojban, you add separate words to the
sentence that express the number of boys, or the time when the
walking was going on.</p>
<p>However, Lojban does have what is called ``derivational
morphology'': the capability of building new words from old
words. In addition, the form of words tells us something about
their grammatical uses, and sometimes about the means by which
they entered the language. Lojban has very orderly rules for
the formation of words of various types, both the words that
already exist and new words yet to be created by speakers and
writers.</p>
<p>A stream of Lojban sounds can be uniquely broken up into its
component words according to specific rules. These so-called
``morphology rules'' are summarized in this chapter. (However,
a detailed algorithm for breaking sounds into words has not yet
been fully debugged, and so is not presented in this book.)
First, here are some conventions used to talk about groups of
Lojban letters, including vowels and consonants.</p>
<p></p>
<dl>
<dt>1)</dt>
<dd>V represents any single Lojban vowel except ``y''; that
is, it represents ``a'', ``e'', ``i'', ``o'', or ``u''.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>2)</dt>
<dd>VV represents either a diphthong, one of the
following:</dd>
<dt></dt>
<dd>ai ei oi au</dd>
<dt></dt>
<dd>or a two-syllable vowel pair with an apostrophe
separating the vowels, one of the following:</dd>
<dt></dt>
<dd>a'a a'e a'i a'o a'u e'a e'e e'i e'o e'u i'a i'e i'i i'o
i'u o'a o'e o'i o'o o'u u'a u'e u'i u'o u'u</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>3)</dt>
<dd>C represents a single Lojban consonant, not including the
apostrophe, one of ``b'', ``c'', ``d'', ``f'', ``g'', ``j'',
``k'', ``l'', ``m'', ``n'', ``p'', ``r'', ``s'', ``t'',
``v'', ``x'', or ``z''. Syllabic ``l'', ``m'', ``n'', and
``r'' always count as consonants for the purposes of this
chapter.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>4)</dt>
<dd>CC represents two adjacent consonants of type C which
constitute one of the 48 permissible initial consonant
pairs:</dd>
<dt></dt>
<dd>bl br cf ck cl cm cn cp cr ct dj dr dz fl fr gl gr jb jd
jg jm jv kl kr ml mr pl pr sf sk sl sm sn sp sr st tc tr ts
vl vr xl xr zb zd zg zm zv</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>5)</dt>
<dd>C/C represents two adjacent consonants which constitute
one of the permissible consonant pairs (not necessarily a
permissible initial consonant pair). The permissible
consonant pairs are explained in <a href="../c3/s1.html">Chapter
3</a>. In brief, any consonant pair is permissible unless it
contains: two identical letters, both a voiced (excluding
``r'', ``l'', ``m'', ``n'') and and an unvoiced consonant, or
is one of certain specified forbidden pairs.</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>6)</dt>
<dd>C/CC represents a consonant triple. The first two
consonants must constitute a permissible consonant pair; the
last two consonants must constitute a permissible initial
consonant pair.</dd>
</dl>
Lojban has three basic word classes --- parts of speech --- in
contrast to the eight that are traditional in English. These
three classes are called cmavo, brivla, and cmene. Each of
these classes has uniquely identifying properties --- an
arrangement of letters that allows the word to be uniquely and
unambiguously recognized as a separate word in a string of
Lojban, upon either reading or hearing, and as belonging to a
specific word-class.
<p>They are also functionally different: cmavo are the
structure words, corresponding to English words like ``and'',
``if'', ``the'' and ``to''; brivla are the content words,
corresponding to English words like ``come'', ``red'',
``doctor'', and ``freely''; cmene are proper names,
corresponding to English ``James'', ``Afghanistan'', and ``Pope
John Paul II''.</p>
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The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology
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The Lojban Reference Grammar
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