Chapter 6: To Speak Of Many Things: The Lojban sumti

1. The five kinds of simple sumti

✥1.1  mi klama le zarci
I go-to the market

In ✥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.

There are five kinds of simple sumti provided by Lojban:

(1)

descriptions like “le zarci”, which usually begin with a descriptor (called a “gadri” in Lojban) such as “le”;

(2)

pro-sumti, such as “mi”;

(3)

names, such as “la lojban.”, which usually begin with “la”;

(4)

quotations, which begin with “lu”, “le'u”, “zo”, or “zoi”;

(5)

pure numbers, which usually begin with “li”.

Here are a few examples of each kind of sumti:

✥1.2  e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
Please support Lojban!

✥1.2 exhibits “ko”, a pro-sumti; and “la lojban.”, a name.

✥1.3  mi cusku lu e'osai li'u le tcidu
I express “Please!” to-the reader.

✥1.3 exhibits “mi”, a pro-sumti; “lu e'osai li'u”, a quotation; and “le tcidu”, a description.

✥1.4  ti mitre li ci
This measures-in-meters the-number three.
This is three meters long.

✥1.4 exhibits “ti”, a pro-sumti; and “li ci”, a number.

Most of this chapter is about descriptions, as they have the most complicated syntax and usage. Some attention is also given to names, which are closely interwoven with descriptions. Pro-sumti, numbers, and quotations are described in more detail in Chapter 7, Chapter 18, and Chapter 19 respectively, so this chapter only gives summaries of their forms and uses. See c6-§13 through c6-§15 for these summaries.