This is a brief introduction to Lojban, a constructed human language. It has a very nice, fun, regular grammar that computers and humans alike can understand easily.
All Lojban words are either particles (tiny words that help the grammar) or verbs (which tell us how nouns relate).
A Lojban sentence consists of a main verb with a bunch of nouns plugged into it.
A Lojban verb definition looks like this:
dunda = x1 gives x2 to x3.
The x1, x2, x3 are placeholders for the nouns in this relation. They’re called the places of “dunda”.
(Okay, when I say “noun”, I really mean what grammarians call a “noun phrase”. For the purpose of this document, “you” and “Elizabeth” and “this street” and “the thing I saw at the lake yesterday” are all “nouns”: they describe a thing, and you can put them in a verb place.)
In the Lojban sentence mi dunda ti do, the main verb is dunda, the x1 noun is mi (“me”), the x2 noun is ti (“this”), and the x3 noun is do (“you”). Thus, the sentence means “I give this to you.”
Verbs in Lojban can express states-of-being as well as action. For example, “sfofa” is a verb meaning “x1 is a sofa.” The sentence ti sfofa then means “this is a sofa.”
mi, ti, and do are examples of pronouns, a kind of particle. But we saw that Lojban doesn’t have any non-particle words that are nouns. Yes, its root vocabulary — words like dunda and sfofa — consists entirely of verbs!
Here’s the trick to making nouns: you wrap lo … ku around a verb to turn it into a noun that means “one who (verb)s.” (Actually, the result can be singular or plural, definite or indefinite — it’s totally general.)
lo VERB ku → NOUN
So lo dunda ku is “a giver” (or “the givers” or “givers”, etc.) And lo sfofa ku is “a sofa” (or “the sofas” or “sofas”, etc.)
The sentence mi dunda lo sfofa ku do means “I give a sofa to you.”
In the sentences we’ve seen so far, the x1 goes before the main verb, and the x2 and beyond go after it.
The main verb can actually go anywhere from “between the first two nouns” until “after the final noun”:
mi dunda ti do = I give this to you.
mi ti dunda do = I give this to you.
mi ti do dunda = I give this to you.
But it can’t go in front. This has to do with the mechanism for omitting nouns.
You can leave any amount of places unfilled, starting from the end:
mi dunda ti do = I give this to you.
mi dunda ti = I give this.
mi dunda = I give.
And as a special case, you can leave the x1 place omitted by moving the main verb to the front:
dunda ti do = This is given to you.
dunda ti = This is given.
dunda = Gives. (no participants specified at all!)
To leave a place in the middle of a verb’s definition unspecified, use zo'e, the “unspecified” pronoun:
mi dunda zo'e do = I give to you.
| Word | Definition |
|---|---|
| barda | x1 is big. |
| nelci | x1 likes x2. |
| viska | x1 sees x2. |
| tavla | x1 talks to x2 about x3. |
| klama | x1 goes to x2 from x3. |
| prenu | x1 is a person. |
| mlatu | x1 is a cat. |
| skami | x1 is a computer. |
| pendo | x1 is a friend of x2. |
Try translating these sentences. Remember to use lo … ku to turn verbs into nouns where necessary.
-
I am a person.
-
You like computers.
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The cat is a friend of me.
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I like this.
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You talk about cats.
If you place se in front of a verb, you get a new verb that has the first two places swapped in its definition.
se VERB → VERB’
dunda = x1 gives x2 to x3.
se dunda = x2 gives x1 to x3. In other words, x1 is given, by x2, to x3.
This is Lojban’s equivalent of the “passive voice”. The following sentences are equivalent:
-
mi dunda ti do = ti se dunda mi do.
-
do nelci lo mlatu ku = lo mlatu ku se nelci do.
Ah, we’ve gained a new power now: now we can express not only “giver” (lo dunda ku), but also “gift” (lo se dunda ku)! See how that works? Let it sink in for a while. (lo … ku noun-ifies the first place of the verb inside it, but we’ve moved the second place to where the first place was.)
Similarly, te swaps the third and first places in a definition.
te dunda = x3 gives x2 to x1. In other words: to x1, x2 is given by x3.
So mi te dunda ti do means do dunda ti mi. And lo te dunda ku means “recipient”.