Lojban Wave Lessons/24

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Lojban Wave Lessons: Foreword | ← Lesson 23 | Lesson 24 | Lesson 25 →

Lesson 24: brika'i/pro-bridi and ko'a

If I say that I'm called Mikhail, zo .mikail. cmene mi, and you have to say the exact same bridi, what would that be? One of the many answers is do se cmene zo .mikail.. For the bridi to be the same, you have to replace mi with do, and it doesn't matter which if you say the bridi with the se-converted selbri or not. This is because a bridi is not the words which express it – a bridi is an idea, an abstract proposition. The word mi when I say it and the word do when you do refers to the same sumti, so the two bridi are identical.

This lesson is on brika'i, the bridi equivalent of sumka'i. They are word which represent entire bridi. Here it is important to remember that a bridi consists only of sumti and the things which contain the sumti, selbri and sumtcita. Neither attitudinals, nor the semantic layer of ko or ma are part of the bridi proper, and so these are not represented by a brika'i.

There are much fewer brika'i than there are sumka'i. We will begin by going through some of the words in the most used series, called GOhA:

go'u = Repeats remote past bridi
go'a = Repeats past bridi
go'e = Repeats next-to-last bridi
go'i = Repeats last mentioned bridi
go'o = Repeats future bridi
nei = Repeats current bridi
no'a = Repeats outer bridi

Some of the GOhA-brika'i. Notice the familiar i, a, u-pattern for close in past, medium in past and distant in past.

These are very much like the sumka'i ri, ra and ru. They can only refer to main bridi of jufra, and not those contained in relative phrases or description sumti. The main bridi can contain a relative phrase, of course, but a brika'i can never be used to refer to only the relative phrase.

A GOhA acts grammatically much like a selbri, any construct which can apply to selbri can also apply to these. The place structure of a GOhA is the same as that of the bridi it represents, and the sumti are by default the same as in the bridi it represents. Filling the sumti places of a GOhA explicitly overwrites the sumti of the bridi it represents. Contrast:

A: mi citka lo plise B: go'iI eat an apple. You do. with

A: mi citka lo plise B: mi go'iI eat an apple. I do, too.

These brika'i are very useful when answering a question with xu:

A: xu do nelci le mi speni B: go'i / na go'iDo you like my wife? Yes./No.. The xu, being an attitudinal, is not copied.

When repeating bridi negated by na, that is: Bridi where na is placed in the prenex (lesson twenty-seven), in the beginning of the bridi or right before the selbri, the rules for copying over na are different from what one might expect. Any na is copied over, but any additional na in the brika'i replaces the first na. Let me show you with an example:

A: mi na citka lo plise

B: mi go'i = mi na citka lo plise

C: mi na go'i = mi na citka lo plise

D: mi na na go'i = mi citka lo plise = mi ja'a go'i

nei and no'a are not used much, except for mind-breaking purposes, which is making up bridi which are hard to parse, like dei na se du'u le no'a la'e le nei. Since nei repeats the current outer bridi, however, le nei can be used to refer to the x1 of the current outer bridi, le se nei the x2 and so on.

When using brika'i, one must always be wary of copying sentences with the personal sumka'i like mi, do, ma'a ect, and be careful not to repeat them when they are in the wrong contect, as shown in the two examples with apple eating above. Instead of replacing them one by one, though, the word ra'o anywhere in the bridi updates the personal sumka'i so that they apply for the speaker's perspective:

A: mi do prami B: mi do go'i is equivalent to A: mi do prami B: go'i ra'o

ra'o = Update all personal sumka'i so that they now fit the speaker's point of view.

The only other series of brika'i are very easy to remember:

broda = Bridi variable 1
brode = Bridi variable 2
brodi = Bridi variable 3
brodo = Bridi variable 4
brodu = Bridi variable 5
cei = Define bridi variable (not a brika'i and not in BRODA)

The first five are just five instances of the same word. They can be used as shortcuts to bridi. After saying a bridi, saying cei broda defines that bridi as broda, and broda can then be used as brika'i for that bridi in the following conversation.

While we're at it, there is an analogous series of sumka'i, which probably does not belong in this lesson, but here they are anyway:

ko'a Sumti variable 1 fo'a Sumti variable 6
ko'e Sumti variable 2 fo'e Sumti variable 7
ko'i Sumti variable 3 fo'i Sumti variable 8
ko'o Sumti variable 4 fo'o Sumti variable 9
ko'u Sumti variable 5 fo'u Sumti variable 10

as well as the cei-equivalent for this series:

goi = Define sumti variable

These are used like the brika'i-series. Just place, for instance, goi ko'u after a sumti, and that sumti can be referred to by ko'u.

Strangely, these series are rarely used for their intended purpose. They are, however, used as arbitrary selbri and sumti in example texts, where broda and brode mean "any selbri A" and "any selbri B" and similarly for ko'a and friends:

So, is it true that the truth conditions of ko'a ko'e broda na ku are always the same as na ku ko'a ko'e broda? Nope, it isn't.

Lojban Wave Lessons: Foreword | ← Lesson 23 | Lesson 24 | Lesson 25 →