Template:Today's featured article/madjio, 2015

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The cmavo na is always used to negate a bridi, i.e. it is a bridi operator. Other bridi operators include tenses, quantifiers and logical connectives. In general, the order in which a bridi operator is applied to a bridi matters: two operators applied in a given order give a different meaning than when applied in the opposite order. The general rule for Lojban is that an operator has scope over operators that appear later in the sentence, and is within the scope of operators that appeared before it in the sentence. There is however one glaring exception to this rule: the operator na when it appears directly in front of the selbri is traditionally taken to have maximal scope, scoping even over those operators that appeared before it in the sentence. The motivation for this exception has never been very clear. I will argue here that this exception either leads to contradictions or, in order to avoid the contradictions, it requires complicating the rules so much that the exception should be scrapped.

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