9. Rules for inserting pauses

Summarized in one place, here are the rules for inserting pauses between Lojban words:

1)
Any two words may have a pause between them; it is always illegal to pause in the middle of a word, because that breaks up the word into two words.
2)
Every word ending in a consonant must be followed by a pause. Necessarily, all such words are cmene.
3)
Every word beginning with a vowel must be preceded by a pause. Such words are either cmavo, fu'ivla, or cmene; all gismu and lujvo begin with consonants.
4)
Every cmene must be preceded by a pause, unless the immediately preceding word is one of the cmavo ``la'', ``lai'', ``la'i'', or ``doi'' (which is why those strings are forbidden in cmene). However, the situation triggering this rule rarely occurs.
5)
If the last syllable of a word bears the stress, and a brivla follows, the two must be separated by a pause, to prevent confusion with the primary stress of the brivla. In this case, the first word must be either a cmavo or a cmene with unusual stress (which already ends with a pause, of course).
6)
A cmavo of the form ``Cy'' must be followed by a pause unless another ``Cy''-form cmavo follows.
7)
When non-Lojban text is embedded in Lojban, it must be preceded and followed by pauses. (How to embed non-Lojban text is explained in Chapter 19.)