“Vocatives” are words used to address someone directly; they precede and mark a name used in direct address, just as la (and the other members of selma'o LA) mark a name used to refer to someone. The vocatives actually are indicators – in fact, discursives – but the need to tie them to names and other descriptions of listeners requires them to be separated from selma'o UI. But like the cmavo of UI, the members of selma'o COI can be “negated” with nai to get the opposite part of the scale.
Because of the need for redundancy in noisy environments, the Lojban design does not compress the vocatives into a minimum number of scales. Doing so would make a non-redundant nai too often vital to interpretation of a protocol signal, as explained later in this section.
The grammar of vocatives is explained in Section 6.11; but in brief, a vocative may be followed by a name (without la), a description (without le or its relatives), a complete sumti, or nothing at all (if the addressee is obvious from the context). There is an elidable terminator, do'u (of selma'o DOhU) which is almost never required unless no name (or other indication of the addressee) follows the vocative.
Using any vocative except mi'e (explained below) implicitly defines the meaning of the pro-sumti do, as the whole point of vocatives is to specify the listener, or at any rate the desired listener – even if the desired listener isn't listening! We will use the terms “speaker” and “listener” for clarity, although in written Lojban the appropriate terms would be “writer” and “reader”.
In the following list of vocatives, the translations include the symbol X. This represents the name (or identifying description, or whatever) of the listener.
The cmavo doi is the general-purpose vocative. Unlike the cmavo of selma'o COI, explained below, doi can precede a name directly without an intervening pause. It is not considered a scale, and doinai is not grammatical. In general, doi needs no translation in English (we just use names by themselves without any preceding word, although in poetic styles we sometimes say “Oh X”, which is equivalent to doi). One may attach an attitudinal to doi to express various English vocatives. For example, doi .io means “Sir/Madam!”, whereas doi .ionai means “You there!”.
All members of selma'o COI require a pause when used immediately before a name, in order to prevent the name from absorbing the COI word. This is unlike selma'o DOI and LA, which do not require pauses because the syllables of these cmavo are not permitted to be embedded in a Lojban name. When calling out to someone, this is fairly natural, anyway. “Hey! John!” is thus a better translation of ju'i .djan. than “Hey John!”. No pause is needed if the vocative reference is something other than a name, as in the title of the Lojban journal, ju'i lobypli.
(Alternatively, doi can be inserted between the COI cmavo and the name, making a pause unnecessary: coi doi djan.)
coi |
greetings |
“Hello, X”; “Greetings, X”; indicates a greeting to the listener. |
co'o |
partings |
“Good-bye, X”; indicates parting from immediate company by either the speaker or the listener. coico'o means “greeting in passing”. |
ju'i |
[jundi] |
attention |
at ease |
ignore me/us |
“Attention/Lo/Hark/Behold/Hey!/Listen, X”; indicates an important communication that the listener should listen to. |
nu'e |
[nupre] |
promise |
release promise |
non-promise |
“I promise, X”; indicates a promise to the listener. In some contexts, nu'e may be prefixed to an oath or other formal declaration. |
ta'a |
[tavla] |
interruption |
pe'u |
[cpedu] |
request |
ki'e |
[ckire] |
appreciation; gratitude |
disappreciation; ingratitude |
“Thank you, X”; indicates appreciation or gratitude toward the listener. The usual response is je'e, but fi'i is appropriate on rare occasions: see the explanation of fi'i. |
fi'i |
[friti] |
welcome; offering |
unwelcome; inhospitality |
be'e |
[benji] |
request to send |
re'i |
[bredi] |
ready to receive |
not ready |
mu'o |
[mulno] |
completion of utterance |
more to follow |
“Over, X”; indicates that the speaker has completed the current utterance and is ready to hear a response from the listener. The negative form signals that the pause or non-linguistic sound which follows does not represent the end of the current utterance: more colloquially, “I'm not done talking!” |
je'e |
[jimpe] |
successful receipt |
unsuccessful receipt |
vi'o |
will comply |
will not comply |
ke'o |
[krefu] |
please repeat |
no repeat needed |
fe'o |
[fanmo] |
end of communication |
not done |
mi'e |
[cmavo: mi] |
self-identification |
non-identification |
This cmavo is often combined with other members of COI: fe'omi'e would be an appropriate closing at the end of a letter; re'imi'e would be a self-vocative used in delayed responses, as when called to the phone, or possibly in a roll-call. As long as the mi'e comes last, the following name is that of the speaker; if another COI cmavo is last, the following name is that of the listener. It is not possible to name both speaker and listener in a single vocative expression, but this fact is of no importance, because wherever one vocative expression is grammatical, any number of consecutive ones may appear.
The negative form denies an identity which someone else has attributed to you; mi'enai .djan. means that you are saying you are not John.
Many of the vocatives have been listed with translations which are drawn from radio use: “roger”, “wilco”, “over and out”. This form of translation does not mean that Lojban is a language of CB enthusiasts, but rather that in most natural languages these forms are so well handled by the context that only in specific domains (like speaking on the radio) do they need special words. In Lojban, dependence on the context can be dangerous, as speaker and listener may not share the right context, and so the vocatives provide a formal protocol for use when it is appropriate. Other appropriate contexts include computer communications and parliamentary procedure: in the latter context, the protocol question ta'apei would mean “Will the speaker yield?”