| Lojban For Beginners — velcli befi la lojban. bei loi co'a cilre | ||
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| Prev | Chapter 8. Swapping things round: conversion and simple lujvo | Next |
Just as se has the combining form sel, the negative na'e has the combining form nal, and we can use this to make lujvo in exactly the same way.
Note: na has its own rafsi, nar; but na'e is more useful in creating new words. na'e in a selbri still indicates an existing kind of relationship, which you would want to describe with a single lujvo; while na could mean anything, including non-existence — making it too broad a concept for most uses.
For example, jdice means 'decide' and has the short combining form jdi. naljdi therefore means 'not decide' or 'be indecisive'. Some other examples:
We can see that nal is like the English non-, but we need to remember that non- sometimes has other meanings or associations that nal does not have. lo naljvi is simply someone who is not taking part in a competition, not a 'non-contender' in the sense of someone who competes but doesn't stand a chance of winning. Similarly lo nalre'a is someone who is not a member of the species homo sapiens (e.g. a chimpanzee or Klingon), and cannot be applied to someone who is inhumane or perceived as subhuman in some way.
We can also use nal with sel and its relatives; for example,
As you'll have guessed, the companions of na'e, namely to'e and no'e, have rafsi of their own: tol- and nor-, respectively. So 'disinterested', 'uninterested' and 'bored' in Lojban are norselci'i, nalselci'i and tolselci'i.
lujvo can be much more interesting than this; interesting enough, in fact, that we won't be covering them any further here. You can make lujvo out of pretty much any tanru you can devise; this is the main way to introduce 'new words' into Lojban. But to make the lujvo you come up with work, you need some background knowledge:
how to make sure rafsi in a word stick together unambiguously in Lojban grammar (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 4.5–4.6, 4.10–4.12.)
how to make sure the gismu inside your tanru group together properly (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 5.)
how to derive the place structure of the lujvo from the place structures of the gismu that make it up (The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 12.)
| Exercise 3 |
If you have access to a gismu list, use it to look up gismu and make lujvo meaning the following, using short combining forms where possible and nal- where necessary.
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