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Putting It All Together: Notes on the Structure of Lojban Texts
The Lojban Reference Grammar |
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The following cmavo are discussed in this section:
ni'o NIhO new topic
no'i NIhO old topic
da'o DAhO cancel cmavo assignments
The paragraph is a concept used in writing systems for two purposes: to indicate changes of topic, and to break up the hard-to-read appearance of large blocks of text on the page. The former function is represented in both spoken and written Lojban by the cmavo ``ni'o'' and ``no'i'', both of selma'o NIhO. Of these two, ``ni'o'' is the more common. By convention, written Lojban is broken into paragraphs just before any ``ni'o'' or ``no'i'', but a very long passage on a single topic might be paragraphed before an ``.i''. On the other hand, it is conventional in English to start a new paragraph in dialogue when a new speaker starts, but this convention is not commonly observed in Lojban dialogues. Of course, none of these conventions affect meaning in any way.
A ``ni'o'' can take the place of an ``.i'' as a sentence separator, and in addition signals a new topic or paragraph. Grammatically, any number of ``ni'o'' cmavo can appear consecutively and are equivalent to a single one; semantically, a greater number of ``ni'o'' cmavo indicates a larger-scale change of topic. This feature allows complexly structured text, with topics, subtopics, and sub-subtopics, to be represented clearly and unambiguously in both spoken and written Lojban. However, some conventional differences do exist between ``ni'o'' in writing and in conversation.
In written text, a single ``ni'o'' is a mere discursive indicator of a new subject, whereas ``ni'oni'o'' marks a change in the context. In this situation, ``ni'oni'o'' implicitly cancels the definitions of all pro-sumti of selma'o KOhA as well as pro-bridi of selma'o GOhA. (Explicit cancelling is expressed by the cmavo ``da'o'' of selma'o DAhO, which has the free grammar of an indicator -- it can appear almost anywhere.) The use of ``ni'oni'o'' does not affect indicators (of selma'o UI) or tense references, but ``ni'oni'oni'o'', indicating a drastic change of topic, would serve to reset both indicators and tenses. (See Section 8 for a discussion of indicator scope.)
In spoken text, which is inherently less structured, these levels are reduced by one, with ``ni'o'' indicating a change in context sufficient to cancel pro-sumti and pro-bridi assignment. On the other hand, in a book, or in stories within stories such as ``The Arabian Nights'', further levels may be expressed by extending the ``ni'o'' string as needed. Normally, a written text will begin with the number of ``ni'o'' cmavo needed to signal the largest scale division which the text contains. ``ni'o'' strings may be subscripted to label each context of discourse: see Section 6.
``no'i'' is similar in effect to ``ni'o'', but indicates the resumption of a previous topic. In speech, it is analogous to (but much shorter than) such English discursive phrases as ``But getting back to the point ... ''. By default, the topic resumed is that in effect before the last ``ni'o''. When subtopics are nested within topics, then ``no'i'' would resume the previous subtopic and ``no'ino'i'' the previous topic. Note that ``no'i'' also resumes tense and pro-sumti assignments dropped at the previous ``ni'o''.
If a ``ni'o'' is subscripted, then a ``no'i'' with the same subscript is assumed to be a continuation of it. A ``no'i'' may also have a negative subscript, which would specify counting backwards a number of paragraphs and resuming the topic found thereby.
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Previous
Sentences: I |
Putting It All Together: Notes on the Structure of Lojban Texts
The Lojban Reference Grammar |
Next
Topic-comment sentences: ZOhU |