Answers to exercises

With terminator: I described the number two to two friends. Without terminator: I described the number twenty-two to a friend.

With terminator: 1:30 was the time when I loved, on Friday. (la mumdjed. is the x₃ of tcika) Without terminator: 1:30 was the time when I loved Friday. (la mumdjed. is the x₂ of prami)

With terminator: The man observes the cat. Without terminator: The man observes the cat. (Yep, trick question. For an isolated sentence, the presence or absence of vau seldom makes any difference.)

With terminator: The mother of the infant travels. (Since ku indicates the sumti is over, the selbri can now begin.) Without terminator: The mother of the infant traveller.

With terminator: I request of Claudia that Maria speaks. (Claudia is the x₃ of cpedu, the person to whom a request is made.) Without terminator: I request that Maria speaks to Claudia.

puzaku la juLIET. klama la paris.

puzuku mi tcidu la kaMIL.

puziku la .iVAN. cliva le kumfa

bazi lenu la pi,ER. klama le kumfa kei la .iocikos. cinba la xorxes.

puziku la treisis. badri .i ku'i caku la maik. gleki

mi baze'i gunka

mi bazi gunka

mi puzuze'a gunka

mi caza gunka (That was a tricky one...)

mi cazize'a gunka (You could also argue for mi puzize'a gunka. What's actually being conveyed by I've been working is something we'll be looking at more closely in Lesson 12.)

Where is your house? (Literally "[something] is the house of you at what?")

Bill was sitting here a while ago.

The bird was just flying some distance by me. (Literally "the bird flew a short time ago located next to here at a medium distance." This is not saying anything about the direction in which the bird was flying: FAhA on its own identifies location, not motion.)

Charles Darwin lived near here. (Note that we don't need zu to specify that he lived near here a long time ago: we assume that the person we're talking to knows who Darwin was, and therfore knows that he lived over a century ago. In fact, you could even miss out the pu, but I left it in to avoid confusion — maybe my friend thinks I'm talking about a different person with the same name, or that I'm somehow speaking metaphorically about the spirit of Darwin.)

I will speak in the bar. (As you will have surmised, you don't need to follow FAhA words with cmavo like vi.)

disinterested: no'e cinri

uninterested: na'e cinri (The distinction between disinterested and uninterested in English in slowly dying out — which makes the word a pedant's delight!)

bored: to'e cinri

unborn: na'e jbena (no'e jbena would be someone in a twilight-zone between being born and not being born — perhaps the baby at the moment it emerges from the womb. to'e jbena is the opposite of being born; what that may mean, up to and including crawling back into the womb, or dying, is pretty much up to you. The English expression is actually more like 'not yet born', and we will find out how to say this in a few lessons' time.)

uncover: to'e gairgau (na'e gairgau means simply 'not to cover', and no'e gairgau 'to leave ajar'.)

undead: no'e morsi (na'e morsi is someone alive, not a zombie. But don't worry too much about the phenomenology of the occult; just be comfortable in the knowledge that Lojban allows you to make these distinctions, if you want to.)

non-Lojban: na'e lojbo (na'e is frequently glossed as 'other than'; this example may show you why.)

un-Lojbanic: to'e lojbo (There is often something subjective about how things are opposites to each other; using an expression like this, you may well be asked to explain exactly how something can be the opposite of Lojban.)

plain: no'e melbi (to'e melbi would be 'ugly', of course.)

imaginary: na'e facti (You can quibble about whether it's not more like to'e facti or no'e facti. That's why it's just as well 'imaginary' has its own gismu: xanri.)

A while after Zhang left, Susan is standing in the bar.

Right now, Susan expects that Zhang will soon afterwards see Susan.

Susan sees two cups.

[She sees] one previously full one. [She sees] one currently full one.

(It's amazing what can be tucked away in exercises. Yes, sumti can have tenses in Lojban. There's no reason they can't: though there's an article in front of the gismu in le kabri, that gismu is still a selbri, and so it still expresses a relationship. This means that sumti have all the characteristics of selbri: they have sumti of their own (as we'll see later on); durations; locations; and tenses. This is an important way Lojban is different from many (though not all) natural languages: it has no essential grammatical difference between its 'nouns' and 'verbs'.)

The one full just a little time ago is now empty (aha!) after Zhang drank the beer (pah!).

(There's some mischief with terminators and attitudinals here. Attitudinals apply to the structure that precedes them. If they follow a sumti, they apply to that sumti. If they follow a selbri, they apply to that selbri. If they are at the start of a bridi, on the other hand, they apply to the whole bridi.

Now, .i'enai 'disapproval; Pah!' follows kei, so it applies to the phrase closed off by that kei: that is, lenu la jan. pinxe loi birje kei. But .ua follows vau, so it applies to the whole phrase closed off by vau: namely, the entire bridi, le puzi culno ca kunti ba lenu la jan. pinxe loi birje.)

Drinking German beer is not liked by all people. (The terminators are the normal implied terminators for that particular structure. Of course, it's much easier to say .i lenu pinxe loi dotco birje na se nelci ro lo prenu, without the kei ku; the na acts like cu, to block off the selbri from its preceding sumti.)

Susan briefly talks to the carrier. (See? A better word for waiter already. Notice, too, that you can specify a duration without specifying a tense.)

"Take that away. Give me a new wine bottle."

"It should not be German."

.i puzuku la suzyn. ze'i xabju le la jan. zdani (You can't just say xabju la jan. — you have to fill in the blank of "Zhang's ___.")

.i la suzyn. ca xabju va la jan.

ca lenu la suzyn. klama le zdani kei la suzyn. klama zu'a vizi le barja (We don't really have a way for saying she — as you're probably painfully aware of by now. Take heart — relief is coming in the next lesson!

Note that Susan's route is away from the bar, but not explicitly moving to or from it; so we don't have to indicate motion along with direction. Not that we can right now, anyway.)

.i ca ro la vodjed. la suzyn. klama le barja va le briju

vi le barja la suzyn. penmi le la suzyn. ze'u pendo (Remember, sumti take tenses and durations, too.)

.i la suzyn. zgana lenu le birje cu dotco kei lenu viska le botpi tcita (or: le tcita pe le botpi, or le le botpi ku tcita — you can feel really smug if you came up with that!)

.i la suzyn. zutse to'o le dotco birje