>>527

Votre anglais est superbe.

I will leave the grouping questions to another time, and probably another person (for I do not entirely feel comfortable with them yet). I presume that you are referring to [zo lu'o] and [zo lu'a]?

Anyway, let's start from the beginning.

le = that or those (left to context for number) which each are desvribed as...by me

If I say "[le gerku]", I am saying "That which I describe as one or more individual dogs". Usually, this refers to something already stated (similar to "A dog walked into the barn. The dog chased the chickens.") It is not always going to be word-for-word accurate with the definition of the word that follows. If I see a person from a distance and say "the woman", and it later turns out to be a man, then I am not really wrong. The person, who is a man, was taken to be a woman by me at first. Really, as long as your definition of the brivla is convoluted enough, [zo le] can be used.

lo = there truely exists some... (treated individually) such that it/they perform/are/do something (the selbri). If it exists, it really is whatever. You could not use [zo lo] instead of [zo le] in the previous example (about the man/woman) because it would be like saying "there exists one or more individual woman such that they are a man/men" wich is nonsense. Of course, if your idea of what really is a woman is large enough, then you can use the word. For example: is a hermaphrodite a woman? A transexual? A transvestite? A castrated man? A homosexual?

Or, what is a bear? A grizzly bear? A polar bear? An extinct relative? A teddy bear? A panda bear? A dog (which is a distant cousin of the modern bear)?

As long as you believe that the thing desired completely, strictly, and always may be accurately described by the brivla, [zo lo] may be used.

Just for measure, [zo la] is "that named by me as...". It completely disassociates the word from any of its meaning and makes it bend to whatever desire I wish it.

[li] = "the number..." There is only one abstract with certain properties, no matter how it is written, said, thought of, or used.

So, from strictest to least strict, they go (put a [zo zo] immediately after every open bracket): [li], [lo], [le], [la].

By the way, [zo lu] begins an extended Lojbanic quote, it is not a gadri (though everything that the quote encompasses may be thought of as a single concept, which may be turned into a sumti (argument, "noun")).

All of the relatives to [zo le] and [zo la] are cmavo. More specifically, they are known as [zo gadri], that is "articles".

[zo mlatu] is a brivla (relation-word). It may be a bridi, selbri, or sumti. See my next post for more details.

What does this "[zo]" mean, by the way? It means that the next word (and only one word) is a Lojbanic quote. Like how you were putting apostrophes around the brackets for only one word.

See my next response for answers to some of your other questions.