Is a matter of attitude
April 17, 2010
All I’ve shown you of Lojban is mainly logic: predictes, assertions… But we are not always in the mood of thinking that logical; that’s where the attitudinals enter the game.
In previous posts, I’ve talked about some kinds of words, like brivla and cmene; now is the time to talk about the other big group: cmavo. I’ve already used them; lo, le, mi… and they act as structure words. They do not need to have a particular meaning, though they modify what they have around. They can be recognized easely because (extracted from What is Lojban?):
- may be a single syllable
- never contain a consonant cluster of any type, whether or not y is counted
- end in a vowel
- need not be penultimately stressed, though they often are if they have more than one syllable
All cmavo display one of the following letter patterns, where C stands for a consonant, and V stands for a vowel:
- V
- VV
- V’V
- CV
- CVV
- CV’V
A small group of cmavo are used to represent what we feel, in general, and in particular with what we say. This are called attitudinals (cnivla in lojban), and are can be found here. For example:
- .a’a: attentive.
- .ui: happy.
- .ue: surprise. :O
- .u’i: ammusement.
And many more…
I can use it alone, and they’ll describe how I’m feeling. For example, if I say just “.ui“, I’m happy
They are also useful combined with a bridi. If they are before the whole bridi, they’ll describe how you feel about the whole predicate. If I say:
.ui do klama
means that you’re coming (or going, or came, or going to come, or… well, you understand) and I’m happy about it.
If I put the attitudinal in the middle of a bridi, they modified the word (or valsi, in lojban) inmediatly before it. So, in the sentence:
do .ui klama
You’re coming, and I’m happy that YOU (and no other) are coming.
Combined with this attitudinals, we can use some attachments that can modify what the attitudinal means. For example, nai. This cmavo turns the last attitudinal into its opposite meaning. For example .uinai is the opposite of happiness, or sadness. 
This emoticons are not there just for fun; one interesting way of learning the attitudinals is to start replacing everyday emoticons, for this new words. They claim that this attitudinals are really powerfull… so I’m going to try it and see if it’s true.
In fact, there is a page for Cniglic, that’s is a subset of Lojban. People there comment about some stuff (in English), and with attitudinals, write what they feel. You can visit here.
