Lojban question

FFlores wrote:

> >If you know anything about Lojban, I think most of their gismu place
> >structures have an internal SVO word order, that is one word might be
> >defined as "x1 hits x2." Of course, that's probably because the lang
> >was designed by English speakers. :)
Lojban can use either SVO or SOV order.  VSO order is also possible
but requires a marker particle, because (oversimplifying) by default the
first noun-phrase after a V is taken to be O.

In a language that does not normally mark cases, and allows ellipsis
freely, SVO makes sense, because SV and VO and SVO are all unambiguous.

> Is this true? And do you agree with that? I know nothing about
> Lojban except its name, and the word _gismu_, though I don't
> know its meaning either...
It means "root word", "unanalyzable content word".  There are slightly more
than 1400 of them.  Each represents a verb (there are no nouns as
such in Lojban) such as "x1 is black" (xekri), "x1 is a bear of species x2"
(cribe), or "x1 hits x2" (darxi).  Noun phrases are constructed with
particles, so "bear" is represented as either "that-which is-a-bear"
or "what-I-say is-a-bear" ("lo cribe" or "le cribe" respectively).

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