Cmavo

Cmavo are a class of structure words in Lojban that carry little lexical meaning but serve to articulate the grammar of a sentence. They are used to link brivla into bridi, to designate the role of each argument, and to express mood, tense, negation, questions, and other grammatical relations.

They form a closed, well-defined set and include pronouns such as mi (I) and do (you), demonstratives, question particles, connectives, negators, and punctuation-like markers. They can occur before, after, or between content words. Some cmavo function as articles that mark the scope of a noun phrase, while others mark tense, place, or logical structure. A typical Lojban sentence weaves cmavo with brivla to form a bridi; the cmavo help determine how arguments relate within the predicate structure.

Example usage helps illustrate their role. A simple sentence is "mi tavla do," meaning "I speak to you," where the brivla tavla encodes the predicate and mi and do designate the participants. The yes-no question particle xu can be used to turn a statement into a question, as in variations of a sentence with the particle added to indicate inquiry. Although many cmavo look short, they are precise and essential for disambiguation and for shaping the logical and syntactic relations within a sentence.