sumti

Noun

sumti (plural sumti)

1. (Lojban) an argument passed to a selbri (“predicate”)
   • Focusing on artificial languages and Lojban in particular. News, state of the language, tutorials, poetry, cleft place structures, and sumti-raising with other long debates on how to construct a sentence in Lojban.1993, M. Gunderloy, Factsheet Five - Issues 49-53, page 43
   • Names may also be used as sumti provided they are preceded with the word "la".1997, JW Cowan, The complete Lojban language, page 13
2. (Lojban) a parameter ("place") in a selbri (“predicate”)'s "place structure", which can be filled with an argument (sumti (“argument”) in the above sense)
   • The simplest kind of selbri consists of a single root word, called a "gismu", and the definition in a dictionary gives the place structure explicitly. The primary task of constructing a Lojban sentence, after choosing the relationship itself, is decideing what you will use to fill in the sumti...1997, JW Cowan, The complete Lojban language, page 12
   • In counting sumtifor voá series anaphora, you are concerned only with the sumti (and not modal/tense operators) of the main bridi of an utterance, as they are formally defined.2002 March 3, Nick Nicholas, “Folk Functionalism in Artificial Languages: The Long Distance Reflexive vo á in Lojban”, in Journal of Universal Language, page 153