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4.6 rafsi The y-hyphen is used after a CVC-form rafsi when joining it with the following rafsi could result in an impermissible consonant pair, or when the resulting lujvo could fall apart into two or more words (either cmavo or gismu).

Thus, the tanru pante tavla (“protest talk”) cannot produce the lujvo patta'a, because tt is not a permissible consonant pair; the lujvo must be patyta'a. Similarly, the tanru mudri siclu (“wooden whistle”) cannot form the lujvo mudsiclu; instead, mudysiclu must be used. (Remember that y is not counted in determining whether the first five letters of a brivla contain a consonant cluster: this is why.)

The y-hyphen is also used to attach a 4-letter rafsi, formed by dropping the final vowel of a gismu, to the following rafsi. (This procedure was shown, but not explained, in Example 4.27 (p. 56) to Example 4.31 (p. 57).)

The lujvo forms zunlyjamfu, zunlyjma, zuljamfu, and zuljma are all legitimate and equivalent forms made from the tanru zunle jamfu (“left foot”). Of these, zuljma is the preferred one since it is the shortest; it thus is likely to be the form listed in a Lojban dictionary.

The r-hyphen and its close relative, the n-hyphen, are used in lujvo only after CVV-form rafsi. A hyphen is always required in a two-part lujvo of the form CVV-CVV, since otherwise there would be no consonant cluster.

An r-hyphen or n-hyphen is also required after the CVV-form rafsi of any lujvo of the form CVVCVC/CV or CVV-CCVCV since it would otherwise fall apart into a CVV-form cmavo and a gismu. In any lujvo with more than two parts, a CVV-form rafsi in the initial position must always be followed by a hyphen. If the hyphen were to be omitted, the supposed lujvo could be broken into smaller words without the hyphen: because the CVV-form rafsi would be interpreted as a cmavo, and the remainder of the word as a valid lujvo that is one rafsi shorter.

An n-hyphen is only used in place of an r-hyphen when the following rafsi begins with r. For example, the tanru rokci renro (“rock throw”) cannot be expressed as ro'ire'o (which breaks up into two cmavo), nor can it be ro'irre'o (which has an impermissible double consonant); the n-hyphen is required, and the correct form of the hyphenated lujvo is ro'inre'o. The same lujvo could also be expressed without hyphenation as rokre'o.

There is also a different way of building lujvo, or rather phrases which are grammatically and semantically equivalent to lujvo. You can make a phrase containing any desired words, joining each pair of them with the special cmavo zei. Thus,


 * Example 4.38
 * bridi zei valsi

is the exact equivalent of brivla (but not necessarily the same as the underlying tanru bridi valsi, which could have other meanings.) Using zei is the only way to get a cmavo lacking a rafsi, a cmene, or a fu'ivla into a lujvo:


 * Example 4.39
 * xy. zei kantu
 * X ray


 * Example 4.40
 * kulnr,farsi zei lolgai
 * “Farsi floor-cover”
 * Persian rug


 * Example 4.41
 * na'e zei .a zei na'e zei by. livgyterbilma
 * “non-A, non-B liver-disease”
 * non-A, non-B hepatitis