The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

English often uses strong stress on a word to single it out for contrastive emphasis, thus

is quite different from

The heavy stress on “George” (represented in writing by italics) indicates that I saw George rather than someone else. Lojban does not use stress in this way: stress is used only to help separate words (because every brivla is stressed on the penultimate syllable) and in names to match other languages' stress patterns. Note that many other languages do not use stress in this way either; typically word order is rearranged, producing something like

In Lojban, the cmavo ba'e (of selma'o BAhE) precedes a single word which is to be emphasized:

Note the pause before the cmevla djordj. , which serves to separate it unambiguously from the ba'e. Alternatively, the ba'e can be moved to a position before the la , which in effect emphasizes the whole construct la .djordj. :

Marking a word with a cmavo of BAhE does not change the word's grammar in any way. Any word in a bridi can receive contrastive emphasis marking:

Emphasis on one of the structural components of a Lojban bridi can also be achieved by rearranging it into an order that is not the speaker's or writer's usual order. Any sumti moved out of place, or the selbri when moved out of place, is emphatic to some degree.

For completeness, the cmavo za'e should be mentioned, also of selma'o BAhE. It marks a word as possibly irregular, non-standard, or nonce (created for the occasion):

marks a Lojbanization of an English name, where a more appropriate standard form might be something like la .ckiipyris. , reflecting the country's name in Albanian.

Before a lujvo or fu'ivla, za'e indicates that the word has been made up on the spot and may be used in a sense that is not found in the unabridged dictionary (when we have an unabridged dictionary!).