The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

Lojban bridi without tense markers may not necessarily refer to actual events: they may also refer to capabilities or potential events. For example:

is a Lojban truth, even though the colloquial English translation is false or at best ambiguous. This is because the tenseless Lojban bridi doesn't necessarily claim that every duck is swimming or floating now or even at a specific time or place. Even if we add a tense marker to Example 10.138 ,

the resulting Example 10.139 might still be considered a truth, even though the colloquial English seems even more likely to be false. All ducks have the potential of swimming even if they are not exercising that potential at present. To get the full flavor of “All ducks are now swimming” , we must append a marker from selma'o CAhA to the tense, and say:

A CAhA cmavo is always placed after any other tense cmavo, whether for time or for space. However, a CAhA cmavo comes before ki , so that a CAhA condition can be made sticky.

Example 10.140 is false in both Lojban and English, since it claims that the swimming is an actual, present fact, true of every duck that exists, whereas in fact there is at least one duck that is not swimming now.

Furthermore, some ducks are dead (and therefore sink); some ducks have just hatched (and do not know how to swim yet), and some ducks have been eaten by predators (and have ceased to exist as separate objects at all). Nevertheless, all these ducks have the innate capability of swimming – it is part of the nature of duckhood. The cmavo ka'e expresses this notion of innate capability:

Under some epistemologies, innate capability can be extended in order to apply the innate properties of a mass to which certain individuals belong to the individuals themselves, even if those individuals are themselves not capable of fulfilling the claim of the bridi. For example:

might be true about a human being named John, even though he has been blind since birth, because the ability to see is innately built into his nature as a human being. It is theoretically possible that conditions might occur that would enable John to see (a great medical discovery, for example). On the other hand,

is not true in most epistemologies, since the ability to see is not part of the innate nature of a book.

Consider once again the newly hatched ducks mentioned earlier. They have the potential of swimming, but have not yet demonstrated that potential. This may be expressed using nu'o , the cmavo of CAhA for undemonstrated potential:

Contrariwise, if Frank is not blind from birth, then pu'i is appropriate:

Note that the glosses given at the beginning of this section for ca'a , nu'o , and pu'i incorporate ca into their meaning, and are really correct for ca ca'a , ca nu'o , and ca pu'i. However, the CAhA cmavo are perfectly meaningful with other tenses than the present:

As always in Lojban tenses, a missing CAhA can have an indeterminate meaning, or the context can be enough to disambiguate it. Saying

with no CAhA specified can translate the two very different English sentences “That is on fire” and “That is inflammable.” The first demands immediate action (usually), whereas the second merely demands caution. The two cases can be disambiguated with:

and

When no indication is given, as in the simple observative

the prudent Lojbanist will assume the meaning “Fire!”