6.14. Quotation summary

There are four kinds of quotation in Lojban: text quotation, words quotation, single-word quotation, non-Lojban quotation. More information is provided in Chapter 19.

Text quotations are preceded by lu and followed by li'u, and are an essential part of the surrounding text: they must be grammatical Lojban texts.

Example 6.87.

mi	cusku	lu	mi'e	.djan.	li'u
I	say	the-text [quote]	I-am	John	[unquote].

I say “I'm John”.

Words quotations are quotations of one or more Lojban words. The words need not mean anything, but they must be morphologically valid so that the end of the quotation can be discerned.

Example 6.88.

mi	cusku	lo'u	li mi	le'u
I	say	the-words [quote]	li mi	[unquote].

I say “li mi”.

Note that the translation of Example 6.88 does not translate the Lojban words, because they are not presumed to have any meaning (in fact, they are ungrammatical).

Single-word quotation quotes a single Lojban word. Compound cmavo are not allowed.

Example 6.89.

mi	cusku	zo	.ai
I	say	the-word	.ai	.

Non-Lojban quotation can quote anything, Lojban or not, even non-speech such as drum talk, whistle words, music, or belching. A Lojban word which does not appear within the quotation is used before and after it to set it off from the surrounding Lojban text.

Example 6.90.

mi	cusku	zoi	.kuot.	I'm John	.kuot.
I	express	[non-Lojban]	<	I'm John	>.

I say “I'm John”.

The implicit quantifier for all types of quotation is su'o (at least one), because quotations are analogous to lo descriptions: they refer to things which actually are words or sequences of words.