What are pro-sumti and pro-bridi? What are they for? Speakers of Lojban, like speakers of other languages, require mechanisms of abbreviation. If every time we referred to something, we had to express a complete description of it, life would be too short to say what we have to say. In English, we have words called “pronouns” which allow us to replace nouns or noun phrases with shorter terms. An English with no pronouns might look something like this: 1.1) Speakers of Lojban, like speakers of other languages, require mechanisms of abbreviation. If every time speakers of Lojban referred to a thing to which speakers of Lojban refer, speakers of Lojban had to express a complete description of what speakers of Lojban referred to, life would be too short to say what speakers of Lojban have to say. Speakers of this kind of English would get mightily sick of talking. Furthermore, there are uses of pronouns in English which are independent of abbreviation. There is all the difference in the world between: 1.2) John picked up a stick and shook it. and 1.3) John picked up a stick and shook a stick. Example 1.3 does not imply that the two sticks are necessarily the same, whereas Example 1.2 requires that they are.
In Lojban, we have sumti rather than nouns, so our equivalent of pronouns are called by the hybrid term “pro-sumti”. A purely Lojban term would be “sumti cmavo”: all of the pro-sumti are cmavo belonging to selma'o KOhA. In exactly the same way, Lojban has a group of cmavo (belonging to selma'o GOhA) which serve as selbri or full bridi. These may be called “pro-bridi” or “bridi cmavo”. This chapter explains the uses of all the members of selma'o KOhA and GOhA. They fall into a number of groups, known as series: thus, in selma'o KOhA, we have among others the mi-series, the ko'a-series, the da-series, and so on. In each section, a series of pro-sumti is explained, and if there is a corresponding series of pro-bridi, it is explained and contrasted. Many pro-sumti series don’t have pro-bridi analogues, however.
A few technical terms: The term “referent” means the thing to which a pro-sumti (by extension, a pro-bridi) refers. If the speaker of a sentence is James, then the referent of the word “I” is James. On the other hand, the term “antecedent” refers to a piece of language which a pro-sumti (or pro-bridi) implicitly repeats. In 1.4) John loves himself the antecedent of “himself” is “John”; not the person, but a piece of text (a name, in this case). John, the person, would be the referent of “himself”. Not all pro-sumti or pro-bridi have antecedents, but all of them have referents.
Personal pro-sumti: the mi-series
The following cmavo are discussed in this section: mi KOhA mi-series I, me do KOhA mi-series you mi'o KOhA mi-series you and I mi'a KOhA mi-series I and others, we but not you ma'a KOhA mi-series you and I and others do'o KOhA mi-series you and others ko KOhA mi-series you-imperative The mi-series of pro-sumti refer to the speaker, the listener, and others in various combinations. “mi” refers to the speaker and perhaps others for whom the speaker speaks; it may be a Lojbanic mass. “do” refers to the listener or listeners. Neither “mi” nor “do” is specific about the number of persons referred to; for example, the foreman of a jury may refer to the members of the jury as “mi”, since in speaking officially he represents all of them.
The referents of “mi” and “do” are usually obvious from the context, but may be assigned by the vocative words of selma'o COI, explained in Chapter 13. The vocative “mi'e” assigns “mi”, whereas all of the other vocatives assign “do”. 2.1) mi'e djan. doi frank. mi cusku lu mi bajra li'u do I-am John, O Frank, I express [quote] I run [unquote] to-you I am John, Frank; I tell you “I run”. The cmavo “mi'o”, “mi'a”, “ma'a”, and “do'o” express various combinations of the speaker and/or the listener and/or other people:
“mi'o” includes only the speaker and the listener but no one else; “mi'a” includes the speaker and others but excludes the listener; “do'o” includes the listener and others but excludes the speaker; “ma'a” includes all three: speaker, listener, others.
All of these pro-sumti represent masses. For example, “mi'o” is the same as “mi joi do”, the mass of me and you considered jointly.
In English, “we” can mean “mi” or “mi'o” or “mi'a” or even “ma'a”, and English-speakers often suffer because they cannot easily distinguish “mi'o” from “mi'a”: 2.2) We’re going to the store. Does this include the listener or not? There’s no way to be sure.