sumti

S1U1M3T1I1
/ˈsuːm.ti/

noun

an argument passed to a selbri (“predicate”)

OriginLojban sumti →
RareScrabble 7
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Meanings

nounsumti (plural sumti)
  1. Lojbangrammaran argument passed to a selbri (“predicate”)

    Showing which sumti fill each of the places of each selbri From Debian

    2004, Binh Nguyen, Linux Dictionary, page 845
    3 more examples

    Focusing on artificial languages and Lojban in particular. News, state of the language, tutorials, poetry, cleft place structures, and sumti-raising with other long debates on how to construct a sentence in Lojban.

    1993, M. Gunderloy, Factsheet Five - Issues 49-53, page 43

    Names may also be used as sumti provided they are preceded with the word "la".

    1997, JW Cowan, The complete Lojban language, page 13

    The LRG (ibid.) says, "Usually, placing more than one sumti [argument] before the selbri [predicator] is done for style or for emphasis on the sumti that are out-of-place from their normal position. (Native speakers of languages other than English may prefer such orders.)"

    2000, Alan Libert, Languages of the World - Issues 24-27, page 114
  2. Lojbangrammara parameter ("place") in a selbri (“predicate”)'s "place structure", which can be filled with an argument (sumti (“argument”) in the above sense)

    The high-level parser then converts that string into XML and traverses it, organizing its sumti into data structures.

    2005, Brandon Wirick, Lojban as a Tool for Encoding Prose on the Semantic Web (Masters Thesis, California Polytechnic State University), page 50
    2 more examples

    The simplest kind of selbri consists of a single root word, called a "gismu", and the definition in a dictionary gives the place structure explicitly. The primary task of constructing a Lojban sentence, after choosing the relationship itself, is decideing what you will use to fill in the sumti places.

    1997, JW Cowan, The complete Lojban language, page 12

    In counting sumtifor voá series anaphora, you are concerned only with the sumti (and not modal/tense operators) of the main bridi of an utterance, as they are formally defined.

    2002 March 3, Nick Nicholas, “Folk Functionalism in Artificial Languages: The Long Distance Reflexive vo á in Lojban”, in Journal of Universal Language, page 153

Origin

  1. Lojbansumti
  2. Lojbansumti
  3. Englishsumti

Borrowed from Lojban sumti.

More words from Lojban

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

tumistuism
Cite this entry
APA

sumti. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sumti

MLA

“sumti.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sumti. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sumti,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sumti.

Source: sumti on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.