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Vowel harmony affects inflectional suffixes and derivational suffixes, which have two forms, one for use with back vowels, and the other with front vowels. Compare, for example, the following pair of abstract nouns: hallit u s 'government' (from hallita , 'to reign') versus terve y s 'health' (from terve , healthy).
A vowel sound that is nonexistent in Lojban (usually /ɪ/ as in ' hit ') is added between two consonants to make the word easier to pronounce. Despite altering the phonetics of a word, the use of buffering is completely ignored by grammar. Also, the vowel sound used must not be confused with any existing Lojban vowel.
Stems ending in *i or *u such as *men-ti-are consonantic (i.e. athematic) because the *i is just the vocalic form of the glide *y, the full grade of the suffix being *-tey-. [note 2] Post-PIE ā was actually *eh₂ in PIE. Among the most common athematic stems are root stems, i-stems, u-stems, eh₂-stems, n-stems, nt-stems, r-stems and s-stems ...
(These consonant stems take a linking vowel -e-when forming the present tense, or -i-when forming the imperfect, e.g. pestä 'to wash': pesen 'I wash' : pesin 'I washed'). Stems ending in -ts, followed by a link vowel in the present or imperfect, drop the s from the stem before adding the infinitive marker -a or -ä.
The location of the pitch accent is closely associated with ablaut variations, especially between normal-grade vowels (/e/ and /o/) and zero-grade vowels (i.e. lack of a vowel). Generally, thematic nouns and verbs (those with a "thematic vowel" between root and ending, usually /e/ or /o/) had a fixed accent , which (depending on the particular ...
When adding one of the above suffixes, this silent e is often dropped and the soft pronunciation remains. While dge commonly indicates a soft pronunciation, the silent e may be dropped before another consonant while retaining the soft pronunciation in a number of words such judgment and abridgment.
Inflected as the "Narten" athematic type, with lengthened grade in the singular and fixed accent. This suffix was the primary means of deriving perfective verbs from imperfective roots, though it appears that there were not many verbs created that way. The suffix became very productive in many of the descendants. Examples: *dḗyḱst, *wḗǵʰst.
Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a "silent" e that is added at the end of words. Thus, a in hat is lax /æ/, but when e is added in the word hate a is tense /eɪ/. Heavy and tense-r vowels follow a similar pattern, e.g. ar in car is heavy /ɑːr/, ar followed by silent e in care is /ɛər/.