Editing Loglan (section)

=== Predicates ===
Loglan makes no distinction between [[noun]]s, [[verb]]s, [[adjective]]s and [[adverb]]s. A predicate may act as any of these, depending on its position in a sentence. Each predicate has its own [[argument structure]] with fixed positions for arguments. For example: ''vedma'' is the word for "sell". It takes four arguments: the seller, the item sold, the buyer and the price, in that order. When a predicate is used as a verb, the first argument appears before the predicate, and any subsequent arguments appear after it. So "S pa vedma T B P" means "S sold T to B for price P". (The structure word "pa" is the past-tense marker, discussed in more detail below.) Not all arguments need to be present; for example, "S pa vedma T B" means "S sold T to B", "S pa vedma T" means "S sold T", and "S pa vedma" simply means "S sold (something)".

Certain structure words can be used to reorder the arguments of a predicate, to emphasize one of the arguments by putting it first.  For example, "nu" swaps the first and second arguments of any predicate.  So "T pa nu vedma S" means the same thing as "S pa vedma T" and might be translated "T was sold by S". Similarly, "fu" swaps the first and third argument, and "ju" swaps the first and fourth argument. Thus "B pa fu vedma T S" = "B bought T from S", and "P pa ju vedma T B" = "P was paid to buy T by B".