[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Larry Wall) writes: > Well, it's actually a little worse than that. Not all languages do > noun disjunctions. In Japanese you can't ask > > Want tea or coffee? > > as far as I know. You have to ask > > Want tea? Want coffee?
I'm not sure I believe that. You can say "do you want tea xor coffee"[1] (and there are no other choices) or you can say "do you want such a thing as tea or coffee."[2] (or any other member of the set of beverages usually offered to guests) So there's disjunctions there, but they're more explicit than in English. [1] "ti- ka ko-hi ka douchi ha nomimasu ka?" [2] "ti- nado no-hi nado nomimasu ka?" -- Timesharing just doesn't work. -K. Thompson, 1982.
