On 30 Oct 2002, Simon Cozens wrote: : [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?"
I'm just confused--it was verbs that you couldn't OR the way we do in English. But then it's quite possible I'm parroting an old book that doesn't really understand Japanese adequately. Anyway, I'm relieved that Japanese does noun | noun even better than I thought. That they're even more explicit than in English means we can be culturally imperialistic against English and have both | and ^. :-) Larry
