4.2. PARTICLES 157, ”will you have coffee?” and , ”will
you have tea?”, into a single choice question. Answers can range from
(’coffee, please’) to (’either is fine’) to
things like
(’no, that’s okay (I shall have nothing)’).However, can also be used as a direct translation for ”or”, but
a very specific one: the logical connectiveor. There is a rather big differ-
ence between the natural languageorand the logical ”or”, in that the laĴer
doesn’t ask about which choice to go with, but whether at least one of the
choices listed is correct:A: ”Would you like coffee, or tea?”
B, interpreting ’or’ naturally: ”Coffee, please.”A: ”Would you like coffee or tea?”
B, interpreting ’or’ logically: ”Yes, please.”What happened in this second conversation? Rather than interpret-
ing ’or’ as the natural version, B decided to interpret it as the logical con-
nective, meaning he answered the question ”would you like [coffee or tea]”- the logical ’or’ doesn’t give you a choice, it connects the choices into a sin-
gle option, which is picked if any one of the otherwise individual choices
is picked, or isn’t picked if none of them work. In Japanese, using to list