206 CHAPTER 4. PARTICLES
This particle can mean two things, depending on whether it’s used on its
own or as a two-item ”list”:
When [you]’re troubled, [you] should talk to either [your] mother or
father.
(lit: when troubled, the concept is to consult your father or mother.)
This list use is very different from the singular use:
Because [she] was tired, [she] went to bed the moment [she] got home,
without having dinner.
Here the literal translation would be ”Because [she] was tired, the
moment [she] got home, [she] went to bed without eating dinner.”
This combination particle is quite interesting; the combination of with
is functionally equivalent to the particles ( ) ( ) and :
MacBook
)( )
”Even though (I) bought a MacBook, (I) actually don’t know how to
use it at all.”
This sentence isn’t significantly different from the same sentence but
using or :
MacBook
”Even though (I) bought a MacBook, (I) actually don’t know how to
use it at all.”
MacBook
”(I) bought a MacBook. However, (I) actually don’t know how to use
it at all.”
The similarity will typically be closer to ( ) ( ) than to , as
the use of creates a factoid, and the is used to, in a way that could
be called genitively, relate the concluding remark to this factoid:
( MacBook ) ( )
(”I bought a MacBook”)’s (”I do not know how to use it at all”)
