Path: news.nzbot.com!not-for-mail
From: "G. Acharya" <ganeshjacharya@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Usage of "or" and punctuation
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 11:10:12 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Lines: 38
Message-ID: <1bd52eaa-8257-4fae-a639-1a7843a6dc19@r8g2000yql.googlegroups.com>
References: <89575234-915f-43f9-b859-32357a5a64a8@e24g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>
<73v30jF10roppU1@mid.individual.net> <32d66da7-91cf-4917-a89b-f46215e6785e@y13g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
<f291de69-8492-49c8-bd80-33d537f7f783@y9g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>
<745sciF11murlU1@mid.individual.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 116.72.244.172
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1239300612 25694 127.0.0.1 (9 Apr 2009 18:10:12 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 18:10:12 +0000 (UTC)
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: r8g2000yql.googlegroups.com; posting-host=116.72.244.172;
posting-account=eRnRTwoAAAC5M-7rcQNhKyhhEubuBXLZ
User-Agent: G2/1.0
X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8)
Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.languages.english:1622
> G. Acharya wrote:
> > On Apr 9, 1:21 pm, "G. Acharya" <ganeshjacha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Apr 7, 12:20 am, Einde O'Callaghan <eind...@freenet.de> wrote:
>
> >>> G. Acharya wrote:
> >>>> Is there a punctuation to add to distinguish the following
> >>>> 1st e.g.
> >>>> A or B can be used
> >>>> ================
> >>>> A results in some problem. B results some other problem and both A a
nd
> >>>> B can be used.
> >>>> 2nd e.g
> >>>> A or The first alphabet
> >>>> =================
> >>>> A is the first alphabet in the English language. This is the first
> >>>> letter the student of English language learns.
> >>> I think this should be "A or the first letter of the alphabet" which
> >>> means tha A is another way of describing the first describing the fir
st
> >>> letter of teh alphabet. A cannot be an alphabet since it is just one
> >>> letter. The alphabet used for English has 26 letters. Other languages
> >>> have larger or smaller alphabet.
> >> So, is there no way in English to solve this ambiguity?
>
> > I meant the "or" ambiguity, to decide if its used to "explain further"
> > or, used in-order to "state alternatives"
>
> The problem is that with your exmples you don't give full sentences.
> I'll try to illustrate how to deal with the ambiguity.
>
> "A or B can be used to deal with the problem."
>
> "A, or the first letter of the alphabet, is frequently used ..."
>
Perfect, can you lead me to any online document that explains these in
details? thanks a lot for you help.
|
|