From cowan Sun Dec 17 21:05:49 1995
Subject: Disjunctive compounds (was: left factoring)
From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu (Lojban List)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 21:05:49 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199512172144.QAA19508@locke.ccil.org> from "Jorge Llambias" at Dec 17, 95 04:26:26 pm
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la xorxes. cusku di'e

> {lei brife ja canre} logically seems to work, too, but I don't find it
> very appealing. Maybe it's just that we are not used to such things
> in natlangs.

Depends on which natlangs.  Ivan says in his paper on noun compounds:

# There don't seem to be many languages which have disjunctive noun-noun
# compounds, in which the set of instances of the complex concept is the
# union of the sets of instances of the components, as in
# Sanskrit  jayaparajaya `victory or defeat'
# (Traditionally analysed as a rather unfrequent variety of dvandva compounding)
# 
# but it is quite common for the compound to refer to a superset of this union:
# 
# Mongolian  xorxoj soxo `insect' (`worm beetle'),
#            soxo xorxoj ` ditto' (`beetle worm');
# Kazakh     ayaq-tabaq `crockery' (`cup-plate');
# Qabardian  dqaz `housefowl' (`hen-goose').

-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.