[OT] linguistics and cultural bias?

[Larry Wall]

On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Martin D Kealey wrote:
: Hmmm...
:
: I've heard that this is a culturally driven thing: that whilst people can
: all disambiguate it, people from different cultures may do so differently
:
: In a "western" culture, exclusive-or is the assumed default unless context
: implies otherwise. But in many Pacific island cultures (*), if one offers
: "kava or coffee" one would be expected to provide both if answered "yes".
:
: -Martin
:
: (* This from annecdotal memory of 20 years ago, so I don't vouch that it
: still applies in any particular culture, but the essential point remains
: that the disambiguation is not as universal or consistent as may seem to us
: sitting here in Australasia, USA or Europe, speaking English.)

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?

So I'm actually being a bit culturally imperialistic in pushing for
noun disjunctions. But I'm an American, and nobody expects better of
me. :-)

Larry

[Brent Dax]

Larry Wall:
# So I'm actually being a bit culturally imperialistic in
# pushing for noun disjunctions. But I'm an American, and
# nobody expects better of me. :-)

I would argue that you should draw on useful concepts from any language,
not paying any attention to their existence in other languages--so if a
useful concept is in Japanese but not English, you should use it anyway.
(I think that at one point you mentioned that 'it' is implicit in
Japanese--so does $_ qualify? :^) ) Of course, I might just be
rationalizing my own cultural imperialism...

--Brent Dax <bren...@cpan.org>
@roles=map {"Parrot $_"} qw(embedding regexen Configure)

Wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in
New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. And radio operates
exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat.
--Albert Einstein (explaining radio)

[Larry Wall]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, Brent Dax wrote:
: (I think that at one point you mentioned that 'it' is implicit in

: Japanese--so does $_ qualify? :^) )

Only when you leave it out. Kind of like the cat.

Larry

[Simon Cozens]

la...@wall.org (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?"

--
Timesharing just doesn't work. -K. Thompson, 1982.

[Larry Wall]

On 30 Oct 2002, Simon Cozens wrote:

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