Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: andre@shappski.demon.co.uk (Andre Shapps)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!news.alpha.net!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!shappski.demon.co.uk!andre
Subject: Re: The logic of "and" and "but"
References: <600434857wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk> <D4H6vo.JIK@world.std.com>
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Date: Sat, 25 Feb 1995 19:07:15 +0000
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In article: <D4H6vo.JIK@world.std.com>  jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C 
Fineman) writes:
> I think it would be more accurate to say that Russian makes a 3-way
> split where we make a 2-way.  I don't think "a" can be used
> indiscriminately in place of "i" and "no".  I am often in doubt about
> "a" vs "no",

Absolyuteno, although offhand I think on balance most of the time "a" 
is used in place of "and" where you wish to imply a contrast. "He's 
English and I'm Russian" could be translated by "i" or "a", the latter 
implying more contrast, but I don't think in this case you'd ever 
translate the "a" into "but". You'd just lose the subtle difference in 
English.

> but I _think_ the rule is that "a" implies a contrast
> between two expressed entities, whereas "no" implies a contrast
> between one entity and an expectation assumed to follow from the
> other.

That sounds fair enough to me. It isn't that difficult really. 

Incidentally, to confuse things slightly further, I have seen "no" given 
the meaning "and" in dictionaries too. I don't have one to hand, so I 
don't know of an example.
 
> Once again, redundancy, of some kind, is clearly popular & arguably
> useful.

What, you mean in case one of them gets broken or something?:-)
Anyway thanks. That's interesting.

Russian has other exmples of redundancy/overlapping words with subtley 
different shades. One that springs to mind is "tozhe"/"takzhe", meaining 
also. The difference between these took me a while to grasp, but it 
doesn't really matter if you are a beginner, because you'll never be 
wrong using "tozhe".

Examples: Ja anglichanin. On tozhe anglichanin
          I'm English. He's also English.
          Ja chitayu knigi. Ja takzhe chitayu gazeti.
          I read books. I also read newspapers.

The second, while translating the same way, embodies an implication of 
"and furthermore ...". I'm sure you could put this more formally for 
me Joseph. Sounds like you know what you're talking about.
-- 
Andre Shapps

