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!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!peernews.demon.co.uk!shappski.demon.co.uk!andre
Subject: The logic of "and" and "but"
Organization: The Soundfile
Reply-To: andre@shappski.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: Newswin Alpha 0.7
Lines:  19
X-Posting-Host: shappski.demon.co.uk
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 10:58:03 +0000
Message-ID: <600434857wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk

While doing nothing in particular it suddenly struck me that from a 
strictly logical (as in maths) point of view, the words "and" and "but" 
mean exactly the same thing. In fact there is a word in Russian "a", 
which means both, although there are also separate words that mean 
"and" and "but" respectively. Are there any languages that have only 
the one word?

Also, I have never quite worked out what purpose is served by using 
articles. Quite a few languages don't have them and there seems to be 
no loss of comunication. In all the time I have been learning Russian 
I've missed being able to distinguish between "a" piano and "the" piano 
only once and/but managed easily to route my way around it even at my 
level.

-- 
Andre Shapps


