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July 22

Two different types of “or” questions

I notice two different types of questions centered around the word “or.” The first type is one where the answer is expected to be (or at least involved) one of the words surrounding the “or.” For example: “Do you prefer helicopters or personal watercraft?” “Should I turn left or right here?” “Is this Wikipedia RefDesk question written in English or French?”

The other type of “or” question is one in which the expected answer is not one of the surrounding words, but either yes or no. For example: “Did you eat or drink anything high in sodium yesterday?” “Can the general read or write?” “Was there any rain or snow here in February 1879?”

Do these types have their own special names? How do they render differently when translated into other languages? What factors influence which type a hearer interprets an “or” question to be? Primal Groudon (talk) 04:30, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In computer programming, those correspond to the Elvis operator and the Logical or. Deliberate misparsing of the first type as the second has comedic potential. "Is this really true, or are you making it all up?" — "Yes".  Card Zero  (talk) 05:04, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the second group forms a type of question. It's rather that a single concept for which no simple word exists is broken into two simple words. The questions could be formulated as "Did you take in any nourishment high in sodium?" "Is the general literate?" "Was there any precipitation here?" The questioner is interested in whether you took up anything high in sodium, not in how you did so. Most people who can read can also write, so there's not really an alternative here. Somebody else will sure provide the proper term for the phenomenon. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:34, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. The inclusion of "or" in the second set of examples has nothing to do with them being a question and simply comes down to extraneous wording, idiomatic expressions, and similar. Matt Deres (talk) 14:09, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These questions can be split into a pair of questions, like Q1: "Did you eat anything high in sodium yesterday?" and Q2: "Did you drink anything high in sodium yesterday?". From the yes/no answers A1 and A2 to both questions (assumed to be truthful), we can compute the answer to the combined question A1 ∨ A2 by using the logical disjunction operation, equating "yes" with "true" and "no" with "false". That said, this is not specific to the issue being presented in question form. The answers to the questions reflect the truth values of the corresponding factual statements "The patient ate something high in sodium yesterday" and "The patient drank something high in sodium yesterday", and the answer to the combined question is the truth value of the disjunction of the factual statements.  ​‑‑Lambiam 17:08, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Suppose you think your keys have been stolen, because they're not in your bag. I could ask "did you use the keys recently, or start using the bag recently?" and you could say no, ruling out both lines of enquiry, no idiom involved.  Card Zero  (talk) 07:42, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first type is also called an "alternative question". Unfortunately, this is by itself an ambiguous term:

• If a participant seems hesitant or unwilling to respond to a specific question, have an alternative question ready to smoothly transition before any awkwardness ensues.^[1]
• Well, we have an alternative question then: What gave you the most fun?^[2]
• Think of it as an alternative question to why this firm?^[3]

 ​‑‑Lambiam 17:33, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some languages have two different words for the two types of "or", e.g. Finnish tai and vai (see https://uusikielemme.fi/finnish-vocabulary/interesting-words/the-difference-between-tai-and-vai). --2A02:8071:880:91C0:213D:AC15:1C1E:12EE (talk) 07:30, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Dutch conjunction dan wel is used for mutually exclusive alternatives. It differs from tai by being exclusive, and from vai by being used normally only in affirmative clauses.  ​‑‑Lambiam 05:39, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the usage notes. Dan wel usually separates alternative cases unknown by the writer; it does not offer a choice. What is this saying you can't do with it? I don't understand how you can write (or speak) about alternative cases without knowing what they are. And I don't get how not knowing what your own words mean is opposite to offering a choice.  Card Zero  (talk) 12:06, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If someone asks, "How many lumps of sugar do you want in your coffee?", you can answer "twee of drie" ("two or three"). You cannot answer, "twee dan wel drie". The answer "twee of drie" suggests that 2.5 lumps would be just perfect, while "twee dan wel drie" would mean you don't not know your own current sweetness preference – maybe two, maybe three, who knows? If the question had been, "How many lumps of sugar had he put in his coffee?", and you don't know the exact amount, you can use either of "twee of drie" and "twee dan wel drie". The latter sounds more formal than would be used in casual speech. As an incomplete rule of thumb, if you can use "or else" in English, "dan wel" is probably OK in Dutch.  ​‑‑Lambiam 04:26, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the phrasing is terrible, but perhaps I'm just a tad hard of thinking. These abstract semantics are difficult and I can't phrase it any better myself, yet. A replacement phrase (however clumsy) is "or if not that then", which shows that the first option, and hence the second too, must be possibly wrong, and possibly right; it's the correctness of the cases that is unknown to the speaker, not the descriptions of the cases. It's funny that in "two or three" the options are exclusive, yet both correct. It reminds me of a certain flag passed to Windows GDI when selecting a font family: if all you want is text of some kind, you specify FF_DONTCARE.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:53, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]