"or" in English

[jack]

My impression of "or" in English is that it can mean either "inclusive or" or "exclusive or" depending on context.

Example #1:

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of a communist party?"
"Would you like milk or sugar in your tea?"
"Don't trust someone if they're incompetent or malicious."

Obviously someone who IS NOW and also HAS BEEN IN THE PAST is supposed to answer "yes", not "no". You're allowed to ask for milk AND sugar. Incompetent malicious people are not automatically trustworthy.

Example #2:

"Would you like dinner now or would you like to freshen up first?"
"Eat in or take away?"
"Would you like the free gift or the cash equivalent?"

It would make no sense to ask for both.

And some of those questions have exactly the same form, it's just that you're supposed to know from context that having both is normal, or having both isn't being offered, or isn't possible.

However, I know some people say "in English, 'or' means 'inclusive or', even if sometimes common sense/politeness/physics stops you having both options at once" and some people say "in English, 'or' means 'exclusive or' but people sometimes use it sloppily and we know what they mean".

However, I can't really see the difference between those and "it can mean either depending on context". Is there any evidence that one of those is a superior description of the "default" interpretation (not just "which is more common", but "which people understand you really mean if you emphasise the meaning of the word").

Comments

[mathcathy]

I guess not.

I suppose I'm thinking about when a question is incorrectly begun with "but".

So when someone isn't acknowledging whatever has gone before, but is using but to argue.

"But don't you have to do that tonight?"

[simont]

Yes, I suppose that does count as different, since it's not really joining two sub-statements together at all. (You might sort of argue that it's attempting to join your question to whatever the previous person said, and hint at an opposition between those two things as I described above, but I think that would be a bit of a stretch.)

That kind of argumentative question is even more out of bounds for the sort of thing you might even try to express in a programming language, though, so it doesn't really come into the question I started with (my childhood confusion over why English needs both 'and' and 'but' while BASIC only needs one of them).

[mathcathy]

No, I think you've adequately explained why "but" and "and" are the same in a programming context. Thank you :)