Disjunctive compounds (was: left factoring)

la xorxes. cusku di'e

> {lei brife ja canre} logically seems to work, too, but I don't find it
> very appealing. Maybe it's just that we are not used to such things
> in natlangs.

Depends on which natlangs.  Ivan says in his paper on noun compounds:

# There don't seem to be many languages which have disjunctive noun-noun
# compounds, in which the set of instances of the complex concept is the
# union of the sets of instances of the components, as in
# Sanskrit  jayaparajaya `victory or defeat'
# (Traditionally analysed as a rather unfrequent variety of dvandva compounding)
# 
# but it is quite common for the compound to refer to a superset of this union:
# 
# Mongolian  xorxoj soxo `insect' (`worm beetle'),
#            soxo xorxoj ` ditto' (`beetle worm');
# Kazakh     ayaq-tabaq `crockery' (`cup-plate');
# Qabardian  dqaz `housefowl' (`hen-goose').

-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.