How do conjunctions work?
[back to outline] Latin has a neat trick: to express X and Y, you can say X Y-que, using a clitic. The expression SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romae, is an example of this construction: the Senate and the People of Rome. Latin also distinguishes inclusive and exclusive or: vel X vel Y means that you can have X or Y or both, but aut X aut Y means you get one or the other but not both. Quechua (before the Spanish conquest) got by without conjunctions at all. For adding things together, you can usually get by with juxtaposition. Or you can use a case ending meaning with: in effect you say ‘X and Y’ by saying ‘X with Y’. I’m not sure how disjunctions (‘or’) were handled– today Quechua uses forms borrowed from Spanish. Style [back to outline] A natural language has a wide variety of registers, or styles of speech: from the ceremonial or ritual, to the official or scientific, to the journalistic or novelistic, to ordinary conversation, to colloquial, to slang. Children talk in their own way; so
