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Apparently when he said "Doesn't make eye contact with or communicate with" he meant "doesn't communicate with or communicate with"

renewiltord 5y ago
“Doesn’t do X or Y” has colloquial meaning of “Does neither X nor Y”. In cases of X being subset of Y or otherwise lower degree it means “Doesn’t do Y, e.g. X” You’ll see this in common speech “My husband doesn’t do the dishes or clean up at all”, “he doesn’t reply to emails or update anything in JIRA”, etc. Pretty standard language structure in English. Odd that people are having trouble.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Except he didn't say "doesn't do X or Y" he said "is unwilling to X or Y", which breaks the colloquial defense and makes it questionable what he meant. (And I don't fully trust further explanations by someone under this kind of pressure)
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Do you interpret "unwilling to X or Y" as "unwilling to X" or "unwilling to Y"? I interpret it as "unwilling to X" and "unwilling to Y". For instance, "my husband is unwilling to take care of the twins or take the dog to day-care" means the husband is not going to either of those things, i.e. the speaker wishes for the husband to do one of these two things and the husband is doing neither. Likewise, "unwilling to make eye contact or communicate" means "is not willing to either make eye contact" and "is not willing to communicate". In fact, it feels very natural to me to take that interpretation. But I am completely open to the idea that this is not the case in other people's English. I don't know the OP guy, so there's no real skin in the game for me, but I really think he has the same meaning as me here.
    - phendrenad2 5y ago
      My initial take was that "unwilling to make eye contact or acknowledge" meant either/or as opposed to neither/nor. But I think there's also a possibility that I'm wrong. But can we know for sure? I feel that we have to try to interpret the first tweet as a standalone thing, because the followup explanations happened after he started getting called out for what is, in theory, illegal.
      - whynaut 5y ago
        > My initial take was that "unwilling to make eye contact or acknowledge" meant either/or What would that even mean in practice though. It’s like a pointless thing to write.

renewiltord 5y ago

“Doesn’t do X or Y” has colloquial meaning of “Does neither X nor Y”. In cases of X being subset of Y or otherwise lower degree it means “Doesn’t do Y, e.g. X” You’ll see this in common speech “My husband doesn’t do the dishes or clean up at all”, “he doesn’t reply to emails or update anything in JIRA”, etc. Pretty standard language structure in English. Odd that people are having trouble.

phendrenad2 5y ago
Except he didn't say "doesn't do X or Y" he said "is unwilling to X or Y", which breaks the colloquial defense and makes it questionable what he meant. (And I don't fully trust further explanations by someone under this kind of pressure)
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Do you interpret "unwilling to X or Y" as "unwilling to X" or "unwilling to Y"? I interpret it as "unwilling to X" and "unwilling to Y". For instance, "my husband is unwilling to take care of the twins or take the dog to day-care" means the husband is not going to either of those things, i.e. the speaker wishes for the husband to do one of these two things and the husband is doing neither. Likewise, "unwilling to make eye contact or communicate" means "is not willing to either make eye contact" and "is not willing to communicate". In fact, it feels very natural to me to take that interpretation. But I am completely open to the idea that this is not the case in other people's English. I don't know the OP guy, so there's no real skin in the game for me, but I really think he has the same meaning as me here.
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    My initial take was that "unwilling to make eye contact or acknowledge" meant either/or as opposed to neither/nor. But I think there's also a possibility that I'm wrong. But can we know for sure? I feel that we have to try to interpret the first tweet as a standalone thing, because the followup explanations happened after he started getting called out for what is, in theory, illegal.
    - whynaut 5y ago
      > My initial take was that "unwilling to make eye contact or acknowledge" meant either/or What would that even mean in practice though. It’s like a pointless thing to write.