or

[aznriceboi17]

Hi, suppose we had the following sentence:

"If John was early, he would have avoided leaving behind X and Y."

Does this mean that if John was early, then what is left behind does not include X and does not include Y. Or does it mean that what is left behind cannot include BOTH X and Y, but could include either one of them by itself (so X was left behind, but not Y, and vice versa)?

For reference, this question was inspired by PT51-S3-Q20 which seems to support the first definition.

To me, the second half of the sentence is unclear because I'm not sure how the 'and' is distributed. For example, I don't see why one can't read it as:

'He would have avoided leaving behind (X AND Y).'

The parenthesis are there just to indicate how to the words in the sentence are grouped in the overall structure -- this grouping would go with the second interpretation.

The other way to read it is:

'He would have avoided leaving behind X and avoided leaving behind Y.'

Is there some rule in English that says definitively that only the second reading is valid?

[tommywallach]

Hey Azn,

Good question here. A bit of clarification. The question you cite uses "avoid" in a slightly different way, so let's not use it here, or it'll confuse the issue. I'm going to edit your sentence to make that clear:

"If John was [should be "were"...learn your subjunctive!!!] early, he would not have done X and Y."

The question you cite does not use "and," it uses "or," which is a very different issue. "Or" on the LSAT means either one OR both. "And," however, always means "both."

So the correct reading of this is your second one:

He would not have done X and he would not have done Y.

Hope that helps!

-t

[aznriceboi17]

Ok I think I that makes sense (also, you're right that the question I cited uses 'or' not 'and', hopefully this doesn't throw off anyone who reads this) -- it seems like the word 'AND' has less precedence than the subject in the first half of the sentence, so the reading

He would have avoided leaving behind (X AND Y).

isn't valid.

Also, thanks for the grammar fix (so much to learn!).

[chike_eze]

If X then not Y and Z

translates to X --> not (Y and Z)
Note that this expands to X --> not Y or not Z

[aznriceboi17]

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong, but then you're saying you disagree with tommywallach's answer?

Applied to the sentence

If John were early, he would not have done X and Y.

which we can represent as 'If A, then not B and C.', where:
A = 'John is early.'
B = 'He would have done X.'
C = 'He would have done Y.'

then you're saying the sentence is saying John can't have done both X and Y? If I understood tommywallach correctly, he's saying the correct interpretation is 'John did not do X and did not do Y.', that is the structure is:

If A, then (not B) AND (not C).

If X then not Y and Z

translates to X --> not (Y and Z)
Note that this expands to X --> not Y or not Z