grammaticality - Precedence of "and" and "or"


Do and and or have any particular precedence as they do in programming languages?


What does the following sentence mean?



Will it be cold and rain or snow today?





  • Will it (be cold and rain) or snow today?

  • Will it (be cold) and (rain or snow) today?



Is the sentence completely ambiguous?



Answer



There is no "operator precedence" notion in English regarding "and" and "or": those are programming or mathematical concepts.


To make the precedence explicit (i.e. to avoid ambiguity) you would make one group a parenthetical, usually with commas, extra words, or a change in word order:



It will be cold and rainy today, or it will snow.


It will be cold today, with rain or snow.



And so on.


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