The Linguist's Shoebox

The ordinary meanings of And and Or are the opposites of the mathematical meanings that are used in Shoebox filters. For example, suppose you want to use a filter to display the records in a bibliographic database that refer to books published in North and South Carolina. The filter would have to be something like \state NC Or \state SC. Although we interpret And as combining two groups of books, Shoebox would check whether each individual record matches both filtering criteria (i.e., is this a book that is published in both NC and SC?). When you build a filter from multiple elements, think of a few sample records to be included and to be excluded, then test it by matching them in your mind according to the mathematical meanings:

• And includes the records that match all the criteria.
  For example, suppose you want to study the intermediate levels in a folk taxonomy. The lexical database records that you need to concentrate on are the ones that match the filter condition: \lf Gen And \lf Spec. For more information about folk taxonomies, read section 8.1 in Making Dictionaries.
• Or includes the records that match any of the criteria.
  For example, suppose you want to change antonym and synonym data fields that use the \an and \sy markers to pairs of lexical function data fields that use the \lf and \lv markers. The records that you need to modify are the ones that match the filter condition: \an Or \sy. For more information about lexical functions, read chapter 7 in Making Dictionaries.