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I'm trying to state in one sentence several things that are lacking.

There's no A, or B, or C.

What about

There's no A, no B, and no C.

Are these both grammatically correct? What's the difference?

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It may be better to simplify the logic in the grammar and say "A, B and C are all lacking" or "A, B and C are all missing". – osknows Jun 22 '11 at 9:53

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

There's neither A, nor B, nor C.

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I don't know that the first "nor" is absolutely necessary. – rintaun Jun 22 '11 at 6:48
1  
This doesn't answer the question. – user1579 Jun 22 '11 at 12:22
up vote 1 down vote

In general use, those expressions are both pretty normal and pretty much equivalent, regardless of what any logician makes of them. They seem grammatically correct to me assuming appropriate phrases are supplied for A, B and C.

From a logical perspective, given that A' (not A) is true, and B' is true, and C' is true, the disjunction and the conjunction give the same answer (true), so in fact the sentences are equivalent if the (negated) assertions are correct. If one of the premises is incorrect, then the overall result differs depending on whether AND or OR is used as the connective.

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!Huh? – mplungjan Jun 22 '11 at 8:32
What sort of logic gives the same result if true, but not if false? (A v B v C)' == (A' & B' & C') . Anglice, the two sentences are the same. The difficult thing would be to translate (A' v B' v C') [= (A & B & C)'], which would have to be "We need A B and C, but haven't got it". – TimLymington Jun 22 '11 at 11:22
A' | B' | C' yields true if all of A', B' and C' are true. A' & B' & C' also yields true if all of A', B' and C' are true. The 'no' in the first alternative is understood (by me, at any rate) to apply to each of the terms A, B and C, producing A' or B' or C'. – Jonathan Leffler Jun 22 '11 at 14:00
up vote 1 down vote

There's no A, B or C.

The "no" applies to all items in the following list.

For lunch I have a plain burger. There's no mayo, mustard or ketchup.
My church choir is pretty tame. There's no sex, drugs or rock and roll.

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