Or

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Pelletier, Francis J.

• It is an extremely popular view among logicians and some linguists (McCawley, Hurford) that there are two distinct or's in English - an \"inclusive\" and an \"exclusive\". It seems equally popular among lexicographers, experts on proper usage, and some linguists (R. Lakoff) that there is only one, the \"exclusive\", and that the \"inclusive\" is a figment of logicians' imagination. Grice (\"Logic and Conversation\") has shown us a way of constructing a theory of \"conversational implicature\" which can perhaps distinguish meaning-relations from other factors. The present paper shows how the Gricean account can be made to yield the conclusion that the only or in English is the \"inclusive\"; it also indicates other ways which will yield this conclusion, including a rather weak (or conservative) version of \"conversational implicature\" relying only on expectation of speakers and various psychological truisms.

• Date created

  1977

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Linguistics
  • Conversational Implicature
  • Meaning-Relations
  • Or
  • Logic

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3513V95P

• License

  © 1977 Pelletier, F.J. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.