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Part of
Crossroads Semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar
Edited by Hilke Reckman, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn and Rint Sybesma
[Not in series 210] 2017
► pp. 249–261

Chapter 15
Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not

| Meertens Instituut | Leiden University
| University of Groningen

The paper deals with the English expression or not and its Dutch counterpart of niet. It is argued that the phrase’s meaning contribution is not descriptive (truth-conditional), but primarily pragmatic in nature, with a different interpretation depending on the exact context it is used in.

Keywords: Coordination, disjunction, negation, semantics, pragmatics, English, Dutch
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The “whether…or type”
  • 3.The “question or not type”
  • 4.The “assertion or…not type”
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.15van
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