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David Crystal , expert on English, states that two forms of "or" exist. One of these is the exclusive "or":

You can eat now or later, but not both.

And the inclusive "or":

You can eat now or later-I don't mind.

He then states that the "or" in the latter example approaches "and" in meaning. this staement has been causing a lot of grief on another forum. What's your opinion'

(No long descriptions of Boolean logic please. I know that stuff, it's the relation to common use I need. are there two "ors"?)

Thanks in advance

Common usage certainly supports the two versions of 'or', yes. I don't remember situations, though, where there's been any confusion between them in conversations (your example -eating - by itself implies we won't be wanting to do the same thing twice).

Unfortunately UK linguistics of the functional ilk does rather like these little ambiguities like "approach and". If I was 'and', I'd make my excuses and leave...

Al

I sort of disagree with the idea that there are two forms of 'or' based the fact that even in the examples you gave, they both signify the same thing. The second example still excludes one choice, but the speaker doesn't care which one "you" chooses. To be inclusive (and to avoid a total misunderstanding in communication) I believe you'd have to say "and" if you wanted to offer both options (ie. "inclusive"). Otherwise it's just as "eclusive" as the other example.

"You can eat the apple or the orange, but not both."
"You can eat the apple or the orange, I don't care/it doesn't matter which."

Notice how the option is till 1 out of the two fruits? In the first example the speaker is firm about choosing one or the other. In the second, the speaker probably knows that there's no reason to fear that the subject will eat both, so is clarifying that he doesn't care which one he/eats, as long as it's "one or the other".

If the speaker wants to offer both fruits to the subject, and be truly "Inclusive", he/she would have to use "and". Otherwise it's still exclusively one choice out two the subject can make.

David Crystal , expert on English, states that two forms of "or" exist. One of these is the exclusive "or":

You can eat now or later, but not both.

And the inclusive "or":

You can eat now or later-I don't mind.

He then states that the "or" in the latter example approaches "and" in meaning. this staement has been causing a lot of grief on another forum. What's your opinion'

Well, let me see if I can put this simply for the both of us.

David Crystal is referring to two types of relationships, groupings, in fact.

Try to imagine inclusive relationships as you would bubbles inside a bigger bubble. Let's say that the word 'now' is a small bubble inside a larger bubble and that the word 'later' is also a small bubble inside the same larger bubble. If it's easier, imagine that 'now' and 'later' are like brother bubbles inside a mother bubble. That image represents an inclusive relationship.

Now, let's talk about the word 'or' as approaching 'and' in meaning.

Keeping the bubble imagery in mind, even though the smaller bubbles are separatly housed in their own bubbles, they belong to the same mother bubble. They share the same larger bubble.

So, whatever happens to the mother bubble will affect both brother bubbles. It is in this way that 'or' approaches the meaning of 'and'. It's like twins inside their mother, they are separate entities yet they are housed in the same space.

In terms of language, 'now' and 'later' are two syntactic units separated by the syntactic unit 'or', yet both 'now' and 'later' can be expresses together as one unit if we house them in the same semantic space. We don't have to change the words, only the space. To do that, the speaker modifies the use of 'or' to include the meaning 'and' by adding 'I don't mind which of the two you choose. I am giving you the choice of both.'

It's in the choice, that 'or' approaches 'and' in meaning, not in the syntactic structure. David Crystal didn't invent it. It's been there all along. He simply put a name to it.

In short,

Exclusive: 'now' , 'later' are not in the same group. They are separate and belong to different groups. They are exclusive. So, if something applies to one group, it cannot apply to the other group. That's the 'or' rule!

Inclusive: 'now' , 'later' are separate but they belong to the same group. They are inclusive. They belong to subsets within the same group. So, if something applies to the group, it applies to both subsets inside the group. This is the 'and' rule!

All the best,

Cas

You go get 'em!

Thanks for the discussion Cas, but to tell you the truth, it made my head spin. At least I can envision where the initial question came from! (And why I agree with wjserson in his comments )

The way I see it, we instinctively distinguish these two meanings in speech in the following way:

"You/can/eat/now/or/later (but not both)"

This alternative is clarified for the listener by inserting a slight pause after the word 'now'. In writing, the existence of the pause is realised by a comma: "you can eat now, or later".

"You/can/eat/now/or/later (maybe both)"

This alternative is spoken in a seamless stream of sound. In writing, the seamlessness is shown by the absence of a punctuation mark.

I am pretty sure there is intonation support for each sentence type as well.
Where there is a pause, the voice rises on the syllable immediately before it; at the end of the sentence the voice falls away on 'later'.
Where there is no pause, there is flat intonation through the sentence until the end, where there is a rise on "la-" and a sharp fall on "-ter".

Harzer

However this may turn out in the end, it is interesting to note that the idea of "or" having two similar but separate meanings is supported by the fact that Chinese has two different words which are translated into the English word "or". In Chinese, one of these words is typically used for statements, and the other is used in sentences which are questions.

Larry Latham

Would you like coffee or tea?

Yes.

(well I think it's very funny)