Abstract

The last chapter shows the use of ‘or’ as an adverb. The discourse-adverbial view invites us rather to think of each clause as formulaically giving permission rather than asserting permissibility. Discourse adverbial uses of ‘or’ may be regarded as the most primitive uses. The invention of logic, or rather the many inventions of logic, for it has been invented many times, has always involved the suspension of some regularities governing the uses of ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if, ‘possibly’, and so on in favor of others. Traditional grammar and its late offspring represent one possible way of describing and representing discourse, howsoever fragmentarily. Our understanding of discourse ought to be measured, not in our understanding of that isolated path, but in the multiplicity of other possible paths that we are also capable of recognizing.