And/or: About the complicated meaning of ‘simple’ coordinators

Abstract

Coordinators (and, or) are very simple words, but they can mean very different things. This paper starts with the introduction of boolean semantics as a foundation for writing down the meaning of coordinators. Then two problems will be discussed to show that the combined parts still have a lot of influence in the meaning of the coordinated structure: - difference between intensional and extensional verb phrases; - conjunction within the determiner phrase