﹃語用論研究﹄ 第 17 号（2015 年）pp. 42-60© 2015 年 日本語用論学会[Special Contribution]

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

Mira Ariel
Tel Aviv University

All or constructions present multiple alternatives, but I here argue that not all introduce these alternatives as discourse-relevant entities. Using a Higher-Level Category or construction a speaker makes
reference to a set of alternatives, but she actually intends the addressee to construct a higher-level category based on these alternatives. For that, the alternatives must be construed as exemplar membersof a context-relevant higher-level category, and it is that abstract concept that the speaker intends torefer to. I exemplify such Higher-Level Category or constructions, motivate their use, and offer tests
for identifying them.
Keywords: Or, Higher-level categories, ad hoc categories, discourse relevance1.

Introduction

Most linguists define the core meaning of natural language disjunctions by reference to the speaker’s commitment to at least one of the states of affairs specified by the
disjuncts (Gamut, 1991, Grice, 1989, Horn, 1972). This is the ‘inclusive’ meaning.
Since they recognize, however, that there is an alternativity relation between the disjuncts, a pragmatic appropriateness condition to that effect has been added on (Simons,
2001). Dik (1972), Harder (1996) and Ariel and Mauri (in preparation) have argued instead that ‘alternativity’ is or’s core linguistic meaning. It is commitment to one ormore alternatives that is pragmatically derived according to Ariel and Mauri. But
whether linguistically encoded or pragmatically derived, alternativity between a multiplicity of options is heavily implicated in or construction usage. Using an X or Y construction, the speaker indicates that X and Y are alternatives to each other. Indeed, consider the following:
1. a. PHIL:
				
				
				
		 b. ANNETTE:				Is the ball getting hotter or colder.
Everybody say it out loud.
AUD:
Hotter.
MANY:.. Colder. (SBC: 027)
and then I think,
our senior year,

42

04_Ariel.indd 42

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

				
				
		 c. REBECCA:
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				

43

junior or senior year,
we lost to em. (SBC: 043)
But if,.. um,... a man .. were to be exposed to,they would ... laugh,.. or,.. you know,
be disgusted,
RICKIE:
Mhm.
REBECCA: or be mad,(H) but they wouldn’t necessarily feel,((3 LINES OMITTED)).. scared .. or threatened, (SBC: 008)

Phil (in a) offers his audience a choice between two mutually exclusive alternative
states for the ball. Indeed, one of his interlocutors picks ‘hotter’ as the correct alternative, while the majority picks the other alternative (‘colder’). All Annette can do (in b)
is narrow down the facts into one of two possible similar, but distinct alternatives: ‘ourjunior year’ and ‘our senior year’. In (c) Rebecca describes what she assumes would
be the prototypical man’s reaction to another man obscenely exposing himself to him.
According to her, men’s alternative reactions might be ‘laugh’, ‘be disgusted’ and ‘bemad’. She contrasts these alternatives with another set of alternatives, which are what
she assumes a woman’s reaction would be, ‘feel scared’ and ‘feel threatened’.
Since natural discourse utterances are much more constrained than logical formulas, the question that arose for Grice was what makes disjuncts such as the above, relevant to each other, and hence appropriate. Co-alternativity theorists face the same question, slightly differently framed: what qualifies certain options (but not others) as alternatives to each other? Grice (1989:68) proposed that each of the possibilities occurringin a natural language disjunction must be relevant in the same way to the same topic,
and Simons (2001) formulates this as a requirement that each disjunct provide a distinct
and informative answer to a single question under discussion. They are, then, alternative answers to a relevant question. This is actually too strong a requirement, we argue
in Ariel and Mauri (in preparation), because in quite a few cases, while the listed options are indeed relevant alternatives, the or construction as a whole only provides asingle relevant answer to a question under discussion. As we see below, this is true forHigher-Level Category or constructions, the focus of this paper.
I prefer to characterize the relation between appropriate or alternatives in terms of
distinct members of a single, higher-level category. Phil’s hotter and colder are members of the higher-level category ‘changed temperature’, Annette’s junior year and senior year are members of the higher-level category of ‘year in (high) school’. These two

04_Ariel.indd 43

2016/01/13 17:53

44

語用論研究 第 17 号

higher-level categories are quite stable. Other abstract categories are much more ad hoc(Barsalou, 1983, 1991). For example, ‘laugh’, ‘be disgusted’ and ‘be mad’ are here
members of an ad hoc category of ‘a relatively mild response to a sexually obscene
act’. ‘Scared’ and ‘threatened’ are here construed as members of an ad hoc category of‘a relatively strong response to a sexually obscene act’.
Now, if we assume that in order to count as discourse-appropriate or alternatives
the listed options must be construable as members of a contextually relevant higher-level category, that category may sometimes be salient enough so as to compete with theexplicit members over discourse relevance. For example, the alternatives in 1(a) and (b)are clearly more discourse relevant than the higher-level categories they are membersof. Phil in (a) is seeking to elicit a single member out of the two he lists, and Annette
is finding it hard to zero in on the precise year in high school. Neither Phil nor Annette
are interested in the higher-level categories themselves. ‘Changed temperature’ and‘high school year’ play no discourse role in their respective utterances. They bear nocontextual implications (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995). They are only useful in explaining why the or construction is appropriate in its context.
While this picture is true for many or constructions, it’s not invariably the case.
Consider 1(c) again. Rebecca, a lawyer, is discussing a sexual abuse case with one ofthe victims of that crime, preparing her for her testimony in court against the same perpetrator, but in a different incident. The conversation at that point concerns the jury
panel in that trial. Rebecca is especially worried about the young male jurors on thatpanel, because men’s reactions to such abuse is quite different from women’s, she notes:
2. REBECCA:
			
			
			
		RICKIE:
		 REBECCA:
			
			
			
		RICKIE:
		 REBECCA:... And,especially,.. I have some .. young single men,.. on my jury panel.
Mhm,(H) And,... I—.. my .. worry is that they don’t .. relate to what a woman feels,.. when something like that is happening,
Mhm.
because their experience would be totally different. (SBC: 008)

Given this context, in which 1(c) occurs, we can better appreciate the difference between 1(a) and (b) on the one hand and 1(c) on the other. Rebecca has no interest in
the specific alternative responses men and women have under such circumstances.
What she is interested in conveying is the difference between the relatively nonchalantmale response pattern and the rather alarmed female response pattern. The specific alternative manifestations of these behaviors she lists are of no direct interest. It makes
no difference for the discourse if men respond with laughter or by being mad or dis-

04_Ariel.indd 44

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

45

gusted. Similarly, it makes no difference to the discourse what women’s precise response is. The various alternatives in fact serve as mere pointers to the discourse-relevant higher-level categories, a “no big deal” response among men and a “big deal” response among women. The worry is that the men’s lack of appreciation of how traumatic the experience is for women (be it one of scare or threat) would affect their decision as jurors.
1(c) is a typical Higher-Level Category or construction, where the speaker leads
the addressee to construct a higher-level concept, based on her disjuncts. The explicit
alternatives must be taken as exemplar members of the more abstract, higher-level category, and it is the higher-level category that the speaker has a communicative intention
about, rather than the specific alternatives. Surprisingly perhaps, my bottom-up, UsageBased analysis of all 1053 or constructions in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken
American English (here abbreviated as SBC) revealed that Higher-Level Category is themost frequent reading associated with or constructions (250, 23.7%).
In order to argue my point, I will mainly adduce evidence to show that only a single discourse entity is evoked in Higher-Level Category cases (3).1 But I start off with ashort discussion of the nature of Higher-Level Category or constructions and the motivations behind using them (2).

2.

Pointing to a higher-level category
Consider a few more examples of Higher-level Category or constructions.

a.	Buying or selling a piece property? Remax. Can’t argue with success (anoriginally Hebrew ad for a real-estate agency, August 2015).
		 b. MONTOYO: (H) If you’re the chairperson of um .. a major corporation?
				.. would you say that that person ... has some power?
			 FRANK:... Most definitely.
			 MONTOYO: .. Alright.
				.. Especially if you’re <X in uh X> IBM,				or General Motors,				or .. Chrysler Corporation and, (SBC: 012)
		 c. Sex determination: How germ cells become sperm or egg
			(http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6245/279.6.full?utm_campaign=email-sci-twis&utm_src=email)		 d. MONTOYO: ... The fact is,				that democracy in this country ... is dying.
3.

1
And see Ariel and Mauri (2015) for arguments why this interpretation is a bona fide or construction reading, and not some “special use”.

04_Ariel.indd 45

2016/01/13 17:53

46

				
				
				
				
				

語用論研究 第 17 号... I want you to put that down.
((TWO LINES OMITTED))
I don’t want you to agree,
or disagree at this point,
just write it down, (SBC: 012)

The ad in (a) aims to generalize over any real estate deals the addressee may be considering. Note that ‘renting’ and ‘renting out’ are included in this appeal, although not explicitly mentioned. This is because ‘renting’ and ‘renting out’ are members of thehigher-level category constructed on the basis of ‘buying’ and ‘selling’ in this context.
Montoyo in (b) wants to refer to any extremely powerful organization in general (soe.g., Microsoft, Ford and many other corporations are included as well), and the article
headline in (c) promises an explanation for how sexually indifferent germ cells become
sexually committed. While ‘sperm’ and ‘egg’ are the only members of the relevanthigher-level category here, it is the process of sex differentiation in general which is thefocus here, rather than the difference between sperm and egg. Agree or disagree in (d)cover a wider spectrum of potential stance alignments between the speaker and his interlocutors (partial (dis)agreement and indifference are included, as is a refusal to address the issue, for example). So, what Montoyo is asking his students is to defer any
judgment (for now). The individuality of the opinions they may form is not at issue,
despite the fact that the difference between agreeing and disagreeing is of course highly
significant objectively.2
The first question that arises is why speakers don’t simply refer to the higher-level
category they have in mind in a more straightforward manner. Why do they choose alinguistically complex expression (the or construction), which moreover requires a complex process of comprehension (the online construction of an abstract higher-level category)? I believe that a variety of factors motivate speakers’ choice of Higher-Level Category or constructions. First, the higher-level category sought may not in fact be lexicalized. We have no single lexeme covering all of ‘buying’, ‘selling’, ‘renting’ and‘renting out’. The addressors in (3) would have had to use linguistically complex expressions, then, such as ‘planning some real-estate deal’ in (a), ‘a powerful corporation’in (b) ‘sexually differentiated cells’ in (c), and ‘a firm opinion regarding Montoyo’s
claim’ in (d). Thus, once we spell out these higher-level concepts it becomes clear that

2
Context obviously plays a major role in determining what the higher-level category intended by
the speaker is in the specific case. For example, the same question in 3(a) could lead to a narrower
higher-level category of ‘planning an act of changed-ownership’ (leaving out rentals) if this were an ad
put out by a property tax law firm. Indeed, Ariel and Mauri (2015) found that different higher-level
categories were derived on the basis of one and the same or construction, a table or a bench, on different occasions. Interestingly, all of them were ad hoc categories, rather than the stereotypical higherlevel category we might think of, namely, ‘furniture’.

04_Ariel.indd 46

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

47

verbalizing them directly does not come with formal simplicity necessarily. In fact,
they are not clearly easier to process either. Some lexemes that are available for higherlevel categories may be dispreferred because they are rather rare, or belong to too formal a register, rendering their use an unattractive option too. This is how I understandthe preference for king or queen (SBC: 023, see 31 below) over monarch, your cars or
your busses (SBC: 038) over your vehicles. Another advantage of exemplification isthat it renders the abstract concept more concrete and vivid. ‘IBM’, for example, ismuch more imageable than the abstract ‘a very powerful corporation’.3
Note that the specific exemplars do not only lead the way to the higher-level category. At the same time, they also serve to narrow the application of the abstract concept. Contrast the following examples in this connection:
4. a. MONTOYO: ... If I am,				... for example,				... the president (H) .. of .. a major labor union,				.. or a major corporation.
				... the position,				.. (H) as president of that entity,				... gives me so much power. (SBC: 012)
		 b. SUE: (H) .. they strongly felt that you had to have a certain amount of				money,
				
or,
				
.. or a certain future in order to —				... [end up] —			 LORI: [position].
			 SUE: Yeah.
				Position in order to have a wife. (SBC: 023)
In both cases, the speakers are talking about the concept of ‘position’ (see Montoyo’s
subsequent use of position, and Sue’s adoption of this word following Lori’s suggestion). But the ‘position’ intended by each speaker here is quite different. The position
constructed for the president in (a) is organizational, and has to do with power to affectpeople’s lives. The position in (b) is understood as a socially prestigious position accompanied by substantial personal wealth. While the different contexts would have led
to differential concept constructions all by themselves (Wilson and Carston, 2007), theinferencing responsible for the narrowing down of the relevant concepts is facilitatedwith the help of the concrete exemplars.

3
Impressionistically, many of the alternatives in Higher-Level Category or constructions are basiclevel concepts (Rosch and Mervis, 1975), which are easier to process. But this observation has yet tobe verified empirically.

04_Ariel.indd 47

2016/01/13 17:53

語用論研究 第 17 号

48

Finally, another advantage of an online construction of the abstract category intended is that the speaker herself does not need to precisely define the category. Consider:5.

FRED: usually they put em on a two-year or three-year plan or something,(SBC: 014).

The higher-level category here constructed is a period of time that’s relevantly similar
to two and to three years. Not only does the speaker not limit himself to either ‘two’or ‘three’, he doesn’t put an upper nor a lower boundary on the period, and he doesn’t
even have to define it as ‘short’, ‘medium’ or ‘long’. In fact, speakers sometimes have
only a vague idea of the concept (the higher-level category in our case) they’re after.
This is possibly the case with Sue’s utterance above, where she can’t think of the higher-level category she’s after, and more clearly so in the following:
6. Is Naomi Shemer ((a very popular Israeli song writer)) considered a poet		like Bialik or Alterman or Rachel ((three very prominent, canonical Israeli poets))? (tips.co.il/singleask.asp?stipid, Oct. 24, 2012).
The high school girl asking about the status of song writer Naomi Shemer most likely
is not aware of the higher-level category she intuitively feels the need for, namely theconcept of a ‘canonical poet’. Indeed, unlike the three major poets she lists, Shemer is
not considered a canonical poet.
Now, if the analysis of the examples above as HLCs is correct, then while HLCs
introduce multiple alternatives at some level, they are not ultimately disjunctive in thatthese alternatives do not play a role in the final reading. According to the analysis here
proposed, HLCs convey a single concept, the one constructed on the basis of the explicit alternatives, which are taken as members of the higher-level category intended. The
alternatives themselves then typically do not provide distinct and informative answers toa single question which is under discussion (see Ariel and Mauri, in preparation). They
are only indirectly relevant to the ongoing discourse. The goal of the next section is toshow that indeed, HLCs are taken to denote single concepts.

3.

Single-alternative tests

My argument that Higher-Level Category should be recognized as a reading on its
own is based on an assumption that such or constructions do not in fact convey multiple
alternatives. Or, at least, not at the discursive level. If I am correct, then Higher-Level
category X or Y constructions contribute a single discourse entity. Section 3 introduces
discourse-level tests (3.1), semantic scope phenomena (3.2) and structural factors (3.3)
all pointing in one direction: Higher-Level category constructions introduce a single option.

04_Ariel.indd 48

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

49

3.1. A single discourse entity
The first criterion we can use to help us determine whether some or construction isintended as a Higher-Level Category is whether the interlocutor can respond with an affirmative yes or a negative no. First, note that this is typically not acceptable with constructions that are not interpreted as Higher-Level Category:4
7. a. PHIL:
Is the ball getting hotter or colder?
			 AUD: 〜??Yes/No.
But Higher-Level Category constructions can be properly confirmed or denied:
8. A:
		B:

Is Naomi Shemer considered a poet like Bialik or Alterman or Rachel?
〜Yes/No.

Moreover, note that the following response would not be coherent as an answer to theoriginal question:
9.

〜??No, she’s like Tshernichovsky.

Now, the only reason why (9) is inappropriate is that Tshernichovsky is another prominent canonical poet, and if so, a speaker cannot deny that Shemer is like the canonicalpoets Bialik, Alterman and Rachel but confirm that she’s like the canonical Tshernichovsky.5
Here is such an attested response:
10. EVELYN:								LINDA:

what was it,
hay fever,or asthma or something, ((1 LINE OMITTED))
Yes. (SBC: 023).

And note the following minimal pair, where the first is an HLC question, which receives a yes response, and the second (‘was it month-to-month or a one-year lease’), a
multiple alternative construction, which cannot be answered by yes or by no:6
11. JUDGE:					ROSE:		 JUDGE:

And was there a uh written agreement,
or a uh lease?
Yes.
... Was it a l- —〜 indicates a nonattested example.
Of course, (9) is not absolutely unacceptable. It’s only inappropriate when the first speaker intended the Higher-Level Category reading in her question. If the 3 poets she lists had a certain poetic
style, for example, which is different from that of Tshernichovsky, then it would be acceptable.
6
No can be used in such cases if the interlocutor is rejecting both alternatives. This is why a yes
response is a better test for HLC.
4
5

04_Ariel.indd 49

2016/01/13 17:53

語用論研究 第 17 号

50

			
			
		 ROSE:		 JUDGE:
		 ROSE:uh month to month,or a uh,
A year.
.. A one-year lease.
One year lease. (SBC: 053)

The next example is a bit confusing at first, for it seems that poll responders chose yes
when they should have chosen either ‘hurt’ or ‘help’. But in fact, it turns out that theway the speaker chose to report the question does not concern any of these alternatives,
but rather, about the higher-level category of ‘affecting Obama’. This is why a “yes”
response is appropriate after all:12.	Asked whether Obama’s race will hurt him or help him, 22 percent said “yes”
in response to a Pew question. Black respondents were more likely thanwhites to say his race would hurt; whites more likely to say it would help.
Half of everyone polled said it would make no difference.”		(http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/53486.html)
Here’s another type of response that testifies to the single HLC intended by a speaker’s
or construction. I claim that salad soup or fries is read as ‘side dish’:
13. JAMIE:
		 ROSEMARY:					JAMIE:
		ROSEMARY:			what type of salad soup or fries.
... S-,Can I have clam chowder for my soup?
Mhm.
Okay.
Soup. (SBC: 031)

Rosemary’s first response to the waitress’ question may seem like a response to a multiple alternative construction. But it is not in fact a request for the clam chowder (although it is a type of soup). Rather, it is merely a clarification question (an insert sequence in Conversational Analysis terms — Schegloff, 2007). Once Jamie has answered her clarification question Rosemary is in position to address her question about
what type of ‘side dish’ she would like. Indeed, once she is reassured that she can haveclam chowder, Rosemary answers Jamie’s original question with “soup”. In otherwords, type of refers to ‘side dish’ and not to either salad or soup or fries (note thatmost likely the restaurant does not offer more than one type of fries).
Indeed, given a choice between treating an HLC construction as denoting a single
or multiple alternatives participants I posed a questionnaire to about or readings overwhelmingly chose to treat such constructions as single-alternative cases. (14) is one of a

04_Ariel.indd 50

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

51

series of questions posed to 60 English speakers:7
14.	Which of B’s responses (B1 or B2) sounds more natural or plausible as a response to A (circle your answer)?
		 A: Would you like the two of us to go away for three or four days?
		B1: Four. That’s a good idea.
		B2: Yes. That’s a good idea.
Subjects chose B2 over B1. They avoided B1-style responses, where a choice between
the alternatives was made. Instead, they treated A’s question as a yes/no question,
which means that three or four days was interpreted as a single alternative.
In a different question type they again preferred the response which commented on
the HLC as a single concept (B2), rejecting a response that asked for a choice between
the alternatives (B1):
15.	Which of B’s responses (B1 or B2) sounds more natural or plausible as a response to A (circle your answer)?
		 A: When Ron gets home from work, I wanna spend time with Ron, because			
he usually doesn’t get home till nine or ten.
		B1: So, which is it, nine or ten?
		B­2: Wow, that’s late!
Now, it’s not invariably the case that subjects on my questionnaire treated or questions
as yes/no questions. Unlike (14), when context favored a Choice interpretation between
distinct alternatives (16), they opted for B1 responses, rejecting a yes response:
16.	Which of B’s responses (B1 or B2) sounds more natural or plausible as a response to A (circle your answer)?
		 A: Would you like me to buy opera tickets or theater tickets?
		B1: Opera tickets, please.
		B2: Yes, please.
Discourse anaphora can also provide a cue that a single entity is involved. Previous research has established that singular versus plural reference tracking expressions mayvery well be dictated by the number of the discourse entity involved, rather than bymorphological number of the antecedent encoding it (Reid, 1991). First, note that multiple-alternative or constructions are routinely tracked using plural referring expressions:7
The questionnaire elicited subjects’ judgments as to the relative coherence of an interlocutor’s response to various or constructions, some of them HLCs. The original questionnaire contained no bold
faced items. Results of Chi square and Chi square with Yates Correction analyses showed that in allthese cases results were highly significant, at p<0.01. I thank Gila Batori for the statistical analyses of
the questionnaire results.

04_Ariel.indd 51

2016/01/13 17:53

52

17. ALINA:
			
			
			
			
			
		 LENORE:
		 ALINA:

語用論研究 第 17 号

Right next door is !Ted !Rich,
who’s uh=,.. (H) one of the biggies at MTM,.. (TSK) or,
Lorimar or MGM,.. oh I forgot which one. ((2 LINES OMITTED))
One of them.
(H) One of those places. (SBC: 006).

‘MTM or Lorimer or MGM’ is tracked by them and those places. Tracked HLCs, however, show a different tracking pattern:
18. a. MONTOYO: ... If I am,				... for example,				... the president (H) .. of .. a major labor union,				.. or a major corporation.
				... the position,				.. (H) as president of that entity,				... gives me so much power. (SBC: 012)
		b. ROY: saving the whale,				or saving uh ... the .. polar bear, ((2 LINES OMITTED))				or making sure there’s enough grizzly bears,
				that’s fine. (SBC: 003)
Montoyo treats ‘a major labor union or major corporation’ as ‘that entity’, and Roy
does the same for his multiple alternatives.
Given the same rationale, referring to HLC alternatives with the plural anaphoric
expression both should either be unacceptable (19b), or else it should turn the HLC
construction into a multiple-alternative one (19d):
19. a. HAROLD: And then like,				.. r- rural areas,
				
or,
				
like,
				
you know,				
central Iowa and stuff, (SBC: 002).
		b. 〜??And then like rural areas or central Iowa and stuff or both these places
		 c. ROY:
saving the whale,				or saving uh ... the .. polar bea[r,			 PETE: [Right.
				.. Pandas],			 ROY:
or making sure there’s enough] grizzly bears,
				that’s fine. (SBC: 003)

04_Ariel.indd 52

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

53		d. 〜 saving the whale or saving the polar bear or both…
The or construction in 19(a) refers to a single concept: ‘places remote from major urban
population centers’, which include rural areas, but also small cities. This is why it isinappropriate to add or both here, which requires two distinct alternatives. The intended reading of the or construction in (c) is the HLC ‘endangered animals’. But once we
add an or both we force a multiple-alternative reading. Note that the original Pete canintervene with “Right. Pandas”, just because Harold’s construction denotes the higherlevel category ‘endangered animals, which includes Pandas. But such a response is not
appropriate once Harold’s utterance contains or both:8
20. 〜 HAROLD: Saving the whale or saving the polar bear or both that’s fine.
			PETE: ??Right. Pandas.
The following questionnaire participants’ clear preference for B1 over B2 makes muchthe same point. Speakers do not treat HLC constructions as introducing multiple alternatives:21.	Which of B’s responses (B1 or B2) sounds more natural or plausible as a response to A (circle your answer)?
		 A: She got sick and tired of turning on the news, and seeing a corrupt			man, or a scandal breaking out.
		B1: I can understand her. It’s depressing to watch the news these days.
		B2: I can understand her. Both of those things are awful.
Subjects overwhelmingly chose B1 where the topic introduced by A was taken to be asingle category of ‘annoying news on TV’. They accordingly rejected B2, which treateda corrupt man or a scandal… as two distinct alternatives.
§3.1 showed that in terms of discourse role, Higher-Level Category or constructions contribute only a single discourse entity. The next section makes much the same
point based on semantic grounds.
3.2.

Semantic cues
Semantic operators have scope over unified/coherent chunks. A differential interpretation of the scope of semantic operators with respect to different or constructions
can testify to a distinct HLC reading too. Once again, we will see that HLC constructions are treated as a single constituent, which can fall under the scope of the operator
as a single unit. To the extent that we get different readings when X or Y potentially
falls under the scope of some semantic operator we can be assured that indeed, HLC isa distinct reading.

8

04_Ariel.indd 53

For convenience I ignore the third disjunct here.

2016/01/13 17:53

語用論研究 第 17 号

54

Here’s a minimal pair, where I indicate the scope of at least using brackets:
22. a.
			
		 b.
			

We should contract for [(at least) [five]] or [maybe ten minutes] to keep
going (LSAC).9And you have to be able to give like [(at least) [a five or ten minute]]
introductory talk (LSAC).

The at least in 22(a) only has scope over the first disjunct of the construction (five),
which testifies that (a) is a multiple-disjunct construction. But the at least in (b) has
scope over five or ten minute, taken as a single semantic constituent. The interpretations are distinct accordingly. In (a) the maximal interval is interpreted as between 5
and 10 minutes, whereas in (b) it’s ‘no less and possibly more than an interval that isabout 5 or 10 minutes’. It’s longer in (b), then.
Similarly, negation operating on an HLC negates the single higher-level concept,
and not only each of the category members. Hence, another HLC diagnostic test is thenonparaphrasability of HLC not X or Y with not X and not Y. Multiple-disjunct constructions are of course paraphrasable with not X and not Y. Compare the original negated HLC utterances in 23(a) and 24(a) with their unacceptable paraphrases in (b):23. a.		 ALICE: Ron,					... usually doesn’t get home till nine or ten. (SBC: 007)		 b. ??Ron usually doesn’t get home till nine and he doesn’t get home till ten.
24. a.		 It didn’t take more than five or ten minutes (LSAC)
		 b. ??	It didn’t take more than five minutes and it didn’t take more than ten minutes
There aren’t two distinct points in time before which Ron does not get home (23). Instead, the speaker conveys that there is a single interval (‘quite late for returning homefrom work’) at which Ron is not back home. The same is true for both negation andmore than in (24).
Another piece of evidence for the semantic cohesion of HLCs as single discourse
entities comes from examples such as the following, where X or Y is predicated on ‘all’:25. a.	All of these companies have been bailed out by the government, sold toother companies at deeply discounted prices or simply failed.
			 (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53398.html)
		b. They’ve all just gone dormant or died (LSAC)
In principle, X or Y (or Z) here could be interpreted as multiple-disjunct constructions,such that X (‘have been bailed out…’) is true for a subset of ‘all’, and Y (‘sold to other9

04_Ariel.indd 54

LSAC is a 5-million words corpus of spoken American English.

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

55

companies …’) (and Z) are true of different subsets of ‘all’. But in reality, such constructions are heavily biased towards an interpretation whereby X or Y are interpreted as
single higher-level categories, each of which is true of an undivided ‘all’. I found 13
such cases in SBC + LSAC.10 11 of these are interpreted exactly like (25). 1 is an alternative question about whether ‘all are X’ or ‘all are Y’, which again shows that ‘all’tends not to be divided into subsets. Only one example shows a multiple-disjunct construction, where ‘all’ is split into two subsets:
26.	Just all the, the fixtures, the water fixtures had to be replaced. They were alleither corroded or uh leaky. So you see new fixtures in the bathroom andthe kitchen. (LSAC)
But note the crucial role of the either… or construction in (26). (26) exemplifies an
Exhaustive reading according to Ariel and Mauri (2015). Such readings focus on theexhaustivity of the set of alternatives, strongly implicating that some other, salient
alternative(s) (here that some of the fixtures were fine) is ruled out. In other words,
though not absolute, the pattern revealed in (25) is a very strong discourse pattern. It’sdue, no doubt, to a more frequent speakers’ interactional goal when predicating over‘all’. Still, one can impose distinctness on the would-be higher-level alternatives as wasdone in (26). Note, however, that when an HLC reading is less plausible, either… or ispretty much required:
27. a. 〜? All my students got 55 or 80 in the course.
		b. 〜 All my students got either 55 or 80 in the course.
		c. 〜 All my students got 75 or 80 in the course.
The preferred interpretation of an X or Y predicating over all is a construed HLC (e.g.,‘failed economically’ in 25a). This is possible in 27(c), where the grades point tosomething like ‘B minus’, but it is not so plausible in (a), where it’s harder to conceiveof the failing ‘55’ and the far from marginal passing ‘80’ as members of a single higher-level category. However, it is indeed possible that reality is such that 55 and 80 were
the only two grades received by the set of students. Based on the very strong discourse
pattern noted above, I’m suggesting that the either version in 27(b) would then be chosen. An ‘all’ predicated on by X or Y is then a strongly biasing context for an HLCreading. I expect to find other HLC-biased contexts as well.
Examples (22)-(27) all point to the same phenomenon: an HLC or construction introduces a single semantic concept. §3.3 demonstrates that formal cues too can bias anor construction towards an HLC reading.

10
The search picked all followed by or within 2-5 words. I excluded from the count or tags (suchas or something/whatever), which are, of course, more often than not single-alternative constructions.

04_Ariel.indd 55

2016/01/13 17:53

語用論研究 第 17 号

56

3.3.

Structural cues
HLCs are highly frequent constructions that interlocutors seem to be tuned into,
responding to them as if they were not disjunctive (3.1, 3.2). Are there any formal cues
addressees can pick up on when identifying an or construction as an HLC? While contextual factors are most probably the strongest indicator for an HLC reading (see all theexamples above, and especially 11, 12 and 14 versus 16), formal cues too may bias addressees towards an HLC reading. Again, all cues have to do with the fact that HLCs
denote single, rather than multiple alternatives. The idea is that speakers often use amore unified syntactic and/or prosodic structure in order to indicate a single conceptual
unit.
Assuming that Intonation Units (IUs) are processing units (Chafe, 1994), we expect
single-alternative or constructions to more often occupy a single IU, rather than spanning over multiple IUs. This is not necessarily so for multiple-disjunct constructions.
Indeed, a comparison between HLCs and Choice constructions (where an unresolved
choice between alternatives is profiled) shows that HLC is 1.6 times more likely to occupy a single IU. A comparison with Repair, the least tight or constructions, shows
HLC 55 times more likely to occupy a single IU. By the same token, a tighter syntactic structure is expected for a unified concept.11 Indeed, the same difference shows up
when we examine the proportion of phrasal, rather than nonphrasal disjunctions. As
many as 86.4% of HLCs are phrasal rather than clausal. This percentage goes down to
61.7% for Choice constructions and to 46.4% for Repairs.
One of the questions on the questionnaire mentioned earlier looked into this question precisely. The original example that the item was based on was a clausal Raisedoptions construction, where the speaker raises a number of options, not even one ofwhich does she commit to:
28. REBECCA:
				
				

.. (H) And then,we could do closing arguments today,or it could be tomorrow. (SBC: 008)

But when the context was changed on the questionnaire, so that the or construction wasbiased for a Higher-Level Category reading, subjects preferred a phrasal over a clausal
disjunction, opting for B2:12
29. A: When are we doing closing arguments?
		B1:	Oh, it’s soon. We could do it today or we could do it tomorrow. The
trial is almost over!

11

See Ariel (2012) for a similar point about and conjunctions.
This item is not ideal, since the clausal disjunction may seem clumsier than the original one. It
was chosen because it created a minimal pair with the phrasal disjunction.
12

04_Ariel.indd 56

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

57

		B2:	Oh, it’s soon. We could do it today or tomorrow. The trial is almost
over!
Next, Hebrew feminine forms are regularly derived from masculine nouns by adding afeminine ending (much like –ess in princess). Male and female entities of the same
type may then be conjoined by an or construction (‘male or female’) or by a reduced,
slash construction (somewhat similar to English fe/male). The latter creates a tighter
syntactic unit. Indeed the slash construction is restricted to HLC disjunctions:30. kol nivdak/etzakai
le=hibadek
al yedey
		 Each patient.msc/fem. Suffix is.entitled to be.examined by		texnaio texnait		 techincian.masc or techinician.fem
		 (Sign posted outside an X Ray examination hall, spotted May 2010)
		‘Every male/female patient is entitled to be examined by a male technician or afemale technician’
The writer could have used or constructions for both occurrences of the male and female referents. But predictably, they chose a slash construction only for the HLC reading, where the ‘male or female patient’ counts as a single category ‘patient of both sexes’. The ‘male or female technician’, on the other hand, count as two separate entities,
patients here being informed that they can choose between the two sexes. Only HLCor constructions can be reduced to slash constructions. Using texnai/it ‘fe/male technician’ here would totally change the meaning of the utterance, making it senseless, infact.
This is why unlike the ‘female or male technician’ in (30) the next, superficiallysimilar or construction can be translated into a Hebrew slash construction:
31. NORA:		LINDA:		 NORA:		 DIANE:		NORA:
		 LORI:

Wonder who was the ruler.
(H)in nineteen ten.
Who was the king or queen?
Mhm.
I don’t know. (SBC: 023)

Since king or queen here are used to convey the single-concept ‘monarch’, it can berendered by Hebrew melex/ka ‘king/queen’.
Furthermore, some HLC readings are rather conventionally associated with either
idioms (a) or specialized sub-constructions (Ariel, 2014), the most prominent of whichis the ‘ascending numeral construction’ as in (b):32. a. MITCHELL:						 b. ALICE:

04_Ariel.indd 57... he used it as,.. more or less bait me to do the job, (SBC: 053).
when !Ron gets home from wor=k,

2016/01/13 17:53

58

				
				
				

語用論研究 第 17 号... I wanna spend time with !Ro=n,because !Ron,... usually doesn’t get home till nine or ten. (SBC: 007)More or less lexically denotes ‘roughly, approximately’ and nine or ten denotes ‘a rangeof time around nine and ten’, but here, actually a more context-specific higher-level category, ‘a late hour for one to come back from work’.13
If formal cues are involved in prompting the HLC reading, no wonder speakers
sometimes wish to de-automatize the interpretative process of such disjuncts when thereading they intend is not that of a Higher-Level Category (but rather, a Raised-options
in a, an unresolved Choice in b). One way to achieve this is to reverse the collocative
ordering of the disjuncts:
33. a. KEVIN: How old was she? ((2 LINES Omitted))
			 LISA:
Right now she’s like nineteen or eighteen. (SBC: 036)		 b. I don’t know which is worse, having less or more? (LSAC)
The ascending numeral construction seems to be so entrenched that speakers may use aslash construction instead, or simply omit the or:
34. PATRICK:						

so that’s what we regularly,<PAR well not regularly,
did this like th- .. two three times, (SBC: 045)

Still, not all cases of ascending numeral disjunctions were HLCs.14
The formal indicators briefly considered in 3.3 are biasing cues that a Higher-level
Category may be the reading the speaker intends for the or construction. But by nomeans are they encoded form/function associations.

Conclusions
The or constructions discussed in the semantics/pragmatics literature are typicallymultiple-alternative constructions, where each syntactic disjunct corresponds to one alternative. However, a bottom-up Usage-Based examination of all 1053 or constructionsin SBC revealed that quite a few of them do not express multiple alternatives semantically or discoursally. The Higher-Level Category constructions focused on here constitute the most frequent reading among single-alternative or constructions. In fact, they
are the most frequent reading among all or constructions. Using a Higher-Level Cate-13
But not all idiomatic X or Y constructions receive a Higher-Level Category reading, e.g., Your
money or your life, ready or not…
14
And moreover, the higher-level category is often more abstract than the range of the numbers
would point to, as in (31b).

04_Ariel.indd 58

2016/01/13 17:53

Higher-Level Category or Constructions: When Many is One

59

gory or construction the speaker indeed introduces multiple alternatives, but these alternatives are subservient to a higher end, namely, the construction of a single higher-level
category. The exemplars the speaker mentions are to be construed as members of acontext-relevant higher-level category, and it is that category that falls under the speaker’s communicative intention.
I offered a number of motivations for why speakers have evolved what seems to be
a complex and roundabout strategy for conveying higher-level categories.15 Lexicalgaps, especially for nonconventional, ad hoc categories, a wish to create a vivid image,
avoiding rare lexemes and difficulties in defining and/or delimiting the concept sought
are among the main forces behind the mobilization of or constructions for expressing
abstract categories. I also noted that Higher-Level Category or construction do not only
introduce into the discourse an abstract concept, they at the same time help narrow it
down, by reference to the specific exemplars provided by the speaker.
Discourse-level, semantic and formal tests were adduced in support of the assumption that Higher-Level Category must be recognized as a distinct or construction reading. These tests include responses which are only acceptable for single-point utterances,
single-number anaphoric expressions, semantic scope interpretations and various formalcues, all pointing that the explicit alternatives form part of single tight unit. Of course,
what are tests for the linguist function as cues for the interlocutors engaged in online
utterance interpretation. However, just like any other or construction reading, HigherLevel Category readings are above all pragmatically determined, based on what the addressee takes to be the speaker’s communicative intentions.
References
Ariel, Mira. 2012. Relational and independent and conjunctions. Lingua: 1682-1715.
Ariel, Mira. 2014. Or constructions: Monosemy versus polysemy. In Brian MacWhinney, Andrej
Malchukov and Edith A Moravcsik, eds., Competing Motivations. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Ariel, Mira and Caterina Mauri. 2015. Why use or? Unpublished Ms., Tel Aviv University, University of Pavia.
Ariel, Mira and Caterina Mauri. in preparation. Or’s core: An ‘alternative’ analysis. Tel Aviv University and Univerity of Pavia.
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1983. Ad hoc categories. Memory and Cognition 11: 211-227.
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1991. Deriving categories to achieve goals. In Gordon Bower, H, ed., The
psychology of learning and motivation. San Diego: Academic Press, 1-64.
Chafe, Wallace L. 1994. Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of consciousness experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

15
But I note in passing that Higher-Level Category readings of or constructions are not a recent development by any means. I have found them in Biblical Hebrew as well.

04_Ariel.indd 59

2016/01/13 17:53

60

語用論研究 第 17 号

Dik, Simon. 1972. Coordination: Its implications for the theory of general linguistics. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Gamut, L. T. F. 1991. Logic, language, and meaning, vol. 1: Introduction to logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Grice, H. Paul. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Harder, Peter. 1996. On content and expression in syntax. In Lars Heltoft and Hartmut Haberland, eds., Proceddings of the thirteenth Scandinavian conference of linguistics: Departmentof languages and culture Roskilde University, 83-92.
Horn, Laurence R. 1972. On the semantic properties of the logical operators in English. Mimeo,
Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Reid, Wallis. 1991. Verb and noun number in English: A functional explanation (Longman Linguistics Library). London: Longman.
Rosch, Eleanor and C. B. Mervis. 1975. Family resemblances: studies in the internal structure of
categories. Cognitive psychology 7: 573-605.
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation
analysis, 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simons, Mandy. 2001. Disjunction and alternativeness. Linguistics and philosophy 24: 597-619.
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1986/1995. Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wilson, Deirdre and Robyn Carston. 2007. A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance,
inference and ad hoc concepts. In Noel Burton-Roberts, ed., Pragmatics. London: Palgrave,230-259.

04_Ariel.indd 60

2016/01/13 17:53