"or eiher"?

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:50 AM -0400 4/21/08, sagehen wrote:
>Jimmy Carter, speaking  on Morning Edition about the likelihood of success
>of certain peace proposals betw/ Palestinians & Israel,  "if [condition A].
>or either [condition  B] ".  This was in fluent, unhesitating speech & made
>me wonder if it's a dialectal usage.  It feels familiar, but not in my
>idiolect.
>AM
>
I've been noticing "or either" = 'or else' for quite a while and my
impression is that it's spreading.  DARE says it's "chiefly
S[ou]th[ern]", and has cites back to 1898:
"Everything had been moved out or moved in or either moved off." My
impression, also just FWIW, is that it's also frequent in
non-Southern AAVE.  Wilson, do you have a take on it?

LH

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