"or either"?

Mon Apr 21 16:40:48 UTC 2008

On Apr 21, 2008, at 8:48 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

> 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.  [confirmed by Wilson Gray]

the hits i got for "either ... or either ..." were from all over the
place (even australia).  and now a hit for "if you * or either you":

If you need support on this item or either you don't have the PDF
reader software, you can check the following link: Adobe PDF Reader ...
www.iczoo.org/australia2006.htm

(this stuff is hard to search for.)  not all of my examples have "or
either" replaceable by "or else".

arnold

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