"and nor" -- British, or foot-in-mouth?

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 17, 2011, at 6:00 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> On Aug 17, 2011, at 2:33 PM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>>
>> This is just a trivisl slip of the tongue or pen, not worth anyone's consideration. Most likely he actually said (or meant to) say "and/or"--just as you mistakenly wrote "and not" and "too."
>>
>> On Aug 17, 2011, at 4:55 PM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
>>
>>> Andy Coulson ("editor of the News of the World, 2003-07") is quoted
>>> by the NYTimes, Aug.17, page A3 New England Edition, as having said
>>> in July 2009 to Parliament:
>>>
>>> "I have never condoned the use of phone hacking, and nor do I have
>>> any recollection of incidences where phone hacking too place."...
>>>
>>> As Jon L. would ask, is there a community of speakers who use "and [nor]"?
>>>
>>> I vote for foot-in-mouth, ...
>
> you should probably vote for british.  from my files:
>
> Contrast Sarah Boseley, "Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists", The Guardian, 2./26/2008
>> Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.<
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005420.html
>
> He did not consider it appropriate for society to be run by or for ‘merchants and manufacturers’, and nor did he accept that the rich and powerful, ...
> www.adamsmithslostlegacy.com/
>
> Nowhere on the packaging does it state that I'd picked up an arabic version and nor did your distributors in Bahrain care to mention it.
> www.htcwiki.com/thread/808844/P4350+Operating+System+Lanaguage
>
> [thousands more – 3/1/08]
>
> (somewhere i have examples from Geoff Pullum.) this is reinforcement: the "and" conveys (emphatic) coordination, the "nor" a negative supplement to the main clause; the combination drives things home.  it does seem to the british, but i see no reason to treat it as an inadvertent error (any more than "and so" is an inadvertent error).
>
> arnold
>

(and) nor is it particularly new.  I've been encountering it in British novels from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.  I don't think it's at all frequent in cispondian usage; perhaps Lynne Murphy has covered "and nor" in her blog.

LH

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