33(1) - 2021

Semantics of coordinators in EU languages – the multiple readings of ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’

Johanna Mattissen

Titre
Semantics of coordinators in EU languages – the multiple readings of ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’

Résumé
The semantics of coordinators have not been studied in a broader cross-linguistic perspective to date. As they play an important role in the multilingual legal acts of the European Union with its 24 official languages and are frequently at issue in legal interpretation at the Court of Justice of the EU, the present article provides a first overview of the multiple readings of ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘but’ in Germanic and Romance languages with outlooks on Finnish and Polish. It is shown within a framework of lexical semantics that language makes finer-grained distinctions than mathematical set theory and logic and that context contributes to the readings in a decisive way. The grid offered can be used to describe and compare the readings of connectors of further languages. The distinctions made allow a more pertinent analysis and legal comparison of the meaning of legal texts and beyond.

Mots-clés
Coordination, EU official languages, conjunctive, disjunctive, adversative

DOI 10.17462/para.2021.01.03

25 avril 2021
  33(1) - 2021