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British Linguists Mangle Logic By Jon N. Hall September 30, 2019 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002) is a 1,842-page tome by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and thirteen other contributors. At the Cambridge University Press, the CGEL is touted as the “definitive grammar for the new millennium.” Well, a thousand years is a mighty long time, but at $324 one would hope that the claim would prove true for at least the beginning of the new millennium. So let’s see whether or not this descriptivist grammar can shed some light on a narrow issue that concerns conjunctions. (Forgive me if I anthropomorphize CGEL.) “Coordinator” is the term the CGEL uses for conjunctions, words like “and” and “or.” Chapter 15, “Coordination and supplementation,” is by linguists Rodney Huddleston, John Payne, and Peter Peterson. In section “2.2.2 And and or in combination with negation” on pages 1298-9 (or see screengrab below), we are assured that the following t