and-parentheticals

Utterances containing detached and-conjncts seem to pose a difficulty for both traditional truth conditional accounts of the semantics of and and for recent pragmatic accounts. In this paper I analyze a range of constructed and actual examples and show that they can be accommodated in Blakemore and Carston's relevance theoretic account of the interpretation of and-utterances. I argue that while the interpretive differences between standard two-conjunct coordinated utterances and utterances containing parenthetical and-conjuncts can be explained in terms of the fact these conjuncts are detached from their hosts, the role played by and in the interpretation of utterances containing detached conjuncts is precisely the same as the role that it plays in standard sentential coordination. I also distinguish between two ways in which and-parentheticals may contribute to interpretation, and will suggest that this difference may be related to Bolinger's [Bolinger, Dwight D., 1989. Intonation and Its uses. Edward Arnold, London] characterization of the functional difference between compressed and expanded parentheticals.