If I omit “otherwise” in below sentence and the meaning will remain the same, then why would I need to use it? what’s the difference in meaning with or without “otherwise”.
[ Without otherwise limiting the obligations of the Contractor under the Contract the
Contractor must in the delivery of the WUC do all the things described in or which
can be reasonably inferred from this Section 4: ]
1- Who invented this strange combination?
2- Why it can’t be found through major dictionaries and references?
3- Why legal documents tend to complicate statements?
4- By the way, do you know any philosophy book which it’s written in plain English?
This is legal language, which many people think means “obscure” but really means “precise.” Just looking at the first three words, there is a vast difference between “without limiting” and “without otherwise limiting.” The agreement/contract/clause clearly does allow “limiting” of whatever or whomever, but only to the extent described in the contract and not “otherwise.” Lacking the word “otherwise,” the meaning of the sentence would be that it voids the prior provision.
Let’s try an example. I sign a contract with you allowing you to come into my back yard and pick apples from one of my trees, but I am limiting you to that one tree; you can’t pick my apricots, nectarines, etc. I want to make sure you know that. So I put a clause into our agreement that says that you cannot disturb my trees–but that’s contradictory, because I am saying you can disturb that one tree. So I insert the word “otherwise”–as in, “you cannot otherwise disturb the trees in my backyard”–to underscore the fact that you can’t pick any of my other fruit, but not voiding the entire contract by saying you can’t disturb my trees at all, which is the way the clause would read if I didn’t include “otherwise.”
To many people, this sort of thing seems very anal and picky, but I assure you that literally billions of dollars have been lost by people who didn’t make their contract language very precise.
Edit: If you want a philosophy text that’s written in plain language, try John Locke or David Hume. (Their English is naturally old-fashioned but their arguments are very clear.)
You won’t find this in a regular dictionary because it’s just a common collocation in legal documents, not a phrase unto itself. A lot of legal language is indeed somewhat redundant, but that’s because the objective of this language is to avoid any “wriggle room,” so to speak.
People don’t really “invent” language like this, though sometimes terms and phrases get “borrowed” from Latin, etc., in an artificial way. It’s just that otherwise has one usage which functions as emphasis. So yes–it’s not “required” in this context to convey the propositional dimension of the phrase. It’s important to keep in mind that a good part of language (even grammar) is not simply representational.