title: Keep it local (and final): Remnant preferences in "let alone" ellipsis.
abstract: The let alone construction (John can't run a mile, let alone a marathon) differs from standard coordination structures (with and or but) by requiring ellipsis of the second conjunct--for example, a marathon is the remnant of an elided clause [[see text] a marathon]. In support of an ellipsis account, a corpus study of British and American English finds that let alone exhibits a Locality bias, as the second conjunct preferentially contrasts with the nearest lexical item of the same syntactic type. Two self-paced reading studies show that the Locality bias is active during online processing, but must be reconciled with indicators of semantic contrast and discourse information. Further, a sentence-rating study shows that the Locality bias interacts with a Finality bias that favours placing the let alone phrase at the end of a clause, which sometimes necessitates a nonlocal contrast. Together, the results show how a general bias in ellipsis for local contrasts is affected by discourse demands, such as the need for scalar contrast imposed by let alone, thereby offering a window into how possibly divergent syntactic and discourse constraints impact sentence processing.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Linguistics , UCLA , Los Angeles , CA , USA.
authors.forename: Jesse A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.affiliation: b Department of English , Morehead State University , Morehead , KY , USA.
authors.forename: Katy
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Carlson
mesh_terms: D001244:Association; D015982:Bias; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009862:Online Systems; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D000068356:Self-Control; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013334:Students; D013997:Time Factors; D014495:Universities
keywords: Corpora; Ellipsis; Scalar contrast; Self-paced reading; Sentence comprehension