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, e.g., a marathon is the remnant of an elided clause [John run 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 favors placing the let alone phrase at the end of a clause, which sometimes necessitates a non-local 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.

Structure Modulates Similarity-Based Interference in Sluicing: An Eye Tracking study

“…As an aside, the Locality bias is not unique to sluiced sentences. It has been observed in other move-and-delete types of ellipsis, such replacives (Carlson, 2013 ) and let alone ellipsis (Harris and Carlson, 2015 ), as well as ambiguous gapping structures (Carlson et al, 2005 ).…”

“…Another important general result is that sluices show a structural preference to associate the remnant with the most local correlate in the antecedent clause, a principle formalized as the Locality bias below (see also Harris and Carlson, 2015 , for a similar preference with let alone ellipsis).…”

Correlate not optional: PP sprouting and parallelism in “much less” ellipsis

“…With respect to step 2, Harris & Carlson (2016, 2018) found that the processing strategies used to pair the remnant, once parsed, with a correlate were similar to those used in other ellipsis structures. In particular, the processor appears to prefer the most local (or nearest) correlate of the appropriate syntactic type, a preference that prevails in sluicing and most likely reflects the tendency for English focus to appear late in a clause (for arguments from sluicing, see Carlson, Dickey et al 2009).…”

“…Although focus-sensitive coordination has been studied far less than other kinds of ellipsis structures, there are a few recent results that bear on the processes outlined above. Regarding step 1, Harris (2016) found a small bias for VP remnants over DP/NP remnants in a variety of offline completion tasks when the fragment after let alone appeared without context (replicated in Harris & Carlson 2016, 2018). However, simply mentioning a salient DP object in preceding text weakened or overturned the bias.…”

“…He argued that these results were consistent with an ellipsis account over a simple coordination account, and that the processor constructs the clause containing the remnant upon encountering a focus-sensitive coordinator. In a follow up study, Harris & Carlson (2016) showed that the bias towards VP remnants could not be attributed to exposure in text alone, as English corpus searches showed a general mild preference for DP, not VP, remnants. Following Toosarvandani (2010), they proposed that the remnant-correlate pair is sensitive to an accessible Question Under Discussion, i.e., the question or topic that immediate conversation is meant to address, explicitly or implicitly (Roberts 1996, 2012).…”