UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Comprehending Ellipsis Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1b63w238 Author Kroll, Margaret Ilona Publication Date 2020 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ Comprehending Ellipsis A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Linguistics by Margaret Kroll June 2020 The Dissertation of Margaret Kroll is approved: Associate Professor Matt Wagers, chair Professor Pranav Anand Professor Adrian Brasoveanu Assistant Professor Amanda Rysling Quentin Williams Acting Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Margaret Kroll 2020 Contents Contents iii Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction 1 2 The pragmatics of sluicing 6 2.1 Introduction . 6 2.1.1 Polarity reversals in sluicing . 6 2.1.2 Methodological preliminaries . 8 2.2 Sluicing in the literature . 10 2.2.1 e-GIVENness . 11 2.2.2 Hybrid Theories . 13 2.2.3 Inquisitive entailment . 13 2.2.4 Scopability . 15 2.3 A modified account . 16 2.3.1 The Well-Formedness Condition . 16 2.3.2 Local Givenness . 18 2.3.2.1 Context update and dynamic interpretation systems . 18 2.3.2.2 Local Givenness . 22 2.3.2.3 Application of Local Givenness . 23 2.4 Deriving polarity reversal sluices . 27 2.4.1 Polarity reversals are not semantic entailment: Neg-raising polar- ity reversals . 28 2.4.2 Polarity reversals are not syntactic: Remember polarity reversals 33 2.4.3 Polarity reversals are not bidirectional pragmatic entailment: Disjunction polarity reversals . 37 2.4.4 Polarity reversals are not entailment at LF: More disjunction . 40 2.4.5 Non-factive negative attitude verbs . 43 2.4.6 Until .................................. 45 2.4.7 Attitude holders . 47 2.4.8 Failure to license . 48 2.5 Structural constraints on sluicing . 49 iii 2.5.1 Data motivating syntactic constraints on sluicing . 50 2.5.2 Local Givenness plus structural constraints . 51 2.5.3 Structure plus pragmatics: A full picture? . 54 2.5.4 Salience . 60 2.6 Non-isomorphic sluicing . 66 2.6.1 Types of non-isomorphic sluices . 67 2.6.2 Polarity reversals cannot be reduced to non-isomorphic sluices . 69 2.6.3 Summary . 72 2.7 Conclusion . 72 3 Violating Perspicuity 75 3.1 Processing anaphoric dependencies . 76 3.1.1 Retrieval in anaphoric processing . 77 3.1.2 Locality in anaphoric processing . 83 3.2 Choosing an empirical domain . 90 3.3 Experiment 1: Ellipsis interpretation shows a subjecthood preference . 95 3.3.1 Method . 96 3.3.1.1 Methodology . 96 3.3.1.2 Participants . 96 3.3.1.3 Materials . 96 3.3.2 Procedure . 101 3.3.3 Results . 104 3.3.3.1 All Results . 104 3.3.3.2 Subject vs. Object Responses . 105 3.3.4 Discussion . 106 3.3.4.1 Plural nouns make better antecedents . 107 3.3.4.2 Subject nouns were preferred antecedents . 109 3.3.4.3 Coordinated antecedents look like split antecedents . 111 3.4 Experiment 2: Ellipsis interpretation shows a locality preference . 112 3.4.1 Method . 113 3.4.1.1 Methodology . 113 3.4.1.2 Participants . 113 3.4.1.3 Materials . 113 3.4.2 Procedure . 115 3.4.3 Results . 116 3.4.3.1 First NP Analysis . 119 3.4.3.2 Second NP Analysis . 121 3.4.3.3 Kind & Conjoined NP Analysis . 122 3.4.4 Discussion . 125 3.4.4.1 Results show a proximity preference . 125 3.4.4.2 Results show a null effect of structure . 129 3.4.4.3 Results show overall preference for Kind interpretations130 3.5 Experiment 2 items are moderately acceptable . 133 iv 3.5.1 Method . 134 3.5.1.1 Participants . 134 3.5.1.2 Materials . 134 3.5.1.3 Procedure . 135 3.5.1.4 Results . 135 3.5.1.5 Discussion . 137 4 Online ellipsis comprehension 140 4.1 Cataphoric ellipsis shows an online plausibility effect in the Maze task . 146 4.1.1 Method . 146 4.1.1.1 Methodology . 146 4.1.1.2 Participants . 149 4.1.1.3 Materials . 149 4.1.2 Procedure . 152 4.1.3 Results . 153 4.1.4 Discussion . 158 4.1.4.1 Implausible nouns were read more slowly than plausi- ble nouns . 158 4.1.4.2 Indexing processing difficulty in the maze task . 164 4.2 Self-paced reading does not show a plausibility effect . 168 4.2.1 Method . 169 4.2.1.1 Methodology . 169 4.2.1.2 Materials . 170 4.2.1.3 Participants . 170 4.2.2 Procedure . 170 4.2.3 Results . 171 4.2.4 Discussion . 173 4.3 Semantic relatedness drives reading times: Revisiting the Maze . 175 4.3.1 Method . 176 4.3.1.1 Methodology . 176 4.3.1.2 Participants . 176 4.3.1.3 Materials . 176 4.3.2 Procedure . 179 4.3.3 Results . 179 4.3.4 Discussion . 183 4.3.4.1 Noun plausibility modulates reading times to a greater degree under postcedent search . 183 4.3.4.2 Indexing processing difficulty in the maze task . 186 4.4 General Discussion . 190 4.4.1 Theoretical implications . 190 4.4.2 Methodological considerations: SPR vs. Maze . 199 4.4.3 Further questions . 200 v 5 Implicit Causality 201 5.1 NPE shows an implicit causality and object bias in the Maze task . 204 5.1.1 Method . 204 5.1.1.1 Methodology . 204 5.1.1.2 Participants . 204 5.1.1.3 Materials . 204 5.1.2 Procedure . 208 5.1.3 Results . 209 5.2 NPE shows an implicit causality and object bias in self-paced reading . 212 5.2.1 Methods . 212 5.2.1.1 Methodology . 212 5.2.1.2 Materials . 213 5.2.1.3 Participants . 213 5.2.2 Procedure . 213 5.2.3 Results . 214 5.3 General Discussion . 216 5.3.1 Implicit causality applies across anaphora and ellipsis . 216 5.3.2 Implicit causality interacts with proximity preference . 218 5.3.2.1 Question response time analysis . 218 5.3.2.2 Origin of object response bias . 224 6 Conclusion 229 6.1 Why we should look across the aisle . 229 6.2 Truth and Beauty? . 234 A Experiment 1 items 241 B Experiment 2 items 251 C Maze/SPR experimental items 257 D Implicit causality items 268 E GloVe Cosine Measures, NPE Maze Experiments 271 Bibliography 274 vi Abstract Margaret Kroll Comprehending Ellipsis This dissertation is about ellipsis, a natural language construction in which a word or phrase is understood even though it is not pronounced. This project brings together two strands of research: formal theoretical research on the relationship between the interpretation of an ellipsis site and its surrounding linguistic context, and psycholinguistics research on the processes.