Carlson, K. (2013). The role of only in contrasts in and out of context. Discourse Processes, 50(4), 249-275.

Carlson, K.

2013

Carlson, K. (2013). The role of only in contrasts in and out of context. Discourse Processes, 50(4), 249-275.

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Three self-paced reading experiments explored the processing of only and its interaction with context. In isolated sentences, the focus particle only predicts an upcoming contrast. Ambiguous replacive sentences (e.g., “The curator embarrassed the gallery owner in public, not the artist”) with only on the subject or object showed faster reading of the contrast phrase (“not the artist”) than without it. The position of only also influenced the phrase’s meaning; despite a bias toward object contrasts, subject only increased subject interpretations. If preceding context provides another reason for the focus particle, it no longer predicts an upcoming contrast. In biasing contexts including indirect questions, there was no facilitation when only marked the argument that answered the question, whereas only on the other argument slowed processing. Both only and context influenced interpretation. The results show that focus particles and questions can each influence processing of an upcoming contrast on- and off-line.

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