Ways of Deriving the Anchored Form of the Corrective But Construction in English

Abstract

The paper examines the anchored form of the corrective but construction (e.g., Max does not eat chard, but spinach.). Toosarvandani (2013) claims that it involves vP-coordination and vP-ellipsis. In this paper, however, we argue that it can be derived by clausal ellipsis (Vincente 2010) and/or Left-Edge Ellipsis. In so doing, we show that the vP-ellipsis analysis is not motivated and thus need not be assumed. It is also shown that the construction is restricted by a certain processing mechanism whereby the remnant strongly tends to correlate to the closest matching element in the first conjunct. We show that the processing mechanism interacts not only with context but with syntax in intricate ways.