a negative sentence that expresses two propositions at different degrees of 'strength' in a scalar model; the speaker asserts the most informative of the two propositions, although the less informative proposition is sufficient in the communicative context. Example: in response to the question Did the kids get their breakfast on time this morning?, the sentence I barely got up in time to eat lunch, let alone cook breakfast is an instance of the let alone construction: not getting up in time to cook breakfast would answer the question, but not getting up in time to eat lunch is still more informative (indicating just how long the speaker remained in bed). (Section 17.4.2)