Linguist Forum

Specializations => Morphosyntax => Topic started by: enunciativo on March 30, 2015, 06:26:24 PM

Title: Contractions in questions
Post by: enunciativo on March 30, 2015, 06:26:24 PM

I've always considered it odd that we say "Why didn't you enjoy the book?" for the contraction-free "Why did you not enjoy the book?"  Obviously, we can't split the contraction by inserting the subject, and no other contraction is possible;  however, I don't see why the desire to include a contraction overrides the normal syntax.     

Title: Re: Contractions in questions
Post by: freknu on March 30, 2015, 11:17:25 PM

In modern standard English, "did you not" is indeed the correct way, but that is a modern phenomenon. E.g. German and Norse do not need to use that order but can also use "did not you" just as well. English used to do so as well — and dialects may still have retained that feature — but in the modern language it is no longer used.

Title: Re: Contractions in questions
Post by: Daniel on March 31, 2015, 01:13:59 AM

This has actually been discussed quite a bit within research on clitics (morphemes that are between words and affixes, showing properties of both). Here's at least one paper that discusses -n't in English:
http://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/ZPCliticsInfl.pdf

Title: Contractions in questions
Post by: enunciativo on April 01, 2015, 10:16:29 AM

Thanks, Freknu and Daniel.