Herb,
   I agree that we may not need this level of distinction outside of
linguistics classes. But I wonder how you might advise countering the
notion that people are being lazy when they don't pronounce things
"properly" when they speak. I think it might help to say that there is
a more or less "scientific" explanation for it, but how might we water
that down without being inaccurate?

Craig


 >

 Brett,
>
> I suspect you misspoke below when you wrote "for reasons why -N'T should
> be considered an inflectional ending (or "clitic" in technical terms)."
> The point of Zwicky&Pullum's argument is that inflectional endings and
> clitics aren't the same thing, and "n't" is an inflectional ending, not a
> clitic.
>
> Clitic is a useful category in grammatical analysis, although it's not
> easy to define.  Contrasting clitics with inflectional endings is one
> thing.  Defining clitics across languages or even across English is a
> little harder. Roughly speaking, on a scale of how bound they are and what
> they bind to, affixes are the most bound and words the least, hence
> Bloomfield's definition of "word" as a "minimal free form."  Clitics sit
> between affixes and words. They are bound to grammatical categories, like
> NP, not to roots or stems as affixes are. Unstressed words like "the,"
> "and," prepositions, "that" as a subordinating conjunctions, etc. behave
> like clitics rather than words.
>
> While the affix/clitic/word distinction is important in grammatical
> analysis, I doubt that it has much of a place in teaching grammar in high
> school or college.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brett Reynolds
> Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2010 7:56 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: question about negative contractions
> Importance: Low
>
> On 2010-07-28, at 3:53 PM, Tony DeFazio wrote:
>
>> Can someone explain, please, why we can say "Why don't you like her?"
>> but not "Why do not you like her?" A student asked and I was at a loss
>> for an explanation.
>
> Zwicky & Pullum (1983) <http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky/ZPCliticsInfl.pdf>
> put forth the argument that -N'T, though historically a contraction, has
> actually become an inflectional ending for auxiliary verbs. That is, they
> say it's like the past tense -ED or third person -S. This approach is
> followed in the recently mentioned grammars by Huddleston & Pullum. See
> the paper linked to above for reasons why -N'T should be considered an
> inflectional ending (or "clitic" in technical terms).
>
> If -N'T is a negative inflection, and I think it is, then the reason we
> can say "Why don't you like her?" (or "Why can't you be there" etc.) is
> because the inflection simply can't be separated from the auxiliary verb.
> The other question, why you can't say "Why do not you like her?", is a
> question about adverb placement in general, not just "not". You can't say
> "Why do never you go there?" "Why do always you say that?" etc.
>
> Best,
> Brett
>
> -----------------------
> Brett Reynolds
> English Language Centre
> Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning Toronto,
> Ontario, Canada [log in to unmask]
>
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