Anthony:

You are dealing with the issue of subject-auxiliary inversion. From a
purely empirical perspective, it is grammatical to invert the subject
and the leftmost auxiliary verb to form certain types of question
constructions, but I believe it is ungrammatical to invert the subject
with anything else. This explains why you cannot invert the subject
with the string "do not" (your second example)--it is more than just
an auxiliary verb. If you treat an the contraction of auxiliary plus
negation as a sub-type of auxiliary, then that predicts that you
should be able to do inversion, which is the right prediction.

The above describes the empirical facts, but it doesn't give a deeper
rationale for "why". I'm not in a position to give a good reason why,
beyond observing that it's just how English is. A lot of how the
language functions is idiosyncratic. Why does the earth rotate one
direction and not the other? That's just how it is, and it could
easily have been otherwise.

I'm not sure how much of what I've said will help your student. I
think it might just overwhelm them--but I hope it at least helps you.

I'm not sure how much you even need to explain though. I doubt it's
common that any students make the error of inverting "do not" with a
subject. I suspect that the principle that you can only invert a
subject with a single auxiliary is principle of the English that is
mastered very early by children.

--Dan Roth
Contra Costa College


On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Anthony DeFazio <[log in to unmask]> 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. Thank you, Tony DeFazio, LIU
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave
> the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/