Craig,

That's the approach I typically take to the question.  People tend to think about English pronunciation as if it's derived somehow from English spelling, assuming, as people tend to, that the written form is what's important.  So when you speak and you leave out things that are clearly written it must be because you're being sloppy and lazy.  Taking writing as basic is such a deep article of faith that I've had people react in utter disbelief when I tell them that writing is secondary, a surrogate for speech.  It's rare that such a discussion goes on into the nature of speech.  

In my classes, where I have time to explain in greater detail, I use the notion of stress-timing as an entry point.  It's not hard to demonstrate the roughly regular spacing of stressed syllables in spoken English and then to show that the number of syllables between stresses can vary.  Obviously there has to be a lot of syllable reduction going on for stress-timing to work.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: question about negative contractions

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]
>
> 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/
>

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/