Auxiliary Contraction Research Articles

Formal grammar, usage probabilities, and auxiliary contraction

This article uses formal and usage-based data and methods to argue for a hybrid model of English tensed auxiliary contraction combining lexical syntax with a dynamic exemplar lexicon. The hybrid model can explain why the contractions involve lexically specific phonetic fusions that have become morphologized and lexically stored, yet remain syntactically independent, and why the probability of contraction itself is a function of the adjacent cooccurrences of the subject and auxiliary in usage, yet is also subject to the constraints of the grammatical context. Novel evidence includes a corpus study and a formal analysis of a multiword expression of classic usage-based grammar.

Formal grammar, usage probabilities, and auxiliary contraction

This article uses formal and usage-based data and methods to argue for a hybrid model of English tensed auxiliary contraction combining lexical syntax with a dynamic exemplar lexicon. The hybrid model can explain why the contractions involve lexically specific phonetic fusions that have become morphologized and lexically stored, yet remain syntactically independent, and why the probability of contraction itself is a function of the adjacent cooccurrences of the subject and auxiliary in usage, yet is also subject to the constraints of the grammatical context. Novel evidence includes a corpus study and a formal analysis of a multiword expression of classic usage-based grammar.*

Syntactic Variation and Auxiliary Contraction: The Surprising Case of Scots

This article is concerned with the distribution of contracted auxiliaries in English, in particular the re- striction against their occurrence in the immediate context of a gap created by movement or ellipsis. We document apparent exceptions to this restriction in varieties of Scots, all occurring in what we call the LOCATIVE DISCOVERY EXPRESSION. We analyse these as mirative constructions, and using new data from the Scots Syntax Atlas we describe patterns of variation in the acceptance of auxiliary contractions in locative discovery expressions which provide clues as to the role of syntax in conditioning auxiliary contraction. Adapting the proposal in Wilder (1997), where contracted auxiliaries are prosodically incorporated into the following predicate, we provide an account in which the differences across dialects with respect to contraction are explained in terms of the availability of different abstract structures.

Syntactic variation and auxiliary contraction: The surprising case of Scots

This article is concerned with the distribution of contracted auxiliaries in English, in particular the restriction against their occurrence in the immediate context of a gap created by movement or ellipsis. We document apparent exceptions to this restriction in varieties of Scots, all occurring in what we call the locative discovery expression. We analyze these as mirative constructions, and using new data from the Scots Syntax Atlas, we describe patterns of variation in the acceptance of auxiliary contractions in locative discovery expressions that provide clues as to the role of syntax in conditioning auxiliary contraction. Adapting the proposal in Wilder 1997, where contracted auxiliaries are prosodically incorporated into the following predicate, we provide an account in which the differences across dialects with respect to contraction are explained in terms of the availability of different abstract structures.

A multimodel inference approach to categorical variant choice: construction, priming and frequency effects on the choice between full and contracted forms of am, are and is

AbstractThe present paper presents a multimodel inference approach to linguistic variation, expanding on prior work by Kuperman and Bresnan (2012). We argue that corpus data often present the analyst with high model selection uncertainty. This uncertainty is inevitable given that language is highly redundant: every feature is predictable from multiple other features. However, uncertainty involved in model selection is ignored by the standard method of selecting the single best model and inferring the effects of the predictors under the assumption that the best model is true. Multimodel inference avoids committing to a single model. Rather, we make predictions based on the entire set of plausible models, with contributions of models weighted by the models' predictive value. We argue that multimodel inference is superior to model selection for both the I-Language goal of inferring the mental grammars that generated the corpus, and the E-Language goal of predicting characteristics of future speech samples from the community represented by the corpus. Applying multimodel inference to the classic problem of English auxiliary contraction, we show that the choice between multimodel inference and model selection matters in practice: the best model may contain predictors that are not significant when the full set of plausible models is considered, and may omit predictors that are significant considering the full set of models. We also contribute to the study of English auxiliary contraction. We document the effects of priming, contextual predictability, and specific syntactic constructions and provide evidence against effects of phonological context.

Variation in English auxiliary realization: A new take on contraction

AbstractEnglish auxiliary contraction has received much attention in the linguistic literature, but our knowledge of this variable has remained limited due to the absence of a thorough corpus study. This paper examines contraction of six auxiliaries in two corpora, considering three distinct phonological shapes in which they occur and the implications for an analysis of the grammatical processes that underlie the surface alternation in form. I argue that the data best support a two-stage analysis of contraction, one under which variation in the morphology is followed by phonetic and phonological processes. Moreover, I show that this particular analysis explains a number of patterns in the data that would otherwise be accidental. In this way, I underscore the importance of approaching the study of variable phenomena with both quantitative data and formal analysis.

Quantitative data as a clue to auxiliary contraction processes

This paper is a quantitative corpus study of the variable contraction of English auxiliaries (e.g. John has ~ John’s been there all day). I examine auxiliaries after non-pronoun subjects, and find the following. First, auxiliaries often surface in an “intermediate” form, one which loses its initial consonant, but retains a reduced vowel (e.g. [?z] for has). After proposing an analysis of these forms, I examine the effect of subject weight on contraction, finding that contraction occurs less often after longer subjects. Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings for where contraction must be situated in the grammar.

The ain't constraint: Not-contraction in early African American English

Studies of negation in African American English (AAE) typically focus on its most salient exponents, ain't and negative concord. Because ain't arose during the development of auxiliary- and not-contraction in Early Modern English, an interesting question is whether constraints on ain't can be attributed to more general constraints on contraction. This article examines the constraints on not-contraction in three varieties argued to be representative of Early AAE. Although the analysis is complicated by the ever-narrowing variable context of ain't and by the competition of not-contraction with auxiliary contraction, results are largely parallel across the three varieties, pointing to a common origin. The parallels between ain't and not-contraction provide evidence that ain't is the extension of more general processes of contraction. The most consistent effect, the presence of negative concord, is argued to reflect a recurrent process of reinforcement in the history of English negation.The data on which this study is based were extracted from corpora housed in the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. I gratefully acknowledge Professor Shana Poplack's permission to use these data. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society (Washington, DC, January 2001) and the third U.K. Language Variation and Change conference (York, U.K., July 2001). The analysis benefited from discussions with and comments from Greg Guy, Dennis Preston, Jennifer Smith, and Gerard Van Herk, as well as several anonymous reviewers. Special thanks go to Sali Tagliamonte and Malcah Yaeger-Dror, whose comments substantially improved the article, and to Anthony Warner for help with translating the Old English examples. Any remaining errors are my own responsibility.

Contraction of negatives as evidence of variance in register-specific interactive rules

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the contraction of negatives in a carefully chosen corpus of discourse and writing, to permit comparison of the relative influences of various linguistic and social parameters on contraction. Evidence is presented that negative contraction is conditioned by interactional and other register variables. The point is made that the pragmatic as well as morphological interpretation of negatives entails that negative contraction and auxiliary contraction should be distinguished from each other. Although a Cognitive Prominence Principle predicts noncontraction when the negative conveys semantically focal information, a Social Agreement Principle predicts contraction. This is because it would be face-threatening (and, therefore, in conversation analysis terms “dispreferred”) to focus on disagreement, which is most often the semantic information conveyed by negatives. This hypothesis is examined using corpora which differ along several dimensions. The most important of these (for this study) appear to be the interactional versus informational register dimensions (Finegan, 1994). Data from instructional (workshop presentations), confrontational (political debates), and casual conversational material are contrasted with comparable reading style materials. The following general results are predicted. The Cognitive Prominence Principle will take over in informational contexts when disagreement is acceptable or neutralized. The Social Agreement Principle will take over in more interactional contexts where disagreement is not acceptable. The results are of interest to the student of focus, the sociolinguist concerned with dialect, register, and style variation, and even the speech technician.

Copula, wh-trace, and the ECP in Mauritian Creole

Mauritian has a null (0) and overt form (ete) of the copula, which are in complementary distribution. The former occurs in the context of a following overt phrase, the latter in the context of a following wh-trace, although in root interrogative lacking overt functional categories, they are optional. The phenomenon is therefore similar to auxiliary contraction in English or copula deletion in Black English Vernacular. The paper examines the nature of this distribution and proposes a unified approach to the variable forms of the copula in these languages. It further explores the condition whereby the null form in Mauritian Creole becomes possible in root interrogatives and suggests that an optional V-I-C movement operates, which, if it applies, results in the copula being in C where it is followed by an overt phrase. The final part of the paper addresses the question of why the copula is overt in the context of a following trace. It is suggested, following a proposal in Aoun et al. (1987) on the licensing of traces, that wh-traces in Mauritian Creole require a visible head governor in order to satisfy the ECP. The paper lends support to Aoun et al.'s suggestion that the ECP be carved up so that its licensing condition applies at PF and its identification requirement at LF

Copula and Auxiliary Contraction in the Speech of White Americans

L'A. examine la contraction de la copule et des auxiliaires anglais (anglais americain blanc vernaculaire). Cette etude le conduit a quelques reflexions theoriques concernant les analyses quantitatives et qualitatives des variations, la definition des langues formelles et informelles et la definition de la contraction elle-meme