Re: Are contractions a part of speech?

From: Brian M. Scott (b.scott_at_csuohio.edu)
Date: 02/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:32:07 -0500

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:33:25 -0000, "Douglas G. Kilday"
<fufluns@chorus.net> wrote in
<news:4214c55a_1@newspeer2.tds.net> in sci.lang:

> "Greg Lee" <greg@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> wrote ...

[...]

>> I don't know. I never heard "durst".

> My mother occasionally used it.

I don't know whether I've heard it, but I've certainly read
it often enough.

> Morphologically it is the "new" (now obsolete?) weak
> preterit of "dare", a preteritive-present verb (Chaucer
> has "dorste"). I used to know someone my own age who
> regularly used "dassn't", which I have never seen
> written, but it seems to be related to "durst" as
> "mussn't" is to "must".

I've seen it quite a number of times. According to DARE,
apparently, <daresn't>, <darsn't>, <dasn't>, <dassn't>,
<dasent>, <dassent>, and <dazzent> are all in record.

<http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010126>

[...]

Brian