Re: Are contractions a part of speech?

From: Greg Lee (greg_at_ling.lll.hawaii.edu)
Date: 02/20/05 

Date: 20 Feb 2005 01:31:38 GMT

Douglas G. Kilday <fufluns@chorus.net> wrote:
...
> One must be cautious arguing from mobility. Different adverbs have
> different degrees of mobility.

I was cautious. I implied that a characteristic of adverbs is occurrence
in several positions, not that adverbs can be put any old place.

...
> Someone here didn't eat any food.
> Someone here did not eat any food.

> I can't imagine "parsing" these differently.

I don't know why. We agreed that "didn't" is one word but "did not" is
two, didn't we? Doesn't that make it obvious that they're parsed
differently?

> In both cases the simple
> negative is bound with the indefinite "any" to form an emphatic negative
> (which nowadays has lost most of its emphatic force through frequent use),
> but one may still yank out the negative. If "not" is a modifier of "eat any
> food", then so is "n't". ...

It doesn't follow. You're arguing from semantics again, or maybe confusing
binding (or, rather, scope) with modification. 

-- 
Greg Lee <greg@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>
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