Serenity& ([info]blueserenity22) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2008-11-20 15:36:00
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Current mood: thoughtful

Hi Linguaphiles!

I was thinking about contractions this afternoon and came upon "let's". Let us. Now, most other contractions are either time indicators (we'll) or verbs (I'm, she's). However, "let's" is a pronoun contraction. Am I too simplistic in the way I am grouping contracted words? (FYI I'm not a linguistics major so try to keep answers in common-speak ;).

Just curious, thanks!


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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-20 08:39 pm UTC (link)
The other contractions you list--we'll, I'm, she's--all contain pronouns as well. The only thing different about let's is the order.

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[info]sollersuk
2008-11-20 08:59 pm UTC (link)
They work the same way. The others you mention are pronoun+verb. This one is verb+pronoun. The key thing is that the initial vowel(s) of the second word. whether it is verb or pronoun, is omitted; if you want a rule, that's the rule.

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[info]caprinus
2008-11-20 09:20 pm UTC (link)
Let's get'em!

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[info]rauduskoivu
2008-11-20 09:45 pm UTC (link)
You're right that in English most contractions, even those involving pronouns, don't contract the pronoun itself, they contract the verb that goes with it. Or in the case of things like "verb + not", it becomes "verbn't." I'd say "let's" is a different-ish case that fits with archaic forms like 'tis and 'twas, where "it" gets contracted.

One interesting thing about Finnish is that just like we contract "I am," "you are," and so forth, they contract as well, but they contract the pronouns only (or sometimes the pronouns AND the verbs). For example, minä olen = "I am" but most Finns would say mä olen or maybe drop the "l" and elongate the "o" to say mä oon. They do this with any verb, not just "to be," though they don't do it with every pronoun, just some.

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[info]germaniac_z
2008-11-20 10:31 pm UTC (link)
Contractions usually have nothing to do with grammar, they are just ways of increasing the flow or sound of a sentence. The same goes with shortening words or omitting vowels, which we do all the time in speech, although it does not always show up in writing.

"Writing is only a secondary and imperfect system of representing speech." -Robert L. Baker

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[info]jmkelly
2008-11-21 04:03 am UTC (link)
As [info]germaniac_z said, contractions have nothing to do with grammar. They're just frequently-used elided phrases. They are often ambiguous: "we had" and "we would" both contract to "we'd"; we tolerate the ambiguity for the sake of convenience.

The "time indicator" you see in "we'll" is of course just the verb "will", which is one of the auxiliary verbs English uses to make up for its sad lack of a true future tense. It just happens to be distinct from the other commonly-used auxiliary verbs, even when contracted into "we'll". If "shall" was more commonly used, and reliably distinct in meaning from "will", we'd probably have another ambiguous contraction on our hands.

There are lots of contractions waiting for their spots in the dictionary: "gonna", for example, and the first-person singular analogue of "let's": "Lemme", as in "Lemme see that."

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-21 01:20 pm UTC (link)
Heck, we got almost a whole set: "I'll letcha see, but you hafta let 'em have it when you're done!"

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