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English Language & Usage

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  • Is that talking about the clitic ['s] for the possessive, or a contraction of is? In this case, both are fine. "Loving you's easy." "The dog that bit you's teeth were very yellow." Although it doesn't sound great because of the nonstandard word "youse" (plural "you").
    – CJ Dennis
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 4:06
  • @CJDennis: The quoted sentence is only about the contraction of is, because it occurs in the context of the section about clitic forms of auxiliary verbs
    – herisson
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 4:09
  • If a constituent is a verb's subject, doesn't that imply that it's a NP? Saying a subject "does not have to be an NP" suggests a restriction on what a NP may consist of.
    – Rosie F
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 8:16
  • Also, you hafta distinguish between spelling, which is arbitrary and technological, and language, which is biological and evolved, and spoken. "Contraction" mostly refers to spelling. There are lotsa contractions that occur frequently in speech but normally don't in spelling. Largely because we don't know how they auta be spelled, given the junk heap of English spelling.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 15:09
  • 1
    @RosieF: Many linguists argue that things like verb phrases, clauses, etc. can be subjects, and that they should not be analyzed as converted into NPs in that context (basically, the idea is that we should reserve the term "NP/noun phrase" to phrases headed by nouns, and verb phrases or clauses are not headed by nouns)
    – herisson
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 16:22