The Significance of'd Contractions

概要

論文の詳細を見る
In spoken English, contraction of the past-perfect auxiliary had after a vowel-final pronoun is quite common (e.g. I'd, they'd, etc.); this can (at least partially) be accounted for by English speakers' propensity to preserve the regular alternation of weak and strong syllables. On the other hand, written English (typically in the expository mode) normally excludes the use of contractions as factors of informality and vulgarity. This study is concerned with how fiction writers deal with their dilemma in narrative writing. Some of them keep to the full forms, leaving the task of "transforming full forms into the surface-level phonetic representations" to the reader, while others take on part of the reader's interpretative task and contract auxiliaries in certain contexts to varying degrees. It is difficult to establish absolute criteria to predict their choice with a small sampling, yet it is of extreme importance to call attention to the significant role of contractions in creative writing, thus laying the foundations for future research on subtle usage or nuances that native speakers evoke by intuitive judgment.
英米文化学会の論文
1997-03-31