A Diachronic Study of English Negative Contraction

A Diachronic Study of English Negative Contraction

  Previous studies of negative contraction in English have suggested that several factors play a role in the choice of contracted and uncontracted forms: dialectal variations (Levin 1958, Iyeiri 2001, Wood 2002), syntactic conditions (Blockely 1998, 1990), and standard and non-standard varieties (Brainerd 1989). However, the role of prosody has not been considered as one of the main factors influencing contraction. In addition, all of the previous studies mainly focus on a specific period so they do not provide any overall picture of contraction patterns through all the stages either any diachronic comparison of different contraction patterns. The aim of this paper is to investigate negative contraction patterns from Old English to Modern English, demonstrating the role of prosody in the use of contraction. Under the assumption that contraction of two words is most likely to occur when they are prosodically close to each other, I argue that contraction takes place in a nested prosodic word. The generalization of contracted forms in Modern English is seen as the result of a phonological drift of prosodic structure which is most appropriate for contraction.