研究习作: Two types of contracted negation in English

xiaoz

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Has anyone thought of the potential differences - if any - between the two types of contracted negation in English, and between the contracted forms and the full form as exemplified in the following sentences?

a. I'll not leave until I've made you see sense.
b. I won't let you down.
c. They will not accept it.

[本贴已被 动态语法 于 2005年08月04日 12时59分25秒 编辑过]
 
the contracted negation is informal form, esp used in spoken English
but full form is formal , esp used in written English.
 
回复:Two types of contracted negation in English

A good point. But I think there are more differences...

以下是引用 patricx2005-8-4 9:02:50 的发言:
the contracted negation is informal form, esp used in spoken English
but full form is formal , esp used in written English.
 
Some observations:

1) N't-negation is dominant in conversation (69%) while not-negation accounts for
nearly half of the negative forms in writing (47%);

2) The contracted negative form n't always takes an operator, i.e. an auxiliary or modal
verb whereas the full form not does not. We examined 1,000 concordances randomly
sampled for not and n't each in FLOB and BNCdemo, and found that n't is always
enclitic to an operator with no exception in both writing and speech while only about
two thirds (66.7% in FLOB and 63.8% in BNCdemo) of the total occurrences of not take
an operator.

3) A full operator followed by not (type c) typically occurs in written genres (with a
FLOB/BNCdemo ratio of 8.8:1), where text categories D, B, J, G, H and F account for the
majority of this form.

4) A full operator plus n't (type b) is more common than a contracted operator plus not
(type a). The former occurs in conversations as well as in written genres
(FLOB/BNCdemo=1:6.9, typically in five types of fiction plus humour) while the latter
normally occurs in conversations (cf. Biber et al 1999: 160; FLOB/BNCdemo=1:12.4,
typically in five types of fiction plus humour).
 
回复:研究习作: Two types of contracted

Tottie, G. (1991). Negation in English speech and writing: A study in variation.
San Diego: Academic Press.
 
Thanks. We have this book in our library.

She is also the author of "An Introduction to American English" (Blackwell 2002).

I think she comes from the home of the London-Lund Corpus.
 
maybe the present teaching reference books should be improved or even re-compiled to offer more convincing evidence, with the results of corpus-based analysis
 
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