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To-contract or not to-contract? That is the question1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2013

JUDITH M. BROADBENT  and
EVI SIFAKI
JUDITH M. BROADBENT
Affiliation:
University of Roehampton, Department of Media, Culture and Language, Southlands College, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SL, [email protected], [email protected]
EVI SIFAKI
Affiliation:
University of Roehampton, Department of Media, Culture and Language, Southlands College, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SL, [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

The focus of this article is what Anderson (2005: 72) describes as ‘another chronic puzzle in English’, the case of to-contraction. We set out to show that the extent and nature of to-contraction has not been captured by the literature to date, because researchers have been concerned with two forms which are no longer synchronic to-contractions: wanna and gonna, and have taken a syntactic or morphological approach. On the basis of new phonological data from British English varieties we argue that the reduction of /t/ in to should be taken as evidence of to-contraction. We claim that to is a phonological clitic and to-contraction is simply the incorporation of the clitic to into the preceding prosodic word.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , November 2013 , pp. 513 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

1

This paper has been through a number of drafts and has been delivered at different venues. We would like to thank the participants of the CRELL seminar group, University of Roehampton and of ICLCE 3, London University. We would particularly like to thank Manfred Krug, Nicolas Ballier and Annabelle Mooney. We are deeply grateful to the British Library Sound Archive for free access to their online resources. Finally, we are deeply indebted to April McMahon and to our two anonymous reviewers. Needless to say, all omissions and errors are our own.

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