this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
713 points (90.7% liked)
Comic Strips
12963 readers
1274 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The reason it feels wrong is that "are" is the main verb in the sentence and shouldn't be contracted. You are only supposed to contract auxiliary verbs like "you're eating already" where eating is the main verb and are is auxiliary.
~~Edit: (I used a bad example because "eating" is a noun, as pointed out below.)~~
Un-edit: The example's correct, "eating" is a verb in this context.
Also, I'm thoroughly confused about who's saying "you're already" in this comic.
But "You're already fluffy" works without another main verb?
Yes. It doesn't work as "you're already" and really, it doesn't work all thay well as "you are already" either. This is almost yoda levels of rearrangement.
It makes the most sense as "you already are".
Right you're
Yup, this is likely a phonological restriction in addition to a syntactic one, though it's worth noting that the copula (the "be" verb) shows a lot of idiosyncratic behavior in different contexts in different dialects of English.
It seems that this pattern may have something to do with stress assignment within a predicate, but I'm not sure what the conditioning environment is at first glance. Any English phonologists here who can shed some more light on this?
I'm no expert, but I think "you're already" doesn't work because the "anti-stress" on the contraction tells us the focus is later, but the focus of "already" is actually on the "are" in "you're". It trips us up because it sneaks the focus past us and then just ends the sentence before the focus the stress told us about arrives.
It may also be because "you are already" is a variant of the sentence "you are" which can't be contracted, so the contraction insinuates "you're already [something]". It makes us parse a different sentence structure than it is, then we get confused when the sentence ends early.
"Eating" isn't a verb, either. The person you're responding to just got some terms wrong, the underlying idea about contractions is correct.
"Eating" most definitely is a verb in that context
Good point, thanks I removed the "eating" example. That's what I get for commenting in the morning.
I think your example is actually correct. Eating CAN be a noun, but in your example it is a present participle, a type of verb. It would be a noun if eating was the subject, ie: "eating is fun," where it would be a gerund. https://teacherblog.ef.com/grammar-recap-intro-to-gerunds-and-infinitives/
Sigh I think you're right. It's the progressive form of the verb.
That's been throwing me off all day. Thanks for confirming. Grammar is confusing.
Its obviously the cat's ass, which explains its facial expression.