this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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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.