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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Sources for Salo Comics

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

But "You're already fluffy" works without another main verb?

[-] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

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".

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago
[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

"Eating" isn't a verb, either. The person you're responding to just got some terms wrong, the underlying idea about contractions is correct.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

"Eating" most definitely is a verb in that context

[-] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Good point, thanks I removed the "eating" example. That's what I get for commenting in the morning.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

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/

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
727 points (90.8% liked)

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