Contractions of negated auxiliary verbs in English
Encyclopedia
The contraction of negated auxiliary verbs in English is most often achieved by suffixing "-n't", an abbreviated form of "not", to the root of a verb with or without changes to the root. In nonstandard or colloquial language
, the form "ain't" has particular prominence, while "amn't" is found typically in Ireland and Scotland.
s of negated auxiliary verbs in Standard English
are formed by reducing
the negative grammatical particle
not to n't, a clitic
or suffix
which is fused to the root verb form.
The standard contractions for negation of auxiliaries are "isn't", "aren't", "wasn't", "weren't" (all from forms of "be"), "hasn't", "haven't", "hadn't" (from forms of "have"), "won't", "wouldn't" (from forms of "will"), "shan't", "shouldn't" (from forms of "shall"), "can't", "couldn't" (from forms of "can"), "don't", "doesn't" (from forms of "do"), "mayn't", "mightn't" (from forms of "may"), "mustn't" (from "must"), "needn't" (from "need"), and "oughtn't" (from "ought").
Of the above standard contractions, three involve changes to the form of the auxiliary. In the case of "shall" → "shan't", a single final consonant sound / l /, spelled < ll >, is dropped. In the case of "will" → "won't", again the final consonant / l /, < ll >, is dropped, and additionally the preceding vowel changes both its sound (/ ɪ / → / oːʊ /) and its spelling (< i > → < o >). In the case of "do → don't", only the pronunciation changes (/ uː / → / oːʊ /).
Note that there is no standard contraction for am not. This is known in Linguistics
as the "amn't gap".
All conjugated forms of "be" are subject to contraction even when used in a non-auxiliary sense. All conjugated forms of "have" are subject to contraction when used as an auxiliary. In some dialects, "have" as a main verb is also subject to contraction, while in other dialects the negation is realised by the insertion of auxiliary "don't".
"Ain't" has several antecedents in English, corresponding to the various forms of "to be not" and "to have not".
"An't" (sometimes "a'n't") arose from "am not" (via "amn't") and "are not" almost simultaneously. "An't" first appears in print in the work of English Restoration playwrights. In 1695 "an't" was used as a contraction of "am not", and as early as 1696 "an't" was used to mean "are not". "An't" for "is not" may have developed independently from its use for "am not" and "are not". "Isn't" was sometimes written as "in't" or "en't", which could have changed into "an't". "An't" for "is not" may also have filled a gap as an extension of the already-used conjugations for "to be not".
"An't" with a long "a" sound began to be written as "ain't", which first appears in writing in 1749. By the time "ain't" appeared, "an't" was already being used for "am not", "are not", and "is not". "An't" and "ain't" coexisted as written forms well into the nineteenth century.
"Han't" or "ha'n't", an early contraction for "has not" and "have not", developed from the elision of the "s" of "has not" and the "v" of "have not". "Han't" also appeared in the work of English Restoration playwrights. Much like "an't", "han't" was sometimes pronounced with a long "a", yielding "hain't". With H-dropping, the "h" of "han't" or "hain't" gradually disappeared in most dialects, and became "ain't". "Ain't" as a contraction for "has not"/"have not" appeared in print as early as 1819. As with "an't", "han't" and "ain't" were found together late into the nineteenth century.
amnae is a contraction of "am not", used in declarative statements. This has been borrowed into Scottish English by many speakers.
and Scottish English
. It is formed in the same manner as other negative contractions: the negative particle
"not" reduces
to "n't", a clitic
or suffix
which fuses to the preceding verb form "am".
In Hiberno-English the question form ("amn't I?") is frequently used, while the declarative form ("I amn't") is less frequent. The Standard English
form "I'm not" is available as an alternative to "I amn't" in both Scottish English and Hiberno-English.
There is no undisputed standard equivalent of "amn't I": "am I not", "aren't I", and "ain't I" may respectively be considered stilted, affected, and substandard.
In Oliver St. John Gogarty
's impious poem, The Ballad of Japing Jesus
, Jesus
says:
In James Joyce
's Ulysses
, Gogarty's alter ego Buck Mulligan
quotes the lines in Chapter One. In Chapter 15, the prostitute Cissy Caffrey says to Leopold Bloom
, "Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl?"
Some twentieth-century writers described the use of "aren't" for "am not" as "illiterate" or awkward; today, however, this usage of "aren't" is "almost universal" among speakers of Standard English.
"Aren't" as a contraction for "am not" developed from one pronunciation of "an't" (which itself developed in part from "amn't" - see etymology of "ain't" for further discussion). In non-rhotic dialects, "aren't" and this pronunciation of "an't" are homonym
s. For reasons that are unclear, the spelling "aren't I" began to replace "an't I" in the early part of the twentieth century, although examples of "aren't I" for "am I not" appear in the first half of the nineteenth century, as in "St. Martin's Day", from Holland-tide by Gerald Griffin
, published in The Ant (1827): (A)ren't I listening; and isn't it only the breeze that's blowing the sheets and halliards about?
, including J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas
.
. It is reminiscent of "hae" ("have") in Lowland Scots
. In dialects that retain the distinction between "hain't" and "ain't", "hain't" is used for contractions of "to have not" and "ain't" for contractions of "to be not". In other dialects, "hain't" is used either in place of, or interchangeably with "ain't".
"Hain't" is seen for example in Chapter 33 of Mark Twain
's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: I hain't come back - I hain't been GONE.
"Hain't" is to be distinguished from "haint", a slang term for ghost
(i.e., a "haunt"), famously used in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird
.
subject + auxiliary + main verb, as in He is going. When such a statement is converted to an affirmative question, the order of the subject and the auxiliary is reversed: Is he going? Alternatively, when the affirmative declarative statement is converted to a negative declarative statement, "not" is inserted directly before the main verb, as in He is not going, and this can be contracted to He isn't going. An uncontracted negative question is formed from an affirmative question (Is he going?) by again putting "not" before the main verb: Is he not going? But a contracted negative question is formed from a contracted negative declarative statement (He isn't going) by inverting the order of the subject and the auxiliary including its suffix or clitic n't: Isn't he going?
Thus a negative question with no contraction has the word order auxiliary + subject + not + main verb (Is he not going?), while a negative question with a contraction has the word-and-clitic order auxiliary verb + attached n't + subject + main verb (Isn't he going?).
Colloquial language
Colloquial language, especially in philosophy of language, is natural language which, among other properties, uses colloquialisms. In the field of logical atomism, meaning is evaluated differently than with more formal propositions.-See also:...
, the form "ain't" has particular prominence, while "amn't" is found typically in Ireland and Scotland.
Standard contractions
ContractionContraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....
s of negated auxiliary verbs in Standard English
Standard English
Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...
are formed by reducing
Relaxed pronunciation
Relaxed pronunciation is a phenomenon that happens when the syllables of common words are slurred together...
the negative grammatical particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
not to n't, a clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
or suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
which is fused to the root verb form.
The standard contractions for negation of auxiliaries are "isn't", "aren't", "wasn't", "weren't" (all from forms of "be"), "hasn't", "haven't", "hadn't" (from forms of "have"), "won't", "wouldn't" (from forms of "will"), "shan't", "shouldn't" (from forms of "shall"), "can't", "couldn't" (from forms of "can"), "don't", "doesn't" (from forms of "do"), "mayn't", "mightn't" (from forms of "may"), "mustn't" (from "must"), "needn't" (from "need"), and "oughtn't" (from "ought").
Of the above standard contractions, three involve changes to the form of the auxiliary. In the case of "shall" → "shan't", a single final consonant sound / l /, spelled < ll >, is dropped. In the case of "will" → "won't", again the final consonant / l /, < ll >, is dropped, and additionally the preceding vowel changes both its sound (/ ɪ / → / oːʊ /) and its spelling (< i > → < o >). In the case of "do → don't", only the pronunciation changes (/ uː / → / oːʊ /).
Note that there is no standard contraction for am not. This is known in Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
as the "amn't gap".
All conjugated forms of "be" are subject to contraction even when used in a non-auxiliary sense. All conjugated forms of "have" are subject to contraction when used as an auxiliary. In some dialects, "have" as a main verb is also subject to contraction, while in other dialects the negation is realised by the insertion of auxiliary "don't".
Shan't
Shan't is the contraction of "shall not". It evolved from "shalln't" which eventually evolved into "sha'n't". Later on the apostrophe disappeared, and it is now typically written "shan't". "Shan't" is more common to British English than American English.Won't
Won't is the contraction of "will not". "Will not" used to have a form "woll not". It was traditionally written with two apostrophes "wo'n't" to represent the missing letters "ll". Throughout the years however, the first apostrophe began to disappear and the word evolved into "won't".Can't
Can't is the contraction of "can not" or "cannot". The word was traditionally written with another apostrophe "ca'n't". Eventually the apostrophe began to disappear and the word evolved into "can't".Colloquial contractions
There are many current and historical contractions of negated auxiliary verbs that are considered colloquial or dialectal. Most are variations on standard contractions, although some function to fill the "amn't" gap.Ain't
"Ain't" is a colloquialism and contraction for "am not", "is not", "are not", "has not", and "have not". In some dialects "ain't" is also used as a contraction of "do not", "does not", and "did not". The usage of "ain't" is a perennial subject of controversy in English."Ain't" has several antecedents in English, corresponding to the various forms of "to be not" and "to have not".
"An't" (sometimes "a'n't") arose from "am not" (via "amn't") and "are not" almost simultaneously. "An't" first appears in print in the work of English Restoration playwrights. In 1695 "an't" was used as a contraction of "am not", and as early as 1696 "an't" was used to mean "are not". "An't" for "is not" may have developed independently from its use for "am not" and "are not". "Isn't" was sometimes written as "in't" or "en't", which could have changed into "an't". "An't" for "is not" may also have filled a gap as an extension of the already-used conjugations for "to be not".
"An't" with a long "a" sound began to be written as "ain't", which first appears in writing in 1749. By the time "ain't" appeared, "an't" was already being used for "am not", "are not", and "is not". "An't" and "ain't" coexisted as written forms well into the nineteenth century.
"Han't" or "ha'n't", an early contraction for "has not" and "have not", developed from the elision of the "s" of "has not" and the "v" of "have not". "Han't" also appeared in the work of English Restoration playwrights. Much like "an't", "han't" was sometimes pronounced with a long "a", yielding "hain't". With H-dropping, the "h" of "han't" or "hain't" gradually disappeared in most dialects, and became "ain't". "Ain't" as a contraction for "has not"/"have not" appeared in print as early as 1819. As with "an't", "han't" and "ain't" were found together late into the nineteenth century.
Amnae
In ScotsScots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
amnae is a contraction of "am not", used in declarative statements. This has been borrowed into Scottish English by many speakers.
Amn't
"Amn't" is a standard contraction of "am not" in some dialects of mainly Hiberno-EnglishHiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
and Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
. It is formed in the same manner as other negative contractions: the negative particle
Particle
A particle is, generally, a small localized object to which can be ascribed physical properties. It may also refer to:In chemistry:* Colloidal particle, part of a one-phase system of two or more components where the particles aren't individually visible.In physics:* Subatomic particle, which may be...
"not" reduces
Relaxed pronunciation
Relaxed pronunciation is a phenomenon that happens when the syllables of common words are slurred together...
to "n't", a clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
or suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
which fuses to the preceding verb form "am".
In Hiberno-English the question form ("amn't I?") is frequently used, while the declarative form ("I amn't") is less frequent. The Standard English
Standard English
Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...
form "I'm not" is available as an alternative to "I amn't" in both Scottish English and Hiberno-English.
There is no undisputed standard equivalent of "amn't I": "am I not", "aren't I", and "ain't I" may respectively be considered stilted, affected, and substandard.
- Examples
In Oliver St. John Gogarty
Oliver St. John Gogarty
Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist, who served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses....
's impious poem, The Ballad of Japing Jesus
The Ballad of Japing Jesus
"The Song of the Cheerful Jesus" is a poem by Oliver St. John Gogarty. It was written around Christmas of 1904 and was later published in modified form as "The Ballad of Joking Jesus" in James Joyce's Ulysses.-Original text:...
, Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
says:
- If anyone thinks that I amn't divine,
- He gets no free drinks when I'm making the wineSacramental wineSacramental wine, Communion wine or altar wine is wine obtained from grapes and intended for use in celebration of the Eucharist...
In James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
, Gogarty's alter ego Buck Mulligan
Buck Mulligan
Malachi "Buck" Mulligan is a fictional character in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. He appears most prominently in episode 1 , and is the subject of the novel's famous first sentence:...
quotes the lines in Chapter One. In Chapter 15, the prostitute Cissy Caffrey says to Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in The Odyssey....
, "Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl?"
Aren't
"Aren't" is a standard English contraction of "are not". It also functions as a colloquial contraction of "am not" in interrogative sentences: Aren't I lucky to have you around?Some twentieth-century writers described the use of "aren't" for "am not" as "illiterate" or awkward; today, however, this usage of "aren't" is "almost universal" among speakers of Standard English.
"Aren't" as a contraction for "am not" developed from one pronunciation of "an't" (which itself developed in part from "amn't" - see etymology of "ain't" for further discussion). In non-rhotic dialects, "aren't" and this pronunciation of "an't" are homonym
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
s. For reasons that are unclear, the spelling "aren't I" began to replace "an't I" in the early part of the twentieth century, although examples of "aren't I" for "am I not" appear in the first half of the nineteenth century, as in "St. Martin's Day", from Holland-tide by Gerald Griffin
Gerald Griffin
Gerald Griffin was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright.-Biography:He was born in Limerick, Ireland, the son of a brewer. He went to London in 1823 and became a reporter for one of the daily papers, and later turned to writing fiction...
, published in The Ant (1827): (A)ren't I listening; and isn't it only the breeze that's blowing the sheets and halliards about?
Bain't
"Bain't" or "baint", apparently a contraction of "be not", is found in a number of works employing eye dialectEye dialect
Eye dialect is the use of non-standard spelling for speech to draw attention to pronunciation. The term was originally coined by George P. Krapp to refer to the literary technique of using non-standard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard, such as...
, including J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas
Uncle Silas
Uncle Silas is a Victorian Gothic mystery-thriller novel by the Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It is notable as one of the earliest examples of the locked room mystery subgenre...
.
Don't
"Don't" is a standard English contraction of "do not". However, "don't" also functions colloquially as a contraction of "does not": Emma? She don't live here anymore.Hain't
"Hain't", in addition to being an antecedent of "ain’t", is a contraction of "has not" and "have not" in some dialects of English, such as Appalachian EnglishAppalachian English
Appalachian English is a common name for the Southern Midland dialect of American English. This dialect is spoken primarily in the Central and Southern Appalachian Mountain region of the Eastern United States, namely in North Georgia, Northwestern South Carolina, Southern West Virginia,...
. It is reminiscent of "hae" ("have") in Lowland Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
. In dialects that retain the distinction between "hain't" and "ain't", "hain't" is used for contractions of "to have not" and "ain't" for contractions of "to be not". In other dialects, "hain't" is used either in place of, or interchangeably with "ain't".
"Hain't" is seen for example in Chapter 33 of Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: I hain't come back - I hain't been GONE.
"Hain't" is to be distinguished from "haint", a slang term for ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
(i.e., a "haunt"), famously used in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature...
.
Effect on syntax of questions
Affirmative declarative statements in which the verb includes both an auxiliary and a main verb take the word orderWord order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
subject + auxiliary + main verb, as in He is going. When such a statement is converted to an affirmative question, the order of the subject and the auxiliary is reversed: Is he going? Alternatively, when the affirmative declarative statement is converted to a negative declarative statement, "not" is inserted directly before the main verb, as in He is not going, and this can be contracted to He isn't going. An uncontracted negative question is formed from an affirmative question (Is he going?) by again putting "not" before the main verb: Is he not going? But a contracted negative question is formed from a contracted negative declarative statement (He isn't going) by inverting the order of the subject and the auxiliary including its suffix or clitic n't: Isn't he going?
Thus a negative question with no contraction has the word order auxiliary + subject + not + main verb (Is he not going?), while a negative question with a contraction has the word-and-clitic order auxiliary verb + attached n't + subject + main verb (Isn't he going?).
Further reading
- "ain't", Merriam-Webster's dictionary of English usage (1995) pp 60-64 online