Contraction (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 and sounds.
In linguistic analysis, contractions should not be confused with crasis, abbreviations and initialisms, with which they share some semantic and phonetic functions, though all three are connoted by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance. Contraction is also distinguished from clipping, where beginnings and endings are omitted.
The definition overlaps with the term portmanteau, but a distinction can be made between a portmanteau and a contraction by noting that contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do and not, whereas a portmanteau word is formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept that the portmanteau describes.
English
has a number of contractions, mostly involving the elision of a vowel, as in I'm for "I am", and sometimes other changes as well, as in won't for "will not" or ain't for "am not". These contractions are commonly used in speech and in informal writing, though tend to be avoided in more formal writing.The main contractions are listed in the following table.
| Full form | Contracted | Notes |
| not | -n't | informal; any auxiliary verb + not is often contracted, but not is rarely contracted with other parts of speech; when a sentence beginning "I am not..." undergoes an interrogative inversion, contraction is to one of two irregular forms Aren't I...? or Ain't I...?, both being far more common than uncontracted Am not I...? or Am I not...? |
| let us | let's | informal, as in "Let's do this." |
| I am | I'm | informal, as in "I'm here." |
| are | -'re | informal; we're /wɪər/ or /wɛər/ is, in most cases, pronounced differently from were /wɜr/. |
| does | -'s | informal, as in "What's he do there every day?" |
| is | -'s | informal, as in "He's driving right now." |
| has | -'s | informal, as in "She's been here before." |
| have | -'ve | informal, as in "I've got two left." |
| had | -'d | informal, as in "He'd already left." |
| did | -'d | informal, as in "Where'd she go?" |
| would | -'d | informal, as in "We'd like to go." |
| will | -'ll | informal, as in "they'll call you later." |
| shall | -'ll | informal, as in "I'll call you later." |
| of | o'- | standard in some fixed compounds, as in three ' cat-o'-nine-tails, jack-o'-lantern, will-o'-wisp, man-o'-war, run-o'-the-mill, but mother-o'-pearl is borderline |
| of the | o'- | informal otherwise, as in "cup o' coffee," "barrel o' monkeys," "Land o' Goshen" |
| it | 't- | archaic, except in stock uses such as 'Twas the night before Christmas |
| them | 'em | informal, partially from hem, the original dative and accusative of they. |
| you | y'- | 2nd person pronoun has plurality marked in some varieties of English by combining with e.g. all, which is then usually contracted to y'all — in which case it likely is standard |
Contraction is a type of elision, simplifying pronunciation through reducing sounds occurring to a word group.
In subject–auxiliary inversion, the contracted negative forms behave as if they were auxiliaries themselves, changing place with the subject. For example, the interrogative form of He won't go is Won't he' go?, whereas the uncontracted equivalent is Will he not go?, with not'' following the subject.
Chinese
The Old Chinese writing system is well suited for the one-to-one correspondence between morpheme and glyph. Contractions, in which one glyph represents two or more morphemes, are a notable exception to this rule. About twenty or so are noted to exist by traditional philologists, and are known as jianci, while more words have been proposed to be contractions by recent scholars, based on recent reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, epigraphic evidence, and syntactic considerations. For example, 非 has been proposed to be a contraction of 不 + 唯/隹. These contractions are not generally graphically evident, nor is there a general rule for how a character representing a contraction might be formed. As a result, the identification of a character as a contraction, as well as the word that are proposed to have been contracted, are sometimes disputed.As vernacular Chinese dialects use sets of function words that differ considerably from Classical Chinese, almost all classical contractions listed below are now archaic and have disappeared from everyday use. However, modern contractions have evolved from these new vernacular function words. Modern contractions appear in all the major modern dialect groups. For example, 别 'don't' in Standard Mandarin is a contraction of 不要, while 覅 'don't' in Shanghainese is a contraction of 勿要. Similarly, in Northeast Mandarin 甭 'needn't' is both a phonological and graphical contraction of 不用. Finally, Cantonese contracts 乜嘢 'what?' to 咩.
Table of Classical Chinese contractions
French
The French language has a variety of contractions, similar to English but mandatory, as in , where c'est stands for ce + est. The formation of these contractions is called elision.In general, any monosyllabic word ending in e caduc will contract if the following word begins with a vowel, h or y. In addition to ce → c'-, these words are que → qu'-, ne → n'-, se → s'-, je → j'-, me → m'-, te → t'- , le or la → l'-, and de → d'-. Unlike with English contractions, however, these contractions are mandatory: one would never say *ce est or *que elle.
Moi and toi mandatorily contract to m'- and t'- respectively after an imperative verb and before the word y or en.
It is also mandatory to avoid the repetition of a sound when the conjunction si is followed by il or ils, which begin with the same vowel sound i: *si il → s'il ; *si ils → s'ils.
Certain prepositions are also mandatorily merged with masculine and plural direct articles: au for à le, aux for à les, du for de le, and des for de les. However, the contraction of cela to ça is optional and informal.
In informal speech, a personal pronoun may sometimes be contracted onto a following verb. For example, je ne sais pas may be pronounced roughly chais pas, with the ne being completely elided and the of je being mixed with the of sais. It is also common in informal contexts to contract tu to t'- before a vowel, e.g., t'as mangé for tu as mangé.
Hebrew
In Modern Hebrew, the prepositional prefixes -בְּ /bə-/ 'in' and -לְ /lə-/ 'to' contract with the definite article prefix -ה to form the prefixes -ב /ba/ 'in the' and -ל /la/ 'to the'. In colloquial Israeli Hebrew, the preposition את, which indicates a definite direct object, and the definite article prefix -ה are often contracted to 'ת when the former immediately precedes the latter. Thus ראיתי את הכלב may become ראיתי ת'כלב.Italian
In Italian, prepositions merge with direct articles in predictable ways. The prepositions a, da, di, in, su, con and per combine with the various forms of the definite article, namely il, lo, la, l', i, gli, gl', and le.| il | lo | la | l' | i | gli | le | ||
| a | al | allo | alla | all' | ai | agli | alle | |
| da | dal | dallo | dalla | dall' | dai | dagli | dalle | |
| di | del | dello | della | dell' | dei | degli | delle | |
| in | nel | nello | nella | nell' | nei | negli | nelle | |
| su | sul | sullo | sulla | sull' | sui | sugli | sulle | |
| con | col | coi | ||||||
| per |
- Contractions with a, da, di, in, and su are mandatory, but those with con and per are optional.
- Words in parentheses are no longer very commonly used. However, there's a difference between pel and pei, which are old-fashioned, and the other contractions of per, which are frankly obsolete. Col and coi are still common; collo, colla, cogli and colle are nowadays rare in the written language, but common in speaking.
- Formerly, gl' was often used before words beginning with i, however it is no longer in very common use.
- “C'è / V'è un problema” - There is a problem
Spanish
has two mandatory phonetic contractions between prepositions and articles: al for a el, and del for de el.Other contractions were common in writing until the 17th century, the most usual being de + personal and demonstrative pronouns: destas for de estas, daquel for de aquel, dél for de él etc.; and the feminine article before words beginning with a-: l'alma for la alma, now el alma. Several sets of demonstrative pronouns originated as contractions of aquí + pronoun, or pronoun + otro/a : aqueste, aqueso, estotro etc. The modern aquel is the only survivor of the first pattern; the personal pronouns nosotros and vosotros are remnants of the second. In medieval texts, unstressed words very often appear contracted: todol for todo el, ques for que es ; etc. including with common words, like d'ome instead de ome, and so on.
Though not strictly a contraction, a special form is used when combining con with mí, ti, or sí, which is written as conmigo for *con mí, contigo for *con ti, consigo for *con sí
Finally, one can hear pa' for para, deriving as pa'l for para el, but these forms are only considered appropriate in informal speech.
Portuguese
In Portuguese, contractions are common and much more numerous than those in Spanish. Several prepositions regularly contract with certain articles and pronouns. For instance, de and por combine with the definite articles o and a, producing do, da, pelo, pela. The preposition de contracts with the pronouns ele and ela, producing dele, dela. In addition, some verb forms contract with enclitic object pronouns: e.g., the verb amar combines with the pronoun a, giving amá-la.Another contraction in Portuguese that is similar to English ones is the combination of the pronoun da with words starting in a, resulting in changing the first letter a for an apostrophe and joining both words. Examples: Estrela d'alva ; Caixa d'água.
German
In informal, spoken German prepositional phrases, one can often merge the preposition and the article; for example, von dem becomes vom, zu dem becomes zum, or an das becomes ans. Some of these are so common that they are mandatory. In informal speech, aufm for auf dem, unterm for unter dem, etc. are also used, but would be considered to be incorrect if written, except maybe in quoted direct speech, in appropriate context and style.The pronoun es often contracts to s in certain contexts. For example, the greeting Wie geht es? is usually encountered in the contracted form Wie geht's?.
Local languages in German-speaking areas
of German, and various local languages that usually were already used long before today's Standard German was created, do use contractions usually more frequently than German, but varying widely between different local languages. The informally spoken German contractions are observed almost everywhere, most often accompanied by additional ones, such as in den becoming in'n or haben wir becoming hamwer, hammor, hemmer, or hamma depending on local intonation preferences. Bavarian German features several more contractions such as gesund sind wir becoming xund samma, which are schematically applied to all word or combinations of similar sound. The Munich-born footballer Franz Beckenbauer has as his catchphrase "Schau mer mal". A book about his career had as its title the slightly longer version of the phrase, "Schau'n Mer Mal".Such features are found in all central and southern language regions. A sample from Berlin: Sag einmal, Meister, kann man hier einmal hinein? is spoken as Samma, Meesta, kamma hier ma rin?
Several West Central German dialects along the Rhine River have built contraction patterns involving long phrases and entire sentences. In speech, words are often concatenated, and frequently the process of "liaison" is used. So, kriegst Du nicht may become Kressenit, or Lass mich gehen, habe ich gesagt may become Lomejon haschjesaat.
Mostly, there are no binding orthographies for local dialects of German, hence writing is left to a great extent to authors and their publishers. Outside quotations, at least, they usually pay little attention to print more than the most commonly spoken contractions, so as not to degrade their readability. The use of apostrophes to indicate omissions is a varying and considerably less frequent process than in English-language publications.
Norwegian
The use of contractions is not allowed in any form of standard Norwegian spelling; however, it is fairly common to shorten or contract words in spoken language. Yet, the commonness varies from dialect to dialect and from sociolect to sociolect—it depends on the formality etc. of the setting. Some common, and quite drastic, contractions found in Norwegian speech are "jakke" for "jeg har ikke", meaning "I do not have" and "dække" for "det er ikke", meaning "there is not". The most frequently used of these contractions—usually consisting of two or three words contracted into one word, contain short, common and often monosyllabic words like,,,, or. The use of the apostrophe is much less common than in English, but is sometimes used in contractions to show where letters have been dropped.In extreme cases, long, entire sentences may be written as one word. An example of this is "Det ordner seg av seg selv" in standard written Bokmål, meaning "It will sort itself out" could become "dånesæsæsjæl". R-dropping, being present in the example, is especially common in speech in many areas of Norway, but plays out in different ways, as does elision of word-final phonemes like.
Because of the many dialects of Norwegian and their widespread use it is often difficult to distinguish between non-standard writing of standard Norwegian and eye dialect spelling. It is almost universally true that these spellings try to convey the way each word is pronounced, but it is rare to see language written that does not adhere to at least some of the rules of the official orthography. Reasons for this include words spelled unphonemically, ignorance of conventional spelling rules, or adaptation for better transcription of that dialect's phonemes.
Latin
Latin contains several examples of contractions. One such case is preserved in the verb nolo, which was formed by a contraction of non volo. Similarly this is observed in the first person plural and third person plural forms.Japanese
Some contractions in rapid speech include ～っす for です and すいません for すみません. では is often contracted to じゃ. In certain grammatical contexts the particle の is contracted to simply ん.When used after verbs ending in the conjunctive form ～て, certain auxiliary verbs and their derivations are often abbreviated. Examples:
| Original form | Transliteration | Contraction | Transliteration |
| ～ている／～ていた／～ています／etc. | -te iru / -te ita / -te imasu / etc. | ～てる／～てた／～てます／etc. | -te ru / -te ta / -te masu / etc. |
| ～ていく／～ていった／etc.* | -te iku / -te itta / etc.* | ～てく／～てった／etc.* | -te ku / -te tta / etc.* |
| ～ておく／～ておいた／～ておきます／etc. | -te oku / -te oita / -te okimasu / etc. | ～とく／～といた／～ときます／etc. | -toku / -toita / -tokimasu / etc. |
| ～てしまう／～てしまった／～てしまいます／etc. | -te shimau / -te shimatta / -te shimaimasu / etc. | ～ちゃう／～ちゃった／～ちゃいます／etc. | -chau / -chatta / -chaimasu / etc. |
| ～でしまう／～でしまった／～でしまいます／etc. | -de shimau / -de shimatta / -de shimaimasu / etc. | ～じゃう／～じゃった／～じゃいます／etc. | -jau / -jatta / -jaimasu / etc. |
| ～ては | -te wa | ～ちゃ | -cha |
| ～では | -de wa | ～じゃ | -ja |
| ～なくては | -nakute wa | ～なくちゃ | -nakucha |
The ending ～なければ can be contracted to ～なきゃ when it is used to indicate obligation. It is often used without an auxiliary, e.g., 行かなきゃ（いけない） "I have to go."
Other times, contractions are made to create new words or to give added or altered meaning:
- The word 何か "something" is contracted to なんか to make a colloquial word with a meaning along the lines of "sort of," but that can be used with almost no meaning. Its usage is as a filler word is similar to English "like."
- じゃない "is not" is contracted to じゃん, which is used at the end of statements to show the speaker's belief or opinion, often when it is contrary to that of the listener, e.g., いいじゃん！ "What, it's fine!"
- The commonly used particle-verb phrase という is often contracted to ～って／～て／～っつー to give a more informal or noncommittal feeling.
- といえば, the conditional form of という mentioned above, is contracted to ～ってば to show the speaker's annoyance at the listener's failure to listen to, remember, or heed what the speaker has said, e.g., もういいってば！, “I already told you I don't want to talk about it anymore!”.
- The common words だ and です are older contractions that originate from である and でございます. These are fully integrated into the language now, and are not generally thought of as contractions; however in formal writing, である is used in place of だ.
- The first-person singular pronoun 私 is pronounced わたくし in very formal speech, but commonly contracted to わたし in less formal speech, and further clipped in specifically younger women's speech to あたし.
Polish
In the Polish language pronouns have contracted forms that are more prevalent in their colloquial usage. Examples are go and mu. The non-contracted forms are jego and jemu, respectively. The clitic -ń, which stands for niego as in dlań, is more common in literature. The non-contracted forms are generally used as a means to accentuate.Uyghur
, a Turkic language spoken in Central Asia, includes some verbal suffixes that are actually contracted forms of compound verbs. For instance, sëtip alidu is usually written and pronounced sëtivaldu, with the two words forming a contraction and the leniting into a or .Filipino/Tagalog
In Filipino, most contractions need other words to be contracted correctly. Only words that end with vowels can make a contraction with words like "at" and "ay." In this chart, the "@" represents any vowel.| Full form | Contracted | Notes |
| ~@ at | ~@'t | |
| ~@ ay | ~@'y | |
| ~@ ng | ~@'n | Informal. as in "Isa'n libo" |
| ~@ ang | ~@'ng |