Re: It's vs. it is

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Peterson wrote:

> In a message dated 4/16/01 6:45:21 AM, nsampat@IX.NETCOM.COM writes:
>
> << Someone brought up the fact that it's okay to say "It's a frog", but not
> okay to say things of the nature of *"I don't know where it's".  I thought
> about this a little.. it seems that there's some fine distinction between the
> contraction and the phrase, that I'm at a total loss to describe. >>
>
> Well, while part of my description didn't work (mood/aspect markers only), it
> is still true that you can only contract in the relative subject position.
> So, you can say "It's what I want", but also "I know that it's what I want",
> since the last part's an embedded clause.  I think that explains it.  Any
> other facets unexplained as of yet?
Metrics.  In the sentence, "I don't know what it is," the accent falls on
"is," so "is" cannot be elided.  But in the sentence "It's what I want,"
the accent falls on "what," so "is" can be contracted.



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