Re: It's vs. it is

In a message dated 4/16/01 8:27:52 PM, pearson@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU writes:

<< The following two sentences are both fine:

  Andrea is happy, and Martin is happy too.
  Andrea's happy, and Martin's happy too.

This one is fine as well, with "happy" deleted from the second conjunct:

  Andrea is happy, and Martin is too.

But not this one:

  *Andrea's happy, and Martin's too.

Somehow "Martin is" can't be contracted to "Martin's" in this case.  Similarly
for this set:

  Andrea is leaving for Rome on Saturday, and Martin is leaving for Rome on
Sunday.
  Andrea's leaving for Rome on Saturday, and Martin's leaving for Rome on
Sunday.

  Andrea is leaving for Rome on Saturday, and Martin is on Sunday.

Those three are good for me (although the third sentence is ever so slightly
stilted, and requires a special intonational contour).  However, this
sentence is
no good:

  *Andrea's leaving for Rome on Saturday, and Martin's on Sunday.

Anyhow, I'm not sure what the rule for contraction is, but my intuition is
that
it must make reference both to prosody (stress/intonation, position in the
sentence, etc.), and to constituent structure ('Chomskyan' or otherwise). >>

    I see yet another interesting twist.
    What would happen if the words "too" and "on" in your asterisked
sentences were nouns?  Then "Martin's" would be a possessive.  Consider:
    "Andrea's leaving for Rome on Saturday" vs. "Andrea's leaving for Rome on
Saturday is good for her job, but bad for her relationship".
    Granted, you'd probably leave out the "for Rome on Saturday" in sentence
two, but I left it for comparison.  So, could it be that you can't contract
when a verb isn't next to it?  So, just auxilliars, like someone said?  Well,
and in sentences where "to be" is the main verb?

-David