Re: It's vs. it is

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Matt Pearson wrote:

> David Peterson wrote:
>
> > In a message dated 4/16/01 12:20:07 PM, tb0pwd1@CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU writes:
> >
> > << 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. >>
> >
> > That's not exactly correct.  After all, you could put the stress on "I"
> > indicating it's you who wants it and not someone else and you could still say
> > "it's" in the beginning.  You could put the stress on anything, in fact, and
> > you could only contract things in the subject position.
>
> What do you mean by "subject position"?  "Is" is not--and cannot be--a subject.
>
> If what you mean is that "is" can be contracted when it follows a subject, then
> your rule doesn't work:  In the sentence "I don't know what it is", "it" is the
> subject of the embedded clause.
You cannot contract a stressed word.  Try saying "It's big" with the
stress on the -'s.  It will sound, at best, awkward, at worst, absurd.

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