Re: clitics (was Re: Jovian's Verbs From Hell)

Quoting Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>:

> On 2 Sep 02, at 15:18, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> [-a as a cliticised form of "have" as an auxiliary]
> > Mastery of this clitic is one quality of fluency in the
> > language.
>
> As is mastery of the -a from "to", and knowing when to use it. One of
> my pet peeves is when learners of English use "gonna" or "wanna" in
> written English -- and then sometimes go on to claim that "everyone
> does it"!
I tend to agree, but that's because emails have for me a
higher degree of formality than chats do.  In chats, I'm
quite likely to use informal spellings like <rilly> / <rill>
for the intensive use of <really> / <real>.  And I usually
use <wouldna>, <shouldna>, etc. as well.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637