The implication of contracting English words for constituent analysis

The development of English contracted forms was initially viewed as a part of the corruption of English. This explains in part why to date the structural, functional and generative approaches to English syntax with focus on constituent analysis, have not yet been reviewed to explicitly cover the contractions despite their frequent use in English, today. Using the empirical, theoretical method, therefore, this research investigates the implication of contracting words for constituent analysis using the structural, functional and generative approaches to syntax within the theoretical framework of radical construction grammar. It begins from observation of data, transiting to generalization of the data and concluding with formation of theory. From the data observation, English contracted forms are categorised into subject-verb contractions and verb-negator contractions, with each further categorised. The generalization carried out using the constituent analysis reveals the individual inadequacies of the structural, functional and generative approaches in accounting for the English contractions, which collapses into one, but different patterns of constituent. Formation of the theory indicates that the structural, functional and generative account of syntax are unable to identify English contraction as a constituent, whose analysis can only be conducted morphologically.