of elevator buttons and contractions |
02 June 2003 - 10:18 am |
so i totally know this is how it went down in the elevator lobby this morning: young hot asian guy in suit (totally out of place on a college campus in the summertime) is standing in elevator lobby. young frat-boy type comes in from the street, assumes hot asian suit is waiting for the elevator. does not push button. i come in with bike, take a look at the engineer's board half-hidden in the corner that tell the savvy elevator rider which floors the elevators are currently on. though i expect them both to say 4, then watch in dismay as they both proceed slowly up to 5, then back down again, apparently stopping at every floor because they're taking so damn long, one of them is on 1. 1! the very floor i am standing on! but the door is not opening! i take a look at frat boy, at hot asian suit, at the engineer board, and push the button for the elevator. the doors immediately open, and i get in with my bike. frat boy follows me. heh. dumbass. exposed as having been standing in the elevator lobby, waiting for an elevator that was never going to come because he hadn't pushed the button. "now borogoves," you are saying to your computer screen right now, "perhaps he has the same pet peeve as you about repeat pressing the elevator button! perhaps he also hates it when people enter an elevator lobby complete with other people obviously waiting for the elevator, and press the button that is CLEARLY ALREADY PRESSED." ah yes, perhaps he does, perhaps he does. however, i reply, the dude has to at least *check* to see if the button is already pressed before he stands around just waiting.
saturday, laura and i spent a lovely 4 hours preparing the midterm exam for our class. sample question:
Which of these sentences sounds more natural than the other?
(a) This is the song that I wanna sing. (b) This is the songbird that I wanna sing.
Explain how the more natural sentence is constructed, and why that construction allows for the contraction to wanna. [for the answer, highlight the following white area. warning: actual factual information below. you may learn something.]
Sentence (a) should sound more natural. Sentence (b) only sounds right if you change wanna to want to. Why? Consider the underlying structure of sentence (a), This is the song. I want to sing the song, and you'll notice that there is a repetition of the song. In the second, "embedded" sentence, it occurs after the verb to sing. Keep that in mind while you consider sentence (b), which has the underlying structure, This is the songbird. I want the songbird to sing. Here, there is also repetition (of the songbird), but the position is different. Instead of coming at the end of the sentence, it comes between want and to.
Now, even though the repeated elements don't show up in the surface structure of the sentences, they leave behind psychologically real but linguistically unrealized "memories" of themselves, called traces. In the end, the rule about contraction from want to to wanna is just: you cannot contract across a trace. So, you in sentence (b), you can't contract (because there is a trace "blocking" the contraction), while in sentence (a) you can.
Here ends the answer (and begins the gushing about psycholinguistics). This is SO COOL. The fact that your brain is paying attention to these invisible traces is proof that language has a complex structure (that we are totally not aware of, in our day-to-day use of language). Also, your brain knows this kinda complicated fact about language, without you knowing that it knows it. Even cooler than that is that KIDS as young as 3 or 4 years old know this rule about contraction, and use it flawlessly! Moral of the story: sometimes, when your English teacher in junior high told you that teenagers today were making a mess of English by speaking sloppily, she was WRONG WRONG WRONG. Not only is contraction to wanna not sloppy, but it is governed by this complex rule, and people never use it wrong. Not only that, but sometimes, use of a contraction can make speech *clearer*. Consider this example This is the guy I want to visit. It can mean two things, right? You want to go to the guy's house and visit him there, or you want the guy to come visit you. You can't tell which meaning is intended. However, if you have the contracted version: This is the guy I wanna visit, suddenly one meaning has disappeared. Now, it can only mean that you want to go visit the guy at his house. It can no longer mean that the guy is coming to you. So here, a "sloppy" contraction has actually made language clearer. So there, Mrs. Lowry!
okay, so enough with the longwinded, overzealous psycholinguist. i return you now to your regularly scheduled incompetence.
coming home from previously mentioned exam-writing fest, i drove like a dumbass and clipped an open car door with my car. just lightly, mind you. but, i stopped, and backed up til i was even with the owner of the car door. he was all self-righteous and puffed up ready for a fight
guy: "hey! do you know you just clipped my door?"
me: "uh, yeah. that's why i stopped and backed up."
guy: "you should be careful driving."
me: "yeah, i know. i don't know what i was thinking. hang on, let me park the car and i'll come take a look." i park, get out, and walk up to his door. "how's it look?"
guy: (almost reluctantly) "well, i don't think you did any damage."
me: "that's good. well, i'm sorry about that. i don't know what i could have been thinking."
guy: "yeah, well, you're lucky, especially since i just bought this car yesterday."
me: "phew!" (wipe faux sweat from my brow)
guy: (in the manner of a child who's been told by his mother that he must apologize, even though he still doesn't really think he was doing anything wrong) "well, thanks for stopping anyway."
me: "no problem."
of course, i get all the payback later when i'm bitching to karl about how it musta been some vandals to cracked my passenger side view mirror, and he asks if perhaps i cracked it when i clipped the car. uh, yeah. that's i said.
ok, a rare instance of some gratuitous links:
this is so sad and i can't even read the captions.
and then there's just people with too much time on their hands.