LL-L "Grammar" 2004.09.24 (04) [E]

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From: godsquad at cox.net <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2004.09.23 (13) [E]

Aren't I?

Uiliam, my view is that we do not like to say "Am I," so we say, "Aren't I?"
We seem to want a contraction when one is not needed.

[Ben J. Bloomgren]

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From: Tom <jmaguire at pie.xtec.es>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2004.09.23 (13) [E]

From: Uilleam Òg mhic Sheumais <goidel.glas at gmail.com>

>Subject: Grammar (maybe)
>
>Latha math, Lowlanders;
>
>I was wondering about the phrase "Aren't I?". E.g.:
>Person A: You're mean.
>Person B: I am mean, aren't I?
>We all know that "I" doesn't go with "are", so why does it in this
>phrase? Furthermore, has anyone encountered such a phrase in other
>languages, Lowlandic or otherwise?
>
>Beannachdan,
>Uilleam Òg mhic Sheumais
>
Hello,

I know that this form is taught in many  ESL classes, probably
throughout the world, but it has always sounded contrived to me. Could
it be that some influential speakers of English cannot get their mouths
round "Amn't I?" and so the grammatically correct form has degenerated
into "Aren't I?"

Whatever the theory, in practce "Amn't I?" is excluded as an option in
question forms and directly replaced by "Aren't I?", at least in ESL
(see Michael Swan: "Practical English Usage" Second Edition:
"'Am not' is normally only contracted in questions, to 'aren't'"
"The question tag for 'I am' is 'aren't I'?: 'I'm late, aren't I?'" )

Regards,

Tom

--
Carpe Diem.
-Visit Nlp in Education  http://www.xtec.es/~jmaguire
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From: John Duckworth <jcduckworth2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Grammar


Uilleam said:

"I was wondering about the phrase "Aren't I?"."

I think our use of _aren't I_ in English is just a sign that the verbal
system was on its way to further simplification when printing and
standardization more or less froze it as we know it today. We might have
been using forms such as *_I are_ and *_she are_ if things had not slowed
down. It also strikes me that euphony might be a reason that things never
got that far; _I are_ is difficult to say without inserting a glottal stop,
and if you contract it to _I're_ you have a homonym of _ire_ (not that
English is very averse to homonyms). Maybe this argument is wrong though,
since we already have _we are/we're_ (the latter homonymous with _weir_).

In our local dialect here in Lancashire, even in the very diluted version
still in use, the construction _am't I_ is still relatively common.

In some dialects of English, such as in the southwest of England, the
subjunctive forms of the verb seem to have taken over; hence, _I be from
England_. Of course, _baint I_ (<_ain't I_) also occurs in such southeastern
dialects, and in obsolete English, as does _aint I_.

John Duckworth
Preston, UK

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