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Tue 19 Jul, 2005 02:24 am
Hi everybody, I want to make sure if the negative interrogative can also
be contracted like negative in present continuous. I guess it can be, here
isn't mentioned,
He is working / He's working.
Why is he working? / Why's he working ?
Is he not working? / Isn't he working ?
Another thing, for rules of the present continuous spelling. Let's take the
following examples,
Get : one syllable, one vowel, last letter is consonant. So, when using in
present con. it would be getting, doubling the last letter.
Prefer : two syllables, the second one has a vowel and ends up with
a consonant, so it would be preferring. But, if we take budget,
this verb can't be written budgetting because the stress lies on
the first syllable.
Could somebody tell me about signal spelling ?, and what is the exception
in American English ?
Also,
taking the example,
She is knitting, and she is singing. Now, we have one subject, so we
might drop the second one,
She is knittig, and singing. Does this mean that the first sentence is
awkward ?, or it's fine.
Thanks everybody :wink:
Quote:He is working / He's working.
Why is he working? / Why's he working ?
Is he not working? / Isn't he working ?
Yeah, these are all acceptable contractions. However, the last one changes things ever so slightly. If you say "Isn't he working?" most people will answer as if you said, "Is he working?" But grammatically, they're equivalent.
Quote:Another thing, for rules of the present continuous spelling. Could somebody tell me about signal spelling ?, and what is the exception
in American English ?
Never knew about this rule...but I'm not surprised that it is not hard and fast! English is just not consistent enough to define all these exceptions with easy to remember rules. You'll just have to try to remember each word.
Quote:She is knitting, and she is singing. Now, we have one subject, so we
might drop the second one,
She is knittig, and singing. Does this mean that the first sentence is
awkward ?, or it's fine.
There's no need for a comma in this sentence, so that makes it a little awkward. The top sentence is also awkward because you repeated the pronoun "she" twice which was unnecessary. Therefore, the second sentence is more acceptable.
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