摘要：During the last few decades, contracted forms have been studied by
scholars with different aims. Some have focussed on grammatical and
register-related factors, conditioning the use of contractions in corpora
of spoken and written British English (Black 1977, Forsheden 1983,
Hiller 1984, Kjellmer 1995); others, within the framework of generative
syntax, have concentrated on ‘knock-out’ factors, blocking contraction
of auxiliaries (Zwicky 1970, King 1970, Kaisse 1983 and 1985). It is
generally accepted that contracted forms are primarily a feature of
spoken, informal English. The role of contracted not in spoken American
English characterized by discourse situations and speaker interaction of
different kinds has been investigated by Yaeger-Dror (1996, and references
therein).
