Economizing spoken American English with the /s/ contraction: Native speaker perceptions of grammaticality

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the way that the /s/ contraction is used by native English speakers to form grammatically acceptable utterances. The use of the /s/ contraction involves several grammatical features, such as agreement and tense. Whether or not they are aware of these individual features, most native English speakers are able to identify when a sentence is grammatically correct. This study begins by describing some of the grammatical terminology that characterizes use of the /s/ contraction. While there are extensive textual resources that describe how the /s/ contraction can be used grammatically, or that describe the grammatical features, little research has been done to reflect the way that uses of the /s/ contraction are viewed by native speakers. The second part of this study describes a survey that was given to a group of forty-two native speakers, with high levels of education and living in the same region. The survey asked them to rate the grammaticality of certain phrases containing the /s/ contraction. The data was collected by email during a two-week period, and then the results were empirically analyzed. The results of this study indicate that this group of participants is in agreement about the grammaticality of most constructions using the /s/ contraction. The most notable finding of this study is that there are particular grammatical features that evoke less agreement, such as uses of the /s/ contraction with some instances of ‘there', as a replacement for the third person verb ‘has’, and also for some instances of reported speech. These categories may indicate an area of spoken English with evolving rules of grammaticality, as English is shaped by its speakers.