The Student Room Group

People who use don't instead of doesn't and who forget to start sentences with words

Why do people sometimes use don't instead of doesn't? They're not interchangeable...

Why do people also forget how the difference between there/their and they're? and it's and its and other words that sound the same but are different?

Also why do people forget to put words like I in front of sentences like... Putting "Love it!" instead of I love it...
(edited 10 years ago)
Cuz the internet makes people stoopid init.
Reply 2
it is because TELEVISION
Reply 3
It's quicker to type your instead of you're. Especially on a smartphone, where you often have to press the symbols key to access the apostrophe. And then when people use you're instead of your they must be doing it just to take the piss

Similar reasons for the other stuff
Reply 4
Because spoken dialect influences the way people write, the way it always has done. This is nothing new.
Reply 5
OP don't have a clue about nothing. Their just jealous of are English GCSEs.
Original post by Ornlu
OP don't have a clue about nothing. Their just jealous of are English GCSEs.

You mean doesn't and they're... Our also.. Ugh...
Reply 7
Its strange. But its there business. Hate it. Love it. Don't make difference to they're lives.
Reply 8
Original post by MylittlePlusle
Why do people sometimes use don't instead of doesn't? They're not interchangeable...


We have obligatory subject pronouns, the -es ending is absolutely vestigial and only still exists where the rest of the verb paradigm is dead because of the heavy use of the third person, particularly in written works.

Why do people also forget how the difference between there/their and they're? and it's and its and other words that sound the same but are different?


Well, homophony, but I will admit I have little patience with this one myself. To be fair, the apostrophe is a terrible kludge, and it is just a written convention and has no grammatical reality - particularly the possessive apostrophe.

Also muddying the waters is the fact that only the personal pronouns have overt case features in English. Since they're indicates that auxiliaries are phonetically cliticised in English, it's quite fair that someone might think their is the auxiliary cliticisation, particularly if they analyse the apostrophe, generalising from John's to it's and they're, as part of an overt possessive case paradigm at the grammatical level (which it isn't, it's just a written convention).

Far from an unreasonable assumption, and to understand it fully requires a knowledge of the interplay between phonetics, syntax and formal written language, quite apart from the complexity of the syntactic rules themselves.

Misunderstanding the apostrophe may therefore be due to the use of reading for early formal language learning.

Also why do people forget to put words like I in front of sentences like... Putting "Love it!" instead of I love it...


Because the subject pronoun is clear from the discourse context. The fact that the phrase is exclamatory with a highly deictic function means it lends itself to syllable reduction and being analysed as a chunk. The fact that an exclamatory "you/we/they/he love(s) it" would have a mandatory subject pronoun is evidence that in such constructions the first person singular is the unmarked form.
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 9
Original post by SoftPunch
Its strange. But its there business. Hate it. Love it. Don't make difference to they're lives.


Funny gal
Reply 10
Original post by Ripper-Roo
Funny gal

:wink:

Spoiler

Laziness.

Contempt for the English language should be punishable with 50 years prison sentence》imo
Reply 12
Original post by kidomo
Laziness.

Contempt for the English language should be punishable with 50 years prison sentence》imo

OMG. No full-stop. I will call the cops now.
Original post by scrotgrot
We have obligatory subject pronouns, the -es ending is absolutely vestigial and only still exists where the rest of the verb paradigm is dead because of the heavy use of the third person, particularly in written works.



Well, homophony, but I will admit I have little patience with this one myself. To be fair, the apostrophe is a terrible kludge, and it is just a written convention and has no grammatical reality - particularly the possessive apostrophe.

Also muddying the waters is the fact that only the personal pronouns have overt case features in English. Since they're indicates that auxiliaries are phonetically cliticised in English, it's quite fair that someone might think their is the auxiliary cliticisation, particularly if they analyse the apostrophe, generalising from John's to it's and they're, as part of an overt possessive case paradigm at the grammatical level (which it isn't, it's just a written convention).

Far from an unreasonable assumption, and to understand it fully requires a knowledge of the interplay between phonetics, syntax and formal written language, quite apart from the complexity of the syntactic rules themselves.

Misunderstanding the apostrophe may therefore be due to the use of reading for early formal language learning.



Because the subject pronoun is clear from the discourse context. The fact that the phrase is exclamatory with a highly deictic function means it lends itself to syllable reduction and being analysed as a chunk. The fact that an exclamatory "you/we/they/he love(s) it" would have a mandatory subject pronoun is evidence that in such constructions the first person singular is the unmarked form.


My head hurts:cry2:.
Original post by SoftPunch
OMG. No full-stop. I will call the cops now.


Cume at me bro!
Reply 15
Original post by kidomo
My head hurts:cry2:.

Don't know about you, but I was like tl;dr :wink:
Original post by kidomo
My head hurts:cry2:.


Sorry, reading back it's frightening how unthinkingly the jargon comes, as I was writing it seemed fairly accessible :tongue: basically all his points are *******s and there are good linguistic reasons for why they're misused.

Still, linguistics ain't gonna land me a job, might as well get some use out of it where I can
Original post by scrotgrot
We have obligatory subject pronouns, the -es ending is absolutely vestigial and only still exists where the rest of the verb paradigm is dead because of the heavy use of the third person, particularly in written works.



Well, homophony, but I will admit I have little patience with this one myself. To be fair, the apostrophe is a terrible kludge, and it is just a written convention and has no grammatical reality - particularly the possessive apostrophe.

Also muddying the waters is the fact that only the personal pronouns have overt case features in English. Since they're indicates that auxiliaries are phonetically cliticised in English, it's quite fair that someone might think their is the auxiliary cliticisation, particularly if they analyse the apostrophe, generalising from John's to it's and they're, as part of an overt possessive case paradigm at the grammatical level (which it isn't, it's just a written convention).

Far from an unreasonable assumption, and to understand it fully requires a knowledge of the interplay between phonetics, syntax and formal written language, quite apart from the complexity of the syntactic rules themselves.

Misunderstanding the apostrophe may therefore be due to the use of reading for early formal language learning.



Because the subject pronoun is clear from the discourse context. The fact that the phrase is exclamatory with a highly deictic function means it lends itself to syllable reduction and being analysed as a chunk. The fact that an exclamatory "you/we/they/he love(s) it" would have a mandatory subject pronoun is evidence that in such constructions the first person singular is the unmarked form.


As I've said before don't and doesn't have two different meaning... We learn all of this in school, I don't understand why it's so hard for
people to remember it...


If the apostrophe was hard to use, they would be typing it as "theyre" which I've seen people do... I don't know what's wrong with them. . It's like know and now and no also and every other two or more words that sound the same but have DIFFERENT meanings.

As for the I love it thing, it just annoys me to no end really.

I think people are just getting lazy.
Original post by MylittlePlusle
As I've said before don't and doesn't have two different meaning... We learn all of this in school, I don't understand why it's so hard for
people to remember it...


If the apostrophe was hard to use, they would be typing it as "theyre" which I've seen people do... I don't know what's wrong with them. . It's like know and now and no also and every other two or more words that sound the same but have DIFFERENT meanings.

As for the I love it thing, it just annoys me to no end really.

I think people are just getting lazy.


I hate to get on my high horse but you are hopelessly unqualified to make such a judgement without knowing some linguistics.

Don't and doesn't mean the same thing
Don't and doesn't do have the same meaning because the -es represents what's called an uninterpretable feature, which means it can't be grammatical until it matches up/"checks off" with an agreeing subject, i.e. he, she, it, one, which are said to bear the corresponding interpretable feature. Uninterpretable features are so called because they have no representation in terms of the underlying logic of the sentence, only of its written/pronounced form. Working together, these features allow us to divine the relationship between the various parts of the sentence we hear and figure out who's doing what to whom ("man bites dog" or "dog bites man" kind of thing).

Therefore, despite their different form, don't and doesn't (uninterpretable 1st/3rd person features) have the same meaning in a way that I and he (interpretable 1st/3rd person features) don't.

Try it: try explaining the difference between he and I in terms of what different objects they refer to in real life. Now try doing the same for what different actions don't and doesn't refer to in real life (or try some more concrete verb if it helps).

You'll find the only "difference" you can possibly think of is that doesn't "implies" it's a he, she or it doing it. Voila - the "checking off" of interpretable and uninterpretable features at work.

Apostrophes confuse the interpretation of possessive case
How people do or don't type it has absolutely nothing to do with the apostrophe thing. This is a very complex issue that involves phonetics, syntax and semantics all in one go. Essentially it results from people thinking the apostrophe means something grammatically, in the same way the -es of does does*, rather than just being a convenient written convention.

*that is, they think the apostrophe indicates an un/interpretable feature (see above), namely "possessive case", when really with possessive -'s it's just the s bit that indicates that and the apostrophe is just a written convention**. This misanalysis extends to they're and it's. The issue is further confused by the unfortunate homophony with the true possessive forms their and its.

**the apostrophe conventions emerged around the eighteenth century, we had the following things indicated by the suffix -s:
- third person singular on verbs, e.g. John works hard (formerly worketh)
- plural nominative on nouns, e.g. the works of Dali (had always been works)
- singular possessive on nouns, e.g. after my works conclusion (formerly workes)
- plural possessive on nouns, e.g. Dali's works most striking feature (formerly workas)

So as you can see by coincidence several different things had all managed to collapse into -s and it was getting confusing, so for a variety of historical reasons (mainly copying French printers) we settled on using the apostrophe to distinguish the possessives - but this has nothing to do with the underlying grammar, it was just to make the reading comprehension easier, we might equally have replaced the possessive -s with a -z or a picture of a smiley face.
(edited 10 years ago)

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