Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Contrazione shoulda

In una canzone del compianto Jim Diamond, 
scozzese, trovo la contrazione shoulda (che 
non avevo mai sentito prima). La frase 
precisa è "I shoulda known better", 
contrazione di "I should have known better". 
Volevo sapete se questa contrazione è usata 
maggiormente nell'inglese britannico o in 
quello americano. Grazie
 
-- 
peppino
 

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La vera contrazione di "should have" è "should've." La parola "shoulda" 
è una rappresentazione di un colloquialismo. Si vede "shoulda" nelle 
romanze americane scritta così nel discorso dei personaggi per indicare 
il modo di dire, ma non è l`inglese standard.
 
 
 

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Direi piu' US che UK...
 
E' famosa l'espressione "Shoulda, coulda, woulda".
Ad esempio: 
"I shouldn't have made that mistake, but coulda, shoulda, woulda doesn't do
it." Nel senso che e' inutile recriminare so cosa avrebbe dovuto o potuto
accadere..  
E, tecnicamente, non e' una contrazione e' una elisione.
 
una spiegazione...
-----
We have here an elision field. Elide, rooted in the Latin for "to strike out,"
means "to omit"; in speech, an elision is the omission of letters and sounds
to produce compressions like don't and couldn't, or as the would-be boxer
played by Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" said, "I coulda been a
contender."
 
In this rhyming compound, a triple elision does the hat trick: although each
elision expresses something different, when taken together, the trio conveys a
unified meaning. Shoulda, short for should have (and not should of, which
lexies call a variant but I call a mistake), carries a sense of correctness or
obligation; coulda implies a possibility, and woulda denotes conditional
certainty, an oxymoron: the stated intent to have taken an action if only
something had not intervened.
by WILLIAM SAFIRE
----
 
G

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 From wikipedia:
* A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms 
of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal 
letters and sounds.
* In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more 
sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or 
phrase.
 
I wonder why people get so confused when there's such a striking 
difference between the two :)
 
Kiuhnm

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Probably because most of the times it's both. :(
 
However, the first definition is not right, not always a contraction omit
letters: "cannot" instead of "can not" is a contraction, but not an elision,
while "going to" -> "gonna" is an an elision that is not a contraction.
 
G 

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Notice that I deftly eluded this quagmire in my response.
 
But now that the quicksand is spreading, I'll throw in an untethered 
rope: 
https://www.shmoop.com/literature-glossary/elision.html
 
 
According to Shmoop, they know an elision, and that's no elision.
 
And here's a source that's anonymous but does include an abbreviated 
word "diff" as a root name, which seems vaguely apropos: 
https://wikidiff.com/elision/contraction
 
 
 

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What are the correct definitions? They'd help much more than a couple of 
examples.
 
Kiuhnm

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I did some research and I've come to the conclusion that a contraction 
is just an elision which has entered standard English because of 
repeated and stable use.
 
Note that "can not" -> cannot is also an elision because sounds are 
omitted (cluster reduction). Indeed, "can not" and "cannot" are 
pronounced differently because the sound 'n' is weaker in the latter.
 
Here's one source:
http://martinweisser.org/courses/phonetics/connect/elision.html
 
http://martinweisser.org/courses/phonetics/connect/contraction.html
 
 
Kiuhnm