Friday, April 12, 2013

grammaticality - Is there an exception to the prohibition against ending a sentence with “ ’s ” at work here?

The ’s can be used as a contraction representing a weak, unstressed word that is not pronounced. It allegedly cannot occur in sentence final position.





  • She is not ready, but he is.

  • She’s not ready, but he is.

  • She’s not ready, but *he’s.





The last one is not grammatical there.



Similarly, here the last one is not grammatical:





  • He has not started yet, but she has.

  • He’s not started yet, but she has.


  • He’s not started yet, but *she’s.




This answer claims this is because you cannot end a sentence with a weak form. It backs up its point with reasonably scholarly documentation.



However, this does not seem to be invariably true.






  • Shall we go to the movies? Yes, let us go.

  • Shall we go to the movies? Yes, let’s go.

  • Shall we go to the movies? Yes, let’s.




Unlike the third example in the first two sets, here in this case the third example is indeed grammatical, despite ending with a weak form.



Is this an exception to the rule, or is there another rule at work here?

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