Friday, January 23, 2015

grammaticality - "You're as [ADJECTIVE] as you are [ADJECTIVE]" construction: why does it sound awkward when you replace "you are" with "you're"?




I'm just wondering what it is about this construction that makes it sound "incorrect" even though technically it is grammatically correct. Is it an awkwardness arising from a lack of cadence, or rhythm of the sentence? Is it a case of rhetorical anaphora* just evolving to be more popular rather than rhetorical repetition? I'm wondering if the popularization of this construct is more due to chance than to any underlying logic.




*anaphora (OED): Grammar ~ The use of a word referring to or replacing a word used earlier in a sentence, to avoid repetition, such as do in I like it and so do they.







Google Ngrams: " * as you are ADJECTIVE "




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Google Ngrams: " * as you're ADJECTIVE " (no results)





Answer



It's because the "as ... as" construction has a deleted part which follows "are", words preceding deleted constituents must bear stress, and stressed words cannot be contracted.




"You're as (to an extent) wise, as you are (to that extent) well-traveled" has the elision of "to that extent". This causes "are" to be stressed and prevents it being contracted to "'re" by deletion of the stressed vowel.


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