A weird linguistic monet...

[lithera]

So take, "This is strange, isn't it?"

Break down "Isn't it?" - "is not it?" That's awkward. I would say, "is it not?"

I just noticed that. It's like wh movement with out the wh word. How peculiar.

Ignore me. I'm strange.

Comments

[seanb.livejournal.com]

Actually, to me the longer fragment - "is it not?" seems more awkward. Why is the "not" - a negation modifier for the bastard verb "is", placed AFTER the direct object "it"? Wouldn't it make more sense for a verb-negating adverb to be next to the verb?

Re:

[lithera.livejournal.com]

That's why it caught my attention. It should make more sense as "is not it", but I don't think I could ever say it that way. I was curious as to why, when I pulled it out like that, "is it not" some how seemed more proper than "is not it".

I think it's a different issue all together that's really going on though. If you take the fragment as "is it not" and put it inside the sentence it loses it's rhetorical value and the meaning changes entirely.

[seanb.livejournal.com]

True, we do see a different parsing when we go from the rhetorical final sentance fragment "isn't it?" or "is it not?" to the same phrase embeded before an adjective or adjectival phrase, for example "Isn't it squamous?" or "Is it not gibbering?" In the latter case, the negation "not" doesn't modify the "is", but actually modifies the trailing adjectival phrase, which in turn modifies "it".

In other words, in the phragment "isn't it", the not is negating the "is", but in "is it not", the "not" is negating whatever modifier is applied to "it", even if the trailing phragment is only implied, as is the case when "isn't it" is used as a rhetorical suffix.