In the body of this paper I examine the English contraction rule Auxiliary Reduction, while studying J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It may be admitted that the rule is generally neglected or paid little attention to in our school grammar, and it may be worth reexamining the conditions here under which contraction can occur. This is a preliminary paper, which will be followed later by my own data drawn from the study cooperated with American English speaking informants.
Perrin (1972,532) describes briefly but clearly:
The term contraction is applied to the written forms of words in which an effort is made to indicate the colloquial pronunciation, usually by substituting an apostrophe for one or more letters of the standard spelling. As a trait of spoken English, contractions abound in Informal usage but are notably rare in Formal. In General usage a writer will favor or avoid them just as he makes other rhetorical choices, considering the rhythm of the particular sentence, how much distance he wants between himself and his readers, arLd whether the subject and the occasion call for a relaxed or a restrained style. Contractions are necessary, of course, in actual representations of speech, as in dialog.
Transformationalists observe this phenomenon and categorize it as the contraction trartsformation.
Roughly speaking, auxiliary reduction types are as follows :
<tt>
is ┐ would ┐
│⇒[z] │⇒[d] have ⇒ [v]
has ┘ had ┘
am 　⇒[m] are ⇒[r] will ⇒ [I]
(Having, was, were are not subject to the rule)
</tt>
Zwicky (1970) states that there are four classes of auxiliaries undergoing reduction : (i) is, has ; (ii) would, hed ; (iii) have, will, are ; (iv) am. He observes that the reduction takes place :
(1) only after vowels for classes (ii) through (iv)
(2) only after pronouns immediately dominated by S in classes (iii) and (iv)
(3) only after the specific pronoun I for class (iv).