Contraction (linguistics)

In linguistics, a contraction is the formation of a new word from two or more individual words.

In English, contractions are usually either negations or combinations of pronouns with auxiliary verbs, and always include an apostrophe. Negations are generally in the form of "doesn't", for "does not", or "wouldn't", for "would not", where the apostrophe stands for the missing "o" in "not". The second category is generally in the form of pronoun + "to be", as in "It's cold today" or "We're going downtown", where the apostrophe again stands for a missing vowel, either "i" or "a". The second category also often uses a form of "to have", as in "He's gone to bed" or "We've finally gotten there". In this case, the apostrophe stands for the missing "h" plus "a".

Many people writing English confuse the possessive form of the pronoun "it" with its contractions, which both have the form "it's" ("it is" or "it has"). The possessive form has no apostrophe.

The French language has contraction forms similar to English, as in "C'est la vie" ("That's life"), where "c'est" stands for "ce est" ("it is").

Spanish also has some contractions, as in "trecientos" (three hundred) for "tres cientos".

Both French and Spanish use a form of contraction combining the article "le" (French masculine form of "the") or "la" (Spanish feminine form of "the"). For instance, in French, we have the phrase, "L'etat, c'est moi" (Napoleon: "I am the state", or, literally, "The state, it is me").