Is the sentence "The apples are red, aren't they?" grammatically correct? If i remove the contraction it becomes, "The apples are red, are not they?" which does not sound right to me.
Asked
Active
Viewed 1.2k times
-1
-
Related if not a dup: Why does “Why doesn't it work?” become “Why does it not work?” – FumbleFingers Jun 11 '15 at 21:07
-
Acceptability in English is governed by usage rather than logical analysis. It's nice when they overlap. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 13 '15 at 10:55
1 Answers
1
"Aren't they?" is perfectly acceptable, though you're right that "are not they?" sounds a little strange - you'd say "are they not?" if you wanted to avoid the contraction, though to my ears this sounds overly... dramatic?
Herr Pink
- 3,491
-
1It's more than "a little strange"; it's ungrammatical. Tag questions with negatives should be contracted whenever possible, and if they're not, then the negative goes after the subject, not before it -- i.e, , are they not? is grammatical, but *, are not they? isn't. – John Lawler Jun 11 '15 at 17:19