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I am doing some informal research into dynamic speech and narrative generation, and I've been looking into some local colloquialism and having a little bit of difficultly classifying a set of them. I would call them "super-contractions" or "a contraction of contractions". But I'm curious if there is a better word/phrase that represents them.

For example:

I am going to tell him that!
I'm going to tell him that!
I'm gonna' tell him that!
I'm'a tell him that!
Ima tell him that!

Matt E. Эллен
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J. Holmes
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  • 'I'm' and 'gonna' are separate contractions, so no word is necessary to describe the uninteresting fact that one follows the other. Do you have good evidence for the use of the last two? – Barrie England Dec 21 '11 at 16:00
  • I would be tempted to coin "grandcontraction", "great-grandcontraction", etc. – JeffSahol Dec 21 '11 at 16:02
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    @BarrieEngland Imma is definitely used in some southern dialects in the US, as well as in AAVE. Give this a listen, if you care to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2FR2HpUpz4 –  Dec 21 '11 at 16:04
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    I'd like to go with hypercontraction, which is used to describe muscle contractions. –  Dec 21 '11 at 16:05
  • @BarrieEngland i've heard its usage in some regions in the american south, similar in usage to the colloquialism "y'all" – J. Holmes Dec 21 '11 at 16:07
  • I've actually heard another intermediate step: between "I'm gonna" and "I'm'a", there's "Ahmina" (or "I'm'na"). – Hellion Dec 21 '11 at 16:08
  • In that case, I wonder if we aren't moving beyond contractions into new vocabulary. – Barrie England Dec 21 '11 at 16:17
  • There are certainly people who use the contraction in more than one form – Matt E. Эллен Dec 21 '11 at 16:23
  • @BarrieEngland I don't know if there's really a difference between "I'm'a" and "Ima" in speech; in writing, I use only "Ima" with this meaning - for example, in text messages. I sometimes hear it among friends or in conversations in AAVE (east coast USA). Some evidence for use by searching for phrases like "ima tell", or site:twitter.com "ima go": ima tell her not to come if she tired for example. – aedia λ Dec 21 '11 at 16:27
  • @aediaλ: I'm not aware of it in British speech, but that's not to say it may not exist. – Barrie England Dec 21 '11 at 16:54
  • There are also similar contractions like he'da (he would have). –  Dec 21 '11 at 17:00
  • We seem to be talking about spelling instead of what people are saying. Eye dialect is not really very useful. The question is about regionalisms, and those are spoken and best described in some kind of phonetic transcription, at least. If one is really interested in research, that's the bare minimum; professional sociolinguists conduct systematic syntax surveys and pack sound spectrographs. – John Lawler Dec 21 '11 at 17:06
  • That said, you can find quite a lot of variation in an individual's speech among all of these variants. They're not necessarily local; they may have more to do with socioeconomic factors, the time of day, or the stress the speaker is under. Collectively they're known as Fast Speech Rules in linguistics. They are, to understate the matter, very complex. Sorry. – John Lawler Dec 21 '11 at 17:09
  • Regarding I'm'a/ima/imma, it's also in Wiktionary with a number of citations for how it has been used in print, if you are interested in the eye dialect used. (They give /aɪmə/ as the pronunciation, with which I would agree.) – aedia λ Dec 21 '11 at 17:13
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    Related (not duplicate): http://english.stackexchange.com/q/50/11762 – yoozer8 Dec 21 '11 at 18:59
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    I know a 5yo who says dwut? instead of do you know what? – Daniel Dec 21 '11 at 19:43
  • You would appropriately call them cntxns, nothing more. – Kris Dec 22 '11 at 07:36

3 Answers3

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I was considering evolutionary or progressive or intensive contraction. However, these words have connotations of aiming for better, which does not seem to work in terms of contraction.

Then I would suggest degenerative contraction. I would also consider iterative or recursive contraction. These suggestions are far from being precise, but they might give you some inspiration.

Edit: Based on some wisdom from the comments, I would also call it over-contraction, since the contraction Ima or even I'm'a could make little sense to and confuse people.

Terry Li
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  • +1 for degenerative contraction. It was in my mind to suggest that by the time he reached the last two, OP's "contractions" were really just degenerate forms. What's with this recent flurry of questions (often from non-native speakers) wanting to know how far they can take written contractions? Do they think it makes them sound more "fluent"? – FumbleFingers Dec 22 '11 at 00:02
  • I, at least for the time being, am going to go with over-contraction in the documentation. I think it aptly fits the concept I am looking for. – J. Holmes Dec 22 '11 at 13:51
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Since double contractions are regularly and frequently used even in educated speech, English grammar should have a place for them!

Bob Batson
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I would use "double contraction" which sounds more clear

Suffix-Prefix Double Contractions: suffix-prefix double contractions are formed from two contractions where the suffix of one contraction is the prefix of the other:

she + would + have = she'd + would've = she'd've

Prefix-Prefix Double Contractions: prefix-prefix double contractions, are formed from two contractions that share a prefix:

they + will + have = they'll + they've = they'll've

Peculiar Cases: double contractions where one of the contractions isn't arrived at formulaically makes the double contraction peculiar:

he will not = he'll not = he'lln't
he will not = he won't = he'on't

yoozer8
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Mustafa
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