"He's working"

What's the meaning of "he's working"?

"He IS working" OR "he WAS working"?

He IS working.

By default, I'd say that it means "he is working", unless context indicates otherwise, but the problem is that this isn't necessarily an area where the written and spoken language coincide very well, as what are both written the same way are, at least in the dialect here, actually distinguished in speech. "He's working", if "'s" means "is", would be simply /hiz "wr=king/ --> [hi:z "w3`.kI:N], but "he's working", if "'s" mean "was", is likely to be pronounced /hi@z "wr=king/ --> [hi@z "w3`.kI:N] rather than like the former. Of course, this is a very dialect-specific matter, and what I just said doesn't necessarily apply to any dialects except my own (even though it may happen to).

Just as I've seen in some opportunities: what's he say?

Normally "he's" is the contraction of "he is." I have never seen it used to mean "he was" (I have never heard "he was" pronounced that way either). You will, however, hear people say "he's" as a contraction of "he has" in spoken language.

Example:

"He's been sick lately." = "He has been sick lately."

mjd, at least here all three're used "he's" for "he is", "he was", and "he has", but they can all be distinguished in speech. While the default pronunciation of "he's" for "he has" is still /hiz/ --> [hi:z], it can be pronounced also as /hi{z/ ---> [hi{:z], especially if one wants to avoid ambiguity. The thing that a lot of people forget is that just because two things are cliticized the same way in informal writing doesn't mean that they're always cliticized in the same exact fashion in speech.

rich7, I think it should be "what'd he say?" = "what did he say?"

"what's he say" makes no sense to me, unless you mean "what's he saying?" = "what is he saying?"

Like you mjd, I have never seen he's to mean "he was" (or heard it pronounced that way) nor do I think I'd ever use it.

>>mjd, at least here all three're used "he's" for "he is", "he was", and "he has"

Travis, I've never heard "he's" used as a contraction for "he was," either. Could you give a better example?

Hey Tiffany, as a learner of English as a second language I was amazed to see "what's he say? in a movie and then realized what they meant was "what does he say?"

Bubbler, well, I should've corrected myself, in that such wouldn't normally be written as "he's", or pronounced as /hiz/ --> [hi:z], and would be primarily limited to speech. There's a *lot* of clitics in speech, at least here, which don't show up at all in writing, you must remember.

<<Hey Tiffany, as a learner of English as a second language I was amazed to see "what's he say? in a movie and then realized what they meant was "what does he say?">>

I say that all the time. Many people do in everyday speech, and may not even realize it. I didn't realize I did that till about a year or so ago. If you think about it, it's not that weird, just another contraction to add to the list. Also, I should note I don't always do this, and can think of at least one other way to say it that sounds equally natural and informal.

For a phrase like "what does he do?" in normal speech I can say:

["wV:4 @z i dM]

or

["wVts i dM]

For that, I myself'd tend more towards "What'd he say?", which'd be /w@td hi se/ --> [wVd hi seI]. (yes, /w@td/ is right, as if it were /w@d/, it'd result in [wV:d] rather than [wVd], due to how vowel length is formed and how it interacts with voicing assimilation in my dialect). Of course, though, this is another case where what the clitics being used may not be as obvious as one may thing, as it isn't "What would he say?" or *"What had he say?", but rather "What did he say?". This is yet another example that goes to show that clitic usage in spoken "low" NAE is far more complex than many'd naively think.

Slight correction, as I forgot that in that example, "he" would cliticize as well. That example should be:

"What'd'e say?" : /"w@tdi se/ --> ["wVd_}.di seI]

"What'd'e say?" : /"w@tdi se/ --> ["wVd_}.di seI]

Instead of marking unrealeased [d_}] before another [d], it might be slightly more accurate to just show the [d] being longer--so:

["wVd:i seI]

Regardless of how you transcribe it, I would say something very similar to you, Travis. The only difference is that I definitely have a pretty long vowel there for [V:] (probably compensatory for the other stuff lost in the expressed form), while I don't think underlying intervocalic /td/ --> /d/ ---> [4] shows any signs of being longer. I could be wrong, tho. I'd say:

["wV:4iseI]

So, in effect, "wuddy say?"

"What'd she say?" would be:

["wV:d_}SiseI]

The main thing is that the [d] appears to be ambisyllabic in my case, and that voicing assimilation does not affect vowel length, which appears to be determined by phonemic voicing, not the actual voicing in the realized syllable codas. The other matter is that it does not seem at all to be [4] for me, but to be an actual stop per se; my writing of [d_}.d] was just because I didn't otherwise know how to mark ambisyllabicity.