who're

Lazar   Mon Nov 03, 2008 3:44 am GMT
Sorry, but I can't help but be reminded of this cartoon: http://xkcd.com/386/ . :)
Johnny   Mon Nov 03, 2008 3:27 pm GMT
LOL, nice one Lazar.
Anyway, that video about Fox news is a good one to look for interesting features in speech. Unless my ears really sucks (which might be the case), there's an example of "who're" where the vowel in "who" seems reduced to me: /hʊər/, instead of /huər/. That's what I was talking about when I asked if "who" had a weak form. The video is the same, sentence at 4:43:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA --- 4:43
The people who watch Fox news like our coverage as you know, those are the people who're watching you right now...
Another Guest   Wed Nov 12, 2008 3:35 am GMT
<<You're completely off base here. *All three* of those pronunciations exist in my dialect, and *all three* are universally represented in standard written English as "would have".>>
You say that I am off base, but you present no fact on which I am in error. I did not say that they don’t exist in your dialect, I simply presented the possibility, as I found ignorance more charitable than arrogance as an interpretation of your stance. On the other point, you, despite being repeatedly informed of your error, are insisting on making a false statement. As I do not represent “would’ve” as “would have”, it clearly follows that “would’ve” is not universally represented as “would have”.

<<In case you're having trouble understanding this, let me clarify. >>
Why do you keep repeating your claim as if it somehow establishes that it is true? Insulting my intelligence by continuing with the absurd pretense that I simply too stupid to understand your claim establishes nothing but your incivility.

<< They would not need faux-netic eye dialect spellings like "would 'ave" or "would of" to read "have" as a reduced form; it's simply the universal way that they would pronounce it.>>
Unless these True English Speakers™ are psychic, they WOULD need SOME method of denoting different pronunciations. I do not see any good-faith reason to respond to my attempt to distinguish between these pronunciations by mocking me.

<< *And*, if a public figure had uttered that sentence and was quoted in print, they would spell it just the same way, "would have">>
And yet again you boldly assert a claim that can be refuted in a manner of seconds.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/21/palin.sitroom.transcript/
Towards the bottom of the page:
<<Drew, you need to ask your colleagues and I guess your bosses or whoever is in charge of all this, why does Joe Biden get a pass on such a thing? Can you imagine if I would've said such a thing? No, I think that, you know, we would be hounded and held accountable for, what in the world did you mean by that, VP presidential candidate? Why would you say that, mark my words, this nation will undergo international crisis if you elect Barack Obama? If I would've said that you guys'd clobbered me.>>
(Note that Palin is incorrectly using the conditional rather than subjunctive.)

<<and again, any native English speaker would know to pronounce "have" as a reduced form. Look up "have" in any dictionary>>
It says that these are VARIANTS. That means that people SOMETIMES say it that way, not that they KNOW that that is the intended pronunciation.

<<What I'm saying is that a quite typical reading (probably the most common reading) of the sentence "The men have done that" would pronounce "have" as a reduced form [@v]>>
You said that it’s pronounced by all English speakers as “would’ve”. Not by most, not by those that are speaking informally, but all. If you are merely saying that “would’ve” is the most common reading, then that contradicts your earlier statements, as there WOULD be a difference between “would’ve” and “would have”; the former would mean DEFINITELY “would’ve” while the latter would mean PROBABLY “would’ve”.

<<You're doubly wrong here.>>
Again, you state that I am wrong without presenting any claim of mine that is false. “I ‘have” is contracted in the literal sense of being made smaller. As to whether it whether it shares enough characteristics with "real" contractions to be so considered, that is, as I said, arbitrary. And “I ‘ave” is NOT part of STANDARD American English.

<<Basically, your arguments are flawed because you're conflating phonology and orthography>>
Your position is that “would’ve” should not be used. Yet clearly it is use. So obviously it is both a phonologic AND an orthographic contraction.

<<you're unable to recognize that there can be more than one accepted (phonological) reading of a written sentence - i.e. that reduced forms can be used in speech without requiring contrived eye-dialect spellings.>>
First, you’re the one insisting on one particular reading of a phrase. Second, the issue is not whether the contracted spelling is REQUIRED. The issue is whether it is WRONG. Your initial claim was not that “would’ve” is not required, but that it is nonsensical. Third, there is absolutely nothing “contrived” about reflecting pronunciation in spelling.

<<it is a standard part of the language that these reduced forms are regularly inferred from written words without necessitating faux-netic spellings in every case>>
It is also a standard part of language to write “would’ve”. So appealing to what is “standard” does you no good.

<<To put it in more basic terms, "would've" serves no purpose because it does not represent a pronunciation that is distinct from the standard, regular, reduced pronunciation of "would have", as I have explained above.>>
But it DOES serve a purpose, as it allows a distinction to be made between two forms. And I do not agree that “would’ve” is the standard form.

<<The first claim *is* relevant, because it proves that a sentence "She would've done it" would be read *no differently* from the sentence "She would have done it">>
No, it doesn’t. It would only do so given other premises.

<<and the second claim [that would’ve is not a distinct form] is true.>>
That’s flat out false. “Would have” and “would’ve” are clearly distinct forms.

<<In case you're still having difficulty understanding this mind-numbingly simple point,>>
Are you really not capable of presenting your argument civilly?

<<Did you use a schwa there (i.e. the reduced form [@v])? Of course you did; that's the way any English speaker would pronounce it.>>
You’re seriously so arrogant that you’re telling me how I pronounce words?

<<What you're saying, in essence, is that in order for the written form to correspond to a reduced pronunciation like [@v] or [{v], we need to use an eye dialect spelling like "'ave" or "of" in place of "have".>>
No, what I’m saying is that if one wishes to ENSURE that one’s audience will pronounce a reduced form, one needs the contraction. Lots of people pronounce “supposedly” as “supposably”, so there is a sense in which the written form of “corresponds” with the mispronunciation, but if one wants to unambiguously indicate that someone said “supposably”, one should write “supposably”, just as, if one wishes to indicate that someone said “would’ve”, one should write “would’ve”.
Travis   Wed Nov 12, 2008 5:46 am GMT
But the key thing is this - does one really need writing to correspond to speech in the first place? Why can one not simply assume that the reader will be able to translate on the fly from the literary language to colloquial registers of the spoken language, with many of the forms of the sort that you refer to being obvious from context? It seems like people can understand "have to" and "supposed to" in writing as /ˈ(h)æftu(ː)/ and /ˈspo(ː)s(ː)tu(ː)/ (using GA phonemes) rather than /ˈhævˈtu(ː)/ and /səˈpo(ː)zdˈtu(ː)/ just fine. How is this any different?
Lazar   Wed Nov 12, 2008 8:04 am GMT
<<You say that I am off base, but you present no fact on which I am in error.>>

You are in error in saying that “there is” a difference between saying “would’ve” and saying “would have”. It’s false if you’re claiming that there’s necessarily a difference between the two; if not, then your claim is not untrue, but still not relevant. To be more clear, there *can* be a difference between those two sequences (speaking only of cases where “have” is an auxiliary verb), if you’re emphasizing “have”, or perhaps if you pause between “have” and the following verb; but usually, “would have” would be pronounced as [wUd @v] or [w@d @v].

But the fact that you make a blanket statement that “there is”, and that you follow by saying that there are three distinct pronunciations, “would have”, “would ‘ave”, and “would of”, seems to imply that you consider “would have” to be a valid spelling only for the rare, completely unreduced pronunciation, and that any reduced pronunciation would require a special eye dialect spelling. That’s simply not the case; the second spelling that you offer, I’ve never seen in print (except perhaps for Cockney eye dialect), and the third I would just consider an error – false morphology -, especially considering that “of” itself typically has reduced and unreduced pronunciations ([Vv], [Qv] or [Av], and [@v]). Indeed, “would of” would take the place of “would’ve”, which you’ve argued in favor of. What I’m saying is that reduced pronunciations do not require these special spellings; if you look in any American English dictionary that gives pronunciations, they’ll give [@v] as a possible pronunciation for the word “have”, no special spelling involved. If we had to use eye dialect spellings like “’ave” every time we elided an <h> or made any similar reduction, then our writing would be peppered with them. They’re not part of standard written English.

<<I did not say that they don’t exist in your dialect, I simply presented the possibility,>>

The absurd possibility.

<<as I found ignorance more charitable than arrogance as an interpretation of your stance.>>

I have no need for your charity. How am I being ignorant or arrogant in pointing out that the pronunciation of “would’ve” is already encompassed by – indeed, is already the most common pronunciation of – “would have”? It’s supported by observation and by dictionaries. By suggesting that “perhaps they don’t all exist in your dialect”, and then noting “but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist”, you’re implying that I had argued that they don’t exist. And I hadn’t. I claimed that they were already represented in writing by “would have”. As I said in my previous post, you seem to be conflating orthography with phonology: arguing against the spelling “would’ve” is not the same thing as arguing against the pronunciations [wUd @v], [wUd {v], etc. Linguists do not typically represent pronunciations using eye dialect spellings, as you did; they would typically use IPA or X-SAMPA. By contrasting the standard spelling “would have” with the eye dialect spellings “would ‘ave” and “would of”, you seemed to be including “would have” itself as an eye dialect spelling, implying that it could only be used when somebody utters a complete unreduced [wUd h{v]. And this implication is false.

<<On the other point, you, despite being repeatedly informed of your error, are insisting on making a false statement.>>

You mean the statement that there is no difference between saying “would’ve” and saying “would have”? Let me clarify: there is not necessarily, and there is not usually, a difference between saying “would’ve” and saying “would have”. Again, imagine that you see either of these two lines of dialogue printed in a novel:

“She would’ve done it.”

“She would have done it.”

Can you honestly say that you would pronounce these differently? Can you honestly say that the presence of “would have” in the second one would compel you to utter a complete unreduced [wUd h{v]? I honestly can’t, and I would be surprised if you could.

<<As I do not represent “would’ve” as “would have”, it clearly follows that “would’ve” is not universally represented as “would have”.>>

I said universally in standard writing. I think it’s reasonable to say that standard written English is defined by the majority of current dictionaries; I think most current dictionaries do not include “would’ve”. They include the other contractions that I’ve noted, and if they list pronunciations, they most likely list [@v] as a possible pronunciation for “have”, thus indicating that [wUd @v] would be represented by uncontracted “would have”, rendering “would’ve” unnecessary. Obviously, many people do write “would’ve”, just as many people write “would of”; but I wouldn’t call either of those standard.

<<Why do you keep repeating your claim as if it somehow establishes that it is true?>>

I repeated my argument because you hadn’t responded to it. (See my line-of-dialogue argument above.) And because you had misrepresented my argument. According to you, my claim that “would’ve” is polysyllabic is irrelevant, and it’s not: note how a reduced pronunciation of a sentence like “The men have done it” [D@ mEn @v “dVn It] would rarely if ever be represented by “The men’ve done it”, and yet you’re claiming that an identical, reduced, polysyllabic pronunciation of “would have” has to be represented by “would’ve”. And according to you, I claimed that “would’ve” is not a distinct form: I claim that [wUd @v] is a distinct *pronunciation*, but that it doesn’t warrant a distinct *spelling*. What you mean by “form” isn’t clear. But please, just respond yes or no to my line-of-dialogue argument above. It’s important to the argument.

<<Insulting my intelligence by continuing with the absurd pretense that I simply too stupid to understand your claim establishes nothing but your incivility.>>

Uh huh, and I’m ignorant and/or arrogant to boot. Gotcha. Again, I repeated my argument because you hadn’t responded to it. You’ve given no indication that you understand my assertion that the pronunciation of your suggested spelling “would’ve” could be represented just as well by “would have”.

<<Unless these True English Speakers™ are psychic, they WOULD need SOME method of denoting different pronunciations.>>

No they wouldn’t: not every reduced pronunciation needs to be represented in print; in most cases, the reductions can be implied intuitively by the speaker; and furthermore, to represent all reductions in print would be quite restrictive on the reader. My argument is that in most cases, like my line-of-dialogue argument, the unreduced pronunciation [h{v] would sound prohibitively stilted – completely out of place -, and that a True English Speaker™ would quite reliably deliver the reduced form without any orthographic prompting. And if they do render a written “have” as [h{v], then it was what seemed natural to them at the time, and we shouldn’t try to shackle them by specifying exactly which pronunciation to use. There are a lot of phonemic and phonetic subtleties that just can’t be represented sufficiently in print. Again, it’s crucial that you respond to my line-of-dialogue argument.

But are you saying that all reductions need to be represented in print? If applied consistently, this would be untenable. There are all sorts of words, like “you”, “your”, “you’re”, “would”, “have, has, had”, “am”, “are”, “us”, “of”, “or”, “probably”, “supposed (to)”, that can have reduced pronunciations; the precise forms, and the distribution of reduced versus unreduced forms can vary by dialect. Let me put forth that the pronunciation of the morpheme “’ve” in your proposed “would’ve” is identical to the (optional!) reduced pronunciation of “have” in a sentence like “The men have done it.” This is indisputable; they’re both [@v]. Now, would you represent this utterance as “The men’ve done it”? Or, say “The spectators’ve seen it”? Or “My parents’ve done that”? If you use “would’ve”, then for consistency’s sake you should use these spellings too.

<<And yet again you boldly assert a claim that can be refuted in a manner of seconds.>>

Well my understanding is that interview transcripts are written more hastily and informally than articles; they often contain typos, errors or informal usages. I would consider both “would’ve” and “guys’d” to be informal usages, and you’d be less likely to see them in an article. Less likely, still, in a book. Do you care to expand the argument by saying that reduced pronunciations of “would” as [@d] now need to be represented as “’d”? Your arguments so far would imply it.

<< It says that these are VARIANTS. That means that people SOMETIMES say it that way, not that they KNOW that that is the intended pronunciation.>>

But why do they need to know exactly what the intended pronunciation is? Why do we need to specify every single reduction, when such reductions would usually be implied anyway? What is the point of specifying such a precise level of phonetic detail? It would be excessively restrictive on the writer and on the reader – why can’t we just write reduced occurrences of “have” as “have”, and let the reader decide for themselves what sounds natural? When a writer happens to use an auxiliary “have” in a line of dialogue, without much thought, can we say that there’s a precise intended pronunciation that they want the reader to follow? Wouldn’t they just want the reader to read it naturally? I mean, why would a writer care so much about every single little auxiliary verb to intentionally specify a precise phonetic realization for the reader?

I’ll concede this: if you want to specify, unambiguously, that a given instance of “would have” is pronounced with [@v], then you can use “would’ve”. There is a certain level of ambiguity in the written form “would have” which can be reduced by using “would’ve” – although I would contend that the “intended” (i.e. original) pronunciation can usually be implied by the reader without special orthographic aids. My question, why would you ever need to specify such a precise level of phonetic detail? What is the purpose of explicitly indicating that a certain occurrence of the auxiliary verb “have” is pronounced as [@v], when an English speaker reading it would instinctively pronounce it in a way that felt natural to them (i.e., usually reduced)? Go to dictionary.com, for example: they have no listing for “would’ve”, and they list [h@v] and [@v] as the “unstressed” pronunciations of “have”. This clearly indicates that in their view, reduced pronunciations of “have” can be implied by context (or to put it in a different way, that the reader will make a natural, instinctive choice between reduced and unreduced pronunciations as they come across the word in various contexts) and that there’s no need for a specific orthographic representation of a reduced phonetic form.

<<You said that it’s pronounced by all English speakers as “would’ve”. Not by most, not by those that are speaking informally, but all.>>

Taking the specific example sentence that I gave, *not* every single case of “would have”, but this specific sentence, I think most English speakers would use the reduced form in most contexts. (Fine, I was overreaching by saying all English speakers.) But my point is, if you look at the sentence “She would have done it”, unless you place an unexpected pause between “have” and “done”, or if you’re speaking very slowly and deliberately, I think most English speakers would use the reduced pronunciation, regardless of formality. Even in formal situations, I think the reduced pronunciation would still be typical. I apologize for saying all English speakers, and I retract it.

<<If you are merely saying that “would’ve” is the most common reading, then that contradicts your earlier statements, as there WOULD be a difference between “would’ve” and “would have”; the former would mean DEFINITELY “would’ve” while the latter would mean PROBABLY “would’ve”.>>

Okay, I basically agree with what you’re saying here, so let’s break this down.

1. I am merely saying that [wUd @v] is the most common pronunciation. I do, however, think it’s preferable to represent phonetic descriptions with phonetic script, not with eye dialect or faux-netic spellings (i.e. “would’ve”), because I don’t want us to conflate phonology with orthography.

2. There is *possibly* a difference between “would’ve” and “would have”; the latter includes a reduced pronunciation, the former explicitly specifies it. Neither of us has been clear enough on this point (i.e. what we mean by “difference”). I freely admit that as you say, “would have” is more encompassing and “would’ve” is narrower, phonetically speaking. What I’m saying is that there’s not *necessarily* a difference between the pronunciation of the two spellings: in most cases where “would’ve” is used, the reader probably would have implied the reduced pronunciation from the uncontracted spelling “would have”. And to extend my argument, even if they hadn’t implied it, then what’s the big deal? If they happen to use an unreduced pronunciation, then that’s what felt natural to them at the time, and why should we dictate the exact phonetic realizations that they use? What I’m saying is that “would have” is sufficient, and that readers will naturally infer the reduced pronunciation in appropriate places without prompting.

Again, I apologize for saying all English speakers, because that was overreaching; and I think neither of us has been clear enough on what we meant by “difference”. You meant that there is *potentially* a difference, and I meant that there is not *necessarily* a difference. I think we’re in agreement here, semantics aside.

<<Again, you state that I am wrong without presenting any claim of mine that is false. “I ‘have” is contracted in the literal sense of being made smaller. As to whether it whether it shares enough characteristics with "real" contractions to be so considered, that is, as I said, arbitrary. And “I ‘ave” is NOT part of STANDARD American English.>>

Okay, here’s what you said: “So in Cockney, “I‘ave to go” is considered normal speech, while in SAE it’s considered to be a contraction.” I’m honestly not quite sure what you mean here; I thought you were saying that an elision of [h] that was phonetically comparable to the Cockney form, would, in your opinion, warrant a written contraction in American English. And again, when you say “I ‘ave” is not part of standard American English, I’m honestly not sure what you’re saying. (I’m not trying to be hostile here, honest.) If you’re saying the written form “I ‘ave” is not part of SAE, then you’re certainly right. But if you’re saying that the [h] would never be elided here in SAE, then I would dispute that. I think it would be common in rapid, informal speech to pronounce “I have to go” as [aI {ft@ “goU] in SAE. I would note that it’s much easier to define SAE in orthographic, semantic or lexical terms than in phonological terms; all I’m saying is that I think an [h]-elided pronunciation of this sentence would not seem out of place for a SAE speaker in rapid, informal speech. I said that you were wrong because I interpreted your claim to be that such a reduced reading (i.e. the one I’ve just described) would require an orthographic contraction; I don’t think this is so. But I was arguing against what I know think was a misinterpretation of what you said.

<< First, you’re the one insisting on one particular reading of a phrase.>>

No, I’m just saying that readers should be allowed to infer reduced pronunciations as they will, without the need for specifying exact phonetic realizations. You have argued above that writers should specify precise phonetic realizations for their readers; I don’t think they should do that.

<<Second, the issue is not whether the contracted spelling is REQUIRED.>>

We find ourselves more in agreement! I concede that “would’ve” *can* be used if you feel the need to explicitly specify the precise phonetic realization (though why you would feel that need is beyond me), and you’ve conceded that the reduced pronunciation *can* be represented in writing by “would have”.

<<Your initial claim was not that “would’ve” is not required, but that it is nonsensical.>>

My initial claim was that it should not be used – and that may have been too strong; let’s say that I would prefer that it not be used – because it’s a *needless* specification of phonetic detail. The reduced pronunciation [@v] is already encompassed by the written form “would have”, and as I’ve said, I think that English speakers will infer the reduced pronunciations as they seem natural; I think that in most cases, their pronunciation would be similar to that of the author or the quoted person; and I think that even if their choice is different, it’s such an insignificant issue that it doesn’t deserve specification in writing. Given the fact that dictionaries support the reading of unstressed “have” as [@v], given the fact that they don’t typically list “would’ve”, and given the fact that English speakers will naturally tend to infer reduced pronunciations as they see fit, what is the purpose of making an explicit specification of phonetic detail in this case? There are many other phonetic details, many quite minute, which you *could* specify by writing, but there’s simply no need to do that. I’ll concede that as a stylistic choice, you might want to specify such details to lend an air of folksiness or informality; but what I’m saying is that there’s generally no need for them, and I would discourage people from using such spellings. The precedent for using contractions in English seems to be when something is reduced to a pure monosyllable (like “we’ve”), or when there is a more radical phonemic change that wouldn’t normally be inferred from general trends of reduction (like “won’t”, “shan’t”, “shouldn’t”). But at this point we’ve basically reduced it to a stylistic issue.

<<It is also a standard part of language to write “would’ve”. So appealing to what is “standard” does you no good.>>

The word “standard” is vague. What you’re saying is that it’s common to write “would’ve” in English, at least informally. I would define “standard”, in this case (i.e. the standard for formal or semiformal written English), to be what you would find in a dictionary. And dictionaries typically don’t list “would’ve”; if they give pronunciations, then they typically give [@v] as a pronunciation (or more specifically, the unstressed pronunciation) for “have”. We may very well have different ideas of what “standard” means; that’s fine, and we shouldn’t waste time arguing over it.

<<But it DOES serve a purpose, as it allows a distinction to be made between two forms.>>

As I’ve said above, I don’t think it serves a *useful* purpose, because I think there’s no reason to make such a precise phonetic distinction.

<< No, it doesn’t. It would only do so given other premises.>>

I think I’ve already fleshed this issue out.

<<That’s flat out false. “Would have” and “would’ve” are clearly distinct forms.>>

Again, I think we have a lack of understanding about what we mean by forms. In any case, though, I do think I phrased this argument infelicitously. What I was saying is that the reduced pronunciation does not, in itself, warrant a distinct written form. We can agree that [wUd h{v] and [wUd @v] are distinct phonological forms, and that “would have” and “would’ve” are distinct orthographic forms. I didn’t make this clear, and I apologize.

<<And I do not agree that “would’ve” is the standard form.>>

Did you make a typo here? In any case, suffice it to say that “would’ve” is generally not found in dictionaries; a reduced pronunciation for the uncontracted “have” generally is. So *if* we are to take our standards from dictionaries (and that is a significant if; we might want to take our standards from popular usage instead), then I think my choice (not to use “would’ve”) would be standard.

<<Are you really not capable of presenting your argument civilly?>>

I was capable of presenting it civilly, I just chose not to. :) But no, I was just frustrated because you hadn’t responded to my line-of-dialogue argument. You hadn’t made it clear that you would accept a reduced pronunciation of the uncontracted written form; but we’ve established that you would accept such a pronunciation, and that you would only consider “would’ve” optional, right?

<<You’re seriously so arrogant that you’re telling me how I pronounce words?>>

It’s not arrogance; it’s common sense. Call me presumptuous, but if you’re a native speaker of English, then I can be pretty sure that you have a reduced pronunciation of “have” in your idiolect, and that it’s unlikely that you would use an unreduced pronunciation of “have” in the sentence “She would have done it.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I just can’t see how any English speaker would use an unreduced pronunciation there, unless there was an unexpected pause before “done” or you were speaking very slowly and deliberately.

And it was a rhetorical point; you had repeatedly failed to acknowledge my assertion, which, it turns out, you actually accept. When you referenced the three possible pronunciations “would have”, “would ‘ave”, and “would of”, you made it clear, in my eyes, that you considered “would have” to refer specifically to the unreduced pronunciation, not encompassing any reduced pronunciation. I think this misunderstanding represents the follies of trying to represent sounds or phonemes using eye-dialect: it’s bound to fail. There’s a reason why linguists (professional and amateur) use IPA or X-SAMPA, and tend to disdain faux-netics. (Are you familiar with phonetic script? If not, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA .) You never made it clear when you were talking about orthography and when you were talking about phonology.

<<No, what I’m saying is that if one wishes to ENSURE that one’s audience will pronounce a reduced form, one needs the contraction.>>

That’s true. What I’m saying is that there’s no point trying to ensure this. Usually, the reader will infer reduced pronunciations as they seem natural; and if the exact phonetic realizations of the reader happen to differ from those of the writer, then what’s the problem? It seems absurd to me that anyone would want to ensure that.

<<Lots of people pronounce “supposedly” as “supposably”, so there is a sense in which the written form of “corresponds” with the mispronunciation, but if one wants to unambiguously indicate that someone said “supposably”, one should write “supposably”, just as, if one wishes to indicate that someone said “would’ve”, one should write “would’ve”.>>

That’s true. I would note that “supposably” is not a standard form; or rather, that the pronunciation with [b] would not typically be listed by a dictionary as a valid pronunciation for “supposedly”, whereas reduced pronunciations of “have” are listed as valid pronunciations by dictionaries. The latter is the result of simple reduction, whereas the former is a basic morphological reanalysis; therefore I would consider the former more notable. In any case, the latter is standard (*if* we take standards from dictionaries), while the former is not. Beyond that, I would just reiterate, I can’t imagine *why* one would feel a need to specify that someone said “would’ve”, when the specified pronunciation would probably have been inferred by the reader in any case.

So, congratulations on having elicited a really really long post. As to the uselessness of “would’ve”, Travis makes the point in much fewer words:

<<But the key thing is this - does one really need writing to correspond to speech in the first place? Why can one not simply assume that the reader will be able to translate on the fly from the literary language to colloquial registers of the spoken language, with many of the forms of the sort that you refer to being obvious from context? It seems like people can understand "have to" and "supposed to" in writing as /ˈ(h)æftu(ː)/ and /ˈspo(ː)s(ː)tu(ː)/ (using GA phonemes) rather than /ˈhævˈtu(ː)/ and /səˈpo(ː)zdˈtu(ː)/ just fine. How is this any different?>>
Matthew   Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:43 am GMT
"Who're" (/ˈhuər/) is pronounced the same as 'who are' with the unstressed form of 'are' (ər) used sometimes, but not always, in connected speech.

Using the who're contraction is pointless, non-standard, and may be misread as 'whore'. As such, I would recommend that it never be used, even in informal writing.
Lazar   Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:52 am GMT
Johnny: It's hard for me to tell definitively if she's reduced the vowel in "who" or not.

Matthew: That was my initial view too, because I don't consider "who are" something that can be compressed to one syllable in my idiolect, although a few posters have indicated that they do have monosyllabic realizations of "who are". I wouldn't use "who're" myself.
Damian in Edinburgh   Wed Nov 12, 2008 10:59 am GMT
"who're"? - a non starter here in the UK. I can't think of any reason or occasion at all why it should be used either here or anywhere else in the ESW.

As others have said it looks too much like a word for a lady of easy virtue, a lady of the lamplight shaded red.
Lazar   Wed Nov 12, 2008 11:26 am GMT
Wow, that's true: it sounds quite awkward if I try to say "who're" non-rhotically.
Another Guest   Sun Nov 16, 2008 9:12 pm GMT
<<But the fact that you make a blanket statement that “there is”, >>
That's a nonsensical use of "blanket statement". A "blanket statement" is one with a UNIVERSAL quantifier, and I had a EXISTENTIAL one. There is nothing "blanket" about saying that, for at least one case, something is true.

<<that you follow by saying that there are three distinct pronunciations, “would have”, “would ‘ave”, and “would of”, seems to imply that you consider “would have” to be a valid spelling only for the rare, completely unreduced pronunciation,>>
In the context of the discussion, it implies no such thing.
And I disagree that the unreduced form is rare.

<<How am I being ignorant or arrogant in pointing out that the pronunciation of “would’ve” is already encompassed by – indeed, is already the most common pronunciation of – “would have”?>>
You were ignorant or arrogant in saying that everyone speaks English the same way that you do, and now you are asking me to defend a position that I never took.

<<you’re implying that I had argued that they don’t exist. And I hadn’t.>>
That’s false. You said “But there's no difference between saying *’would've’ and saying ‘would have’.”

<<Can you honestly say that you would pronounce these differently?>>
Yes. And I’ve asked other people, and they have pronounced it unreduced. Granted, my drawing attention to their pronunciations does make the unreduced form more likely.

<<I repeated my argument because you hadn’t responded to it.>>
You are wrong on two counts. First, I have stated that I do not pronounce “have” as [@v], so I have responded to your claim. Second, this is not an argument. You have claimed that “have” is pronounced [@v]. In support of that, you have presented various situations in which you believe that “have” would be pronounced [@v]. That’s not an argument, that’s simply a restatement of the premise. Do you not realize how you “argument” sounds? “X is true. I’ve given you several examples where x is true, yet you refuse to acknowledge that x is true. How can you not follow this mind-numbingly simple logic? I’ve declared that x is true, so now you’re supposed to agree with me.”

<<And because you had misrepresented my argument.>>
If you’re going to make that sort of claim, you should follow it with support.

<<According to you, my claim that “would’ve” is polysyllabic is irrelevant, and it’s not: note how a reduced pronunciation of a sentence like “The men have done it” [D@ mEn @v “dVn It] would rarely if ever be represented by “The men’ve done it”>>
What follows the colon does not establish as true what precedes the colon. In fact, it borders on non sequitur.
And, as an aside, “would” and “have” are both “helping” verbs, and it makes sense to gather all the helping verbs into one word. Otherwise, you’ll have three verbs in a row. “Men” is a noun, and “have” is a verb, so linguistically there is a big difference between “would’ve” and “men’ve”. (And an aside within an aside: I’m typing this in MS Word, and “men’ve” has a red squiggle under it, while “would’ve” does not. Apparently MS considers “would’ve” to be a legitimate contraction.)

<<and yet you’re claiming that an identical, reduced, polysyllabic pronunciation of “would have” has to be represented by “would’ve”.>>
I never said that. I said that IF one wishes to be certain that the reduced form will be used, THEN the contraction must be used.

<<You’ve given no indication that you understand my assertion that the pronunciation of your suggested spelling “would’ve” could be represented just as well by “would have”.>>
You’ve given no indication that you understand how to tie your own shoes, but that doesn’t mean it would be legitimate for me to imply that you can’t. And your assertion wasn’t that it could be represented by “would have”, it was that it is the automatic pronunciation.

<<No they wouldn’t: not every reduced pronunciation needs to be represented in print>>
But if someone wanted to denote a reduced pronunciation, they would need something other than “would have” to ensure the correct pronunciation.

<<My argument is that in most cases, like my line-of-dialogue argument, the unreduced pronunciation [h{v] would sound prohibitively stilted – completely out of place>>
When a contracted form is standard, the non-contracted form usually seems stilted. If a line says “I do not know”, many people would pronounce it as “I don’t know”. “I would have” DOES sound stilted, and if I saw that in a novel, I would assume that the author INTENDED for it to sound stilted.

Also, I am not convinced that “eye dialect” is an accurate term for “would of”. My understanding is that “eye dialect” refers to when someone outside the dialect imposes a spelling, but here it’s very common for people to denote their own pronunciation as “of”. This in turn suggests that people do NOT view “[@v]” to be a reduced form of “have”; they consider it to be a separate word. People don’t write “uh book”, because they recognize “uh” as being simply another way of pronouncing “a”. Apparently, when people say “would’ve”, they are not, in their minds, saying “would have”.