For next Thursday, please read the following paper, which can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website:

Zwicky, Arnold M. & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 1983. Cliticization vs. Inflection: English n’t. Language 59: 502-513.

In the paper, Zwicky and Pullum ask whether n’t should really be considered a contracted form of not (as ‘ve in we’ve is considered a contracted form of the verb have).  So-called ‘contracted’ forms are one example of what linguistics refer to as a ‘clitic’.  Roughly speaking, a clitic is a morpheme that has an independent morphological/syntactic existence, but is phonologically dependent on an immediately adjacent word.  (Note, for instance, that we’ve is pronounced as a single word.)

The other possibility is that n’t is not a contracted form/clitic, but is in fact an (inflectional) verbal suffix (as -s in eats is considered an inflectional suffix).  Suffixes are one example of what linguists refer to as a ‘bound morpheme’.  Unlike a clitic, a bound morpheme is complete dependent (morphologically/syntactically/phonologically) on some other word or (more generally) morpheme.  Put another way, a clitic is a “semi-word”, while a bound morpheme can never stand alone as its own word.

Zwicky and Pullum review the evidence for these two views of n’t, with some (perhaps) suprising results!