In linguistics, a contraction is the formation of a new word from two or more individual words. This often is a result of a common sequence of words, or, as in French, to maintain a flowing sound.
In English, contractions are usually but not always either negations or combinations of pronouns with auxiliary verbs, and in these cases always include an apostrophe. Negations are generally in the form of "doesn't", for "does not", or "wouldn't", for "would not", where the apostrophe stands for the missing "o" in "not". The second category is generally in the form of pronoun + "to be", as in "It's cold today" or "We're going downtown", where the apostrophe again stands for a missing vowel, either "i" or "a". The second category also often uses a form of "to have", as in "He's gone to bed" or "We've finally gotten there". In this case, the apostrophe stands for the missing "h" plus "a". It should be noted, though, that only British English allows a "to have" to contract when it is the primary verb (i.e., I've a date today).
Many people writing English confuse the possessive form of the pronoun "it" with its contractions. The possessive form has no apostrophe ("its"), while the contraction of "it is" or "it has" does have an apostrophe ("it's"). See List of frequently misused English words.
Outside the English contractions described above, contractions are virtually the same concept as portmanteaus.
The French language has contraction forms similar to English, as in "C'est la vie" ("That's life"), where "c'est" stands for "ce est" ("it is"). In general, any word-final, non-silent "e" will contract if the following word begins with a vowel. For example the common words "que" (qu'-), "je" (j'-), and "de" (d'-).
Spanish also has some contractions, as in "trecientos" (three hundred) for "tres cientos". Spanish also has two mandatory phonetic contractions: "al" (to the) for "a el," and "del" (of the) for "de el"
Both French and Spanish use a form of contraction combining the article "le" (French masculine form of "the") or "la" (Spanish feminine form of "the"). For instance, in French, we have the phrase, "L'etat, c'est moi" (Louis XIV: "I am the state", or, literally, "The state, it is me").
In German prepositional phrases, one can often merge the preposition and the article; e.g., "von dem" becomes "vom", "zu dem" becomes "zum", or "an das" becomes "ans". Some of these are so common that they are in fact mandatory. In informal speech, also "aufm" for "auf dem", "unterm" for "unter dem", etc. are used, but would be considered wrong if written.
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