I meant to add something to this months ago, but I got too wrapped up in talking about the Led Zeppelin song. The thing I had intended to say was that a person looking only at the title could be tempted to argue that they meant the "you're" to be a contraction for "you were." It's a non-standard contraction, and the majority of grammarians would consider it flat-out wrong. It seems to be happening more and more, though, so who's to say whether or not it will still be considered wrong in thirty years?Mal Shot First wrote:That apostrophe-D in "Why'd" really bothers me. It seems to be the official spelling of the song title, but the contraction doesn't quite make sense in the context of the song. The way I see it, "why'd" can stand for "why would" or possibly "why did." They intend it to mean "why do" - it should be written "Why d'you only call me when you're high."
If it were meant as a contraction for "you were," the title, expressed without contractions, could be read thus: "Why Did/Would You Only Call Me When You Were High?"
You might be able to come to the conclusion that they meant this if you were only given the title. It's a harder conclusion to come to if you listen to the song or read the lyrics.
Maybe it can be chalked up to some quirk of colloquial Sheffield English. Maybe it's a conscious grammatical flub for effect. Maybe they're going for something like what the Beatles did when they tried to approximate African American English.
Maybe Alex Turner's just kinda dumb.
