Explain Like I'm Five | Don't Panic!

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eli5 Why is it that if you remove the contraction in the sentence “Couldn’t you leave?”, it becomes “Could not you leave?”, which doesn’t make grammatical sense? (lemmit.online)

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The original was posted on /r/explainlikeimfive by /u/Lamalova on 2023-10-03 09:27:07.

A contraction can be removed from a sentence but it should still make grammatical sense because it’s simply combining two consecutive words, but in this instance the expanded form is “Could you not leave?” which requires the sentence structure to be completely changed. Why is this allowed?

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