Why is 'Where's it' Grammatically incorrect? [duplicate]

Question

I want to explain to the Spanish developers of a website why this text label sounds wrong:

If your column isn't country data, where's it?

IMHO, you have to say "Where is it?" - but I don't know why.

EDIT

For context, the meaning of "where's it" here is "in which country are the regions represented by the data in your column?"

And to be clearer, I'm not asking about when it's ok to use contractions in semi-formal English. To my (native Australian) ear, "Where's it?" sounds wrong in any context. Not "informal", but wrong.

EDIT 2

There is a near-duplicate question What's this? What is it? but not What's it? - Why?. I think the difference between "what" and "where" is significant enough to not want to merge the two.

Answer 1

Because the logical stress in that sentence falls on "is": Where IS it? If you abbreviate the stressed syllable, it results in nothing but nonsense.

Answer 2

The clitic 's meaning "is" can only be used to substitute for a "weak form" is (pronounced /əz/). The is in in "Where is it" is the "strong form" is (pronounced /ɪz/) since it is used as a main verb and not as a modal (or helping) verb. Therefore it cannot be replaced with the clitic 's.

See a related answer I wrote a while back discussing this restriction in my answer to Is there some rule against ending a sentence with the contraction “it's”?

Answer 3

Generally speaking, I'm of the mind that technical writing should follow the same conventions as formal and academic writing, which is one reason to avoid the contraction. That being said, I think your intuition is that the sentence itself just "sounds wrong" -- and I would agree. The first part of the sentence refers to "being" (if your column is not country data), but the clause immediately after it refers to location (where is it) -- one clause doesn't follow the other (it is unclear how the type of data in the column is related to where it is).

For example, if the first clause is supposed to convey "If the unit of analysis for the data in this column is not a country", then the second clause should read "what is it [the unit of analysis]", not " where is it".

Answer 4

The repetitive-contrastive stress in the sentence produces stress on "is", which can't receive stress when it's a clitic ("A clitic is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but shows evidence of being phonologically bound to another word" and "The term clitic is used in traditional grammar for a word or particle that cannot bear accent or stress....") bound to "where".

If your column isn't country data, where is it?

Here, the stress on the most-important word (for the sense of the question), is, contrasts that word and its sense with the second-most important word, isn't, in the contingency:

If your column isn't country data, where is it?

In addition, when the negated verb (isn't) is re-introduced as a positive verb (is) in the wh-question, that "repetition serves discourse informational ... purposes [and] contrasts or emphasizes the whole [wh-question] ...." ("Sentence Stress in Information Structure", Kent Lee, 2013, p. 8).

My observations about the prosodic stress patterns required by the intended meaning of the quoted question don't satisfy the OQ entirely. In order to satisfy the OQ, the reasons "it", "where's", or another word shouldn't or aren't likely to receive stress would need to be explained and, for good measure, an account of why such phonological observations would apply to written English at all should at least be referenced.

About the last, why phonological observations would apply: I'm either going to palm that explanation off as 'general reference' in accordance with long-standing evasive tactics at EL&U, or I'm going to misrepresent that explanation as being complete and entire in the rationale that written English, especially written English drawing on informal phonological features such as clitics, derives all of its informational structure from spoken English.

The other, the reasons another word than is doesn't receive the stress, are at least partly explained by the reasons I've given that is does receive the stress. Briefly and in summary, my reasoning is that the accurate interpretation of the question quoted in the OQ depends on that pattern of underlying stress. Beyond that positive explanation, the reasons another word than is doesn't receive the stress are best summed up as artifacts of there being no other good candidate than is for both the sentence and the phrasal stress.

Note

Successive edits of the OQ have put this answer somewhat out of step, yet I think it still might have some value as an answer to the original, unedited OQ.

1. The title of the OQ was originally Why can't you say "Where's it?" not Why is "Where's it?" Grammatically incorrect? I responded to the original title, not the edited one. My response to the edited title, should I choose to make one, would summarily dismiss it: "Where's it?" is grammatically correct.
2. The second edit ("Edit 2" in the OQ) implies, quite to the contrary of the poster's intent, that the OQ is a 'duplicate' (a 'duplicate', that is, in EL&U parlance, which parlance promotes a close similarity to duplication) of the suggested 'duplicate'. Accordingly, I have voted to close the question and removed any of my comments suggesting the OQ was not a 'duplicate'.

Answer 5

Hypothesis: Asking a question (audibly) essentially requires what is commonly referred to as a "rising tone" at the end of the sentence. "Where is it?" easily allows the rising tone on "it", satisfying this requirement. With "Where's it?" it is very difficult to apply the rising tone to "it", and hence the "questionness" of the sentence is not properly conveyed.

It's not entirely clear what attributes make adding the rising tone easy or hard, but if you say "Where's it?" and "Where's Ed?" to yourself I think most people (no doubt there will be a few disagreeing) will find that the rising tone is more easily and recognizably applied to the second.

The reason "Where's it?" "sounds bad" is that it doesn't/can't follow the rules for audible questions.

(There is also the point, of course, that "Where's it?" is so short and ends so abruptly, even when compared to "Where's Ed?", that the sentence is simply hard to recognize and parse in a conversational environment. But there are other situations where this is the case and they yet they don't "sound bad".)

Answer 6

The clitic 's as a contraction of is is grammatically acceptable in any case where the is is not vocally stressed (and is not the final word in a sentence or clause). Assuming the speaker places vocal stress on the final word, the expression Where's it? is comparable to Where's he?, Where's she?, or Where's that? — Whether to choose is or 's in such cases is a matter of style, not grammar.

Consider the example posed in the original question, in its uncontracted form: If your column isn't country data, where is it? — If spoken aloud, the word is in this example would be vocally stressed, as it highlights the contrast with the earlier isn't. Because it's stressed, it can't be reduced to 's.

Answer 7

"Where's" is short for "where is" in spoken and informal English, the " 's " here is not to be confused with the genitive as in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". So it is not grammatically incorrect but may be too informal in the business context to which the web page presumably belongs.

Answer 8

"Where's it?" is always wrong.

"Where's it at?" is completely valid however.

I think the difference might lie in the fact that "Where's it..." is almost the lead-in for something else. When you say "Where's it?" it makes it sound like you stopped talking before you got to the good part.

Answer 9

It sounds like this is a table of data in which there are two neighbouring columns, one which might be named "region/country" and the other "country". If the data in the first column is a country then the second is blank; but if the data in the first column is not a country then it's presumed to be a region so data then appears in the second column to indicate the country of the regions. Of course, why you would list a country in the first column when you already have a column solely for country data is down to design. Hence, I presume that the question "If your column isn't country data, where's it?" pertains to the second column. That, I think, is what Steve is dealing with.

Regarding the question he wants to associate with the country column, obviously the last part has difficulties because of stress, but the first part would be clearer by displacing the "data" word thus: If your column data isn't a country, ... ?

I'm revising this because I've had second thoughts about whether the last part of the question is difficult because of stress; instead I now think that it's a matter of specificity. If you're specific enough then the contraction works: Where's Waldo?, for instance; but if you're not specific it doesn't work: Where's water?, as someone commented. This latter example is grammatically wrong, and if you correct it: Where's the/my/our water?, the clitic works. It even works for "Where's it?" if you make "it" specific: remember the creature named It from the Adams Family? When you refer to It then the clitic works: Where's It?