Do the phrases “Can’t you do that…” or “Isn’t it possible to do…” actually have a real grammatical meaning?

Question

For the life of me, I have never been to understand these common phrases in english. For example, someone asks you “Can’t you find research articles on google?” And you reply with “Yes, you can.”

But expanding the words and now it says “Can not you find research articles on google?” And now the sentence doesn’t seem to be grammatically correct.

Or for example, “Isn’t it impossible to create a perpetual machine?” Easy to answer normally, but expanded it becomes “Is not it impossible to create a perpetual machine?

What does “Can not you…” and “Is not it…” actually mean???

In: 0

Answer 1

It’s just laziness. The correct wording of these phrases would be “You can not…”, “it is not…”. The way you’re confused about is essentially just an abbreviation to save on syllables while talking.