“Are you cold?”
“I’m”
“Have you showered?”
“I’ve”
“Is it raining?”
“It’s”
“Am I ugly?”
“You’re”
You get the gist. Why is it so weird to say these instead of “I am, I have, It is, You are”?
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I think it sounds wrong to us to use more than one “shortcut” in a single sentence. Contractions are a verbal shortcut, but so is leaving a word implied, such as in your first example. When you reply to “Are you cold?” with “I’m”, you’re saying “I am (cold)”. You’re using two shortcuts there.
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Because all of those are yes or no questions, you can just answer yes or no.
I do like to answer “is anyone…” questions with “I’m” though. No one has actually questioned it so far surprisingly
Emphasis. While it’s easy to overlook, we constantly put emphasis on certain words in a sentence because they’re important. If someone asks you if you’re cold, the concept you’re trying to get across is yes/no. So, if not using contractions, you could either say, “I **am**” or “I am **not.**” It would be weird to say “**I** am” or “I **am** not,” because those emphasize parts of the sentence that are less relevant; the person knows that you’re who they asked, they just want to know if you’re cold or not cold.
On the other hand, if someone in a group asks “Who’s in charge here?” you could respond “**I** am.” Now, the important point is that **you**, as opposed to any other person, is in charge.
In all of the examples you list, using a contraction makes it impossible to stress the word you want to stress. In general, we only contract words that we’re not emphasizing, because they’re less important. It’s actually worth paying attention to how differently people may pronounce a word that’s being stressed/emphasized.
That said, there are a few times we might respond with a lone contraction. How come? ‘Cause.
It’s just one of those rules of English. Much like saying adjectives in the right order such as a great green Irish dragon instead of a green Irish great dragon.
We don’t use affirmative contractions at the ends of sentences, generally. Contractions shorten between – and at the end of the sentence there is no between. Not is a negation and not a verb being contracted, so it has a completely different function in the sentence.
Linguist here.
It’s phonological stress.
Where the stress is one of the things that distinguishes a vinyl *record* from to *record* a video.
Unstressed syllables have a tendency to be reduced or elided altogether, like *prob’ly* for *probably*. Even when you say all of the syllables in *probably*, the second syllable is unstressed and is a reduced uh sound instead of the more distinct sound a short a normally makes.
In “It is me”, *is* is not normally stressed (except for added emphasis) so it can contract. It “It ís” as an answer to “what’s making that noise?”, *is* is stressed so it cannot contract.
Predicates (basically the part of a sentence that is not the subject, the verbs+ any objects or or any predicate nouns/adjectives) have to have one heavy phrasal stress in English. In phrases like “It is” there is no following word to take the stress so it has to fall on is. In “It is making the noise”, the heaviest stress falls on *máking* so is can be unstressed, reduced or contracted.
Some do… A lot do. I moved to rural Appalachia and this is very common… And passed down from generation to generation. Words and phrases are shortened so much it almost seems more like a series of grunts and growls. It seems like the generations lost in the hills have created and kept almost a verbal short hand, so “I’m” “I’ve” said in a gravely voice as a response is very prominent in my memories of that time. I have since moved further into town but I can spot that dielectric two rows over in Agway.
I believe the point of a contraction in English is to quicken the time spent saying a sentence. “You’re very cool”, is quicker than saying “you are very cool”. So given that explanation, perhaps the sound of hearing a contraction on its own sounds weird because there is no follow up sentence, hence giving the contraction no purpose to begin with. Or maybe I’m wrong, dunno 🤷♀️
You hear more of it in British English, “Can’t”, “won’t” or “isn’t” as a response to a question.
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