[poli]

Originally Posted by AMG

Hey guys, nice talking to you.

These days we've reviewed the Present Perfect tense at the university, and a question came to my mind: Why do you always have to contract the negative interrogative form? And I also wondered this about the other tenses.

Some examples:
- Don't they play soccer?
- Aren't you going shopping?
- Didn't we go to the gig?
- Wasn't she drinking coffee?
- Haven't you done the homework?
- Hadn't she had a blue car?
Etc., etc.

And what I wonder is whether you can separate the auxiliary from the 'not', and if that cannot be possible, I'd like to know why.
I asked my 'Anglophone language and culture' teacher and he told me that cannot be possible, but I don't know why.

Also, I found this sentence on the internet (a song lyric):
Has he not crossed the seven seas (notice it's not interrogative) and I also asked my teacher about this and he told me it was an inversion, and I'd also like to know what it is.

Thanks a lot for your help

Just in agreement with Perikles--and perhaps clarification. At least I hope so.
Don't they play soccer? You can say: Do they not play soccer? The meaning is slightly different. Do they not play soccer? is very emphatic or hyperbolic, and because of that, less used, and as Perikles states often used in a rhetorical argument. All the examples you present can be used the same way I illustrated without the contraction. If you use it that way a lot you run the risk of sounding like you are on stage.