I don't understand, because if 'don't' is 'do not' then wouldn't the sentence without conjunctions be 'do not you dare' which I'm pretty sure isn't grammatically correct. Like, when we say the term it means something else, certainly not 'do not you dare' anyway. Any ideas on why? I am so glad English is my first language.
Learn English – Why do we say “don’t you dare”
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Envy is a member of a Levin class. Beth Levin's book English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation (1993 U Chicago Press) is a classic and is very useful for anyone interested in English. (from the online Verb Index of the book)
31.2 "admire" verbs
abhor admire adore appreciate cherish deplore despise detest disdain dislike distrust dread enjoy envy esteem exaltexecrate fancy favor fear hate idolize lament like loathe love miss mourn pity prize regret relish resent respect revere rue savor stand support tolerate treasure trust value venerate worship
This class of verbs denotes positive and negative psychological states of the experiencer subject, and participates in three major "Possessor-Attribute Factoring Alternations", as Levin calls them (examples below from Levin pp 72-6, illustrated with envy):
1. (2.13.1) Possessor Object Alternation
They envied the volunteers' dedication
They envied the volunteers for their dedication.
2. (2.13.2) Attribute Object Alternation
They envied the volunteers' dedication
They envied the dedication in the volunteers.
3. (2.13.3) Possessor and Attribute Alternation
They envied the volunteers' dedication
They envied the volunteers their dedication.
None of them are grammatical full sentences, if we don't consider "why so" as having a meaning of its own. And we'll do that in a minute, but let's first pretend that it doesn't have one.
Possible full sentences would be:
Why are you so sure?
How are you so sure?
Why is it that you are so sure?
How is it that you are so sure?
The forms you all have are eliding part of these sentences.
Now, those that do not contain so could be construed as elisions from different questions; asking why someone is sure of something is different to to asking why they are sure to the extent that they are. Of course, we could be asking that, but that's not the form that has become idiomatic, as we'll come to.
The way elision works with contexts is complicated, in that we can understand e.g. some headlines fine that we'd trip up on in the middle of a passage of prose.
And similarly, while "how so sure?" doesn't scan right, we still understand it, and it would unusual, but not utterly bizarre, for someone to use it in informal speech.
Likewise with "why so sure?" except that "why so" has been used so much as to become an idiom of its own, indeed one that is defined in its own right in at least one dictionary.
And so, after that little journey through elision, we can see that because "why so" has been so often used as to become an idiom, we can actually understand "why so sure" without reference to elision at all, but in terms of that idiomatic meaning.
("Why so" was once also used as an expression of relief or acquiescence, as it is used by Shakespeare and continued to be used into the 19th Century, this other meaning might or might not have helped "why so" in the sense here come into being).
"How so" has had a different journey toward becoming an idiom, in that it is often found as the entirety of a question ("How so?"). As such, just as we can understand "why so X?" as an idiomatic form with a defined meaning, so we can "how so?", but not "why so?" or "how so X?" because that is not what those idioms mean.
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TL;DR (Too long, didn't read): The “you” in “don't you dare” is emphatic repetition, but the first “you” is omitted due to the imperative mood implying the second person (you).
You is commonly used as an intensifier, often with the imperative mood. A good example of this is “you [noun] you”, in which the sentence would be fine without the “you” at the end, but the “you” gives the sentence emphatic repetition. In your example, “don't you dare”, the verb “do” (as in “don't” - “do not”) is in the imperative mood, so saying, “Don't you dare!” means that the desired action is that “you don't dare”. Notice how I added a “you” at the beginning, and removed the “you” after the “don't”. The “you” at the beginning is the subject, which is implied in the imperative mood, and the other “you” is simply emphatic repetition. In other words, the “you” in “don't you dare” is emphatic repetition, but the first “you” does not show up in the imperative mood. This is also explained by @1006a in a comment:
The other sign that this is happening is that the word “you” can be safely removed. For example, the sentence,
has the same meaning as the sentence,
These two forms can be used interchangeably, but the former is slightly more emphatic, and the latter is slightly more formal, so the form used can depend on the context.