Why don't you love me

[deveel]

Hi,

I've just heard one of Beyonce's song "Why don't you love me" and it made me a little confused. What does this sentence exactly means?

For me it can be understandable in 2 different ways:

1) Love me, please.
2) You don't feel love to me, why?

As those 2 meanings are totally different, which one of them is correct? I guess the first one as "why don't you" is kind of phrasal verb. But if yes - how can I simply write the sentence with second meaning?

Thanks in advance

 

[Koronas]

It means: "why do you not love me?"
(I see no ambiguity or hidden meaning.)

 

[deveel]

'Why don't you' is phrasal verb but also simple present.
In the first context it means "let's do something",in second one is just a simple question.
That's why I'm confused.

 

[emsr2d2]

'Why don't you' is phrasal verb but also simple present.
In the first context it means "let's do something",in second one is just a simple question.
That's why I'm confused.

In what way do you think "Why don't you?" is a phrasal verb (a phrasal verb being a combination of a verb and a preposition leading to a different meaning from the original verb)?

"Why don't you.." can mean a suggestion: Why don't you give me a hundred dollars? Why don't we go to the cinema?

In the context of that song title, I initially only read it as a straight question, meaning "You don't love me and I want to know why". However, it could be meant the other way and without knowing the rest of the lyrics, it's difficult to tell. If the rest of the song were to contain, for example, something about a girl lighting candles, putting on sexy underwear and waiting for her boyfriend to get home, I could imagine her then saying to him "Hey, I'm all ready for you. Why don't you love me?" though of course "Why don't you make love to me?" would make much more sense.

As we've said many times on here before, song titles and song lyrics don't always make sense!

 

[Koronas]

"Why don't you love me?" means: "why do you not love me?"
It's a simple question.

That's exactly what it means. I don't understand why you want to paraphrase it (and, thus, change its meaning).