English Expletive Constructions Are Not Infected

Abstract

Sobin (1997) proposes an analysis of several ''prestige'' constructions of English under which they result from grammatical viruses. Counter to his claim, I argue that plural agreement in expletive constructions introduced by there results not from a virus but from the grammar of English, because it lacks signature properties of viruses. I show that the flat agreement seen in expletive constructions with conjoined associates can be explained as a processing effect. I then argue that singular agreement with plural associates represents a second alternative allowed within the grammar.

Subject agreement variation: Support for the configurational approach

“…Thus, as is well known, in Standard English a plural subject occupying the structural subject position in a declarative clause must agree with the finite verb (see (12a,b)); but when the plural subject of a declarative clause appears in postverbal position in there-sentences, the verb can readily bear singular phi-feature inflection (as in (13a 0 ,b 0 )). Sobin (1997) in fact takes (13a 0 ,b 0 ) to instantiate the grammatical norm, treating the plural version in (13a,b) as a 'virus' (but see Schütze, 1999). (12) a.…”

“…The fact that there are differing views regarding whether apparent lack of agreement in there-sentences is confined to 's (or whether it is premitted also with the full form is, or was, or seems) likely reflects the fact that different speakers allow different possibilities.Chomsky (1995:384, n. 42) andTortora (2006:292, n. 17) argue that there-sentences with plural post-verbal subjects only allow the 's form, suggesting that 's does not obviously encode singular agreement; see alsoSchütze, 1999, who notes that some speakers only allow 's in these constructions, andRupp, 2005, who does not explicitly state it, but whose data robustly excludes examples that do not have contracted 's. See alsoQuirk et al (1985.…”

Phi-feature inflection and agreement: An introduction

“…But it may be significant that this is an existential there-sentence. As is well known, such sentences present 'agreement puzzles' in the other direction as well: There is/was/seems to be many people in the room (see Schütze 1999;Sobin 1997;den Dikken 2001, i.a., for discussion). The there-less sentence Many people is in the room is probably very hard to contextualise (it is clearly different, because of the nature of the predicate, from Pancakes is nice, referred to by Wechsler in his paper), and will strike speakers of English not following the Northern Subject Rule as deviant.…”

Expletive selection and CP arguments in Dutch

“…My theory need not, furthermore, predict that English should allow impersonal ergatives because it has rule R, for two reasons: 1) Rule R has a very limited scope, and does not apply to seem-verbs but only to be, and sometimes only to certain instances of be (e.g., only to copula be in wh-questions: Schütze 1999) (although Schütze allows there appears to be some men in the garden); and 2) since Rule R does not absorb case for the associate (wherever it originates), even if it turns out that rule R can delete the uninterpretable features on T, it might be that impersonal ergatives are blocked because this case remains unassigned. See Schütze (1999) and references cited there for further discussion.…”