On resolving disagreement: Linguistic theory and variation – There's bridges

Abstract

Studies of concord variation in English have found subject-verb concord to be particularly low in existential sentences such as There's bridges. Noting that these sentences are unusual because the subject NP is postverbal and is generally indefinite, we hypothesized that the unusual concord variation pattern was a result of structural differences associated with the restriction on the type of determiners preceding the postverbal NP. Using variationist methodology, we analyzed natural speech data from 31 speakers of standard Canadian English and found an overwhelming preference for singular agreement in existentials. Contrary to our predictions, this was not linked to a determiner-based structural distinction, but rather to the form of the copula (i.e., full or clitic) and the speaker's level of education. Our findings have implications for those theoretical studies of existentials that assume concord, because the effect of education suggests that this assumption reflects the bias of the higher educational level of the researchers.

English Expletive Constructions Are Not Infected

“…This possibility has been attested on the basis of production data, by counting the proportion of ECs with plural associates and singular versus plural verbs, as a function of tense. Meechan and Foley (1994) report a rate of 58% singular past tense with plural NPs, in contrast to 92% with present tense ('s), in interview transcripts of Canadian English speakers. Elicited production data were collected by Smallwood (1997Smallwood ( , 1998.…”

Non-concord in existential there be sentences

“…Research by Meechan & Foley (1994), Cheshire (1999), Martinez & Palacios (2003), and Crawford (2005) demonstrates that plural notional subjects often take singular verbs. They argue that this situation has several origins and conclude that a single approach is not sufficient to explain concord variation of ETBs.…”

“…He worked with concord in general and concluded that there is a tendency in informal English to use the singular rather than the plural in ETBs. More specific and recent research documenting of non-concord in ETBs include Meechan & Foley (1994), Cheshire (1999), Biber et al (1999), Martinez & Palacios (2003) and Crawford (2005).…”

“…However, The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English claims that there is a "strong tendency in conversation to use a singular verb regardless of the number of the notional subject [of ETBS]" (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan, 1999, p. 944). Research by Meechan and Foley (1994), Cheshire (1999) Martinez and Palacios (2003) and Crawford (2005) indicates that non-concord is found primarily in spoken language and occurs more frequently when the verb is contracted. In this project, my objective is to investigate variables that motivate non-concord in ETBs.…”

Variation and Formal Theories of Syntax, Chomskyan

“…However, in later generative models, the idea of a derivational model was abandoned in favor of a configurational model (most recently Minimalism), in which a single representation is subject to various constraints. An example is the study of Meechan and Foley (1994), where variable verbal number agreement in existentials was analyzed as a reflection of different configurational positions of the postverbal NP (a second example is Meyerhoff, 2000). As a consequence, the original notion of the linguistic variable as a structural unit such that syntactic variants are different surface realizations of an underlying structure has been lost too.…”