There's three variants: Agreement variation in existentialthereconstructions

Abstract

Previous studies of agreement variation in existential there constructions treat the variable as binary, distinguishing between agreeing and nonagreeing variants. Using new data from a corpus of English spoken in California, we argue that this widely studied variable cannot be fully understood without instead making a three-way distinction between agreement (there are/were + plural), nonagreement using a full form of the verb (there is/was + plural), and nonagreement using there's. We motivate this three-way distinction by showing that the two nonagreeing variants differ in their distributions with respect to polarity and determiner type, as well as speaker age and education level. Full form nonagreement is more frequent among speakers with less formal education, while there's is favored by younger speakers. These results suggest that the two nonagreeing variants differ in their longitudinal trajectories, a finding that would be obscured in an analysis that makes only a binary distinction between variants.

Social meaning in a shifting grammatical landscape: The perception of nonagreement in existential there constructions

“…Apparent‐time analyses of spoken English reveal a similar trend. Britain and Sudbury () found that, in two geographically distant varieties of English, younger speakers were more likely than older speakers to use nonagreeing forms of the construction, and Krejci and Hilton () found that it is the form there's alone which is driving this age correlation (Figure ). For speakers under the age of 35, there's is the preferred form for introducing plural nouns by a wide margin.…”

“…Rate at which speakers across three age groups use agreeing and nonagreeing variants of the existential construction to introduce plural nouns (Krejci and Hilton : 193)…”

“…Despite this, nonstandard number agreement is actually the norm in English existential there constructions. When existential constructions introduce plural subjects, the verb is more likely to display nonagreeing singular morphology (Examples 2–3) than plural (Example 1) (Meechan and Foley ; Walker ; Breivik and Martínez‐Insua ; Riordan ; Krejci and Hilton ):…”

“…Although the two forms there's + NP pl and there is + NP pl appear to constitute the same nonstandard, nonagreeing variant, there is mounting evidence that they are neither grammatically nor sociolinguistically equivalent (Meechan and Foley ; Walker ; Breivik and Martínez‐Insua ; Krejci and Hilton ). There's + NP pl accounts for the vast majority of nonagreement in existential constructions and differs from other nonagreeing forms (e.g.…”

“…There's + NP pl accounts for the vast majority of nonagreement in existential constructions and differs from other nonagreeing forms (e.g. there is / was + NP pl ) in the set of linguistic and social factors that condition its use (Walker ; Krejci and Hilton ). In a study of 145 sociolinguistic interviews, Krejci and Hilton () found that nearly all speakers used there's to introduce plural nouns, regardless of their education level, but use of there is / was + NP pl was largely restricted to speakers without a college education.…”