A Gradient Grammar Approach to Concord Variation in Existential there+be Constructions
نویسنده
چکیده
‘Gradient grammar’ (Bresnan & Hay 2006) refers to statistical theories of language competence. A number of studies (Bod et al. 2003, Bresnan et al. 2005, Gries 2007, O’Connor et al. 2004, Snider & Zaenen 2006, Wasow & Arnold 2005, among others) have explored such probabilistic variation where speakers choose among grammatical options (dative and genitive alternations, complementizer optionality, and so on). English existential THERE+BE (‘ETB’, Crawford 2005) constructions, however, offer an opportunity to apply stochastic analysis to an alternation where one of the forms is prescriptively ungrammatical: a choice between typical English number agreement and the otherwise proscribed discord that is, in fact, productive with ETBs in many dialects.
منابع مشابه
A Gradient Grammar Approach to Concord Variation in Existential There+Be Constructions
English existential there+be constructions (ETB, as coined in Crawford 2005, e.g., Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup) are well known to exhibit variable concord (e.g., There’s lots of stars out tonight; There are lots of stars out tonight). Existing analyses either dismiss this observed lack of consistent ETB verb agreement as un-analyzable or explain it as the product of more general verb agree...
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