Subject-verb agreement in existential constructions in contemporary American English : a corpus-based study
Other Title(s)
في التراكيب الوجودية في اللغة الإنجليزية الأمريكية المعاصرة : توافق الفعل مع الفاعل : دراسة قائمة على المدونات النصية
Joint Authors
al-Umari, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman
al-Shawashrah, Iqab Yusuf
Source
Association of Arab Universities Journal for Arts
Issue
Vol. 16, Issue 2 (31 Oct. 2019), pp.661-680, 20 p.
Publisher
Association of Arab universities The Scientific Society of Faculties of Arts
Publication Date
2019-10-31
Country of Publication
Jordan
No. of Pages
20
Main Subjects
Languages & Comparative Literature
Abstract EN
This study investigates the variable subject-verb agreement in existential constructions in the Corpus of Contemporary American-English (COCA).
While variable subject-verb agreement in existential constructions has been extensively studied in many varieties of English, we study this variation in a particular corpus to find out the correlation between the distribution of the standard and non-standard subject-verb agreement variants in American-English and a number of linguistic factors (tense, contraction, kind of plural and adjacency of subject and verb).
To achieve this goal, a total of 375 tokens of standard and non-standard agreement in existential constructions are extracted from the corpus and coded in terms of the aforementioned linguistic factors.
The data are then analyzed using a computer program, namely Goldvarb X, which is capable of providing the frequencies of the standard and non-standard variants in the extracted tokens.
The results of the study confirm the findings of the previous studies and hypotheses.
Present tense, contraction, absence of plural-s, and presence of intervening material are found to favor singular agreement in existential constructions in contemporary spoken American- English.
In addition, processing, default, and lexicalization hypotheses (Walker, 2007) are supported by the absence of plural-s, intervening material, and the high frequency of occurrence of there'srespectively.
American Psychological Association (APA)
al-Shawashrah, Iqab Yusuf& al-Umari, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman. 2019. Subject-verb agreement in existential constructions in contemporary American English : a corpus-based study. Association of Arab Universities Journal for Arts،Vol. 16, no. 2, pp.661-680.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1114298
Modern Language Association (MLA)
al-Shawashrah, Iqab Yusuf& al-Umari, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman. Subject-verb agreement in existential constructions in contemporary American English : a corpus-based study. Association of Arab Universities Journal for Arts Vol. 16, no. 2 (Oct. 2019), pp.661-680.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1114298
American Medical Association (AMA)
al-Shawashrah, Iqab Yusuf& al-Umari, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman. Subject-verb agreement in existential constructions in contemporary American English : a corpus-based study. Association of Arab Universities Journal for Arts. 2019. Vol. 16, no. 2, pp.661-680.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1114298
Data Type
Journal Articles
Language
English
Notes
Includes bibliographical references : p. 678-680
Record ID
BIM-1114298