Given the disbelief that was expressed by my students, I think its fair to say that they were not using "are + plural" in either speech or writing. Most of them were elementary ed or English ed students. And, Old Dominion has a large military population, so many of them were non-traditional (older) students and/or students who had lived in many different regions of the US.
Jaclyn Ocumpaugh, PhD
Research Associate, Teachers College, Columbia University
Affiliated Researcher, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
________________________________________
From: Flanigan, Beverly [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2013 1:13 PM
To: Ocumpaugh, Jaclyn; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Is vs. are research?
Again: Are they saying "there's + pl." but writing "there are + pl."? I wonder if there isn't a common (and standard) distinction made between spoken and written language, perhaps in all the English-speaking countries? That's certainly the case in our very prescriptive School of Journalism at Ohio University--a geekish group if there ever was one.
Beverly Flanigan
________________________________________
From: Variationist List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ocumpaugh, Jaclyn [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2013 12:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is vs. are research?
For what it's worth, I taught descriptive grammar to Ed majors at Old Dominion for several years, and ninety percent of them were shocked to hear that "there are three students in the hallway" would be considered correct. A couple of them accused me of either making it up or citing a rule that was centuries out of date. The ones that knew it tended tone prescriptive geeks (eg the copy editor who was returning to get another degree).
So "there is plural" seems pretty std in my experience. And if it's not, it may be soon!
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 25, 2013, at 2:21 AM, "TRUDGILL Peter" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
But they will obviously say it themselves….. Someone should teach them the difference between style and dialect.And that Standard English is not a set of prescriptive rules.
I don't think its anything British teachers focus on - or am I wrong?
_____________________________________________
Peter Trudgill FBA
Prof. of Sociolinguistics, Agder Univ., N;
Prof. Emeritus of Eng. Linguistics, Fribourg Univ, CH;
Adjunct Prof., CRLD, La Trobe Univ., Aus.
Hon. Prof. of Sociolinguistics, UEA, Norwich, UK.
The Eastern Daily Press publishes Peter Trudgill's language and dialect column every Monday: http://www.edp24.co.uk/home/e-edition
On 25 Oct 2013, at 09:16, David Bowie wrote:
We (as in those of us on this list) are unlikely to think it's nonstandard, but there are a lot of K-12 (and first-year composition) teachers who teach that it's not just nonstandard, but unforgivably so.
David Bowie
TRUDGILL Peter wrote:
Do we really think "Theres lots of people out there" is nonstandard?
Surely all native speakers of English are capable of saying this? Not "There is", perhaps - but "theres" is surely colloquial but standard in spoken English.
I'm writing it "theres" not "there's" because - isnt this univerbation in progress?
_____________________________________________
Peter Trudgill FBA
Prof. of Sociolinguistics, Agder Univ., N;
Prof. Emeritus of Eng. Linguistics, Fribourg Univ, CH;
Adjunct Prof., CRLD, La Trobe Univ., Aus.
Hon. Prof. of Sociolinguistics, UEA, Norwich, UK.
The Eastern Daily Press publishes Peter Trudgill's language and dialect column every Monday: http://www.edp24.co.uk/home/e-edition
On 24 Oct 2013, at 20:29, Robert Lawson wrote:
Hi folks,
One of my final year UG students is currently working on a research project for my language and gender module, and one of the things he's interested in is is vs. are forms in plural noun phrases (e.g. There is/are three men in a bar). His suggestion is that is is used more by males than by females, and he's attributing that to orientations towards the (non-)standard markets. He wants to record male and female speakers in Birmingham to see if this holds up in this part of the world, which I'm happy for him to do. It seems to me that this must have already been studied in the literature, but I have no idea where to even start, much less advise him on what kind of literature would be relevant.
Does anyone have any suggestions for reading (both sociolinguistic and non-socio) on a topic of this kind?
Thanks in advance,
Rob
Dr Robert Lawson
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of English
Birmingham City University
Birmingham, B42 2SU
The Social Linguist<x-msg://19/www.thesociallinguist.wordpress.com>
Fulbright Scottish Studies Award, 2012/13
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