If I Had Have Been… On the Web

• Authors: Nadina Cehan , Anca Cehan
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper looks at the nonstandard, so called ‘plupluperfect’, construction If [Subject] had have [past particple]. Based on inquiries in WebCorp and the BNC and COCA, the paper shows the relative incidence of this construction in the available corpora. The investigation concludes that the construction is more likely to be found in Internet texts and communications. This prompts a brief discussion on the general nature of Internet language and its main characteristics. Moreover, taking into consideration the morpho-syntactic make-up of the construction, certain theories about its occurrence are presented. It is also noted that the construction is by no means new, having been attested centuries ago. Thus, the paper tries to tie in history with present-day trends in language and linguistics.

Keywords

EN

plupluperfect; corpus linguistics; web language; nonstandard forms; spoken vs. written English

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Linguaculture
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 2012
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 57-70

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2015-04-18

Contributors

author

Nadina Cehan

• ”Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj

author

Anca Cehan

• Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi

References

• BNC (British National Corpus) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). http://corpus.byu.edu. Web. March 2011.
• WebCorp. http://www.webcorp.org.uk/. Web. March 2011.
• Bailey, Charles-James T. “Classifying the English Conditionals.” American Speech 64, 3 (1989). 275-80. Print.[Crossref]
• Biber, Douglas and Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, Edward Finegan. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman. 1999. Print.
• Comrie, Bernard. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1976. Print.
• Christophersen, Paul. “A history of the plupluperfect.” English Today 8, 2 (1986).[WoS]
• 36. Print Crystal, David. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 5th edition. Malden: Blackwell. 2003. Print.
• Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Print.
• Declerck, Renaat. The Grammar of the English Verb Phrase. Volume 1: The Grammar of the English Tense System. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2006. Print.
• Fowler, H. W. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. 2nd edition. Revised by Sir Ernest Gowers. London: Oxford University Press. 1965. Print.
• Hughes, Arthur and Peter Trudgill. English Accents and Dialects. 3rd edition.
• London: Arnold. 1996. Print Kortmann, Bernd. English Linguistics: Essentials. Berlin: Cornelsen. 2005. Print.
• Lambert, Valerie. “The nonstandard third conditional.” English Today 8, 2 (1986). 28-9. Print.
• Leech,Geoffrey. “English Grammar in Conversation.” http://www.tuchemnitz. de/phil/english/chairs/linguist/real/independent/llc/Conference1998/Pa pers/Leech/Leech.htm, 1998. Web. November 2012.
• Mair, Christian. Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation and Standardization. Cambridge: CUP. 2006. Print.[WoS]
• Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster Incorporated. 1995. Print.
• Miller, Jim and Regina Weinert. Spontaneous Spoken Language: Syntax and Discourse. Oxford: Claredon Press. 1998. Print.[WoS]
• Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. 1985. Print.
• Palmer, Frank. “Plupluperfect or pluplupast?” English Today 8, 2 (1986). 29. Print.
• Partridge, Eric. Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English. London: Penguin Books. 1973. Print Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah. International English: A guide to varieties of Standard English. 4th edition. London: Hodder Arnold. 2002. Print

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/lincu-2015-0001