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“There’s a lot more Chinese people”

Tracking ethnic variation in plural there existentials over time in Australian English

ORCiD logo with link | University of Canterbury
Published online: 13 August 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.25118.gan
Abstract
The variable realisation of there+be+plural arguments (e.g. there’s a lot more Chinese people) is well-documented across English varieties, but little research has examined its use among ethnic minorities or how intersecting social factors shape its variation. This study addresses these gaps, analysing 1,549 tokens from 206 Australians of Anglo, Italian, Greek, and Chinese backgrounds, recorded in the 1970s and 2010s. The study finds an apparent-time increase in there’s during the 1970s, led by teenagers across ethnic groups, followed by broad adoption by the 2010s. Usage patterns reflect intersections of age, ethnicity, and class, with working-class Adult Anglos consistently favouring there’s. Additionally, the grammatical conditioning of (there’s) has shifted: the definiteness effect, where definite and numerical determiners (e.g. these, two) favour there’s, emerged among 1970s teenagers and has since been maintained. Changes in frequency are accompanied by shifts in linguistic and social conditioning, illustrating how variation evolves within complex sociolinguistic ecologies.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Rates of (there’s) across varieties of English
  • 3.Social conditioning of (there’s)
  • 4.Linguistic conditioning of (there’s)
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Data
    • 5.2Extraction and the variable context
    • 5.3Annotation of the explanatory factors
      • 5.3.1Tense
      • 5.3.2Determiner type
      • 5.3.3Adjacency
      • 5.3.4Extension
      • 5.3.5Plural marker -s
  • 6.Rates of (there’s) over time and across ethnicity
  • 7.Modelling social and linguistic conditioning over time
    • 7.1Conditioning of (there’s) over time and across ethnicity
    • 7.2Conditioning of (there’s) across ethnicity for young adults in the 2010s
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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