If I Had Have Been... On the Web

The paper looks at the nonstandard, so called 'plupluperfect', construction If [Subject] had have [past participle]. Based on inquieries 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....Read more