Agreement patterns in existential constructions in the New Zealand Niuean community¹

This paper examines a small group of Niuean New Zealanders typical of their community; all have English as their primary language, and most only a passive knowledge of the Niuean language. The speakers are members of a lower socio-economic community, yet they lack most of the grammatical variation associated with similar communities which have English as a first language. The paper considers agreement in there existential constructions in the spontaneous and scripted spoken discourse of a Niuean interviewer and her 14 Niuean participants. This variable is of interest because singular agreement in existential constructions is widespread and relatively unstigmatised in most varieties of spoken New Zealand English, yet stigmatised in some written forms. The findings point to patterns of variation which are both similar to and distinct from that of the wider New Zealand speech community, and highlight the need for qualitative analyses of grammatical variation in immigrant communities.