Definiteness Of "There+Be" Constructions In English-A Study Based On The BNC Corpus

As one of the most common syntactic constructions, there-sentences are widely used in written and spoken English. However, there is a lot of debate centering on this type of sentence, mainly regarding three aspects: the identification of the subject, the concord of subject-verb and the definiteness. The debate has aroused the interest of many linguists, who carry out research from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives. It is well recognized by traditional grammarians that "there +be +indefinite noun phrase + adjunct (time/place)" is the most typical pattern used to predicate the existence of something and to introduce new information. However, some transformationalists hold that there-sentences are transformed from "noun+ be+adverb of place," without any difference in meaning between them. It is believed that as long as the basic pattern: (i) has an indefinite subject; and (ii) has a form of the verb be in its verb phrase, it can be changed into a there-sentence. Consequently, a rule that there-sentences should have an indefinite noun phrase has been proposed. It is known as the definiteness restriction. It means a definite noun phrase is disallowed to function as the subject in the there-sentence, namely, the head of noun modified by the, demonstratives(these, those, that, this), possessives (my, your, his, etc.) and universal quantifiers (all, every), and proper nouns and personal pronouns cannot appear in the position of the subject.This study attempts to conduct an empirical investigation using the BNC corpus, in order to discover the frequency and regularity of the definiteness of there-sentences. It will address two questions: (1) what is the frequency of definiteness in there-sentences? What grammatical features do they have? (2) When and where are they used? The corpus findings show that the "rule" is problematic, for the reason that the definite account for 4%, and that each type displays its unique grammatical features. This suggests that it is far too absolute to regard definite in there-sentences as exceptions to a rule. Furthermore, their regularity shows that they are subjected to certain constraints, which stem from semantic features of the noun phrase, context, the speaker/addressee, and information status. The definite there-sentences and their function of expressing the existence of something have been weakened, and their discourse functions mainly involve providing new topics, reminding a given topic as well as listing and answering the existential question.