There-be Construction Revisited

English existential construction is of special properties, and the analysis of there in English existential constructions (EC) at home and abroad is of great significance in the development of generative grammar. Syntactic studies on English existentials mainly focus on the following issues: (1) whether there needs a case; (2)the syntactic status of there; (3)what is the relationship between there and the locative phrase(LP); (4)the case assignment of the postverbal NP and the Definiteness Effect(DE).To solve these problems, different hypotheses and assumptions have been made at home and abroad from different perspectives. As for the issue of case associated with there-be, there are many hypotheses or assumptions, such as Case Transmission, by Chomsky (1981, 1986) , Direct Case Assignment by Belletti (1988) , LF Affix Theory by Chomsky(1991). And for the matter of be, there are several explanations in the literature. Traditionally, be is called the link verb, and it is divided into the auxiliary verb, a raising verb by Stowell (1978).Unfortunately, these assumptions and studies have not provided the abovementioned various issues with satisfactory answers mainly for their inadequate abstraction of UG and their linear and phenomenal perspective such as partitive case and affix theory etc.This paper, points out the following deficiencies of the existing studies: (1) the chain formed by there and NP seems not convincing as the members of a chain are required to be equal both grammatically and semantically;(2) according to Case Transmission Theory, if it is true that the inserted there acts as the transmitter of nominative case to NP, then why is the transmitter there but not other expletives, such as it;(3) the hypothesis of partitive case is much of prescription from a semantic view;(4) according to the Principle of Full Interpretation, there is no empty category on LF, ie. there does not exist on LF level, which is contrary to reality. (5) Chomsky proposes a Principle of Greed in MP meaning that any movement is out of the need of the moving part itself. However, in LF Affix hypothesis, the movement of there is not out of the need of there itself, but the need of the sentence, which is obviously contradictory with the Principle of Greed;(6) according to Burzio's hypothesis of unaccusative verb, the postverbal noun is the internal argument of the unaccusative verb, and it can get the thematic role from the verb, which is contradictory to the idea of traditional generative grammar that be can not assign any thematic role;(7) for many linguistic phenomenoa, the hypothesis that existential verb be is an auxiliary verb or a special raising verb can not give a satisfied explanation.Based on our observation, this paper, tring its best, aims to put forward a more powerful and more economical solution including the following basic points: (1) there is just a marker of existence generated by meaning drive, for the need of expressing the meaning of existence; syntactically, there is not an expletive subject, but an adjunct of the existential verb; having nothing to do with the matter of case; (2)existential verb be is just a complete VP rather than an auxiliary verb or a special raising verb; and(3)through corpus analysis this paper tries to prove that all the existential constructions meet the logic syntactic model [NP [VP]], providing evidence for the universality of UG.In all, this thesis, on the basis of logic syntactic model, provides English existential constructions with an effective explanation, proving that some unnecessary complexity can be avoided in theory constructing according to economic principles so as to make the theory consistent within and outside itself.