A Syntactic Study Of There ES In The Framework Of Generative Grammar

In English, there ES is a special kind of construction but used universally, which attracts a lot of attention of linguists. But there is no consensus on the relative results among them, especially, on the syntactic status of there and the case on there. Some (Chomsky) hold it is the subject of the sentence; others (Moro (1997)) think it is the predicate of small clause. Some parties (Chomsky) think there has no case; others (Han (2004)) think it has, and their study methods are various.This paper analyzes there ES from the perspective of the syntactic status, case, semantics and derivation. It aims to make people have a different and refreshed opinion on the unique structure, and provide possibly a reference for further research. Besides, the research in the thesis involves the comparison of expletive there and it, which is of help to the unified notion on the expletives.The first part is introduction, which specifies the research background, research questions and the frame of the paper. The second chapter introduces the relative study on there by different scholars firstly, and then analyzes the study methods, and points out the defects. The third chapter mainly deals with the relative theories of generative grammar used for analyzing there ES, including case theory, x-bar, checking theory, merge, economy principle, and the derivation method. The fourth part answers the research questions one by one after detailed analysis, and proves that there has case as expletive in there ES, and it is originally derived in the predication of SC and bears the role of subject. And the conclusion is further verified in the part of the derivation and semantic explanation. The fifth chapter is the conclusion, including the recapitulation and the significance and limitation, generalizing the hypothesis that there is base-generated in the double SC, pointing out the defect that the study is limited by focusing only on there and therefore need further confirmation.After the research in this paper, the author aims to explain there ES in different respects, especially, of there. The methods and theories adopted here is in line with generative grammar of Chomsky. And the spirit of economy is penetrated throughout the paper in order to make it concise and efficient.