advanced grammar problem - part 1 - help needed

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by M56

The student wrote this:<<All of a sudden a bottle broke on the table. (All of a sudden there broke a bottle on the table) >> This was offered as an alternative by a native speaker on another forum. What do you think of it? All of a sudden, there was a bottle breaking on the table.

We were looking at why a given list of sentences could or couldn't be considered existential there structures. The original sentence has 'broke' as its verb; therein lies the problem. 'broke' is not a stative verb. However, if we switch it with a stative verb, then the structure works:

There was a bottle breaking on the table.

In short, stative verbs seems to be one of the criteria. That's why "there broke a bottle" doesn't work.

All the best,

Originally Posted by Casiopea

We were looking at why a given list of sentences could or couldn't be considered existential there structures. The original sentence has 'broke' as its verb; therein lies the problem. 'broke' is not a stative verb. However, if we switch it with a stative verb, then the structure works:

There was a bottle breaking on the table.

In short, stative verbs seems to be one of the criteria. That's why "there broke a bottle" doesn't work.

All the best,

OK, thanks.

I don't understand the semantics of: All of a sudden, there was a bottle breaking on the table.

What happened to the bottle? How did it break so slowly? Was there an agent?
It sound like a NNES sentence.

[Casiopea]

If 'over there' is implied, yes. :)