Existential there construction

[Kudla]

Hello,

What difference (if any) do you feel between sentence pairs such as:

There is a cure for every illness.
Every illness has a cure.

There is a solution to this issus.
This issue has a solution.

or:

There was a guy crossing the bridge.
A guy was crossing the bridge.

- In the last example, would you sometime use the other sentence? When and how would it differ from the first one starting with there was?

Thank you

 

[TheParser]

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


Hello, Kudla:

I cannot answer your question, but I can pass along some information that may interest you.

1. A ball was in the street.
2. There was a ball in the street.


Two scholars claim the following:

a. "The first sentence could be one piece of information in a longer description where the writer is setting up the reader to expect something to happen."

b. "The second sentence may simply be a description without any accompanying expectation being aroused in the reader."

c. "[T]here is a tendency on the part of speakers to place given information at the beginning of a sentence and new information toward the end of the sentence."


James


Those two scholars are Mesdames Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman in their The Grammar Book / An ESL /EFL Teacher's Course. (I have the 1983 edition.)

 

[Kudla]

"[T]here is a tendency on the part of speakers to place given information at the beginning of a sentence and new information toward the end of the sentence."

This is especially true of my native language, where the word order is relatively free, and in a way similar to English it can also make use of fronting but it does not have a construction similar to there is/are. So if anyone could answer my original question about those sentences, I´d be glad.

 

[Kudla]

Anyone:?:

 

[Raymott]

There's no practical difference from my point of view. That is, they would normally be taken to mean the same thing.

 

[Kudla]

"There's no practical difference from my point of view. That is, they would normally be taken to mean the same thing."

Thanks, I felt the same way about them, at least the first 2 pairs. But, maybe, you or someone else can feel some kind of contextual difference, or difference in style, and you would rather use one variant instead of the other depending on the situation. Could that be true? I mean when you have a choice then it implies, at least virtually, some kind of difference between the items you can choose from, or else it would seem redundant to have more than one option when there is no difference. What do you think?

 

[Raymott]

There’s a difference, and in a certain context, one form might be better than the other.
Hence these conversations (which, to some extent, beg the question):
A: There’s no cure for my illness.
B: There’s a cure for every illness.

A: My illness had no cure.
B: Every illness has a cure.

“I mean when you have a choice then it implies, at least virtually, some kind of difference between the items you can choose from, or else it would seem redundant to have more than one option when there is no difference.”

We get this assertion occasionally here. But English doesn’t work that way. Maybe Czech does. Let’s say a certain form of word order comes from a Germanic language and is adopted in the north of England, and another derives from a Latinate language – probably French – in the south of England. They mean exactly the same thing. And then the two populations merge, and you have different ways of saying exactly the same thing. English is not a constructed language, nor is there an Academy that rules which of two similar constructs is ‘real’ English. Note that I don’t say your example derived that way, only that your objection to redundancy can be countered by a little knowledge of linguistics.

In any case, it’s not just English that has a “There is …” Eg:

“There are two cats on the mat.” (Eng); “Ci sono due gatti sul tappete.”(It.) “Hay dos gatos en la estera.” (Sp); “Es gibt zwei Katzen auf der Matte.” (De.)
“Two cats are on the mat” (Eng.); “Due gatti sono sul tappeto.”(It.); “Dos gatos están en el tapete.”(Sp.); “Zwei Katzen sind auf der Matte.”(De).

But wait! How come the Spanish translator gives me “tapete” for the first ‘mat’, and “estera” for the second. Surely that’s redundancy? And why doesn’t it give ‘alfombrilla’, or ‘falpudo’ which are also floor mats?

 

[Kudla]

That was helpful, thanks. Since I am not a native speaker, I was just curious to know how those who are feel about these pairs, whether they are interchangeable or not rather than trying to assert what I do not know. But then, it may go beyond the framework of purely linguistic field and has more to do with psycholinguistics, dicision making or it is more of a personal preference or who knows what. I mean, ultimately, even if the pairs were like two peas in a pod, one always has to choose just one (unlike the peas:lol because all languages are linear.

E.g. I call my dad tati (vocative of táta) but when I talk about him I say taťka (nominative of a similar yet different word) - both words are informal, while others may use the words reversely or use just one of them, etc. So here it is a matter of personal preference without much of a difference between them.

Anyway, the pairs I gave were not much good for a contrastive analysis (that´s why I chose them) but there are other pairs with a noticeable difference or such where only one sentence is acceptable:

[STRIKE]There were people tall[/STRIKE] but The people were tall.
vs
There were people sick. or The people were sick.
Maybe someone could give some pairs where they can see a clear difference:?:

 

[Raymott]

Yes, there is a semantic difference between "The people were tall." and "There were tall people".
"The people were sick."; "There were sick people." - totally different.
In this case, in the first variation, the people are already identified. In the examples so far given, this hasn't occurred.

 

[Tdol]

Since I am not a native speaker, I was just curious to know how those who are feel about these pairs, whether they are interchangeable or not rather than trying to assert what I do not know

They are pretty much interchangeable, but one may fit a context better than the other.

There is a cure for every illness.
Every illness has a cure.

If you're the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, you might favour the first as it moves cure towards the start of the sentence.

 

[Kudla]

What about sentences such as:

There´s some of them was Irish.
There´s only Alan so far says he´s got a problem.

Are they gramatically correct, maybe colloquial? Does such a construction have a name?

 

[Raymott]

That's not standard English.
There's some of them [STRIKE]was[/STRIKE] who were Irish.
There's only Alan so far who says he's got a problem.

 

[Kudla]

That's not standard English.

I thought so but do you happen to know how liguists call such a "fusion"?

 

[Tdol]

There´s some of them was Irish.
There´s only Alan so far says he´s got a problem.

Are they gramatically correct, maybe colloquial?

You'll hear these used in spoken colloquial English in some regions. As some native speakers use them in some contexts, a common description of them would be non-standard English, which is a halfway house that doesn't quite say something is completely wrong as it is used by some, while recognising that it doesn't meet the standards laid out in grammars. Many would just say that they're wrong, though.

 

[Kudla]

Hi,

Is it true that a sentence such as the following is wrong because count bare singulars are barred in existential there-sentences? E.g.:

There is professor of philosophy at Yale.

But if I replaced it with a professor or professors​ it would be OK, wouldn´t it?

 

[emsr2d2]

Hi,

Is it true that a sentence such as the following is wrong because count bare singulars are barred in existential there-sentences? E.g.:

There is professor of philosophy at Yale.

But if I replaced it with a professor or professors​ it would be OK, wouldn´t it?

"There is professor of philosophy at Yale" is grammatically incorrect. If there is only one Philosophy professor, then it's "There is a professor of Philosophy at Yale". If there is more than one, then it's "There are [number] professors of Philosophy at Yale".

 

[Kudla]

How do you understand the following lyrics of The Times They Are a-Changin´ by Dylan:

And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'

Does it refer back to the wheel? If so does it mean sth along the lines of us not being able to guess whom it names (choses? - for what?) How would you interpret it?

 

[emsr2d2]

I find that it's easier not to spend time trying to deconstruct song lyrics, especially for grammatical purposes. Lyrics are written to fit the rhyme and rhythm of the song. Little attention is paid to grammar. It seems to me that even less attention is paid to the lyrics actually making any kind of sense.

 

[Kudla]

I find that it's easier not to spend time trying to deconstruct song lyrics, especially for grammatical purposes. Lyrics are written to fit the rhyme and rhythm of the song. Little attention is paid to grammar. It seems to me that even less attention is paid to the lyrics actually making any kind of sense.

Yes, I suppose one wouldn´t talk like that, it certainly sounds clumsy to me but is it really gramatically incorrect? Since it follows as: for the loser now will be later to win I thought or rather imagined a roulette ball landing on a certain number to tell (name) the winner - just meant in a metaphorical sense. What do you think?

 

[Raymott]

I believe this refers to the Wheel of Fate/Fortune:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_Fortunae