[Grammar] omission of 'there'

[Nazmul Hassan]

I want to explain my problem by the following sentence.

"Among those scientists recently exploring 'terra cognita' were psychologists from the State University of New York at Stony Brook."

1) In above sentence, what is the subject of the auxiliary verb "were"? I think, subject of auxiliary verb is 'there' and it has been omitted in this sentence. Am I right?

2) If I wish to place 'that/who' before the word 'exploring' in the above sentence, will it be legal? And if I do this, the form of 'exploring' will be 'explore'. Am I right?

 

[+Technist Warp-]

I want to explain my problem by the following sentence.

"Among those scientists recently exploring 'terra cognita' were psychologists from the State University of New York at Stony Brook."

1) In above sentence, what is the subject of the auxiliary verb "were"? I think, subject of auxiliary verb is 'there' and it has been omitted in this sentence. Am I right?

2) If I wish to place 'that/who' before the word 'exploring' in the above sentence, will it be legal? And if I do this, the form of 'exploring' will be 'explore'. Am I right?

1. The word 'there' isn't omitted since the sentence makes absolute sense. The sentence says that there's a group of scientists and among this group of scientists, there are also psychologists. Using 'there' wouldn't make sense. "There were psychologists among those scientists that recently explored 'terra cognita'. That would be fine. But adding the word 'there' before 'were' would make sense.

For example, among a group of monkeys were mischievous baby monkeys. In a group of monkeys, there were mischievous baby monkeys.

2. No, it would be 'explored' because it already happened recently. Anything is legal if the intention of the sentence isn't altered. But adding that/who wouldn't make sense if you added 'there' before 'were'. Or you could say "Among those scientists who were recently exploring 'terra cognita'....Stony Brook."

 

[Rover_KE]

'Were' is the main verb in that sentence and 'psychologists' is the subject.

 

[Roman55]

2) If I wish to place 'that/who' before the word 'exploring' in the above sentence, will it be legal?

I am not a teacher.

Well, you probably wouldn't get arrested for it, but the result would not be pretty.