THE PRESENTATIVE FUNCTION OF EXISTENTIAL CLAUSES
There are several reasons for thinking that existential there has acquired a new role:
• We saw the structure of the existential clause (unstressed there + a form of be + a NG), as in There was a fight. The semantic role of Existent is associated with the NG, which occupies the position after the verb and is, experientially, the notional subject.
• Unstressed there, however, fulfils most of the syntactic requirements for subject, including its use in the tag: There’s a café just round the corner, isn’t there?
• Plural concord is not always maintained in spoken English, as for example: There’s
• some chocolate chip cookies out there if you want some.
• Existential there can occur with the stressed adverb of place there in the same clause, as in There’s plenty more over there.
These facts support the view that existential there (and especially there’s) has lost its original locative meaning and is on the way to becoming a kind of introductory particle. An alternative view is that its locative and deictic meaning is not entirely lost: rather, there points to the upcoming noun.
Unstressed there is a presentative device in discourse. There points to the New information conveyed by the noun group placed at the end of the clause, where it carries end-weight and end-focus. In the basic types, the reverse order is not allowed, as we can see in the examples below. In these, a verb of very low communicative dynamism, be, placed in final position and preceded by an indefinite subject, violates the Given–New progression. The result is an ungrammatical clause in most cases. The corresponding existential clauses in 1–4 here are therefore basic existentials: they have no corresponding plain clause.
1 *Hundreds of millions of stars are. There are hundreds of millions of stars.
2 *Plenty of time is. There is plenty of time.
3 *A storm was last night. There was a storm last night.
4 *Seven of us are in the family. There are seven of us in the family.
5 A man is at the door. There’s a man at the door.
