Linguistics 55						Spring 2009


Assignment 11		THERE INSERTION
Due Friday May 8

There are sentences that start with the word 'there':

(1)  There is a fly on your nose.
(2)  There were small fish swimming in the pond.
(3)  There might have been a miner trapped inside the mine.
(4)  There was a nasty plot being hatched.

In these sentences, the word 'there' is in the position where we
would expect to find the subject, and the original subject is
displaced.  Note that (1)-(4) are synonymous with sentences that
do not have 'there':

(5)  A fly is on your nose.
(6)  Small fish were swimming in the pond.
(7)  A miner might have been trapped inside the mine.
(8)  A nasty plot was being hatched.

Warning:  this 'there' (call it there1) is not to be confused with the adverb
'there' (there0):

(9)  Put it there.
(10) There goes a velociraptor.

One clue is that there0 can be stressed, while there1 can never be.
Another is that there1 only occurs in places where subjects can occur
(or be moved to), while there0 only occurs where adverbs can be found.

Here's the assignment:  Write and test a Transformation that
derives sentences like (1)-(4) from sentences like (5)-(8).
Discuss it thoroughly and show (providing ungrammatical examples
as well as grammatical ones) that it generates the right results.

Show how the following are derived, starting from Deep Structures:

(11) There were eleven soldiers awarded medals for bravery by the general.
(12) Were there windows being broken by the force of the wind?

Discuss and exemplify any necessary ordering relations between There Insertion
and other Xns or Form Rules.