Assignment 12:   There

In this problem you are to investigate the word 'there' in sentences like 

    (1)  There is a fly in the Pope's soup.
    (2)  There emerged a gopher from the hole.
    (3)  There must have arisen a great wave of protest against the sin tax.
    (4)  There may exist very large prime numbers.
    (5)  There was a pig eating my garbage.

This word (which we will call 'there1') must be distinguished from
the adverb 'there0', observed in sentences like

    (6)   The fly will land there.
    (7)   I put it there.
    (8)   There she goes!

One easily observable difference is that 'there0' can be stressed,
and often is, while 'there1' cannot:

    (9)   The fly will land THERE.
    (10) *THERE is no largest prime number.

I tell you this only to help you distinguish the two words, because
we are not interested in the adverb 'there0' at all right now.

1.  The first question to consider is: What is 'there1'?
We can see immediately, for example, that it is not a Determiner,
because it does not occur where Determiners do:

    (11) *There fly will land on your nose.

Nor is it a Noun:

    (12) *A big there is a fly on your nose.

So what is it?  The following sentences provide relevant evidence:

    (13)  Will there remain many species of fish in the next century?
    (14)  Have there been signs of progress?
    (15)  Is there a gopher in that hole?

If our YNQ transformation is correctly formulated, what must 'there1' be?

2.  Now notice that the distribution of 'there1' is very restricted:  

Examples (1-5), together with (13-15), together with (16-20) below,
illustrate a fundamental fact about where 'there1' may occur.  What is
that fact?

    (16) *We sent there to the cleaners.
    (17) *We left a bucket of there on the doorstep.
    (18) *There's monkey went hungry.
    (19)  There was not a lot of room for the elephants.
    (20)  There did emerge one good idea from the discussion.

A second type of restriction concerns the category of verbs that can
co-occur with 'there1'.  Notice

    (21) *There slept a gopher in the hole.
    (22) *There devised a linguist these questions.
    (23) *There ate a gorilla my sandwich.

Considering the given examples, and any that you make up, try to provide
a complete listing of the verbs that can co-occur with 'there1'.
Come back and revise this list if you discover anything interesting
later.

3. THE QUESTION (amend the grammar)

Now here comes the real question:  How is our grammar to generate 
    
     (1)  There is a fly in the Pope's soup.

and not generate anything ungrammatical?  I want you to consider two
hypotheses:

Hypothesis A: 'there1', like most other words, is inserted into deep
structures, subject to certain lexical insertion restrictions.

Hypothesis B: 'there1' is inserted by a transformation, which derives
sentences like (1) from sentences like

    (24)  A fly is in the Pope's soup.

Under hypothesis B, similar derivations would be proposed for 

    (25)  There emerged a fly from the hole.
    (26)  There arose a disturbance among the students.

and various other things you might think of.


There is a good argument against hypothesis A, and in favor of
hypothesis B, and it is based on the observation that the following
are ungrammatical:

    (27)  *John emerged a fly from the hole.
    (28)  *I arose a disturbance among the students.
    (29)  *There ate my sandwich.
    (30)  *There sleeps.
    (31)  *There arose in the kitchen.
    (32)  *There emerged from the hole in the ground.

Figure out what this argument is, state it clearly, and then state
a formulation of the transformation that is required under hypothesis B.  

4.  This transformation has some peculiar restrictions.  One is that
the basic subject is subject to certain restrictions:

    (33)  *There emerged the fly from his nose.
    (34)  *There arose the disturbance among the students.

Describe these restrictions as accurately as you can, and tell me how
you think they should be built into the grammar.