There-Insertion

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The chief use of existentials is to denote the more or less vague existence or coming into existence of something indefinite. While the initial element or theme of a clause usually contains given informations as the point of departure for the introduction of new information, the existentials begin, contrary to the f\general practice, with indefinite subjects, being indefinite expressions to something that has not been previously mentioned or specified.
Such awkwardness is avoided by the device of leaving the subject position vacant of content, introducing there and consequently postposing the original subject to a non-thematic position.
Fillmore's analysis of copying and subsequent pro-replacement has defects in that this there functions as surface subject NP, while he postulates it as being governed by L node rather than NP. In his analysis there is no device for the existential there to be governed by NP, because his pro-replacement of there has no effect of deleting case marker. Besides, his analysis fails to explain the parallelism between the existential there and the expression of the meteorological conditions, which is replaced by NP it though it belong to the same case category and undergoes just the same transformations.
The existential there is not contained in underlying structure, but inserted by a syntactic rule. The point is clear when we compare there-constructions in active and passive voices, where passive sentences allow there, while the other do not. If we postulate there to exist in deep structure, there will arise an ironical problem: the same deep structure do or do not accept there.
According to the above facts, this paper analysed the change as there-insertion transformation, which (ⅰ) moves the subject NP to the right of verb, leaving dummy in its original place, and (ⅱ) replaces dummy by there.
The existential there-construction has a very highly restricted range of use: (1) It can occur only with indefinite NP, and (2) It can occur with a few verbs of existence, such as be, come, exist, arise, ensue, appear, happen, remain, result, etc.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 序言
• Ⅱ. 基底內在·複寫理論의 批判
• Ⅲ. There-Insertion
• Ⅳ. Existential Sentence의 特性
• Ⅴ. 結語