Re: "There can be"

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:30 PM, ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> wrote:

> Edwin Chen wrote:
>
> > I chose a somewhat bad example, I think: yep indeed, the first 'there'
> > is usually just thought of as an 'empty' expletive/pleonastic pronoun,
> > not some sort of locative.
> >
> > However, skimming through the paper again, it looks like Freeze does
> > argue that 'there' is a locative.
> >
>
> Locative, but not deictic-- that would be the 2d "there ~here" in:
> 'there's a mouse _there/here_'.
> I suppose it could also be deictic (but with stress, different intonation)
> in "_There's_ a mouse" (pointing), and in this case I don't think you could
> have a second locational modifier-- *_There's_ a mouse on the cheese'.
>
> Thanks for sending the pdf, by the way. Very interesting albeit
> jargon-ridden :-((((
>
> I was pleased to see him mention the relationship between "have" and
> "be"-- IIRC this was first discussed by Chas. Fillmore, which Freeze has in
> his biblio.
>
Ray Freeze was my first linguistics teacher. I remember when the paper was
published; he was pretty stoked. I don't remember anything about the paper,
though, other than that the title played on the title of a book concerning
the Altaic hypothesis--_Japanese and the other Altaic Languages_.

Dirk
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