Re: "There can be"

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.

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 7:32 PM,  <MorphemeAddict@...> wrote:
> In a message dated 4/11/2008 07:51:36 AM Central Daylight Time,
>
> edchen@MIT.EDU writes:
>
>
>  > 2. Some sort of "locative inversion".
>  > English: (there) is a mouse on the piece of cheese
>  >
>
>  I disagree that this is a locative inversion.  "There" in "there is/are" is a
>  particle, not used for any other purpose.  One can say "There are no books
>  there", and the second "there" is a locative, but not the first.
>
>  stevo   </HTML>
>

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