English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts

Thanh Minh To

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

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English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts

Thanh Minh To

Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 2, Issue 6)

Received: 1 October 2014 Accepted: 15 December 2014 Published: 22 December 2014

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Abstract

English sentences beginning with there, also called English there-constructions, do not constitute only existential sentences; most important among their other uses are presentational there-constructions. It is almost impossible to distinguish existential sentences beginning with Empty there, which is not stressed and has no lexical meaning, from presentational there-constructions beginning with Locative there, which is pronounced with some degree of stress and has its denotative meaning as opposite to that of the adverb here. Therefore, language users have to care for other sentence components, both obligatory and optional, that follow there in the clause in question. Comparing English there-constructions and their Vietnamese counterparts helps to identify translated versions of each subtype of English there-constructions, both semantically and pragmatically equivalent, irrespective of the fact that Vietnamese has neither the empty subject nor subject-verb inversion – the two phenomena quite easily observed in a Subject-prominent language like English.

Published in	International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 2, Issue 6)
DOI	10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
Page(s)	391-402
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

English there-Constructions, Existential Sentences, Presentational there-Constructions, Empty there, Locative there

References

[1]	Halliday, M. A. K., An Introduction to Functional Grammar, Second Edition, London: Arnold, 1994.
[2]	Grzegorek, M., “English sentences with introductory there and their Polish counterparts,” in Fisiak, J. (ed.) Contrastive linguistics – prospects and problems, 143-170. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Company, 1984.
[3]	Hao Xuan Cao, Tiếng Việt – Sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức năng (The Vietnamese Language – A Rough Draft on Functional Grammar), Hanoi: Publishing House of Social Sciences, 1991.
[4]	Stageberg, N. C. and Oaks, D. D., An Introductory English Grammar. Fifth Edition. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000.
[5]	Biber, D.; Johansson, S.; Leech, G.; Conrad, S. and Finegan, E., Longman grammar of spoken and written English, London: Pearson Education Ltd, 1999.
[6]	Longman Exams Dictionary. First edition, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2006.
[7]	Eastwood, J., Oxford guide to English grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
[8]	Breivik, L. E., “The use and non-use of ‘existential there’ in present-day English”, Forum Linguisticum. Contributions to applied linguistics 2: 58-1-3, 1975; “Existential sentences revisited”, Papers from the 4th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, edited by K. Gregersen (Austin: University of Texas, 235-240, 1978.
[9]	Thanh Minh To, Vai nghĩa trong câu trần thuật tiếng Việt và tiếng Anh (Semantic Roles in Vietnamese and English Declaratives), Ho Chi Minh City: Publishing House of Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City, 2011.
[10]	Alexander, L. G., Longman English Grammar Practice for Intermediate Students. Harlow: Longman Group UK Limited, 1990.
[11]	Rando, E. and Napoli, D.J., “Definiteness in there-sentences,” Language, 54, 300-313, 1978.
[12]	Kimball J.P., “The grammar of existence,” PCLS 9, 262-270, 1973.
[13]	Li, Ch. and Thompson, S., “Subject and topic: A new typology of language,” in Li, Ch. (ed.) Subject and Topic, New York: Academic Press, 1976.
[14]	Dik, S.C., Functional grammar, Dordrecht-Holland: Foris Publications, 1978.
[15]	Thanh Minh To, “The English adverbial of time vs. the Vietnamese range topic of time,” International Journal of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 2, No. 6, 348-355, 2014.
[16]	Vietnam Committee of Social Sciences, Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (Grammar of Vietnamese), Hanoi: Publishing House of Social Sciences, 1983.
[17]	Thomson, A.J. and Martinet, A.V., A practical English grammar, Fourth edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
[18]	Murphy, R., English grammar in use, Second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
[19]	Thanh Minh To, “Câu tổng loại trong tiếng Việt và tiếng Anh” (Generic sentences in Vietnamese and English), Language (Ngôn ngữ), 7(266), 27-40, 2011.

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APA Style

Thanh Minh To. (2014). English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2(6), 391-402. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

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ACS Style

Thanh Minh To. English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2014, 2(6), 391-402. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

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AMA Style

Thanh Minh To. English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts. Int J Lang Linguist. 2014;2(6):391-402. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

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@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19,
  author = {Thanh Minh To},
  title = {English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts},
  journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
  volume = {2},
  number = {6},
  pages = {391-402},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20140206.19},
  abstract = {English sentences beginning with there, also called English there-constructions, do not constitute only existential sentences; most important among their other uses are presentational there-constructions. It is almost impossible to distinguish existential sentences beginning with Empty there, which is not stressed and has no lexical meaning, from presentational there-constructions beginning with Locative there, which is pronounced with some degree of stress and has its denotative meaning as opposite to that of the adverb here. Therefore, language users have to care for other sentence components, both obligatory and optional, that follow there in the clause in question. Comparing English there-constructions and their Vietnamese counterparts helps to identify translated versions of each subtype of English there-constructions, both semantically and pragmatically equivalent, irrespective of the fact that Vietnamese has neither the empty subject nor subject-verb inversion – the two phenomena quite easily observed in a Subject-prominent language like English.},
 year = {2014}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts
AU  - Thanh Minh To
Y1  - 2014/12/22
PY  - 2014
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
T2  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JF  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JO  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
SP  - 391
EP  - 402
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-0221
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
AB  - English sentences beginning with there, also called English there-constructions, do not constitute only existential sentences; most important among their other uses are presentational there-constructions. It is almost impossible to distinguish existential sentences beginning with Empty there, which is not stressed and has no lexical meaning, from presentational there-constructions beginning with Locative there, which is pronounced with some degree of stress and has its denotative meaning as opposite to that of the adverb here. Therefore, language users have to care for other sentence components, both obligatory and optional, that follow there in the clause in question. Comparing English there-constructions and their Vietnamese counterparts helps to identify translated versions of each subtype of English there-constructions, both semantically and pragmatically equivalent, irrespective of the fact that Vietnamese has neither the empty subject nor subject-verb inversion – the two phenomena quite easily observed in a Subject-prominent language like English.
VL  - 2
IS  - 6
ER  -

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Author Information

Thanh Minh To

Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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APA Style

Thanh Minh To. (2014). English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2(6), 391-402. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

Copy | Download

ACS Style

Thanh Minh To. English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2014, 2(6), 391-402. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

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AMA Style

Thanh Minh To. English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts. Int J Lang Linguist. 2014;2(6):391-402. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19,
  author = {Thanh Minh To},
  title = {English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts},
  journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
  volume = {2},
  number = {6},
  pages = {391-402},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20140206.19},
  abstract = {English sentences beginning with there, also called English there-constructions, do not constitute only existential sentences; most important among their other uses are presentational there-constructions. It is almost impossible to distinguish existential sentences beginning with Empty there, which is not stressed and has no lexical meaning, from presentational there-constructions beginning with Locative there, which is pronounced with some degree of stress and has its denotative meaning as opposite to that of the adverb here. Therefore, language users have to care for other sentence components, both obligatory and optional, that follow there in the clause in question. Comparing English there-constructions and their Vietnamese counterparts helps to identify translated versions of each subtype of English there-constructions, both semantically and pragmatically equivalent, irrespective of the fact that Vietnamese has neither the empty subject nor subject-verb inversion – the two phenomena quite easily observed in a Subject-prominent language like English.},
 year = {2014}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - English Sentences Beginning with there and their Vietnamese Counterparts
AU  - Thanh Minh To
Y1  - 2014/12/22
PY  - 2014
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
T2  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JF  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
JO  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
SP  - 391
EP  - 402
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-0221
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20140206.19
AB  - English sentences beginning with there, also called English there-constructions, do not constitute only existential sentences; most important among their other uses are presentational there-constructions. It is almost impossible to distinguish existential sentences beginning with Empty there, which is not stressed and has no lexical meaning, from presentational there-constructions beginning with Locative there, which is pronounced with some degree of stress and has its denotative meaning as opposite to that of the adverb here. Therefore, language users have to care for other sentence components, both obligatory and optional, that follow there in the clause in question. Comparing English there-constructions and their Vietnamese counterparts helps to identify translated versions of each subtype of English there-constructions, both semantically and pragmatically equivalent, irrespective of the fact that Vietnamese has neither the empty subject nor subject-verb inversion – the two phenomena quite easily observed in a Subject-prominent language like English.
VL  - 2
IS  - 6
ER  -

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