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| Ruud Harmsen... |
 Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:42 am |
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| Ruud Harmsen... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:02 am |
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Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:55:23 +0200: Ruud Harmsen <rh at (no spam) rudhar.eu>: in
sci.lang:
[quote:594f570f9a]Dutch however uses 'er' (often pronounced as if written d'r), which is
supposed to be from 'daar' (cognate with there, da, dort).
Iemand werkt.
Er wordt gewerkt.
[/quote:594f570f9a]
There exist cases in English where this is possible too.
(Er bestaan gevallen waarin dit in het Engels ook kan.)
But because the possibilities are much wider in Dutch than in English,
we must be very careful with it. I hear many Dutch speakers make
mistakes with that in English.
I think "there exist" is barely grammatical, whereas "there are" is
completely normal. In Dutch both are equally normal, hence our
confusion.
In German:
Es bestehen
Es gibt
*Es sind
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.eu |
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| Guy Barry... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:23 am |
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"Ruud Harmsen" <rh at (no spam) rudhar.eu> wrote in message
news:ho9jc517ror1cflc5c22o1824gb0n3pq1r at (no spam) 4ax.com...
[quote:2ae9994a9e]I think "there exist" is barely grammatical, whereas "there are" is
completely normal.
[/quote:2ae9994a9e]
"There exist" is perfectly normal English as far as I'm aware, especially in
mathematical contexts. Random example from the Web: "there exist triangular
numbers that are also square"
(http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/triSquare.shtml).
"There" can be used as a dummy subject with a variety of intransitive verbs
in English, as in "there stood a woman at the top of the stairs".
--
Guy Barry |
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| Guy Barry... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 2:36 am |
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"Christian Weisgerber" <naddy at (no spam) mips.inka.de> wrote in message
news:hab9or$8mr$1 at (no spam) lorvorc.mips.inka.de...
[quote:87d6556db6]I don't know how remarkable all of this is in the bigger linguistic
picture. It is pretty crazy if you are looking at it from English.
[/quote:87d6556db6]
It's only remarkable if you're taught that a verb has to have a subject.
After all, the German usage is perfectly logical: in a passive construction
the direct object of the active verb becomes the subject. So if the verb
has no direct object, either because it's intransitive or because it takes
some other object, then it makes sense that the passive verb should have no
subject. (In English, of course, you can't form the passive of an
intransitive verb.)
What's interesting is that in such cases the verb is always third person
singular. Is this to be taken as the "default" form of the verb? Or is
there in fact an implied subject which is third person singular, although
never expressed? Difficult to say.
--
Guy Barry |
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| Ruud Harmsen... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 3:41 am |
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Mon, 5 Oct 2009 09:23:11 +0100: "Guy Barry"
<guy.barry at (no spam) blueyonder.co.uk>: in sci.lang:
[quote:6accd9ce41]
"Ruud Harmsen" <rh at (no spam) rudhar.eu> wrote in message
news:ho9jc517ror1cflc5c22o1824gb0n3pq1r at (no spam) 4ax.com...
I think "there exist" is barely grammatical, whereas "there are" is
completely normal.
"There exist" is perfectly normal English as far as I'm aware, especially in
mathematical contexts. Random example from the Web: "there exist triangular
numbers that are also square"
(http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/triSquare.shtml).
[/quote:6accd9ce41]
OK. But you can't say "there walk people in the street" and "there sit
ducks in the pond, there fly bird in the air". In Dutch, this is
perfectly possible: er lopen mensen op straat, en zitten eenden in de
vijver, er vliegen vogels in de lucht.
All of these can probably be easily rendered in German too, with 'es'.
[quote:6accd9ce41]"There" can be used as a dummy subject with a variety of intransitive verbs
in English, as in "there stood a woman at the top of the stairs".
[/quote:6accd9ce41]
Yes. But our usage is wider, which make it hard for us to learn what
can and what can not. (And this can not, I know.)
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.eu |
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| Guy Barry... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:28 am |
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"Ruud Harmsen" <rh at (no spam) rudhar.eu> wrote in message
news:ejfjc55kclvk19vk1tlhsq04u2c0o4cc01 at (no spam) 4ax.com...
[quote:94b8cb18ab]OK. But you can't say "there walk people in the street" and "there sit
ducks in the pond, there fly bird in the air".
[/quote:94b8cb18ab]
I agree that it's impossible with "walk" and "fly", but I'm not sure about
"sit". As with "there stood", "there sat" has an old-fashioned,
story-telling quality to it. The first example I found was from the King
James Bible: "And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet,
being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked" (Acts 14: .
I agree that the rules in English aren't very obvious, though. Uses like
"there appeared" and "there emerged" are perfectly standard, but I'd have to
think hard about exactly where "there" can and can't be used in this
fashion.
--
Guy Barry |
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| Christian Weisgerber... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:33 am |
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Guy Barry <guy.barry at (no spam) blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
[quote:cf41a06c87]"There" can be used as a dummy subject with a variety of intransitive verbs
in English, as in "there stood a woman at the top of the stairs".
[/quote:cf41a06c87]
It is not a subject. Note the verb agreement:
There stands a woman ...
There stand women ...
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy at (no spam) mips.inka.de |
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| Adam Funk... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:48 am |
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On 2009-10-05, Guy Barry wrote:
[quote:f31ddfb4bb]
"Christian Weisgerber" <naddy at (no spam) mips.inka.de> wrote in message
news:hab9or$8mr$1 at (no spam) lorvorc.mips.inka.de...
I don't know how remarkable all of this is in the bigger linguistic
picture. It is pretty crazy if you are looking at it from English.
It's only remarkable if you're taught that a verb has to have a subject.
[/quote:f31ddfb4bb]
(It doesn't have to have an expressed subject in Latin, for example.)
[quote:f31ddfb4bb]After all, the German usage is perfectly logical: in a passive construction
the direct object of the active verb becomes the subject. So if the verb
has no direct object, either because it's intransitive or because it takes
some other object, then it makes sense that the passive verb should have no
subject. (In English, of course, you can't form the passive of an
intransitive verb.)
What's interesting is that in such cases the verb is always third person
singular. Is this to be taken as the "default" form of the verb? Or is
there in fact an implied subject which is third person singular, although
never expressed? Difficult to say.
[/quote:f31ddfb4bb]
I'm curious as to whether Modern English is an exception among current
and past Germanic languages here. Do most other Germanic languages
allow this? How about Old English?
--
Oh, I do most of my quality thinking on the old sandbox. [Bucky Katt] |
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| Mok-Kong Shen... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:46 am |
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Christian Weisgerber wrote:
[snip]
[quote:dbbd0f1a10]I don't know how remarkable all of this is in the bigger linguistic
picture. It is pretty crazy if you are looking at it from English.
[/quote:dbbd0f1a10]
From the little I know about Russian, there are quite many instances
of sentences without subjects or verbs. I find this elimination of
redundancy nice and rational. (On the other hand the Russian case
system, for example, seems to have complexities that probably could
be greatly reduced.)
M. K. Shen |
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| Guy Barry... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:10 am |
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"Mok-Kong Shen" <mok-kong.shen at (no spam) t-online.de> wrote in message
news:had0sh$6mg$00$1 at (no spam) news.t-online.com...
[quote:7355432cc5]From the little I know about Russian, there are quite many instances
of sentences without subjects or verbs.
[/quote:7355432cc5]
To me, the above means "sentences that lack both a subject and a verb",
which if true would be quite remarkable. Is that what you meant? Or did
you mean "sentences without subjects or without verbs" (i.e. lacking one or
the other, but not both)?
--
Guy Barry |
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| Guy Barry... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:30 am |
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"Christian Weisgerber" <naddy at (no spam) mips.inka.de> wrote in message
news:had03t$2ptj$1 at (no spam) lorvorc.mips.inka.de...
[quote:a63b4b30ba]Guy Barry <guy.barry at (no spam) blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
"There" can be used as a dummy subject with a variety of intransitive
verbs
in English, as in "there stood a woman at the top of the stairs".
It is not a subject. Note the verb agreement:
There stands a woman ...
There stand women ...
[/quote:a63b4b30ba]
Apologies - what is the correct term then?
--
Guy Barry |
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| Alan Munn... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:04 pm |
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In article <had03t$2ptj$1 at (no spam) lorvorc.mips.inka.de>,
naddy at (no spam) mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
[quote:7dee802921]Guy Barry <guy.barry at (no spam) blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
"There" can be used as a dummy subject with a variety of intransitive verbs
in English, as in "there stood a woman at the top of the stairs".
It is not a subject. Note the verb agreement:
There stands a woman ...
There stand women ...
[/quote:7dee802921]
Agreement here is not a good test for subject in English. In every other
respect, 'there' behaves like a subject: it is inverted around in
questions (1), it shows up in a 'tag' question (2), it shows up in the
position right next to the Aux verb or 'to' etc (3).
(1) John is in the room. > Is John in the room?
There is a man in the room > Is there a man in the room?
(2) John is in the room, isn't he?
There is a man in the room, isn't there (*isn't it)
(3) There will be a man in the room.
I expect there to be a man in the room.
Also, the agreement pattern you give shows funny results with
coordination.
(4) There is a man and a woman in the room.
*There are a man and a woman in the room.
By the agreement test, we would have to say that 'a man' is the subject
in (4), but even you wouldn't want to say that  .
So 'there' is undoubtedly a subject in English.
Alan |
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| Ruud Harmsen... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:10 pm |
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Mon, 5 Oct 2009 14:17:29 +0000 (UTC): naddy at (no spam) mips.inka.de (Christian
Weisgerber): in sci.lang:
[quote:687d2a1504](a1) Es gibt acht Planeten. (There are eight planets.)
(a2) Es gibt einen Gott. (There is a God.)
(b1) Es existieren acht Planeten. (There exist eight planets.)
(b2) Es existiert ein Gott. (There exists a God.)
In (a) the verb agrees with "es", but in (b) it doesn't.
[/quote:687d2a1504]
Yes. If the expression "es gibt" existed in Dutch (it doesn't), we'd
also use "het geeft" in both a1 and a2. In b1/b2 however, es cannot be
translated by 'het' (not even in too literally translated, crippled
Dutch mimicking the German example), but it has to be "er" (pronounced
much like English "air", by the way), also with verb agreement.
[quote:687d2a1504](a2) shows
that the slot after the verb is taken by an accusative, in (b2) by
a nominative.
In (a), "es" is a dummy subject. In (b), it is just a placeholder.
This shows up even more clearly if you change the word order:
(a3) Acht Planeten gibt es.
(b3) Acht Planeten existieren.
[/quote:687d2a1504]
Acht planeten zijn er (real Dutch)
Acht planeten geeft het (pseudo Dutch, but "formally right")
Acht planeten bestaan.
So: all confirmed.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.eu |
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| Ruud Harmsen... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:10 pm |
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Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:10:15 +0100: "Guy Barry"
<guy.barry at (no spam) blueyonder.co.uk>: in sci.lang:
[quote:df14ddc1ba]
"Mok-Kong Shen" <mok-kong.shen at (no spam) t-online.de> wrote in message
news:had0sh$6mg$00$1 at (no spam) news.t-online.com...
From the little I know about Russian, there are quite many instances
of sentences without subjects or verbs.
To me, the above means "sentences that lack both a subject and a verb",
which if true would be quite remarkable.
[/quote:df14ddc1ba]
Doutbful.
[quote:df14ddc1ba]Is that what you meant? Or did
you mean "sentences without subjects or without verbs" (i.e. lacking one or
the other, but not both)?
[/quote:df14ddc1ba]
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.eu |
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| Ruud Harmsen... |
| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:20 pm |
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Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:04:53 -0400: Alan Munn <amunn at (no spam) msu.edu>: in
sci.lang:
[quote:d5fafb9910](1) John is in the room. > Is John in the room?
There is a man in the room > Is there a man in the room?
[/quote:d5fafb9910]
Possible in Dutch too.
[quote:d5fafb9910](2) John is in the room, isn't he?
There is a man in the room, isn't there (*isn't it)
[/quote:d5fafb9910]
Only "is het niet" is possible in Dutch, not something containing
"er".
[quote:d5fafb9910](3) There will be a man in the room.
I expect there to be a man in the room.
[/quote:d5fafb9910]
Not possible in Dutch.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.eu |
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