English Sentences Beginning with there and Their Vietnamese Counterparts

Abstract

Abstract: English sentences beginning with there do not constitute only existential sentences; most important among their other uses are presentational there-constructions. Since it is almost impossible to distinguish pure existential sentences from presentational there-constructions due to the two homographs called Empty there in pure existential sentences and Locative there in presentational there-constructions without considering the fact that the former has no stress and the latter is pronounced with some degree of stress, language users have to care for other sentence components, both obligatory and optional, that follow there in the clause in question. Comparing there-constructions and their Vietnamese counterparts helps to identify translated versions of each subtype of 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.

Keywords: Existential sentences, there-constructions, Empty there, Locative there.