Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Chapter 5 - Verb Phrases

subject position to get Case. This has led some to the conclusion that the there
somehow has a role in the assignment of Case to the theme. One possibility is that the
difference between an expletive there and an expletive it is that the former has the
ability to transmit the Case that it receives by occupying the subject position. If this is
so, then the post-verbal theme should get nominative Case as this is the Case that the
expletive gets:

(64) there might have [VP settled some snow on the lawn]

It is unfortunately impossible to check this in English as we can only see visible
Case morphemes on personal pronouns and these are excluded from the post-verbal
position in the there construction as they are definite and only indefinite DPs can
occupy this position:

(65) a there departed him
b there lived he

A second problem with this assumption is that if there is able to transmit Case to
otherwise Caseless positions, it is not entirely clear why it is not used more often to
overcome similar problems when we find DPs sitting in Caseless positions.
The observation that the post-verbal DP is limited to indefinites has led to the
claim that neither nominative nor accusative Case is assigned to this position, but a
special Case which can only be born by indefinite DPs. Belletti (1988) proposed that
partitive Case is incompatible with definite DPs for semantic reasons and therefore
only indefinites can bear it. Thus if we assume that partitive Case is assigned to the
post-verbal position in there constructions, we can account for why only indefinite
DPs can appear in this position. The problem with this is that under these assumptions
it is not entirely clear why we have a there expletive and not an it. It would seem then
that the key to the proper analysis of this construction is the link between the there
subject and the Case marked indefinite DP in the post-verbal position.
Of course, we also need to explain why the theme argument, that we have claimed
to be generated in the specifier of the VP, sits behind the verb, not in front of it, in the
there construction:

(66) a there arrived a letter
b *there a letter arrived

Some of the properties of the there construction are similar to the causative
construction: a Case marked theme which follows the surface position of the verb and
some other element in the subject position:

(67) a there lived a dragon (in the hills)
b they opened the window

These similarities can be captured if we assume that the post-verbal position of the
theme is achieved by movement of the verb in front of it and this necessitates the

nominative

Case transmission