Revision as of 13:09, 8 June 2018

Pronunciation

UK: strong form /ðeə/, There's /ðeəz/, There are /ðerə/
US: strong form /ðɜr/, There's /ðɜrz/, There are /ðɜrər/

NB: identical to the pronunciation of there and they're. This is terribly inefficient and makes learning difficult, but what can you do? That's the way the language is!

Existential

In the following patterns: s indicates any plural noun. (i.e. including irregular ones like people, children, data, alumni, etc., ...

Present

• There is      an   . . .       in the fridge.
• There are      . . .s       in the soup.

• There isn't any       . . .       in the soup. uncountable nouns
• There isn't      an   . . .       in the toolbox.
• There aren't any       . . . s       in the freezer. countable nouns

• There has been a change of plans.
• There haven't been any changes here for years.
• There haven't been many calls this morning.

Past

• There was       a problem       with the file.
• There were       mistakes       in the file.

• There wasn't any       . . .       left. uncountable nouns
• There weren't any       . . . s      in the building. countable nouns

• There hadn't been much interest in the product until the company began to market it more aggressively.

Future and other modalities

• There will be       an   . . .       next week.
• There will be       . . . s       later this week.

• There won't be       an   . . .       until next week.
• There won't be       . . . s       in the room.

• There may be a few things we need to clear up from the last meeting before we start. Let's go over the minutes quickly to see if there are any questions.
• There may not be enough time to walk.

• There may have been some confusion.
• There might not have been any review of the account.

Incompatible with the present participle

be +-ing is incompatible with There + be

This is true of the existential structure, or the fronted locative structure.

• There were waiting four people.
• There were [four people waiting].

• There came were coming three ships...
• There goes is going the bus.

Locative

A location a distance away from the speaker & listener. The opposite of here.

Idiomatic

Comfort

• There, there, don't cry.

Famous uses

There is no there, there. (Gertrude Stein is famous for this sentence about her native Oakland. She said it about going back to her native Oakland, because she no longer knew many people in a city that had changed since her youth. Ishmael Reed responded. Later, in the 2016 elections, this became the mantra of the Clinton spinners dealing with the many leaks during the 2016 elections (after it was used by ???): but it had come to be synonymous with "big nothing-burger", which originated in the same quarters. It's not clear if "There is no there, there" was meant to mean "There is no smoking gun, there" or "There is no context there, there in that email dump"

Wikipedians even have a policy (NOTHERE) by this name that can be cited when blocking people from editing the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It is generally parsed as "Not here" rather than "No there".

Humorous add-on to demonstrative determiners

From dialectal (non-standard) English, forms a contrastive pair with "here" to indicate proximity or distance. '

• "That there" NOUN vs. "this here" NOUN
• "them there" NOUNs vs. "these here" NOUNs