The Meaning of There: From Identifiable to Vague Location to Existence, Purpose, and Support

Park, Yong-Yae; Strauss, Susan G.

doi:10.30961/lr.2024.60.3.251

Lang. Res. 60(3):251-278

pISSN: 0254-4474, eISSN: 2586-7113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30961/lr.2024.60.3.251

Article

The Meaning of There: From Identifiable to Vague Location to Existence, Purpose, and Support

Yong-Yae Park¹^,^†, Susan G. Strauss²^,^†

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹Seoul National University

²The Pennsylvania State University

^†Corresponding author: Professor Department of English Language and Literature Seoul National University 1 Gwank-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, Korea, E-mail: parky@snu.ac.kr

^†Corresponding author: Professor Departments of Asian Studies and Applied Linguistics The Pennsylvania State University 300 Sparks Building University Park, PA 16802 USA, E-mail: sgs9@psu.edu

ⓒ Copyright 2024 Language Education Institute, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Oct 31, 2024 ; Revised: Dec 02, 2024 ; Accepted: Dec 10, 2024

Published Online: Dec 31, 2024

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the range of polysemous usages and variable structures of the be there construction in English. Using a corpus of 112,345,722 words from the British National Corpus, we identified 16,111 instances of be there. From these, a randomized sample of 500 instances was analyzed for their usages and functions and categorized into five basic categories. The categories range in designating the meanings of there from concrete, specific, identifiable locations to vaguer indicators of place to abstract references of place that signal the meanings of benefaction (i.e., be there for someone) and purpose (i.e., be there to do/accomplish something). We explore the meaning of there, progressing from designated identifiable concrete space through abstract, non-identifiable locations, to hybridized meanings of vague location bordering on mere existence, and finally to the metaphorical extensions of there that express concepts of support and purpose. There in English is unique because just this single word carries such varied meanings, thus posing challenges for L2 learners of English.

Keywords: There; pro-adverb; deictic; existential; non-identifiable; metaphorical extensions

References

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G. Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman .

Brevik, L. (1981). On the interpretation of existential there. Language, 75(1), 1-25 .

Cann, R. (2007). Towards a dynamic account of BE in English. In I. Comorovski, & K. Heusinger (Eds.), Existence: semantics and syntax (pp. 13-48). Dordrecht: Springer .

Celce-Murcia, M. (2002). On the use of selected grammatical features in academic writing. In M. J. Schleppegrell, & M. C. Colombi. (Eds.), Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: Meaning with power (pp. 143-158). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates .

Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The grammar book: An ESL/EFL teacher's course (2nd ed.). Boston: Heinle & Heinle .

Chou, M. (2004). Chinese learners' overgeneralization of English existential constructions. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 30(2). 183-214 .

Davidse, K. (1999). The semantics of English existentials: A cognitive-functional approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

Denison, D. (1998). Syntax. In S. Romaine (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language (Vol. IV, pp. 1776-1997). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

Farsani, H.M., Tavakoli, M., & Moinzadeh, A. (2012). The effect of task-based instruction on the acquisition and use of English existential constructions by Iranian English learners. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 6(1). 45-67 .

10.

Fauconnier, G. (1994). Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

11.

Freeze, R. (1992). Existentials and Other Locatives. Language, 68(3), 553-595 .

12.

Haspelmath, M. (2002). Understanding morphology. London: Arnold .

13.

Heine, B. (1993). Auxiliaries: Cognitive forces and grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press .

14.

Heine, B. & Kuteva, T. (2002). World Lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

15.

Ionin, T. & Chen, C. (2024). There isn't a problem with indefinites in existential constructions in L-2 English. In M. Velnić, A. Dahl, & K. F. Listhaug (Eds.), Current perspectives on generative SLA - processing, influence, and interfaces (pp. 290-313). John Benjamins .

16.

Jespersen, O. (1924). The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen & Unwin .

17.

Kim, M. (2008). The diachronic development of the Korean existential verb iss. Korean Linguistics, 14 (1), 91-111 .

18.

Kim, M., & Lee, S. (2022). Comprehension of English There-constructions by Korean learners of English. English Teaching, 77(4), 29-48 .

19.

Lakoff, G. (1984). There-constructions: A case study in grammatical construction theory and prototype theory. Berkeley, CA: Cognitive Science Program, Institute of Cognitive Studies, University of California .

20.

Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .

21.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .

22.

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Celce-Murcia, M. (2016). The grammar book: An ESL/EFL teacher's course (3rd ed.). Boston: National Geographic Learning/Cengage Learning .

23.

Lee, H.J. (2011). Information structure and the use of the English existential construction in Korean learner English. The Journal of English Language and Literature, 57(6), 1017-1041 .

24.

Lee, H.S. (2022). Usage-based approach to grammar in Korean language teaching and learning. In A. S. Byon & D. O. Pyun (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of Korean as a second language (pp. 153-170). New York: Routledge .

25.

Lee, I., & Ramsey, S.R. (2000). The Korean Language. Albany: State University of New York Press .

26.

Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

27.

Lyons, J. (1968). An introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

28.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman .

29.

Sohn, H. (1994). Korean. London: Routledge .

30.

Sohn, H. (2001). The Korean language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

31.

Strauss, S. & Feiz, P. (2018) Grammar, meaning, and concepts: A discourse-based approach to English grammar. Oxon/New York: Routledge .

32.

Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (Vol.3, pp. 57-149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

33.

Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics, Vol. 2: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .

34.

Traugott, E. C. (1989). On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: An example of subjectification in semantic change. Language, 65(1), 31-55 .

35.

Traugott, E. C., & Hopper, P. J. (Eds.). (1993). Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

36.

Ward, G., Birner, B., & Huddleston, R. (2002). Information packaging. In R. Huddleston & G.K. Pullum (Eds.), The Cambridge grammar of the English language. (pp. 1363-1448). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

37.

Warner, A. R. (1993). English auxiliaries: Structure and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

38.

Warner, A. R. (2008). Parameters of variation between verb-subject and subject-verb order in late middle English. In T. Nevalainen, I. Taavitsainen, P. Pahta, & M. Korhonen (Eds.), The dynamics of linguistic variation: Corpus evidence on English past and present (pp. 279-309). Amsterdam: John Benjamins .