Monday, June 15, 2009

There, there

When editors and writers and teachers who don’t know what they are talking about inveigh against “passive voice,” one of the things they commonly misidentify as passive is the there is/there are construction.

There in this context is what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage calls a “dummy subject.” The actual subject of the verb is found in the noun or nouns following the verb. Some writers use are to make the verb agree with a compound subject, and some don’t, and that’s just the way it is. (It is also a dummy subject in such constructions as It’s raining.)

Though there is/there are is not technically a passive construction, it is frequently identified by teachers of composition as a weak construction to be shunned. Merriam-Webster’s is instructive on this point:

In an article appearing in Written Communication for July 1988, Thomas N. Huckin and Linda Hutz Pesante investigate the use of there as dummy subject, calling it “existential there.” They decided to test the common handbook warning not to begin sentences with there against a 100,000-word sample of good writing by what they call “expert” writers. Their survey found the construction very common; the expert writers obviously paid no attention to the handbook prohibition. They found there sentences used for four chief purposes: to assert existence, to present new information, to introduce topics, and to summarize. Clearly, then, there sentences are often highly useful, and they seem to occur with the same frequency at all levels of discourse.

To give an example of the utility of the there is construction in a statement of assertion, what sane writer would want to change There is a balm in Gilead to A balm exists in Gilead?

The only sensible advice about there is/there are constructions is not to rely on them too heavily and risk monotony in the prose.

6 comments:

  1. I don't understand the function of "there" in this part of your quote: "Clearly, then, there sentences are often highly useful..."

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  2. "It's raining" is always the example given for dummy "it". Isn't there any other example?

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  3. 1. I had neglected to italicize there with sentences.

    2. In addition to It's raining, there's It's snowing.

    All right, all right, how about It's hot in here?

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  4. I find the 'dummy subject' explanation a bit confusing, I'm not saying it's wrong. 'There' is an adverb which tells you that the real subject of the verb follows rather than precedes it ("there may come a time..."). 'It' is a pronoun, introducing an impersonal verb in the case of "it's raining" - I don't see that much similarity.

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  5. Believe it or not, when I was teaching university English, we called the "there is" construction an expletive! Not THAT kind of expletive--but, still, the name implies that it's quite that bad . . .

    "It is obvious that they do not like us." But, honestly, would you really want to express the same notion with the ear-clunky "That they do not like us is obvious"?

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  6. Aha! I looked up the etymology of "expletive," and it cleared up 'dummy subject' for me as well.

    >>"That they do not like us is obvious"<<

    It's got a rhetorical feel to it to me, maybe the same thing repeated to make a point. "That they do not like us is obvious; that they do not like our opinions is plain; that they would like us to go stick our heads in a bucket..." There's probably a technical term.

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