@article{oai:nagoya.repo.nii.ac.jp:00028003,
 author = {Yanaka, Katsutoshi},
 journal = {IVY},
 month = {Oct},
 note = {In this paper, I investigate the syntactic status and function of expletive there, which has been analyzed just as a filler of the empty subject position, and make an attempt to achieve a unified analysis of there-constructions. In the previous studies, there-constructions are classified into two types: existential and presentational sentences, as illustrated in (1) and (2), respectively. (1) a. There remained a relatively small amount of activity in Canadian Studies. b. There is a solution. (2) a. There walked into the room a tall man with blond hair. b. Suddenly there entered the room a six-edged troll. It has been assumed that the sentences in (2) have a different history of derivation from those in (1); since the predicates in (2) are, unlike those in (1), not restricted to an unaccusative type, expletive there is inserted after the rightward movement of the subject from [Spec, IP]: (3) [IP [IP there [VP V (PP)]] Subj ] This analysis, however, makes a wrong prediction with respect to verb selection. If there plays no role but as a dummy subject, (4) are wrongly predicted to be grammatical. (4) a. *There laughed during the class many students. b. *There ate an apple a boy with glasses. Furthermore, some unaccusative verbs such as die and open are also disallowed, although there is a position where there can be inserted: (5) a. *There died some people in that fire. b. *There suddenly opened a window behind me. In order to solve these problems, I propose that expletive there plays a significant role in interpretation, serving as an external argument, which I assume to be located in [Spec, vP]. Taking into consideration that the VPs in (1) and (2) contain an explicit or implicit locative expression, I define there as a scene-setting argument, which is licensed only under a predicational relation with VP. This proposal can correctly rule out (4) and (5) since their VPs cannot be predicated of a location (or scene). Under the assumption that there is an external argument, it is expected that unergative and transitive verbs cannot appear in there-constructions since their subjects are also external arguments. The grammaticality of (2) seems to be problematic, but a close examination of the predicates in (2) reveals that verbs of manner of motion can take an unaccusative structure when accompanied by a directional phrase, I use resultative constructions and causative alternation as unaccusative diagnostics. (6) She danced / swam free of her captors. (7) We ran the mouse through the maze. Following Levin and Rappaport's (1995) Direct Object Constraint, according to which result phrases must be predicated of direct objects, we can conclude that the subjects in (6) originate in the object position. The causative alternation in (7) shows that the DP in the object position denotes a moved entity when a directional phrase is present. Since the predicates in (2) are all verbs of manner of motion with a directional phrase, their underlying structure is the same as that of (1), as illustrated in (8). (8) T [vP there v-V [VP DP Subj tV (PP) ]] I conclude that all there-constructions are derived from the unaccusative structure in (8).},
 pages = {53--81},
 title = {Expletive There as an External Argument : A Unified Analysis of There-Construccions},
 volume = {37},
 year = {2004}
}