[quote=“Chris”][quote=“yuli”]Chris, IYouThem, Tempo Gain, I wonder whether one of you could explain to this non-native speaker of English what the function is of the word “out” is that comes right before the “there”.
[/quote]
Ooh, I missed the “out”… I was thinking it read “for there stood an oak tree”. Good catch![/quote]
Yes, good call. But without the “out” they’re right and it’s pretty obscure grammar these days. I’m actually pretty impressed.
Yes, they are right. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way in real life: “without the ‘out’” is not an option for the students facing the test question. 
So would anybody care to analyse the pattern again, this time with the “out”? 
Actually, there (not “out there”) is no need to do that: the answer has been posted already - just go back to the first half of the thread… 
I said I disagree with Tempo Gain. I never said he is wrong. With cataphoric pronouns “there” could be considered the subject like he rightfully pointed out. My previous post does indicate though that there are other options for when different forms can follow there.
Yuli,
Out is purely an indication of place being the opposite of in. You could refer to Practical English Usage by Michael Swan for grammar explanations. By far the best book on the market in my opinion.
I missed your sarcasm. My radar is broken therefore I had to edit the post.
You were right with your disagreement - “there” is neither the subject nor a temporary (dummy) subject, it is part of the adverbial expression “out there”. 
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=103469&start=9
And i supported your disagreement then and still support it now:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=103469&start=17
And it seems so does Charlie Jack…
True enough, but an adverbial can also serve as a subject. It could as easily have been “for in the park stood a tree…”
You can call this the subject or not, I’ve seen different interpretations, but it’s irrelevant to the question at hand.
The question at hand is the verb form which can appear after this element, whatever you care to call it, which is filling the place of the subject in this sentence.
Yes, it could have been - and in that case, quite like with the sentence that was mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, “in the park” would be an adverbial of place and “a tree” the subject.
[quote]You can call this the subject or not, I’ve seen different interpretations, but it’s irrelevant to the question at hand…
The question at hand is the verb form which can appear after this element, whatever you care to call it, which is filling the place of the subject in this sentence.[/quote]
Well, it appears that not only has the initial question been answered but people have been talking about the (grammatical) subject of the sentence and ended up disagreeing on what/where that would be… 
And i still hope that it will become clear to all involved that whoever suggested the subject is “the oak tree” had gotten it right…
) pointed out in what happens to be the 4th post in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=103469&start=3
I quote (and slightly edit for clarity) The Oxford Reference Grammar, by Sidney Greenbaum, ISBN 0-19-860044-5, p. 119:
Ex: There were a lot of idiots on the road.
In the example, “there” is the grammatical subject and “a lot of idiots” is the notional subject. Without existential “there” the sentence would be:
“A lot of idiots were on the road.”
I am not interested in a whose book says what contest, but I find that the Oxford Reference Grammar book taught me a lot. It made me understand things about English grammar in a meaningful way.
However, Yuli’s statement (quoted above) teaches nothing, nor does it explain anything about English grammar.
[quote=“alecinwonderland”]Just taught these students again. They are using the book “遠東高中英語關鍵句型，第三本” (Far east key sentence patterns book3) and the tests (sometimes) relate to this book.
Tonight’s classic test question:
Correct this sentence (change underlined section, not multiple choice):
Running over by a car, the dog limped away.
How the hell do you teach this?[/quote]
I guess (only a guess) they want “Run over by a car, the dog limped away,” or more fully, “Having been run over by a car, the dog limped away.” Oftentimes, some folk here seem to favor a kind of Bulwer-Lytton-esque English, with some added peculiarities.
Some posters on the board have expressed disapproval of teachers who simply say, “We don’t do it that way.” There have been times here when, after looking in grammar manuals and searching the 'net, the best I could come up with was, “We don’t do it that way.” So I guess y’all can just set me down amongst the bad teachers.
In my time here I’ve been given parameters from on high that forced me (if I wanted to avoid trouble and maintain some kind of job security) to write some strange stuff, stuff even Bulwer-Lytton wouldn’t have liked. At that time, the more I wrote according to the way I was trained, the more flak I got, and the more I wrote according to those parameters, the less flak I got. Finally, when the stuff I was writing was at times pretty damned awful, I was affirmatively praised.
I advise going with the flow, but trying to go with the flow somewhat conscientiously. Don’t let this stuff blow your mind. Hang in there, alecinwonderland.
That’s great - now if you would just read this thread (not just the few most recent comments) carefully enough you would find that not only the OP’s question was answered early on (thanks to Tempo Gain) but that the issue about the “subject” has also been explained - at least three people point in the right direction: heimuoshu, Charlie Jack, and myself.
[quote=“IYouThem”]I quote (and slightly edit for clarity) The Oxford Reference Grammar, by Sidney Greenbaum, ISBN 0-19-860044-5, p. 119:
Ex: There were a lot of idiots on the road.
In the example, “there” is the grammatical subject and “a lot of idiots” is the notional subject. Without existential “there” the sentence would be:
“A lot of idiots were on the road.”[/quote]
I get it, and I think the others who disagree with your position also get it.
Sometimes it’s called a syntactic expletive. Sometimes it’s called a dummy or anticipatory subject. It’s been called an expletive adverb. The grammar book of my undergraduate days simply calls it an expletive. And of course there’s the name your source gives it.
I think everybody gets that. There’s a there that’s used the way the Chinese word you3 is sometimes used. But there’s also a there that’s used the way the Chinese word na4li3 is sometimes used. Some people in this thread hold in effect that there in the sentence in question is used as you3 is sometimes used, and some hold in effect that it is used as na4li3 is used. We just disagree about how there is used in the sentence in question.
[quote=“yuli”]
Yes, it could have been - and in that case, quite like with the sentence that was mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, “in the park” would be an adverbial of place and “a tree” the subject.
:[/quote]
Defintely right, while an adverbial can at times be a subject it’s not there. “Out there” is an adverbial as you say, and not the subject there. Thanks for pointing that out by the way
[quote=“alecinwonderland”] Suddenly, he heard all of the young people screaming with joy, for out there _________ an oak tree covered with hundreds of yellow handkerchiefs.
A to stand B stood C standing D had stood
A ________ ________ over the classroom ________ as the teacher walked in.
No multiple choice. Required answer from Chinese translation = A hush fell over the classroom just as the teacher walked in.
Obviously I know the correct answers, but “Why isn’t it A/B/C/D teacher?”
[/quote]
Ask them, “What ‘did’ what?” in the second part of the sentence.
They won’t know, so tell them the tree stood. What stood? The tree. What did the tree do? It stoods. The tree stood because that is what trees do. They stand. They blow in the wind, they fall down, they shade the old lady sitting at the park bench and they stand. Mostly they stand. Trees stand (you could adopt a big tree like standing posture, proud and yet somehow longsuffering too.) Then ask, “Where did the tree stand?” They won’t know that either so ask if it stands in the middle of the bathroom. No? Did it stand on my head. Hahaha, no? “Where” did it stand?" “Look at the text.” “Out there?” The tree stood out there. That is what the sentence says, but for stylistic reasons we have switched the subject and verb around and put the place expression at the end.
Draw the appropriate diagram.
Explain that it’s an SV relationship between tree and stood that you are talking about and since an SV combination like “the tree stands” can take any permissable verb form (has/had stood, has/had been standing, was standing, is standing, stood, stands, will stand, will be standing, will have been standing) you just need to choose the right one of those.
“To stand” does not combine in a SV relationship, EVER, because “To stand” isn’t that kind of verb. It DOESN"T SAY WHAT THE SUBJECT DOES. It’s more like NOUN or an ADVERB in that sense.
(I like sandwhiches. I like to stand (noun). I am happy to have stood (adverb) behind Eric Stevick once. It behaves like a verb in the sense that a certain, restricted, number of forms are possible (to “have been” but not to “will have been”) as are objects with transitive verbs. (I like to eat cake) but TO VERB is NOT acceptable in relation to the subjects of sentences. EVER. It’s an absolute rule. Tell them to memorize it. Give LOTS of examples.)
“Standing,” with no be verb in front, isn’t that kind of verb either. It’s a NOUN or an ADJECTIVE. I like sandwhiches. I don’t like standing in standing water. “Ing” verbs with no “be” verb in front behave somewhat like a verb (they can take adverbs for example) but without a “be” verb in front, the “ing” form of a verb NEVER exists as a verb in relation to the subject. Give lots of examples, mark the SVOs and draw arrows to show what decribes what.
The “ing” form with no be verb in front can sometimes be used as an adverb as well. “Dying, she reached for the phone.” Adverbs are pretty movable so you could just as well say, “She reached for the phone, dying”
Essentially though, since you know that tree and stand exist in an SV relationship (they answered the “what did what” question) you also know that only B and D could be correct grammatically. And semantically only B makes much sense. It was an oak tree, not the dogs of war.
As an aside you might tell them that “for” is an artsy fartsy way to say “because” and probably best avoided lest one attempt to sound poetic and end up sounding, lets say, “awkward.”
All of this, of course, assumes that you even want to answer a “why” question with regard to grammar as complicated as this. If you do decide to answer it you should answer it completely IMHO. You should do it in a way that pounds away once again at the basic concepts because if you just throw around a lot of jargon nobody will understand a thing, or worse yet, they’ll think they do when they don’t.
Thanks Bob. That’s a great explanation.
Except that it is perfectly acceptable to use an infinitive as the subject of a sentence:
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Oops!
This thread is good, but has drifted into two distinct issues. The first is the presence of locative adverb phrase standing where one usually sees the first argument (“subject”), and the other is the dummy pronoun.
There are a lot of pretty cool issues at hand.
Adverbials and Existentials:
The first is that there’s a strong connection between locative sentences and existential sentences in the English language. It works out in a nice way, since we generally like to think that things that exist exist in a certain space. This also helps explain why we conjugate the verb for the “second argument” of the sentence, because it’s really still the first, but we’ve just moved some bits.
Examples:
[ul][li]“Some people are there.” --> “There are some people.” [NP1 VP RP] --> [RP VP NP1][/li]
[li]“Some people reside there.” --> “There reside some people.” [NP1 VP RP] --> [RP VP NP1][/li][/ul]
But it’s not limited to here or there. Even prepositional phrases, working as locative adverbials, work well here.
Example:
[ul][li]“A tree stands in the garden.” --> “In the garden stands a tree.” [NP1 VP RP] --> [RP VP NP1][/li][/ul]
But take a step back: If “in the garden” really were the first argument, why would we always conjugate the verb for the second argument in the sentence?
Dummy Pronouns:
When the first argument is a transformed sentence (a complement phrase), it usually takes more time to generate it during spoken discourse, so a keen solution to this is to allow dummy subjects while we process that harder syntactic piece as we talk. It also helps us because English is head-initial with complement phrases more generally.
Example:
[ul][li]“That you were the one who committed the murders is clear.” --> “It is clear that you were the one who committed the murders.” [{CP = NP1} VP] --> [{NP0 = “It”} VP {CP = NP1}] [/li][/ul]
However, we only do this with sentence-to-argument transformations.
Example:
[ul][li]“You are pretty.” --> *“It is pretty you.” [NP1 VP] -/-> [{NP0 = “It”} VP NP1][/li][/ul]
[quote=“ehophi”]This thread is good, but has drifted into two distinct issues. The first is the presence of locative adverb phrase standing where one usually sees the first argument (“subject”), and the other is the dummy pronoun.
There are a lot of pretty cool issues at hand.
Adverbials and Existentials:
The first is that there’s a strong connection between locative sentences and existential sentences in the English language. It works out in a nice way, since we generally like to think that things that exist exist in a certain space. This also helps explain why we conjugate the verb for the “second argument” of the sentence, because it’s really still the first, but we’ve just moved some bits.
Examples:
[ul][li]“Some people are there.” --> “There are some people.” [NP1 VP RP] --> [RP VP NP1][/li]
[li]“Some people reside there.” --> “There reside some people.” [NP1 VP RP] --> [RP VP NP1][/li][/ul]
But it’s not limited to here or there. Even prepositional phrases, working as locative adverbials, work well here.
Example:
[ul][li]“A tree stands in the garden.” --> “In the garden stands a tree.” [NP1 VP RP] --> [RP VP NP1][/li][/ul]
But take a step back: If “in the garden” really were the first argument, why would we always conjugate the verb for the second argument in the sentence?
Dummy Pronouns:
When the first argument is a transformed sentence (a complement phrase), it usually takes more time to generate it during spoken discourse, so a keen solution to this is to allow dummy subjects while we process that harder syntactic piece as we talk. It also helps us because English is head-initial with complement phrases more generally.
Example:
[ul][li]“That you were the one who committed the murders is clear.” --> “It is clear that you were the one who committed the murders.” [{CP = NP1} VP] --> [{NP0 = “It”} VP {CP = NP1}] [/li][/ul]
We don’t do this with sentence-to-argument transformations, however.
Example:
[ul][li]“You are pretty.” --> *“It is pretty you.” [NP1 VP] -/-> [{NP0 = “It”} VP NP1][/li][/ul][/quote]
Nice!
However, and this is not meant as a correction, what about this possibility:
“Some people are there.” --> “There are some people.” [T1] or “There are some people there.” [T2]
When we see the context (preceding sentences or question) there is 
the possibility of using the 2nd transformation [T2] to convey a subtle, but slightly different, meaning.
I have always “suspected” that the way to teach this initially is partly through translation.
Zhuo1zi4 shang4 you3 yi4 ben3 shu1.
(There is a book on the table.)
You3 yi4 ben3 shu1 jiao1 wen2fa3.
(There is a book that teaches grammar.)
and…
Zai4 na4li3 you3 yi1 ben3 shu1.
(There is a book THERE.)
Seems like the concepts line up pretty well, so rather than bothering anybody with abstract concepts that they already know subconsiously, why not run through a lot of translations at some point and from then on just use the English? It’s not like you would have to struggle to work it in.
I am not saying an explanation in English wouldn’t be useful for some students but for others it would likely be just confusing, particularly if it was taught by someone who wasn’t entirely well versed in the issue him/herself.
Couldn’t agree more!