Editing English grammar (section)

===={{Anchor|There as pronoun}}"There"====
The word ''there'' is used as a pronoun in some sentences, playing the role of a [[dummy subject]], normally of an [[intransitive verb]]. The "logical subject" of the verb then appears as a [[complement (linguistics)|complement]] after the verb.

This use of ''there'' occurs most commonly with forms of the verb ''be'' in [[existential clause]]s, to refer to the presence or existence of something. For example: ''There is a heaven''; ''There are two cups on the table''; ''There have been a lot of problems lately''. It can also be used with other verbs: ''There exist two major variants''; ''There occurred a very strange incident''.

The dummy subject takes the [[grammatical number|number]] (singular or plural) of the logical subject (complement), hence it takes a plural verb if the complement is plural. In informal English, however, the [[contraction (grammar)|contraction]] ''there's'' is often used for both singular and plural.<ref>{{Harvnb|Fowler|2015|p=813}}</ref>

The dummy subject can undergo [[inversion (linguistics)|inversion]], ''Is there a test today?'' and ''Never has there been a man such as this''. It can also appear without a corresponding logical subject, in short sentences and [[question tag]]s: ''There wasn't a discussion, was there? There was''.

The word ''there'' in such sentences has sometimes been analyzed as an [[adverb]], or as a dummy [[Predicate (grammar)|predicate]], rather than as a pronoun.<ref>For a treatment of ''there'' as a dummy predicate, based on the analysis of the [[copula (linguistics)|copula]], see [[Andrea Moro|Moro, A.]], ''The Raising of Predicates. Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure'', ''Cambridge Studies in Linguistics'', 80, Cambridge University Press, 1997.</ref> However, its identification as a pronoun is most consistent with its behavior in inverted sentences and question tags as described above.

Because the word ''there'' can also be a [[Deixis|deictic]] adverb (meaning "at/to that place"), a sentence like ''There is a river'' could have either of two meanings: "a river exists" (with ''there'' as a pronoun), and "a river is in that place" (with ''there'' as an adverb). In speech, the adverbial ''there'' would be given [[stress (linguistics)|stress]], while the pronoun would not – in fact, the pronoun is often pronounced as a [[weak and strong forms in English|weak form]], {{IPA|/ðə(r)/}}.