On the Development of the Expletive there in there+be Construction

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explain the development of the expletive there in there+be construction on the basis of the data from the Helsinki Corpus. Despite extensive studies done by Nagashima and Breivik, the period of the establishment and the process of the regulation are still in controversy. Classifying the data according to eight different types of there+be constructions, we assume the three stages for the change of there. On that assumption, we are going to clarify when, how and why there+be construction with non-referring there has become so widespread as it is in Present-day English.