Constructional Hierarchy and Features of the There Construction

摘要

The There Construction, as a very important and widely used construction in English has aroused extensive concern of the scholars in the research field. Previous studies predominantly concentrate on such issues as its subject, non-concord in the construction, the definiteness effect of NP after VP, its classification and its formation. Little attention has been paid to the syntactic and semantic features of the construction. Thus, we elaborate the constructional features and the constructional hierarchical relationship of the There Construction in present English on the basis of data collection of COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). It might also benefit the further academic study, teaching and acquisition of the There Construction.