Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

Section E: Word Order 61
Locative inversion and presentative structures:
a case study in English and Lithuanian
Kaledaite, Violeta
Vytautas Magnus University
v.kaledaite@hmf.vdu.lt
Locative inversion and the there-construction in English have enjoyed an exhaustive
treatment in linguistic literature (cf. Breivik 1990, Birner 1996, and Dorgeloh 1997, among
others). However, the structurally diverse presentative construction without there, as in
Outside a crowd had gathered, In the garden stood a sundial, and A woman stood on his step
is seldom treated as one well-defined structural category.
Lithuanian presentative constructions raise additional problems. The typological differences
between English and Lithuanian are especially conspicuous on the syntactic level (cf.
Kalėdaitė 2002). It is a well-established fact that where there is an opening place adverbial,
existential clauses in English seem to be closely related to constructions with locative subjectverb
inversion, as in Behind the sundial there were a few trees, some of them in flower: a
small path led into their deceptive shallow depths, and there, in a hollow a few yards from a
high brick wall that bordered the garden, stood a sculpture (LGSWE 1999: 954).
As regards existential sentences in the two languages, the only difference in the syntactic
structure is the occurrence of an empty subject there in the English ESs, whereas Lithuanian
ESs exhibit the Loc + verbexist + subjNP element order. This is exactly the pattern that
corresponds to the locative inversion in English. Does this mean that Lithuanian has not
developed an existential construction at all? Or have the locative inversion and the existential
structure merged into one?
The paper discusses locative inversion and presentative structures in the two languages from a
contrastive perspective. It aims at providing an account based on such parameters as basic
word order patterns, the discourse function of inversion, and the generation of additional (e.g.
subjective) meanings through marked word order.
References
Birner, B.J. 1996. The discourse function of inversion in English. New York & London:
Garland Publishing Inc.
Breivik, L-E. 1990. Existential THERE.
Dorgeloh, H. 1997. Inversion in modern English: form and function. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Kalėdaitė, V. 2002. Existential sentences in English and Lithuanian: a contrastive study.
Peter Lang.
LGSWE (Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English). 1999. Longman.
La position et l’ordre relatif de deux circonstants dans la phrase:
étude comparative du français et du néerlandais.
Magnus, Ilse
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
ilse.magnus@arts.kuleuven.be
L’ordre des constituants dans la phrase est le résultat de l’interaction complexe entre
différents facteurs, d’ordre syntaxique, sémantique et pragmatique. S’il est vrai que
l’organisation syntaxique de la phrase peut être très différente d’une langue à l’autre, les