Remarks on Raising There

Remarks on Raising There

  This paper reviews two approaches recently proposed with regard to there raising in existential constructions: the one from the head D, and the other from the predicate of small clause. In the former approach, checking [+specific]- and Case-features of the expletive can be explained in terms of parallel movement if the expletive there is assumed to be a topic marker. Such an analysis, however, is shown to arouse non-trivial issues, such as non-uniform chain, and treatment of raising verbs followed by an infinitival complement as a monoclausal structure, etc. Given the assumption that there base-generates as the predicate of small clause, the latter approach does not arouse these issues, provided with den Dikken"s (2007) phase extension and Boskovic"s (2007) mover-oriented motivation for movement.