Being There
The gerundial construction 'Being There' [Dasein] is the grammatical sleight
of hand that has successfully fooled a large section of the academic
philosophical establishment, and as far as many are concerned still continues to do
so. Why? Because they do not understand the simple nature of gerundial or
gerundivial mechanisms - putting it bluntly - they are 'grammatically
challenged.' It seems that one is either capable of grasping the way the mind works in
this case - or one is not. Ontologically speaking it is a mental test that
sorts the Analytical men from the Heideggerian boys
Look at it this way. If a man is sitting there by the riverbank fishing - it
is not the 'sitting there' that is 'sitting there' it is the man.
If Joe likes 'being there' in Franks' Diner, it is not his 'being there'
who is 'being there,' being the subject of what he likes - it is HIMSELF being
there in Frank's Diner - being himself - Joe. Being there is simply an
existential modality of that which constitutes Joe. Now this has nothing to do
with nominalism or existentialism or any other 'ism' - it is just plain old
common sense. 'Being there' in the world is no different to 'being there' in
Frank's Diner, in that both gerunds describe aspects of the existential manner
in which Frank, as a living thinking object or entity is present in the
cosmos.' In fact if Frank found Joe to be collapsed dead over his coffee in his
eatery, Joe, [or Joe's dead body] would still be being there in Frank's Diner
until the ambulance came and took away the body - it wouldn't be dead Joe's
being there that was there - it would be Joe's dead body. What Heidegger does
is to craftily introduce Being-There as a stand-in word for 'Human Existence'
and human existence doesn't exist - only the individual humans exist as
[nearly] everybody knows.
Let's take a closer look at 'Da' or 'THERE.'
Let's say there is an gif image of a woman dancing on your computer screen.
Here the word 'THERE' is not acting as an adverb of place, nor does it speak
of the locative modality of the image, for that is taken care of by the
expression 'on your computer screen.' The 'there is' is acting as a pronoun for
'image of a woman.' If it were a real woman she could be dancing on the
dance-floor or in a field, but there is no doubt as to whose existential modality is
being addressed - it is the woman's. Compare the use of the word THERE in the
following sentence: "There is an image of a woman dancing on my monitor." In
this case the word THERE is not particularly employed to point to the
location of the entity, but to ensure that the existential modality of the MONITOR
is maintained and sentence-wise is not semantically purloined by the woman's
image. In other words the word THERE holds back the semantic handle and
curtails the throwing of the modal switch.
Many Indo-European languages employ the word 'THERE' in an attempt to avoid
the modal shift tilting the wrong way. Actually in some ways the AITist
discovery of the modal shift mechanism and our unlocking of the door to THERE is
quite an achievement, for the 'THERE' function has baffled linguists for
centuries, and the theory of modalic shifting and in relation to the locative
doesn't appear to have occurred to them.
Other languages seem not to be bothered by the problem - although modalic
shifting is a danger in any language, and they have all developed stratagems to
avoid it happening.
Take for example Sk'op Sotz'leb: The Tzotzil of Zinacantán which I have been
studying today:
"Oy krus ta jol vitz." - 'There is a cross on the head of the mountain'.
Literally: "Is cross on head mountain. "
"Oy [modal processant] krus'' [extantal imbuant] 'ta jol vitz'. [modal
informant.] No THERE word is needed here, for although the word-order seems
strange to us [it's a VSO language] It is the same in Russian:
"There is a telephone here" - "Zdyes telefon" - "Here [is] telefone. " In
Danish on the other hand: " Der er altid mennesker på Rådhuspladsen" - There are
always people on Parliament Square. Plainly in this construction we would be
unaware or confused as to whether the existential modality of 'the people'
or the 'Parliament Square' was being addressed.
In the early days of AIT one of the most difficult things to work out and
explain to critics was the way that the 'there is' feature works in English.
Professional linguists and non-linguists alike always seemed to seize upon this
mechanism and insist that the phenomenon was only explicable if one accepted
the fact that it dealt with and referred to the simple existence of the
subject, and not to its existential modality as AIT maintained. The first time I
confronted this syntactical conundrum my conclusion was that the THERE word
referred directly to the location of the subject, so in a sentence like: "There
is a tree in the garden" I considered that the word THERE pointed to the
tree's position in the garden. It must be so I thought, for why else choose the
word THERE, which normally is an adverb of place, as in: "It is over there in
the corner. "
Later I came to accept that the reason for the emplacement of THERE at the
head of such sentences with an indefinite subject as: "There is a cockroach on
the table" was to nullify the modal switch [to obviate a transfer of
existential modality from 'the table' to 'the cockroach'] and not to existentialise
the the cockroach's modality at the expense of the table's, and that it was
not the 'DUMMY THERE' that all the grammar books tell us.
I have lately come to see that it was not by chance that 'there' was chosen
or rather developed as the mythical 'Dummy' word in the first place, because
the whole mechanism can be explained as being the result of two syntactical
and semantic adjustments contingent upon and necessary to the correct
assignment of existential modality to the grammatical constituent about which
something is predicated in a sentence - i. e. the subject of the sentence:
(1) Negation of the potential modal shift of indefinite subject sentences.
(2) Locative .
I shall deal with the two subjects separately.
(A) The negation of the potential modal shift of indefinite subject
sentences. Why English uses a 'there is' construction with indefinite subjects.
In the sentence: "A fly is in the singer's mouth" we are unsure as to
whether the fly's experience is being referred to [as more important part of the
communication] or the singer's. This is the reason why English is notorious for
fighting shy of using this construction. AIT explains this phenomena by
pointing out that the task of the IS word and all its cognates is always to
exhibit the existential modality of the subject and never its simple existence or
presence which is announced by its name alone.
THE 'BE-WORD' IS NOT NECCESSARY TO ESTABLISH THAT THE SUBJECT EXISTS
In order to specify to whom the existential modality [action or state]
inheres between the fly and the singer, the word THERE is employed, thus: "There
is a fly in the singer's mouth. " Now we know that the existential modality
being referred to is that of the singer's and not the fly - and the modalic
switch has been neutralised. "There is a tree in the garden." is a similar
sentence where the THERE word establishes quite clearly that the information
concerns the state of the garden and not the tree whereas the statement: "A tree
is in a garden" or even: "A tree is in the garden" leave us unsure of which way
the arrow of the modalic switch is pointing.
(B) Locative .
Let us now examine sentences where no specific location is mentioned. In the
sentences that follow there is no location mentioned like 'the garden' or
'the singer's mouth', and it is with these examples that we can see that the
selection of the word THERE is no arbitrary choice, as the orthodox grammarians
believe with their misconceived notions of the 'dummy there' or the 'empty
there' but is there for a purpose.
"There is a man named Bill Jones waiting to see you. "
At first glance it appears that the "there is. " confers existence on the
man called Bill Jones until we remember of course that the BE conjugational
cluster NEVER does this. If we examine the sentence more closely we begin to
realise that we haven't been told WHERE Bill Jones is waiting. In other words
his location goes unspecified, so the only thing to do in circumstances of is to
employ the word THERE, [which is the opposite of HERE. ] If on the other
hand the location of Bill Jones WAS specified in such a sentence as: "A man
named Bill Jones is waiting in the drawing room to see you" then there is no need
to employ the pleonastic pre-predicational word THERE. There are some more
sample sentences below that you can analyse yourself
"There is a policeman outside. " ("Outside WHERE? - Outside the front
door.") "There are no more oranges left. " ("WHERE? In the bowl? In Israel? - In
the shops"} "There is still some hope left. " ("WHERE? In your heart? - In the
minds of the Taliban.")
Interestingly enough from the initial researches it appears that the word
THERE is usually always employed in sentences where the action or state of the
subject is in the past, for that action can no longer be identified as
residing in any current position if it no longer exists. We can say therefore:
"There was a storm last night" or even: "There was a storm over Africa last night"
but we cannot say: "A storm was last night" and even the expression: "A
storm was last night over Africa " presents an awkward potentially ambiguous
sentence. In order to generate an unambiguous string we have to ditch the BE word
and come up with another construction such as: "A storm settled over Africa
last night" and of course this gets us into problems with the modalic switch
again because we are unsure whether the existential modality of the storm or
Africa is being addressed.
Jud Evans November 1999
Additional Usage Note: The standard rule states that when the pronoun there
precedes a verb such as be, seem, or appear, the verb agrees in number with
the following grammatical subject: There is a great Italian deli across the
street. There are fabulous wildflowers in the hills. There seems to be a
blueberry pie cooking in the kitchen. There seem to be a few trees between the green
and me. Nonetheless, it is common in speech for the contraction there's to
be used when technically a plural verb is called for, as in There's a couple
of good reasons for going. The Usage Panel dislikes this construction,
however. Seventy-nine percent reject the sentence There's only three things you need
to know about this book. But when there's is followed by a compound subject
whose first element is singular, the Panel feels differently: 56 percent
accept the sentence In each of us there's a dreamer and a realist, and an
additional 32 percent accept it in informal usage. The Panel is even more accepting
of the sentence When you get to the stop light, there's a gas station on the
left and a grocery store on the right; 58 percent accept it in formal use,
while an additional 37 percent accept it in informal use. Although this usage
would seem to violate the rules of subject and verb agreement, the attraction
of the verb to the singular noun phrase following it is so strong that it is
difficult to avoid the construction entirely.·There may be used as an
intensive adjective when placed after a noun preceded by that, but it is considered
nonstandard to place there between that and the noun. Thus that there dress
is not an acceptable substitute for that dress there. This here is similarly
considered nonstandard.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.
Cheers,
Jud Evans
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The gerundial construction 'Being There' [Dasein] is the grammatical sleight
of hand that has successfully fooled a large section of the academic
philosophical establishment, and as far as many are concerned still continues to do
so. Why? Because they do not understand the simple nature of gerundial or
gerundivial mechanisms - putting it bluntly - they are 'grammatically
challenged.' It seems that one is either capable of grasping the way the mind works in
this case - or one is not. Ontologically speaking it is a mental test that
sorts the Analytical men from the Heideggerian boys
Look at it this way. If a man is sitting there by the riverbank fishing - it
is not the 'sitting there' that is 'sitting there' it is the man.
If Joe likes 'being there' in Franks' Diner, it is not his 'being there'
who is 'being there,' being the subject of what he likes - it is HIMSELF being
there in Frank's Diner - being himself - Joe. Being there is simply an
existential modality of that which constitutes Joe. Now this has nothing to do
with nominalism or existentialism or any other 'ism' - it is just plain old
common sense. 'Being there' in the world is no different to 'being there' in
Frank's Diner, in that both gerunds describe aspects of the existential manner
in which Frank, as a living thinking object or entity is present in the
cosmos.' In fact if Frank found Joe to be collapsed dead over his coffee in his
eatery, Joe, [or Joe's dead body] would still be being there in Frank's Diner
until the ambulance came and took away the body - it wouldn't be dead Joe's
being there that was there - it would be Joe's dead body. What Heidegger does
is to craftily introduce Being-There as a stand-in word for 'Human Existence'
and human existence doesn't exist - only the individual humans exist as
[nearly] everybody knows.
Let's take a closer look at 'Da' or 'THERE.'
Let's say there is an gif image of a woman dancing on your computer screen.
Here the word 'THERE' is not acting as an adverb of place, nor does it speak
of the locative modality of the image, for that is taken care of by the
expression 'on your computer screen.' The 'there is' is acting as a pronoun for
'image of a woman.' If it were a real woman she could be dancing on the
dance-floor or in a field, but there is no doubt as to whose existential modality is
being addressed - it is the woman's. Compare the use of the word THERE in the
following sentence: "There is an image of a woman dancing on my monitor." In
this case the word THERE is not particularly employed to point to the
location of the entity, but to ensure that the existential modality of the MONITOR
is maintained and sentence-wise is not semantically purloined by the woman's
image. In other words the word THERE holds back the semantic handle and
curtails the throwing of the modal switch.
Many Indo-European languages employ the word 'THERE' in an attempt to avoid
the modal shift tilting the wrong way. Actually in some ways the AITist
discovery of the modal shift mechanism and our unlocking of the door to THERE is
quite an achievement, for the 'THERE' function has baffled linguists for
centuries, and the theory of modalic shifting and in relation to the locative
doesn't appear to have occurred to them.
Other languages seem not to be bothered by the problem - although modalic
shifting is a danger in any language, and they have all developed stratagems to
avoid it happening.
Take for example Sk'op Sotz'leb: The Tzotzil of Zinacantán which I have been
studying today:
"Oy krus ta jol vitz." - 'There is a cross on the head of the mountain'.
Literally: "Is cross on head mountain. "
"Oy [modal processant] krus'' [extantal imbuant] 'ta jol vitz'. [modal
informant.] No THERE word is needed here, for although the word-order seems
strange to us [it's a VSO language] It is the same in Russian:
"There is a telephone here" - "Zdyes telefon" - "Here [is] telefone. " In
Danish on the other hand: " Der er altid mennesker på Rådhuspladsen" - There are
always people on Parliament Square. Plainly in this construction we would be
unaware or confused as to whether the existential modality of 'the people'
or the 'Parliament Square' was being addressed.
In the early days of AIT one of the most difficult things to work out and
explain to critics was the way that the 'there is' feature works in English.
Professional linguists and non-linguists alike always seemed to seize upon this
mechanism and insist that the phenomenon was only explicable if one accepted
the fact that it dealt with and referred to the simple existence of the
subject, and not to its existential modality as AIT maintained. The first time I
confronted this syntactical conundrum my conclusion was that the THERE word
referred directly to the location of the subject, so in a sentence like: "There
is a tree in the garden" I considered that the word THERE pointed to the
tree's position in the garden. It must be so I thought, for why else choose the
word THERE, which normally is an adverb of place, as in: "It is over there in
the corner. "
Later I came to accept that the reason for the emplacement of THERE at the
head of such sentences with an indefinite subject as: "There is a cockroach on
the table" was to nullify the modal switch [to obviate a transfer of
existential modality from 'the table' to 'the cockroach'] and not to existentialise
the the cockroach's modality at the expense of the table's, and that it was
not the 'DUMMY THERE' that all the grammar books tell us.
I have lately come to see that it was not by chance that 'there' was chosen
or rather developed as the mythical 'Dummy' word in the first place, because
the whole mechanism can be explained as being the result of two syntactical
and semantic adjustments contingent upon and necessary to the correct
assignment of existential modality to the grammatical constituent about which
something is predicated in a sentence - i. e. the subject of the sentence:
(1) Negation of the potential modal shift of indefinite subject sentences.
(2) Locative .
I shall deal with the two subjects separately.
(A) The negation of the potential modal shift of indefinite subject
sentences. Why English uses a 'there is' construction with indefinite subjects.
In the sentence: "A fly is in the singer's mouth" we are unsure as to
whether the fly's experience is being referred to [as more important part of the
communication] or the singer's. This is the reason why English is notorious for
fighting shy of using this construction. AIT explains this phenomena by
pointing out that the task of the IS word and all its cognates is always to
exhibit the existential modality of the subject and never its simple existence or
presence which is announced by its name alone.
THE 'BE-WORD' IS NOT NECCESSARY TO ESTABLISH THAT THE SUBJECT EXISTS
In order to specify to whom the existential modality [action or state]
inheres between the fly and the singer, the word THERE is employed, thus: "There
is a fly in the singer's mouth. " Now we know that the existential modality
being referred to is that of the singer's and not the fly - and the modalic
switch has been neutralised. "There is a tree in the garden." is a similar
sentence where the THERE word establishes quite clearly that the information
concerns the state of the garden and not the tree whereas the statement: "A tree
is in a garden" or even: "A tree is in the garden" leave us unsure of which way
the arrow of the modalic switch is pointing.
(B) Locative .
Let us now examine sentences where no specific location is mentioned. In the
sentences that follow there is no location mentioned like 'the garden' or
'the singer's mouth', and it is with these examples that we can see that the
selection of the word THERE is no arbitrary choice, as the orthodox grammarians
believe with their misconceived notions of the 'dummy there' or the 'empty
there' but is there for a purpose.
"There is a man named Bill Jones waiting to see you. "
At first glance it appears that the "there is. " confers existence on the
man called Bill Jones until we remember of course that the BE conjugational
cluster NEVER does this. If we examine the sentence more closely we begin to
realise that we haven't been told WHERE Bill Jones is waiting. In other words
his location goes unspecified, so the only thing to do in circumstances of is to
employ the word THERE, [which is the opposite of HERE. ] If on the other
hand the location of Bill Jones WAS specified in such a sentence as: "A man
named Bill Jones is waiting in the drawing room to see you" then there is no need
to employ the pleonastic pre-predicational word THERE. There are some more
sample sentences below that you can analyse yourself
"There is a policeman outside. " ("Outside WHERE? - Outside the front
door.") "There are no more oranges left. " ("WHERE? In the bowl? In Israel? - In
the shops"} "There is still some hope left. " ("WHERE? In your heart? - In the
minds of the Taliban.")
Interestingly enough from the initial researches it appears that the word
THERE is usually always employed in sentences where the action or state of the
subject is in the past, for that action can no longer be identified as
residing in any current position if it no longer exists. We can say therefore:
"There was a storm last night" or even: "There was a storm over Africa last night"
but we cannot say: "A storm was last night" and even the expression: "A
storm was last night over Africa " presents an awkward potentially ambiguous
sentence. In order to generate an unambiguous string we have to ditch the BE word
and come up with another construction such as: "A storm settled over Africa
last night" and of course this gets us into problems with the modalic switch
again because we are unsure whether the existential modality of the storm or
Africa is being addressed.
Jud Evans November 1999
Additional Usage Note: The standard rule states that when the pronoun there
precedes a verb such as be, seem, or appear, the verb agrees in number with
the following grammatical subject: There is a great Italian deli across the
street. There are fabulous wildflowers in the hills. There seems to be a
blueberry pie cooking in the kitchen. There seem to be a few trees between the green
and me. Nonetheless, it is common in speech for the contraction there's to
be used when technically a plural verb is called for, as in There's a couple
of good reasons for going. The Usage Panel dislikes this construction,
however. Seventy-nine percent reject the sentence There's only three things you need
to know about this book. But when there's is followed by a compound subject
whose first element is singular, the Panel feels differently: 56 percent
accept the sentence In each of us there's a dreamer and a realist, and an
additional 32 percent accept it in informal usage. The Panel is even more accepting
of the sentence When you get to the stop light, there's a gas station on the
left and a grocery store on the right; 58 percent accept it in formal use,
while an additional 37 percent accept it in informal use. Although this usage
would seem to violate the rules of subject and verb agreement, the attraction
of the verb to the singular noun phrase following it is so strong that it is
difficult to avoid the construction entirely.·There may be used as an
intensive adjective when placed after a noun preceded by that, but it is considered
nonstandard to place there between that and the noun. Thus that there dress
is not an acceptable substitute for that dress there. This here is similarly
considered nonstandard.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.
Cheers,
Jud Evans
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