English Language & Usage Asked by thecrease on December 9, 2020
Most dictionaries seem to describe ‘there’ as an adverb. Oxford online dictionary definition Is this true?
“Last year we went to Paris. We stayed there for three nights.”
In sentences like this ‘there’ is taking the place of a preposition and a noun – in this case ‘in Paris’. So why is it referred to as an adverb?
Is there a case for describing it as a preposition? It is a substitute for a prepositional phrase (‘on the table’. ‘in the room’, ‘to Paris’, ‘in Paris’ etc), and like a preposition, and unlike an adverb, it may be modified by ‘right’ or ‘straight’.
“We flew straight there.”
“The book is right there – in front of you.”
Prepositional phrases
So, is ‘there’ (and I suppose we could extend this to its interrogative: ‘where’) an adverb, a preposition or some other category of word?
As is well-recognised by linguists, dictionaries are not a good place to start when trying to establish parts of speech. A good reference grammar is. Of the three great grammars of the English language from the last hundred years, the most recent and up-to-date is The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Huddleston and Pullum, 2002. It says the following:
Locative there is an intransitive preposition contrasting with here: it has deictic and anaphoric uses ... (p. 1319)
(For a fuller account, consult pages 598-691). Part of the reason given for there and here being prepositions is that, exactly as OP has commented, they are modifiable by straight and right. Furthermore, these words function in the same way as other prepositional phrases: they are able to function as locative complements of the verb BE, and also as spacial and temporal adjuncts.
Many phrase types have the latter function, including adverbs and adverb phrases, however adverbs don't generally function as complements of the verb BE. Furthermore adverbs are not modifiable by either right or straight:
Complements of BE
Straight and right as modifiers.
This all goes to show that the OP is indeed correct: there does indeed seem to be a preposition.
Hope this is helpful
Correct answer by Araucaria - Not here any more. on December 9, 2020
First a caveat: you cannot always reliably test what function a certain word or phrase has by replacing it with some other word or phrase. However, normal adverbs serve the same function as many prepositional phrases do, so what you said about how it can replace in Paris supports treating there as an adverb.
A preposition occurs before a nominal phrase, like a noun; but there Paris is not possible, unlike in Paris. And so it is not a preposition, unlike the preposition in.
There is often called an adverbial demonstrative pronoun. While it does normally have an adverbial function (it describes where something happens), it has an antecedent: it refers back to a place that was mentioned earlier or that the listener or reader knows is relevant. So in your example, it refers back to Paris, a place; in its capacity of referring back to an antecedent, it is pronominal, functioning like a pronoun.
It is demonstrative because you can point at something while saying it, just like the demonstrative (personal and adjectival) pronouns this, that, those and these: I see that [pointing at object], we went there [pointing at place] etc.
Note that, in certain idiomatic constructions, there has almost evolved into something more like a particle, as in there was noöne in the room.
The words straight and right in your example are a bit complicated; they could be analysed in different ways. The two most obvious ways would be to either classify them as adverbs modifying there, or as adverbs modifying the verb in parallel with there. The simplest structure of I flew straight there would be the latter: how did you fly? I flew straight, not via some other point. Where did you fly? There. Those are two adverbs, one of manner and one of place/destination.
Answered by Cerberus_Reinstate_Monica on December 9, 2020
There is an adverb of place, and an adverb is used to modify a verb. In the sentence— We stayed there for three nights, stay is a verb and there is modifying it. it's answering us the question— where did we stay? To make the sentence more understandable a semi colon could have been put between both the sentences.
Answered by Surabhi Kalhan on December 9, 2020
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