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I have found 2 sentences in a law book, but I cannot figure out what grammar rules are used in them. Please advise.

  • 1.) In no state, however, are there [what rule, why such order of the words?] specific guidelines as to what constitutes participation in another business . . .

The above sentence is not a question, so why is there subject-auxiliary verb inversion?

In the following example, why is there no subject?

  • 2.) Between these two extremes, however, is a compromise view. [no subject? What rule is this?], which seems . . .
F.E.
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Pikolko
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  • For your second example, consider "Between these two extremes is Jill's view." -- It seems that the subject is "Jill's view", and that the sentence has subject-dependent inversion. The non-inverted version would be: "Jill's view is between these two extremes." Note that the interrogative versions for both seems to be "Is Jill's view between these two extremes?" – F.E. Apr 13 '14 at 01:09

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The first sentence is an example of negative inversion: after a negating, adverbial word or phrase, the subject and auxiliary (here the verb "to be") are often reversed in order:

There are no rules in any state

In no state (negation) are there any rules

Similarly:

In no way am I going to eat my peas!

Never has he travelled by bus.

Not until she went to France did she realise how much she loved baguettes.

The main reason to use this inversion is for formality; rarely is it used in everyday speech.

There are exceptions to this rule and times when it is optional. See Negative inversion for a good overview.

In your second sentence, "there", which would act as a subject, is simply omitted:

Between these two extremes (there) is a compromise view.

"There" in this case is the existential there - it is not an actual subject, though it can stand in for one. In your example sentence, it is simply not necessary.

Similarly:

In the garden (there) was a dog.

On the wall (there) was a giant spider.

Again, this is not common in everyday speech, and is usually used in formal circumstances or storytelling.

Community
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nxx
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  • For "In the garden was a dog", why wouldn't that be considered to be subject-dependent inversion? -- (With "a dog" as the subject.) – F.E. Apr 12 '14 at 23:38
  • It can be, if derived from "A dog was in the garden." In this case it is a variant construction for "There was a dog in the garden." – nxx Apr 13 '14 at 01:34
  • Actually, I think I've seen before the argument that you're making about there being an implicit "there" in there. But it's been so long, and my memory is kinda fickle--and so, could you provide a vetted grammatical source that would support that position that there's an implicit "there" in there? Maybe the 1985 Quirk et al. has something like that? (I don't know.) Or maybe there's (only) usage commentators that support it? – F.E. Apr 13 '14 at 02:57
  • Or you could tell me that there are no vetted sources that support this and I am wrong? If so I would be grateful to be made right and I'm sure the OP would be happy to have the right answer too. And of course I could edit my question so as not to be misleading. That would all be more constructive than snarkiness. – nxx Apr 13 '14 at 03:24
  • Actually, I haven't been snarky at all. I was merely asking for some vetted grammatical sources to back your claim. Yes, I can back my claim that the example "In the garden was a dog" could be subject-dependent inversion--the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. I was curious to see what you might have. There are lots of modern grammars out there, and some are quite weird (e.g. one considers "a" to be a pronoun). It's possible that your position is supported by usage commentators and/or grammarians. I really don't know. – F.E. Apr 13 '14 at 04:13
  • I try to remember not to declare someone else's somewhat reasonable rationale as being "*Wrong!*", because, well, there's a lot of different modern grammars out there, and there are many forms of traditional-modern grammar hybrids too, and they could, and do, say a lot of different things. Also, my memory has been known to have its own quirks. . . . – F.E. Apr 13 '14 at 04:21
  • . . . Actually, I had spent a few moments wondering if, syntactically, your rationale wasn't actually supportable, w.r.t. information packaging constraints; that is, your construction (existential "there" with PP fronting) might have the same syntactic constraints as that of subject-dependent inversion. I was thinking of looking into it a bit, to see if that was so. (Also I was thinking of browsing 1985 Quirk et al. to see what was in there.) – F.E. Apr 13 '14 at 04:23
  • The rule is called There-insertion, it's governed by a long list of verbs. It inserts a dummy subject (There) and moves the old subject to after the verb. A brass unicorn stands in the garden ==> There stands a brass unicorn in the garden. – John Lawler Apr 13 '14 at 04:24
  • @F.E. My humble apologies, and thank you for the clarification. I try to cite reliable sources when I can, but I am overseas and don't have contact with my usual books nor many publicly available English-language (especially grammar!) resources. The explanation seemed the right one in context, but I honestly can't remember where I first heard it. The link I provided for an overview lists Ron Cowan, The Teacher's Grammar of English. Cambridge University Press, 2008 (existential there) and Angela Downing, English Grammar: A University Course, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006 (omission of ex. there). – nxx Apr 13 '14 at 12:12
  • @JohnLawler Thank you for your input. Is it fair to say that it is an "omitted inserted there"? – nxx Apr 13 '14 at 12:20
  • @nxx: No, it wouldn't be fair. The terminology's wrong. "Omitted" and "inserted" are opposites -- it's inserted, it's present, and if it's omitted, it's not present. The there is inserted by one rule, and is the new subject. The old subject is moved to a position after the verb. Nothing is omitted. – John Lawler Apr 13 '14 at 15:45
  • Thanks @JohnLawler. I mean in There stands a brass unicorn in the garden --> In the garden stands a brass unicorn. Is there an omitted/implied dummy subject? – nxx Apr 13 '14 at 16:07
  • @nxx: No, that's wrong, too. There's no arrow. Those sentences are both transforms of A brass unicorn stands in the garden; one sentence is the result of applying the rule of There-Insertion, the other is a product of the rule of Subject-Verb Inversion, with Adverb Fronting. I.e, the two sentences you quote are not related syntactically, except that they both come from the same source; one is not the source of the other (the arrow indicates source). And nothing is "omitted" -- I keep wondering where that term crept in. – John Lawler Apr 13 '14 at 17:12
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The first sentence, could be written like this:

There are in no state specific guidelines as to what constitutes participation in another business...

To make this more formal, and to add some contrast, the sentence is broken into pieces and rearranged.

The second sentence is all the same, except for word 'there', which is left out. The sentence could be written like this:

There is a compromise view between these two extremes, which seems...

Again the sentence is written this way to make it more formal.

JJJ
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Between these two extremes, however, is a compromise view which seems...

If we leave out "however" (because it's separated by commas):

Between these two extremes is a compromise view which seems...

Does it seem weird now? No. We can say: Between them is a compromise view which seems...

Same goes for the first sentence. Maybe the structure - in [somewhere] + there is confusing you. When you say "There is a thing in Somewhere." You don't actually need "there" to understand the question, right? Obviously, "there" is part of the expression/idiom (I don't know the nomenclature.) so you have to put it, because that's how you would say it as a native speaker, and it's grammatically correct. Oh yes, and, both "between these two extremes" and "in no state" are adverbials (complexes) after the adverbials the verb goes first, then everything else - that's why it's not "there are" - that only works when the adverbial is at the beginning of the sentence.

Teeto
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