1

What is the difference between:

Here he comes!

and

Here comes the bus!

Why in the first sentence "comes" is placed after the subject "he", but in 2nd one before the subject "the bus"?

Araucaria - Him
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Manish Seemawat
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  • Technically, you could say "here come he" and "here the bus comes", but they sound awkward in English. I'd guess that it just comes down to convention. From a quick mental search, it does seem to depend on whether you are using pronouns or nouns. – ralph.m Dec 07 '15 at 07:23
  • @ralph.m Yes, you're right! For why, see my post below. – Araucaria - Him Dec 07 '15 at 17:29

1 Answers1

1
  1. Here he comes.
  2. Here comes the bus.

Notice that both of these constructions use non-canonical (atypical) phrase order. The difference between the two depends on the information status of he and the bus. We don't like to put things that we have already been talking about at the end of the sentence. The end of the sentence is where we expect to find new, exciting or important information that we haven't been talking about.

This is why we don't like to put he at the end of sentence (1). The fact that we are using he and not a name shows that we have probably been talking about this man already. If we put a pronoun like this at the end of the sentence, it won't be good:

  • *Here comes he! (wrong)

But if we haven't been talking about this person so far in our conversation then we can easily put the Subject at the end of the sentence:

  • Here comes Bob!

Notice in sentence (2) that the sentence is felicitous if we haven't just been talking about the bus:

A: What are you doing tomorrow night?

B: I'm going to see Barbara at the ... Hold that question. Here comes the bus!

But if we have been talking about the bus the sentence won't work well at all:

A: I don't think the bus is ever going to arrive.

B: Here comes the bus. (weird)

The second sentence above will only be felicitous if we think that B wasn't really listening to A's conversation. Notice that if we use the same structure as in sentence (1) and replace the bus with the pronoun it, the sentence will work much better:

A: I don't think the bus is ever going to arrive.

B: Here it comes! Wasn't long after all.

Here the old information representing the bus doesn't appear at the end where we expect new, informative elements.

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