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In behind the house was an old culvert, is behind the house the subject of was, or is it an adjunct? I had it down as an adjunct but am changing my mind.

If it's an adjunct, what rule allows us to elide there or otherwise accounts for the lack of subject?

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    What lack of subject do you mean? an old culvert is the subject of that sentence. – oerkelens Jun 24 '19 at 06:59
  • @oerkelens: It kind of seems like that. At the same time, if we assume that question tags have to have a pronoun that corresponds to the subject of the main sentence (I'm not sure if that's true), then it seems hard to explain why "Behind the house was an old culvert, was there?" seems OK (to me at least!) whereas *"Behind the house was an old culvert, was it?" seems completely unacceptable. – herisson Jun 24 '19 at 07:07
  • Araucaria discusses question tags like that in a comment on a related previous question: Why put the verb before the subject? – herisson Jun 24 '19 at 07:11
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    There's no adjunct. Your example has subject-dependent inversion that combines preposing of the PP "behind the house" and postposing of the subject NP "an old culvert". The basic order would be "An old culvert was behind the house", where the PP is clearly a complement, not an adjunct. – BillJ Jun 24 '19 at 07:26
  • So the two question tags are “an old culvert was behind the house, wasn’t it? And behind the house was an old culvert, wasn’t there? – Xanne Jun 24 '19 at 07:31
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    @BillJ: What is your understanding of how question tags relate to the subject of the main clause? Does the inversion alter the form or acceptability of a question tag? Or is a "was it" question tag unacceptable in a sentence like this because of something related to the (non?)specificity of the subject "an old culvert"? (e.g. I think I feel like *"A car drives past this window every minute, doesn't it?" might not be acceptable with a non-specific subject, only with a specific one, where it's the same car every minute) – herisson Jun 24 '19 at 07:43
  • @sumelic I agree with you about a car... but if you consider behind the house was the old culvert (let's say this culvert has already been mentioned), behind the house was the old culvert, was it? is just as weird, so I think these are two separate things. –  Jun 24 '19 at 08:08
  • I think "Behind the house" can only be the subject of "was" if the rest of the sentence contains only adjectives describing the entire area for instance "Behind the house was very untidy" and even then I don't like the structure, I would tend to think of "the house" as the subject and "behind" as a modifying preposition leading to "Behind, the house was very untidy". For me as soon as you introduce a noun into the final phrase as in "Behind the house was a very untidy garden" that noun becomes the subject of the verb. The "culvert" in the OP is such a noun. – BoldBen Jun 24 '19 at 09:15
  • @BoldBen yes, that's exactly the structure I had in mind, where behind the house really means the area behind the house. –  Jun 24 '19 at 09:38
  • I chose a bad example because - as @BillJ and others have pointed out - there is a far better and simpler analysis of my original sentence. I'm not sure the structure I meant to ask about is as limited you say, though. What about behind the house was laid out as a croquet lawn - I gather you wouldn't like that sentence much, but is it wrong? –  Jun 24 '19 at 09:38
  • @Xanne The natural(?)-sounding way to add a tag(-like?) question is something like 'Behind the house was an old culvert. Am I right? / Is that right?' / Is that not so?' You can see why innit = n'est-ce pas is catching on. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 24 '19 at 14:33
  • @sumelic Good point about the subject-specificity requirement. 'A frog is run over every twenty-four hours in Puddlechester. Will it never learn?' – Edwin Ashworth Jun 24 '19 at 14:39
  • Shall I post a proper answer. – BillJ Jul 03 '19 at 07:28
  • @BillJ Sure, go ahead and I'll be happy to accept. –  Jul 03 '19 at 08:32

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