Is "There danced a man in the hall" a grammatical alternative to "A man danced in the hall"? What verbs are possible here?

Question

Does the following sentence sound grammatical to you?

There danced a man in the hall

With the meaning: A man danced in the hall.

And compare it with

There died a man in the hall

Which one sounds more grammatical? Focus on the verb distinction between dance and die please.

It is grammatical, but it doesn't sound idiomatic or natural in everyday speech. — Kate Bunting, Nov 30 '23 at 09:07
Does this answer your question? Can you explain the sentence structure 'In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit'? Why put the verb before the subject? John Lawler's answer at the duplicate includes dance as one of the verbs licensing there-insertion. But being licensed as grammatical doesn't guarantee acceptability; outside of poetry/other suitable literature, this contravenes Orwell's Sixth Law (paraphrasing, avoid anything outlandish except for effect). — Edwin Ashworth, Nov 30 '23 at 12:35
... ('In the hall there danced a man' and 'There danced a man in the hall' are both irregular but non-ungrammatical sentence orders, the latter even more firmly encamped in the literary domain.) — Edwin Ashworth, Nov 30 '23 at 12:38
There lives/lived a man or woman. This is a literary construct: ludwig.guru/s/there+lived+a+man There lived an x. — Lambie, Nov 30 '23 at 18:02
If the underlying question is whether "There died a man in the hall" or "In the hall there died a man" is semantically odd, yes, it is, and it has to do with the "existence-affirming" aspect of this particular use of "there", what in the German might be called its "Dasein". Although we could say "In the war there died a myriad" and "In the box there was nothing" or even "In the hall there died two men", we cannot say "In the hall there vanished a leprechaun" or "In the hall there died a man" without semantic dissonance. — TimR, Dec 01 '23 at 20:47

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 30 '23 at 12:08

5

You are asking the wrong question. A sentence can be grammatically correct without being something that people would say in real life, or even without making sense.

There is nothing grammatically wrong with your sentence. Traditional stories often begin with sentences like "Once there lived an old woman who had three daughters." But nobody would say "There danced a man..." in everyday conversation.

answered Nov 30 '23 at 12:08

Kate Bunting

25,480

What part of the question is wrong? I am not interested in whether people still use such forms. I just wanted to know whether it sounds ok or not – Koray Nedim Özdemir Nov 30 '23 at 15:15
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@KorayNedimÖzdemir Grammaticality isn't a perfect yes or no situation. If you explicitly extract rules from lots of English, 'there danced a man' follows the rules (but a less frequent alternative rule), but it sounds a little odd. That is, between 'not ok' and 'ok', it is more 'ok' than not, but maybe only a little more than halfway towards ok. – Mitch Nov 30 '23 at 15:31
I know . I wasn't asking for a perfect yes no answer anyways. Thank you for this detailed answer. – Koray Nedim Özdemir Nov 30 '23 at 16:22
I said it was 'the wrong question' because I thought you really wanted to know whether or not it was a natural thing to say. – Kate Bunting Nov 30 '23 at 18:47

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '23 at 08:24

2

It sounds archaic. It's the same pattern as "there once lived a man..." but we don't really use this anymore, with the exception of "there was" or "there is."

answered Nov 30 '23 at 08:24

Iris Young

29
1

1

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Community Nov 30 '23 at 08:25

Peter Shor · Answer 3 · 2023-11-30T16:13:35.217

The function of there in this kind of sentence is to introduce a new topic. Because of this, it is usually followed by a form of the verb to be, but looking at Google Ngrams, it's also often followed by verbs like came, stood, lived, which are natural when introducing a new subject.

So Googling, you can find sentences like:

Across the street an arc-lamp shed its cold rays. And into its glare there strode a man draped in a yellow mackintosh.

However, people don't usually dance onto the scene, so there danced a man would be a very unusual sentence in English, and it sounds quite odd. If you want to formulate this sentence with there, it would be much more idiomatic to say

There was a man dancing in the hall,

and if this man has not been mentioned before in the narrative, this is an idiomatic way to phrase it.

And to answer your other question,

There died a man in the hall,

sounds equally odd.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 30 '23 at 19:35

The Once there [was/were] (in the past tense, traditionally used for storytelling) and There [is/are] (present tense, used to state that things exist) structures are pretty common and the use of There in these contexts is mostly for structure instead of literal meaning.

What you have written is not: There [verb] [subject] directly uses There in a literal sense. It is a reordering of the usual [Subject] [verb] there and the unusual reordering indicates strong emphasis and importance. This would be used for example in a public speech or a poem, or the opening line of a novel. The unusual sentence construction is used to draw attention.

Is "There danced a man in the hall" a grammatical alternative to "A man danced in the hall"? What verbs are possible here?

4 Answers4