Three Domains of There and its Subjectification

This paper presents a comprehensive description of There from the perspective of Three Conceptual Domains as put forward in Sweetser (1990), and then analyzes its objective-subjective continuum involved in the three domains.The general function of There be construction is to indicate the existence of a new entity/concept, which is materialized in the three domains as "real-world existence" "epistemic existence" and "speech-act existence".The three existences manifest the evolution of there from objective to subjective axis.The subjectified There features speaker involvement, the function of grounding and "leftward movement".This is an effective indication of the unified unidirectionality in both semantic evolvement and syntactic change.