Some people think there are dummy elements, especially those who look at the result of sentential interpretation (typically formal semanticists), and some people think there aren't, generally those who look at the interpretation of words in context (typically functional semanticist and pragmatic specialists). Both are right because words can be assumed to have some sort of meaning no matter how abstract, yet they do not necessarily steer the meaning of the sentence greatly in some case. The way to demonstrate the former is the good old contrast and compare method. "There" must have some sort of meaning that explains its difference with other abstract pronouns like say "here" and "it" - 'There's a man at the door' isn't quite 'It's a man at the door' or 'Here is a man at the door (who ...)'. Here as elsewhere, it's a matter of perspective, and of the kind of questions you want to ask and answer

Diachronically, most said elements did have a meaning. At some point they underwent grammaticalization. The process does not occur uniformly across all elements but on a per-item basis. Depending on which specific elements you want to examine some, little or none of their original semantics may survive.

Thanks for your answer....

Asterios Chardalias.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Alwan & readers,

I suspect that this question would go much better if you would provide some specific examples of what you have in mind. (Perhaps, something like "It is raining.")

My inclination is to distinguish between what is typically not interpreted (which may be what you have in mind), and what can or cannot be interpreted.

H.G. Callaway

"There" in "there is" is regarded as a dummy subject. If I say "There is a man at the door" it is claimed that the real subject is "a man"; hence the sentence just means "a man is at the door". However, I would argue that the boldfaced segments in "there is a __ at the door" and "a __ is at the door" play the same role (namely, existential quantification) irrespective of what you consider the real grammatical subject to be. Moreover, I would also argue, if they play exactly the same role they must have the same status as regards semantic meaning.

Thank you Dr. H.G. Callaway...

Thank you Dr. Karl Pfeifer...

In spite of losing their lexical meaning, dummy subjects affect the meaning of their contexts as a whole.

Dears...I would like to valid this practically.

And thanks again for your answers.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Pfeifer & readers,

I think you present an interesting way of looking at the phrase, "There is ...",

Notice, too that the "there" of "There is a man at the door" might also be interpreted as a quasi-indexical item ranging over locations --as though one might want to point in some direction or other.

One might say the ordinary-language sentence is too abstract to interpret in isolation, uniformly--as though the same lexical and syntactic sequence always had precisely the same meaning.

H.G. Callaway

Some people think there are dummy elements, especially those who look at the result of sentential interpretation (typically formal semanticists), and some people think there aren't, generally those who look at the interpretation of words in context (typically functional semanticist and pragmatic specialists). Both are right because words can be assumed to have some sort of meaning no matter how abstract, yet they do not necessarily steer the meaning of the sentence greatly in some case. The way to demonstrate the former is the good old contrast and compare method. "There" must have some sort of meaning that explains its difference with other abstract pronouns like say "here" and "it" - 'There's a man at the door' isn't quite 'It's a man at the door' or 'Here is a man at the door (who ...)'. Here as elsewhere, it's a matter of perspective, and of the kind of questions you want to ask and answer

Thanks a lot for your explanation Dr. Pierre larrivée .

Thanks a lot for your explanation Mr. Jean-Marie Merle

"Hello, it's me..." on the telephone. "Hallo, c'est moi..." — /It/ or its equivalents is in fact one of the most important words in language(s). Who is it? Me. C'est qui? Moi. It these examples, our dummy ∂ connects to the presupposed interrogative term and prepares a filling. From /?/ to /∂/ to X. Language often has to do with the unknown (what, who, where, when...) and has to be able to create local slots that we can fill if we have information. So the 'empty' words are unfilled local slots, but they refer to speakers' or hearers' interrogative attention to corresponding unknown entities in the world. No word is empty, unless the world is empty — but it is not empty, just often unknown. — Could you follow this explanation?

Thanks a lot for your explanation Dr. Per Aage Brandt. Can you explain the following foe me actually it is exciting issue (No word is empty, unless the world is empty — but it is not empty, just often unknown.)

Well, Zainab, what happens when we wonder about "something"? We try to focus our attention on something we don't know, but how can we do that? Language is full of trick to help us do it. Questions, words like 'thing', 'something', and the demonstratives, by which we then are "targeting" things (Leonard Talmy's expression in his last book), pointing at them and often asking questions about the "X", the thingamabob we don't know. When I think about something I don't understand, I mentally see a local fog waiting to be cleared. But just because I see a fog and I don't see anything clearly, it does not mean that there is nothing, the spot is not empty, it is just unknown — which is challenging to the mind; so language has a lot to offer to keep us focused on things we don't know or don't understand. We might call the experience of the mental fog a 'mystery'. — So for example, what is it that lets brains create minds? That is some question, right? What is IT that...? Some people will answer that since we cannot see it clearly, it does not exist, and they try all sorts of acrobatic moves to explain the problem away in a hurry. The truth is that we simply don't know; but we should keep wondering about IT.

First we have to identify what dummy means first, because "dummy' does not necessarily mean 'delusory'. The moment we identify it, then identifying its elements will be easy.

I also use dummy markers for undfilled slots in grammar, for example the slot for determiner of nouns in languages that have articles and pronominal fillers, but sometimes, for example to mark generic meaning, leave the slot unfilled, or with a ∆ or an Ø, meaning that here is a zero-article filling. It is zero but still semantically significant. — "Do you eat horse?" NP = ∆^N .

Everything in syntax has a semantic import. Signifiers have signifieds. We just need to grasp them.

Look at what is called ḍamīr aš-šaʾn in Arabic; it is also called dummy pronoun. Is it devoid of semantic implications?

"It is possible that X" -> it(X) is possible that X -> it(=X) is possible. So IT means that an X is on its way in the sentence.

In my simple example, or in similar ones, like: "it happens that X", the pronoun is a cataphor. Anaphors and cataphors refer to the meaning of an X in the neighborhood. This is part of what we call the semantics of syntax. Do not believe that syntax is a pure 'mechanics', as some say; if so, it would be a semio-mechanics, at least. — A different case: "what I mean is that X". That's a so-called cleft sentence. The 'dummy' (interrogative pronoun) is "what", which can be both ana- and cataphor, cf. "That is what I mean". As to 'that', by the way, check out Leonard Talmy's The Targeting System of Language (2017).