# Is apo koinou construction possible in English?



## cheshire

1 It was John  broke the glass.
2 All you have to _do_ is go to the theater.

If 1 is a case of apo koinou construction in English, then what about 2? Is it apo koinou, too?
My second question is, can we repalce do with other verbs and maintain the same construction? It seems like only "do" allows for such construction.


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## coiffe

I'm not sure what you're intending by describing something as "apo koinou." Do you mean that the first sentence is heard commonly in an English dialect? Yes it is, but it's not correct. As I said in a different post, you should learn the rules and speak correct English first. Then if you want to write dialogue of the sort that Flannery O'Connor wrote, with characters from the southeastern United States who would say "It was John broke the syntax," then you've earned the right to do so. But my view is that you shouldn't consider speaking like this until you first master the rules.

The rule is that you can't suppress the relative pronoun "who" in this construction. It should be:

"It was John who broke the glass."

Your second sentence is fine.


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## cheshire

About 2, is it only fine with "do"?


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## coiffe

What other word/meaning were you considering? But roughly speaking, yes, you could use other verbs. I say roughly because other verbs might require some sentence modifications.


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## cheshire

3 All you have to go is the Central Park.
4 All you have to go are the Hyden Park, Bishops Par, and Pablo Park.
5. All you have to go is to the Central Park.
6. All you have to kick is this ball.
7. All you have to polish is this bowl.

Please tell me which sentences are acceptable?


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## coiffe

#6 and #7 are correct.

Is this homework?


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## cheshire

Why are 3, 4 and 5 wrong? Or did you just skip them?


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## coiffe

cheshire said:


> Why are 3, 4 and 5 wrong? Or did you just skip them?



I skipped them because they're wrong.

Is this homework?


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## cheshire

No.
Could you explain why and how 3,4 and 5 are wrong, though they are quite similar in construction to 6 and 7?


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## winklepicker

No. *Apo koinou* is not commonly used in connection with modern English. If you Google it you will find that references to _apo koinou_ tend to be to do with Old English (spoken from the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 12th century), Greek, or other old languages.
Please note also, cheshire, that (like me till I researched it!) many native speakers will have no idea what _apo koinou_ means. I hope you'll forgive my saying that judging by your posts on the subject, neither do you!

"Surrealism was not invented by the surrealists. It is an immemorial component of all poetry. Syntactic ambivalence was well-known to Greek rhetoricians. They had a name for it: apo koinou, "belonging to both," a common denominator. The Greek were masters of Sybilline ambiguity in the augurial response at Delphi and other sanctuaries."

Source.


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## coiffe

winklepicker said:


> No. *Apo koinou* is not commonly used in connection with modern English. If you Google it you will find that references to _apo koinou_ tend to be to do with Old English (spoken from the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 12th century), Greek, or other old languages.
> Please note also, cheshire, that (like me till I researched it!) many native speakers will have no idea what _apo koinou_ means. I hope you'll forgive my saying that judging by your posts on the subject, neither do you!
> 
> "Surrealism was not invented by the surrealists. It is an immemorial component of all poetry. Syntactic ambivalence was well-known to Greek rhetoricians. They had a name for it: apo koinou, "belonging to both," a common denominator. The Greek were masters of Sybilline ambiguity in the augurial response at Delphi and other sanctuaries."
> 
> Source.



Thanks, Winklepicker, for this. I also thought cheshire didn't know what it meant, but I thought that if you just run with the Greek, it could almost be applicable. I didn't know the classical definition, that you gave, but I did know what the Greek words mean, since I've had a smattering of Greek. _Koine_ or _koinos_ is another word for _dialektos, _and if I remember my Greek, _apo_ just means "from". I had heard _koine_ used before but not in the context of Greek rhetoric ... rather in the context of Biblical interpretation -- in particular, in reference to Greek and Aramaic expressions from the New Testament.

I suppose cheshire had a textbook that somehow glossed the differences and used this phrase not in the more correct context of Greek rhetoric, but just to say, "Do you find this usage ('It was John broke the glass') in dialectical English?" I was moving forward from that supposition. Doesn't it seem that was how he was using it? It certainly is true that this construction without the relative pronoun is very common in, for example, the southeastern United States. Not sure how it's used in the UK.


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## LV4-26

cheshire said:


> 1 It was John  broke the glass.
> 2 All you have to _do_ is go to the theater.
> 
> If 1 is a case of apo koinou construction in English, then what about 2? Is it apo koinou, too?
> My second question is, can we repalce do with other verbs and maintain the same construction? It seems like only "do" allows for such construction.


Your question(s) is/are not at all clear, cheshire. You seem to be comparing apples and oranges.

1.It was John  broke the glass.
True, a sentence like "_there was a man lived in a churchyard_" is quoted somewhere as a possible example of "apo koinou", on the ground that the noun _John_ seems to "serve as both the object (??) (a predicate nominative, actually) of one verb and the subject of the next".
Note that that sentence seems to be about 4 centuries old, though.

In reality, your sample sentence 1. hasn't got much to do with _apo  koinou_, whatever that could mean in contemporary English.
It just results from a faulty generalization of the relative pronoun omission, which is normally restricted to object pronouns (_the pipe that I'm smoking_ ---> _the pipe I'm smoking_);i.e. not normally accepted in the case of subject pronouns. (_your example_ #1).
However, as has been said already, this kind of sentence can be heard in some places.

2.All you have to _do_ is go to the theater.
I'm not sure how that sentence can be compared to the former. No missing relative pronoun here.
Is there anything missing? What alternative should that structure be opposed to?
Without any more details, I can only suspect that you were thinking of the _"all you have to do is *to* go/all you have to do is go_" opposition.
In this case I'll refer you to other threads on the same subject. Just type "all you have to do" in the search box. I think there are at least 2 in the EO forum.


3.


> 3 All you have to go is the Central Park.
> 4 All you have to go are the Hyden Park, Bishops Par, and Pablo Park.
> 5. All you have to go is to the Central Park.
> 6. All you have to kick is this ball.
> 7. All you have to polish is this bowl.


You can kick a ball, you can polish a bowl. That's why coiffe told you that #6 and #7 are correct.

But you can't go Central Park, etc....You can only go *to* Central Park, etc...
Therefore #3 and #4 are wrong.

#5, though containing _to_,  is not correct either because of word order.
5a. _All you have to go to is Central Park_
would be a little better but I wouldn't recommend it either as it sounds fairly inelegant.

Above all, be aware that the above sentences are very different from #2.
(2) all  you have to do is + [*Verb*]
(3-7) all you have to [go/kick/polish] is + [*Noun Phrase*]
Therefore, once again, I think you're comparing apples with oranges. Either that or you didn't make yourself clear at all.


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## coiffe

LV4-26, thanks for that link. Now I understand that my interpretation of the Greek phrase was utterly wrong. I think the real meaning is rather interesting (two independent, distinct synctactical units sharing a single word). It seems now, from all this, the usage in some areas (It was John broke the glass) is a holdover from Elizabethan times, rather than a degeneration of modern usage.


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## cheshire

I realized that 6 and 7 are bad examples. I'm really sorry.

(8) All you have to *accomplish* is *master* English before we moved to Australia.​


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## Dimcl

cheshire said:


> I realized that 6 and 7 are bad examples. I'm really sorry.
> 
> (8) All you have to accomplish is *to *master English before we moved *move* to Australia.​


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## mrbilal87

cheshire said:


> I realized that 6 and 7 are bad examples. I'm really sorry.
> 
> (8) All you have to *accomplish* is *master* English before we moved to Australia.​


 
Since "accomplish" and "master" are so close in meaning, this is one case where I would actually replace "accomplish" with "do."

All you have to *do* is master English before we *move *to Australia.


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## cheshire

Thank you very much! 
Is this sentence ever possible without "do" in the parenthesis?
If other verbs comes there, you have to choose to-infinitive, right?
All you have to ( ) is...[infinitive verb].


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## mrbilal87

Actually, not quite. In this type of sentences, you shouldn't use a to-infinitive.

For example:
_All you have to do is eat your food._
_All you have to do is sit down and enjoy the show._
_All you have to do is be there._
_All you have to do is talk to her._

Cheers!


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## cheshire

I know if "do" comes there, you should not choose a to-infinitive.
My question is, whether other verbs come there, you should use a to-infinitive or not.


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## LV4-26

I'm not sure about the answer. All I can do to help here is, maybe, clarify your question, as I understand it. Please correct me, if necessary.

Since this structure
all you have to *do* is.....
allows for the use of the bare infinitive after "is"....

...What if _do_ is replaced by one of its *synonyms*? _Accomplish_, for instance.
Can we still use a bare infinitive (i.e. without "_to_")?

Dimcl seems to think to the contrary


> (8) All you have to accomplish is *to *master English before we *move* to Australia.


I also think that structure is "_do_-specific", so to say.


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## winklepicker

> All you have to accomplish is *to* master English before we move to Australia.


Don't book your passage: I'm a native speaker, and I haven't mastered it yet.  
In BE (my take on it anyway) it is wrong - or at the very least, bad style - to leave out the second _to_.


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## cheshire

All I have to say now is to thank everybody who have helped me here.
All the rest I have to do is thank winkiepicker for making me chuckle.


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## cameron2786

cheshire said:


> 1 It was John broke the glass.
> 2 All you have to _do_ is go to the theater.
> 
> If 1 is a case of apo koinou construction in English, then what about 2? Is it apo koinou, too?
> My second question is, can we replace do with other verbs and maintain the same construction? It seems like only "do" allows for such construction.



I think most people just aren't familiar with what apo koinou is.  The first example you provided is indeed an example of apo koinou.  For those who do not know what apo koinou is, it is a rhetorical _figure of speech--_ in particular, a variety of zeugma--which, for the most part, has become archaic in the English language.  In an apo koinou construction, a word of a phrase joins together two distinct syntactic sentences. And for the record, the etymology of apo koinou comes from the Anciety Greek preposition "apo" (from, off, away) and "koinou" (common).  The word "koinou" is another form of the word "koine," which many of you might recognize from Koine Greek, or "common Greek," the language parts of the New Testament were written in.

So, in the first sentence, you wrote "It was John broke the glass," which combines "It was John" and "John broke the glass."  This is almost a textbook example of apo koinou.  

Of course, as most other people commented, this is ungrammatical and awkward, as it suppresses the relative pronoun "who," i.e., "It was John _who_ broke the glass."  Outside of Renaissance poetry and the occasional political speech, apo koinou is avoided in English because of its awkwardness.  Perhaps the only place where you will see it openly and consciously being used in contemporary discourse is in postcolonial poetry or literature.  For example, the Caribbean-American poet Audre Lorde uses the construction in her poetry to emphasize the relationship between linguistic suppression and linguistic jointing. That being said, you see apo koinou more often in Ancient Greek, Latin, Old English, French, and even Anglo-Irish English than you do in Standard English.  If you ever study Old English or Medieval English literature, however, it's almost impossible _not_ to come into contact with it.


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## Loob

Hello cameron - welcome to the forums

I'm not sure *apo koinou* (a term I'd never come across before today!) is quite as archaic as you suggest. This site quotes a definition taken from _The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar_


> apo koinou (Pronounced /ˈæpəʊ ˈkɔɪnuː/.) Applied to a construction consisting of two clauses which—unusually—have a word or phrase that is syntactically shared.


 and gives an example from the same source: _There's a man outside wants to see you._

I'm pretty sure I could hear that exact sentence - or something very similar - almost every day in my local pub


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## GreenWhiteBlue

And let's not forget the famous last line of_ King Kong_:" 'twas Beauty killed the beast!"


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## cameron2786

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> And let's not forget the famous last line of_ King Kong_:" 'twas Beauty killed the beast!"



Interesting!  I completely misread this at first.


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## cameron2786

Loob said:


> Hello cameron - welcome to the forums
> 
> I'm not sure *apo koinou* (a term I'd never come across before today!) is quite as archaic as you suggest. quotes a definition taken from _The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar_  and gives an example from the same source: _There's a man outside wants to see you._
> 
> I'm pretty sure I could hear that exact sentence - or something very similar - almost every day in my local pub



Interesting!  I'm from Northeastern United States, and we generally don't hear apo koinou used very frequently.  I know that it is still in use in Anglo-Irish English (also called Hiberno-English) and other hybrid languages, though I'd figure it's a dying rhetorical scheme there as well. There's also debate as to whether apo koinou in Anglo-Irish English is intentional--remember that apo koinou is a rhetorical scheme, which implies its user has at least a superifical understanding of its mechanics--or if, when it appears in Irish utterences, it is a result of the underlying Irish syntax burried in modern Anglo-Irish English.


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## Loob

Well, as far as I know, I have not a drop of Irish blood in me: Welsh by the bucketful, and even the odd drop of Spanish (or was it Portuguese?)

But I certainly find myself occasionally saying things like _There's someone wants to speak to you on the phone..._


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## panjandrum

There's nothing unusual about "It was John broke the glass," is there?

There's a guy works down the chipshop swears he's Elvis.

There is a boy in this forum I think is cute. (Ellipsis of "who")


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## cuchuflete

cameron2786 said:


> Interesting!  I'm from Northeastern United States, and we generally don't hear apo koinou used very frequently.


Welcome to the forums, cameron.  Last I heard Maine was also in the Northeastern U.S., and it is common enough here.  Spend a few minutes listening to the lobstermen or the folks who work the skidders.  They may never have heard the word _rhetoric_, but that doesn't stop them from an economy of words..
.
_________________
This is merely my larval stage. You should see me when I pupate.


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## ewie

I'd never heard of 'apo koinou' until today either ... despite using it regularly


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## se16teddy

The OED translates _apo koinou_ as _in common_. 

In English we have a clever and very useful structure that makes a noun serve as an element of two clauses at the same time (in common). We don't usually call it _apo koinou_: we call it a _relative pronoun_. Thus _It was John_ and _John broke the _glass can be united as _It was John who broke the glass._ The term _apo koinou_ is redundant in this context.

Very often in English (especially in informal English - I wouldn't call it "incorrect") the relative pronoun is omitted - hence
_- I know someone you don't. _
- _It was John broke the glass_.

It might be more productive to discuss whether _love you love you dig me_, referred to in LV4-26's link, is _apo koinou_. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102436363


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## Loob

There's a difference, teddy.

I'm pretty sure The Queen would happily omit an object relative pronoun, as in _I know someone you don't._

I think it's rather unlikely, though, that she would omit a subject relative pronoun, except in constructions such as the one in panj's link: _There is a boy in this forum I think is cute._

No doubt someone who knows her well will come along and tell me I'm wrong


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## LV4-26

ewie said:


> I'd never heard of 'apo koinou' until today either ... despite using it regularly


Nor had I. I thought it was a Japanese meal or something _(there ain't nothing beats a good apo koinou for breakfast)_

I wonder if there are other kinds of apo koinou in English. I mean, besides subject relative pronoun omission.


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## Pedro y La Torre

cameron2786 said:


> I know that it is still in use in Anglo-Irish English (also called Hiberno-English) and other hybrid languages, though I'd figure it's a dying rhetorical scheme there as well.



Hiberno-English is not a "hybrid" language, it's a dialect of English which has been influenced by various sources, the Irish language amongst them.

I must say "_it was John broke the glass_" sounds very strange to me, perhaps there are some who would say it, but I certainly wouldn't.


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## entangledbank

The other construction you could call _apo koinou_ is what (some) syntacticians call ECM, exceptional case marking:

I saw the bomb explode.
I helped Mary pack.

There's an object of the matrix clause that's also functioning as, or coreferential/co-indexed with, the subject of the embedded clause, depending on your theoretical slant. Of course in these cases the embedded clause can't be turned into a main clause unchanged, so I don't know whether these count, never having heard of _apo koinou_.

Most linguists would analyse the relative clauses as not actually sharing a word. There's the actual word in the matrix clause, then there's a silent element (trace, gap, invisible pink pronoun, again depending on your theoretical bent) in the embedded clause, co-indexed with the word. Each of them satisfies its own grammatical relations in its own clause.

There's a guy_i_ [I saw ___i_ in the chip shop]
There's a guy_i_ [___i_ swears he's Elvis]


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## ewie

entangledbank said:


> invisible pink pronoun


Ooh I like the sound of that, TangBank ~ where can I see one in action?


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## LV4-26

_She told me a story that she knew was true._
_I'm looking for a house (that) I think is in the neighbourhood._
These (correct) examples use a fairly common sentence structure (I think some call them "pushdown" relative clauses).

I wonder if it could be considered apo koinou.


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## se16teddy

Loob said:


> There's a difference, teddy.


Yes, some speakers drop the relative pronoun where other speakers do not, notably where the relative pronoun is the subject of the relative clause. But I don't see what bearing that has on the issue of whether dropping the relative pronoun can or should be catagorized as _apo koinou_.


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## Forero

cheshire said:


> 1 It was John  broke the glass.
> 2 All you have to _do_ is go to the theater.
> 
> If 1 is a case of apo koinou construction in English, then what about 2? Is it apo koinou, too?
> My second question is, can we repalce do with other verbs and maintain the same construction? It seems like only "do" allows for such construction.


Hi, Cheshire. I'm glad to see you back in the forums.

About the only example I know of in English of _apo koinou_ is a sentence from Shakespeare that has always seemed wrong to me: "A rose is a rose is a rose."

Sentence 1 is a cleft sentence. Notice that an interrogative adverb becomes an omittable _that_ in a cleft sentence:

_How do we receive? By giving._ [Question and answer]
_ How we receive is by giving._ [Pseudo cleft sentence requiring _how_]
_It is by giving _(_that_)_ we receive._ [Cleft sentence - _how_ reduced to omittable _that_]

The same thing happens to interrogative _who_:

_Who broke the glass? John._ [Question and answer]
_ Who broke the glass was John._ [Pseudo cleft sentence requiring _who_]
_ It was John _(_that_) _broke the glass. _[Cleft sentence - _who_ reduced to omittable _that_]

Notice that the dummy subject "it" and the real subject, the (reduced) interrogative clause "(who/that) broke the glass" are both taken to be singular. This leads to interesting sentences like the following:
_
What are most crucial? Clear explanations._ [Question and answer]
_ What are most crucial is clear explanations._ [Pseudo cleft sentence with _what_]
_ It is clear explanations _(_that_)_ are most crucial._ [Cleft sentence - _what_ reduced to omittable _that_]

The verb in the interrogative part agrees with the answer part, but the interrogative clause itself is singular and can be anticipated using _it_.

Things get really interesting in the case of a first person answer to subjective _who_:

_Who are responsible when our child breaks a glass? My wife and I.
Who are responsible when our child breaks a glass is my wife and I.
It is my wife and I _(_that_) _are responsible when our child breaks a glass.
_
_ Who is watching the child? __Me__._ [Question and answer]
_ Who is watching the child is me__._ [Pseudo cleft sentence]
_It is me __that_ _is watching the child._ [Cleft sentence, colloquial version]

In the colloquial version, the answer is not a subject so the second verb does not agree with it but with _that_. A formal version of the answer would be "I" or "I am", but the pseudo cleft sentence seems impossible:

_Who is watching the child? I_ (_am_)_._ [Question and formal answer]
_Who is watching the child is I._ [Is one of these _is_es supposed to agree with _I_?]
_Who is watching the child I am. _[Is this what happens to the _am_?]
_Who am watching the child is I. _[Or is this?]

The formal version, I think, requires an _am_ if it has a second verb at all:

_It is I _(_that_) _am watching the child._ [Cleft sentence based on the last "pseudo cleft version" above]
_It is I _(_who__ am_)_ watching the child._ [Sentence with a relative clause used as a substitute for the problematic cleft sentence]

Sentence 2 is a pseudo cleft sentence:

_Where does he go? To the theater._ [Question and answer]
_Where he goes is to the theater._ [Pseudo cleft sentence]

_How dare he do that? Out of sheer effrontery._ [Question and answer]
_ How he dare do that is out of sheer effrontery._ [Pseudo cleft sentence]

_What does he do? Go_(_es_)_ to the theater._ [Question and answer]
_What he does is go to the theater._ [Pseudo cleft sentence]

_What did we do? Go_/_Went to the theater._ [Question and answer]
_What we did is went to the theater._ [Pseudo cleft sentence]
_What we did was go to the theater._ [Another version]

The verb _do_ is unique in that "do <something>" stands in for any verb and its complement(s). Eating is doing something, going to the theater is doing something, technically even being oneself is doing something. A double _do_ as in "did we do <something>" or a conjugated form of "do <something>" equates to a verb plus complement(s) either in infinitive form or conjugated for the same person, number, tense, and mood as the leading _do_ form.

I hope this makes sense. I find it complicated but intriguing.


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## hamlet

I have a question regarding this construction. Some people say it's informal or even ungrammatical or uneducated. So what effect was Hemingway trying to achieve when he wrote:_ "There was no breeze came through the door" _or_ "There was a door led into the kitchen"_? Why would a modern writer use that construction?


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## velisarius

hamlet said:


> I have a question regarding this construction. Some people say it's informal or even ungrammatical or uneducated. So what effect was Hemingway trying to achieve when he wrote:_ "There was no breeze came through the door" _or_ "There was a door led into the kitchen"_? Why would a modern writer use that construction?



I don't know whether that's an "apo koinou" construction, but it sounds like normal, colloquial, non-standard English to me.

See also this thread:
There is a man wants to leave.

Edit: I think it's an example of this phenomenon:
Subject contact relatives  | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America


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## Hermione Golightly

I googled 'There was a door led into the kitchen' and found numerous entries. I rather think it's not particularly old- fashioned, but using it might be regional or a style choice. It sounds poetic or a story telling device.
In some examples, I'd use the present participle or a relative clause, instead. (I suppose it is the simple past, not a past participle.)


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## hamlet

Hermione Golightly said:


> I rather think it's not particularly old- fashioned, but using it might be regional or a style choice. It sounds poetic or a story telling device.


I find it interesting that Velisarius says it's colloquial and you say it sounds poetic. Could you expound on what kind of story telling device you're thinking of?


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## Myridon

hamlet said:


> Hemingway trying to achieve when he wrote:_ "There was no breeze came through the door" _or_ "There was a door led into the kitchen"_? Why would a *modern *writer use that construction?


The first is from "A Canary for One" (*1927*).  The other is from "The Torrents of Spring" (*1926*). Both works are 90 years old.  It's hard for us to say whether this is valid or common dialect at the time.

Read the first few paragraphs of "A Canary for One" and it seems that he actually was going for an effect with a long series of "there was"/"it was" constructions.
Reading Club: A Canary for One by Ernest Hemingway | Анлийский язык по Skype


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## hamlet

Myridon said:


> Read the first few paragraphs of "A Canary for One" and it seems that he actually was going for an effect with a long series of "there was"/"it was" constructions.
> Reading Club: A Canary for One by Ernest Hemingway | Анлийский язык по Skype


Maybe, though I don't really see it. It seems no different to me from any other story's beginning, which obviously would call for descriptive constructions such as "there is" and "it is"


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## Cenzontle

> There's a guy works down the chipshop swears he's Elvis.
> 
> There is a boy in this forum I think is cute. (Ellipsis of "who")


Interesting pair of examples, panjandrum (#29).
The second one sounds more "standard" to my ear, although both are omitting "who".  Why is that?
Here's my conjecture:
In the first one the omitted "who" (twice!) is clearly the *subject* of its relative clause ("who works", "who swears").
In the second one, the omitted "who" is again the subject ("a boy *who*—I think—*is* cute"), but you have to see "I think" as parenthetical in order to realize it.
With "I think" being so clearly a subject-and-its-verb, we get the impression that "who" is *not* a subject, and thus is omittable omissible fit to omit.


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## PaulQ

The Wikipedia article: Apo koinou construction - Wikipedia is very clear (but not quite as good as entangledbanks' #36) and gives

_"There was *no breeze* came through the door"._ (E. Hemingway)
_"There was *a door* led into the kitchen"._ (E. Hemingway)
_"This is *the sword* killed him."_ (Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics)
as examples.


_"There was *no breeze* came through the door"._ = There was no breeze + no breeze came through the door". The two clauses are joined by that, which is omitted, and then the sentence is resolved to "There was no breeze came through the door"
etc.
etc.
It is still current as a construction.


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## Forero

panjandrum said:


> There is a boy in this forum I think is cute. (Ellipsis of "who")





Cenzontle said:


> ...Here's my conjecture:
> ... the omitted "who" is again the subject ("a boy *who*—I think—*is* cute"), but you have to see "I think" as parenthetical in order to realize it.
> With "I think" being so clearly a subject-and-its-verb, we get the impression that "who" is *not* a subject, and thus is omittable omissible fit to omit.


For me, this "I think" is not parenthetical, and pretending it is confuses the issue.

If it were parenthetical, it would need to be set off by commas or some other punctuation: "There is a boy in this forum who, I think, is cute."

If we start with "He, I think, is cute", "I think" is parenthetical, we can replace "he" with "who", and we get "who, I think, is cute." I would not normally omit the "who" from something like "I saw a boy who, I think, is cute."

But if we start with "I think (that) he is cute", in which "I think" is not parenthetical, we have to change "he" to "who" and move it to the front: "who I think (that?) is cute." (The "that", normally optional, now has to be omitted to keep it from seeming to be the subject of "is".) It is because the "who" had to be moved in front of another subject that it can be omitted from something like "I saw a boy (who) I think is cute" without the antecedent/referent ("boy") appearing to become a subject (as in "I saw a boy is cute" = "I saw that a boy is cute").

I would prefer a "who" in "There is a boy in this forum who I think is cute" just to be clear it is the boy, not the forum, that I think is cute.


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## hamlet

PaulQ said:


> ...
> It is still current as a construction.


But is it standard English?


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## velisarius

Subject contact relatives aren't used in "standard" English, but they're not uncommon in speech, in certain constructions:

For example:
_There's a man comes every Friday to do the garden. _

For dialect usage, see:
Subject contact relatives  | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America


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## Hermione Golightly

Could you please give some examples? Reading somewhat hastily through the thread a variety of contexts appears.
If you mean something colloquial like "There's a nurse in that hospital (who) should have her licence taken away", I'd say it's alive and kicking.


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## hamlet

velisarius said:


> For dialect usage, see:
> Subject contact relatives  | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America


Thanks, very informative.


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