The gerundial construction 'Being There' [Dasein] is the grammatical sleight of hand that has successfully fooled a large section of the academic philosophical establishment, and as far as many are concerned still continues to do so. Why? Why? Because they do not understand the simple nature of gerundial or gerundivial mechanisms - putting it bluntly - they are 'grammatically challenged.' It seems that one is either capable of grasping the way the mind works in this case - or one is not. Ontologically speaking it is a mental test that sorts the Analytical men from the Heideggerian boys.

Look at it this way. If a man is sitting there by the riverbank fishing - it is not the 'sitting there' that is 'sitting there' it is the man.

If Joe likes 'being there' in Franks' Diner, it is not 'being there' who is 'being there' in Frank's Diner it is Joe. Being there is simply an existential modality of Joe. Now this has nothing to do with nominalism or existentialism or any other 'ism' - it is just plain old common sense. 'Being there' in the world is no different to 'being there' in Frank's Diner, in that both gerunds describe aspects of the existential manner in which Frank, as a living thinking object or entity is present in the cosmos.' In fact if Frank found Joe to be collapsed dead over his coffee in his Diner, Joe, [or Joe's dead body] would still be being there in Frank's Diner until the ambulance came and took away the body. What Heidegger does is to craftily introduce Being-There as a stand-in word for 'Human Existence' and human existence doesn't exist - only the individual humans exist as [nearly] everybody knows.

Let's take a closer look at 'Da' or 'THERE.'

Look again the gif of the woman dancing on your computer screen.

"There is an image of a woman dancing on your computer screen."

Here the word 'THERE' is not acting as an adverb of place, nor does it speak of the locative modality of the image, for that is taken care of by the expression

'on your computer screen.'

The 'there' is acting as a pronoun [meaning "it"] for 'image of a woman.' If it were a real woman she could be dancing on the dance-floor or in a field, but there is no doubt as to whose existential modality is being addressed - it is the woman's. Compare the use of the word THERE in the following sentence: "There is an image of a woman dancing on my monitor." In this case the word THERE is not particularly employed to point to the location of the entity, but to ensure that the existential modality of the MONITOR is maintained and sentence-wise is not semantically purloined by the woman's image. In other words the word THERE holds back the semantic handle and curtails the throwing of the modal switch.

Many Indo-European languages employ the word 'THERE' in an attempt to avoid the modal shift tilting the wrong way. Actually in some ways the AITist discovery of the modal shift mechanism and our unlocking of the door to THERE is quite an achievement, for the 'THERE' function has baffled linguists for centuries, and the theory of modalic shifting and in relation to the locative doesn't appear to have occurred to them.

Other languages seem not to be bothered by the problem - although modalic shifting is a danger in any language, and they have all developed stratagems to avoid it happening.

Take for example Sk'op Sotz'leb: The Tzotzil of Zinacantán which I have been studying today:

"Oy krus ta jol vitz." - 'There is a cross on the head of the mountain'. Literally: "Is cross on head mountain. "

"Oy [modal processant] krus'' [extantal imbuant] 'ta jol vitz'. [modal informant.] No THERE word is needed here, for although the word-order seems strange to us [it's a VSO language] It is the same in Russian:

"There is a telephone here" - "Zdyes telefon" - "Here [is] telefone. " In Danish on the other hand: "Der er altid mennesker på Rådhuspladsen" - There are always people on Parliament Square. Plainly in this construction we would be unaware or confused as to whether the existential modality of 'the people' or the 'Parliament Square' was being addressed.

In the early days of AIT one of the most difficult things to work out and explain to critics was the way that the 'there is' feature works in English. Professional linguists and non-linguists alike always seemed to seize upon this mechanism and insist that the phenomenon was only explicable if one accepted the fact that it dealt with and referred to the simple existence of the subject, and not to its existential modality as AIT maintained. The first time I confronted this syntactical conundrum my conclusion was that the THERE word referred directly to the location of the subject, so in a sentence like: "There is a tree in the garden" I considered that the word THERE pointed to the tree's position in the garden. It must be so I thought, for why else choose the word THERE, which normally is an adverb of place, as in: "It is over there in the corner. "

Later I came to accept that the reason for the emplacement of THERE at the head of such sentences with an indefinite subject as: "There is a cockroach on the table" was to nullify the modal switch [to obviate a transfer of existential modality from 'the table' to 'the cockroach'] and not to existentialise the the cockroach's modality at the expense of the table's, and that it was not the 'DUMMY THERE' that all the grammar books tell us.

I have lately come to see that it was not by chance that 'there' was chosen or rather developed as the mythical 'Dummy' word in the first place, because the whole mechanism can be explained as being the result of two syntactical and semantic adjustments contingent upon and necessary to the correct assignment of existential modality to the grammatical constituent about which something is predicated in a sentence - i. e. the subject of the sentence:

(1) Negation of the potential modal shift of indefinite subject sentences.

(2) Locative .

I shall deal with the two subjects separately.

(A) The negation of the potential modal shift of indefinite subject sentences. Why English uses a 'there is' construction with indefinite subjects.

In the sentence: "A fly is in the singer's mouth"we are unsure as to whether the fly's experience is being referred to [as more important part of the communication] or the singer's. This is the reason why English is notorious for fighting shy of using this construction. AIT explains this phenomena by pointing out that the task of the IS word and all its cognates is always to exhibit the existential modality of the subject and never its simple existence or presence which is announced by its name alone.

THE 'BE-WORD' IS NOT NECCESSARY TO ESTABLISH THAT THE SUBJECT EXISTS

In order to specify to whom the existential modality [action or state] inheres between the fly and the singer, the word THERE is employed, thus: "There is a fly in the singer's mouth. " Now we know that the existential modality being referred to is that of the singer's and not the fly - and the modalic switch has been neutralised. "There is a tree in the garden." is a similar sentence where the THERE word establishes quite clearly that the information concerns the state of the garden and not the tree whereas the statement: "A tree is in a garden" or even: "A tree is in the garden" leave us unsure of which way the arrow of the modalic switch is pointing.

(B) Locative .

Let us now examine sentences where no specific location is mentioned. In the sentences that follow there is no location mentioned like 'the garden' or 'the singer's mouth', and it is with these examples that we can see that the selection of the word THERE is no arbitrary choice, as the orthodox grammarians believe with their misconceived notions of the 'dummy there' or the 'empty there' but is there for a purpose.

"There is a man named Bill Jones waiting to see you. "

At first glance it appears that the "there is. " confers existence on the man called Bill Jones until we remember of course that the BE conjugational cluster NEVER does this. If we examine the sentence more closely we begin to realise that we haven't been told WHERE Bill Jones is waiting. In other words his location goes unspecified, so the only thing to do in circumstances of is to employ the word THERE, [which is the opposite of HERE. ] If on the other hand the location of Bill Jones WAS specified in such a sentence as: "A man named Bill Jones is waiting in the drawing room to see you" then there is no need to employ the pleonastic pre-predicational word THERE. There are some more sample sentences below that you can analyse yourself

"There is a policeman outside. " ("Outside WHERE? - Outside the front door.") "There are no more oranges left. " ("WHERE? In the bowl? In Israel? - In the shops"} "There is still some hope left. " ("WHERE? In your heart? - In the minds of the Taliban.")

Interestingly enough from the initial researches it appears that the word THERE is usually always employed in sentences where the action or state of the subject is in the past, for that action can no longer be identified as residing in any current position if it no longer exists. We can say therefore: "There was a storm last night" or even: "There was a storm over Africa last night" but we cannot say: "A storm was last night" and even the expression: "A storm was last night over Africa " presents an awkward potentially ambiguous sentence. In order to generate an unambiguous string we have to ditch the BE word and come up with another construction such as: "A storm settled over Africa last night" and of course this gets us into problems with the modalic switch again because we are unsure whether the existential modality of the storm or Africa is being addressed.

Jud Evans November 1999

Additional Usage Note: The standard rule states that when the pronounthere precedes a verb such as be, seem, or appear, the verb agrees in number with the following grammatical subject: There is a great Italian deli across the street. There are fabulous wildflowers in the hills. There seems to be a blueberry pie cooking in the kitchen. There seem to be a few trees between the green and me. Nonetheless, it is common in speech for the contraction there's to be used when technically a plural verb is called for, as in There's a couple of good reasons for going. The Usage Panel dislikes this construction, however. Seventy-nine percent reject the sentence There's only three things you need to know about this book. But when there's is followed by a compound subject whose first element is singular, the Panel feels differently: 56 percent accept the sentenceIn each of us there's a dreamer and a realist, and an additional 32 percent accept it in informal usage. The Panel is even more accepting of the sentence When you get to the stop light, there's a gas station on the left and a grocery store on the right; 58 percent accept it in formal use, while an additional 37 percent accept it in informal use. Although this usage would seem to violate the rules of subject and verb agreement, the attraction of the verb to the singular noun phrase following it is so strong that it is difficult to avoid the construction entirely.·There may be used as an intensive adjective when placed after a noun preceded by that, but it is considered nonstandard to placethere between that and the noun. Thus that there dress is not an acceptable substitute for that dress there. This here is similarly considered nonstandard.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

Here are some indications as to what the Es is in the expresssion "Es gibt Sein."

Heidegger wrote: "true time appears as the "it" of which we speak when we say: It gives Being."

On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: Unversity of Chicago press, 1972), p. 17 .

As usual Heidegger didn't have a a very clear idea of what he was talking about!

"Es Gibt" and "There is" are used as introductory PRONOUNS to introduce what follows [a clause or clauses]. There is and Es gibt is used to introduce a clause or sentences such as:

"There are numerous items." "There must be another exit."

Heidegger attempted to universalise and wildly project and broadcast his own solipsistical semantic misunderstandings of meaning/meanings which he derived from words and phrases, and tried to dump or impose this semantic juvenilia upon everyone else. This behaviour is an aspect of his proclivity to Nazism - the psychological desire/need todominate and impose one's own will on others. The example given is of the usual obscurantist type so typical of this philosophical cardsharper, for [as usual] it is TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT and can therefore only provide the material for speculation rather than analysis.

The Es of "Es gibt Sein" DOESN'T MEAN 'IT' at all - and to say so is an example of bad scholarship - The German 'ES' has the meaning of "THERE" just like the "THERE" in the English expression "There is... a bird on the window sill."

A flavour of the same interchangeability can occur in English - compare:

"Who or what is that knocking at the door?" "It is a man." or "There is a man." The "There is a man," in this example refers antecedally to the phrase "... at the door."

Compare a Germanic language very close to both English and German and in a developmental sense lies somewhere between the two. In the following sentence you will see that the dual meaning of the Swedish DET which is virtually interchangeable and can mean "IT" or "THERE" can even appear in the SAME sentence and render BOTH meanings:

(A1) "Det är bra vind i dag; det är bra segelväder."
(A2) "There is a good breeze today; it is good sailing weather."

A similar semantic interchangeability can be noticed in the German expression: "Es wurde gesungen und getanzt" where the "ES" plainly has the meaning of "THERE" as in: There was singing and dancing."

The very reason that I originally wrote this essay was to help throw some light upon this common misunderstanding amongst existentialists and transcendentalists.

Compare these German sentences:

(1a) "Es gibt Boote im Hafen."
(1b) 'There are boats in the port.'

To suggest that the semantic meaning of ES gibt above suggests that: "It gives boats in the port," is totally ridiculous. What or WHO is the IT which 'gives the boats in the port? The owners? The port? The sea? You eyes? Your brain? God? Lord Dunfunkington? The same goes for all the sentences below.

(2a) "Es gibt eine große dicke Spinne auf Ihrer Nase."
(2b) "There is a big fat spider on your nose."

(3a) "Es gibt etwas Verpassen von Heideggers grammatischen Fähigkeiten und semantischem Verständnis."
(3b) "There is something missing from Heidegger's grammatical capabilities and semantic understanding."

(4a) "Es gibt nichts, was Sie jetzt darüber machen können."
(4b) "There is nothing you can do about it now."

(5a) "Es gibt einen Gestapo Mann bei der Tür mit einer Flasche Schnaps für Partei-Mitglied Mr Heidegger."
5b) "There is a Gestapo man at the door with a bottle of schaps for Party Member Mr. Heidegger."

Compare the other Germanic language we have looked at before - Swedish.

(5a) "Det finns boats i hamn."
(5a) "'There are boats in the port."

(6a) "Där är en stor fet spindel på din näsa." -
(6b) "There is a big fat spider on your nose."

(7a) "Där är någonting saknas från Heidegger's grammatiskt möjligheter och semantisk förstående."
(7b) "There is something missing from Heidegger's grammatical capabilities and semantic understanding."

(8a) "Där är ingenting du kan gör om den nu."
(8b) "There is nothing you can do about it now."

(9a) "Där är en Gestapo man vid dörren med en flaska av schaps för Parti medlem Herr. Heidegger."
9ab) "There is a Gestapo man at the door with a bottle of schaps for Party member Mr. Heidegger."

(A) Etymologically the meaning of 'there' or 'es' or "där" are interchangeable with the pronoun 'it' - there are ALL PRONOUNS which stand for the subject or subjects of the sentences to avoid phrasal repetition.

(B) The translation of "Es gibt" as "It gives" is a LITERAL translation which DOES NOT carry the actual meaning of the phrase. The CORRECT translation is: THERE IS.

(C) Heidegger's ignorance of basic grammar and semantics leads to much ontological misunderstanding regarding of the role of THERE [in There is...]

(D) NEVER take ANYTHING for granted with Heidegger - double-check his semantic claims for yourself - he was too unprofessional and grammatically unschooled to trust.

(E) Be especially careful when dealing with his so-called 'translations' fro Ancient Greek which has made him a laughing stock amongst Hellenistic scholars.

The utter bilgewater which Heidegger pumped out by the bucketful is ALL based upon his ignorance of semantics and basic grammar. IMO the man shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a primary school never mind a university.

It is the basic and fundamental misunderstanding of "is" [the BE-word] in its many conjugational guises] that subverts the whole of Heideggerianism and renders all that is extrapolated from this elementary misconstrual totally vacuous. Heidegger's disarray can be found in his inability to understand the role of the IS-word in that it only ever applies to the existential modality of entities, and NEVER corresponds to the meaning of simple presence rather than non- presence, in the sense of: "Little blue men exist on Mars." If we say: "There are little blue men on Mars" we are using " there" as a pronoun, and the meaning of the sentence is one describing the existential modality of the little blue men as one of being on Mars. It does not address the simple "existence" of the little blue men per se. He persists in positing a spurious "ontological difference" where none exists. Hence the requirement of the Daseinic device which acts as a cloak. Once somebody accepts the neologistic language of Heideggerianism, they are often act as trammels which lead inexorably to utter confusion.