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It is no accident that with the appearance of societies there appear large areas that share similar cultural.

I need some grammatical analysis on this sentence.

  • What's the meaning of "there" in this sentence?
  • Can you determine phrases in the sentence for me please? I cannot understand what the second that-phrase refer to.
Anfi
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    Related (some old ELL questions): [Meaning of “there being”](http://ell.stackexchange.com/q/77406/3281), [What exactly is the word “there” in an existential construction? And related questions](http://ell.stackexchange.com/q/34099/3281). – Damkerng T. Mar 18 '16 at 19:41
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    One might say "there" in your sentence is a marker for subject verb inversion. – rogermue Mar 19 '16 at 09:15
  • Does "There" refer to "large areas"? because "large areas" could be subject in this way. – Anfi Mar 19 '16 at 09:17

1 Answers1

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there is used here as an introductory subject [Swan, 1986].

You can get rid of there by rewriting the sentence to:

It is no accident that with the appearance of pastoralist societies large areas appear that share similar cultural, ecological, and even linguistic features.

This makes it also easier to understand.

The second that-phrase (that share similar...) refers to large areas.

NZD
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  • Thank you @NZD . Therefore there is an inversion, is that right? Large areas [Subject], that share similar cultural, ecological, and even linguistic features [Adverbial Phrase], appear [Verb]. am I right? – Anfi Mar 19 '16 at 09:14
  • I don't think there is subject-verb inversion here. `there` is used as an introductory subject with an intransitive verb, see http://www.englishgrammar.org/introductory-subject/ – NZD Mar 19 '16 at 19:12