Korean Job Discussion Forums

[OculisOrbis]

Is that correct or no?

My student asked me to explain if it was ok to directly replace the pronoun in Here he comes." to "Here the teacher comes."

I showed her:

Here comes the teacher.
The teacher comes here.
and maybe Here, the teacher comes.

My reasoning was this:

The dog ran quickly.
The dog quickly ran.
Quickly, the dog ran.

The adverb 'quickly' gives additional info. In her example "here" is also additional info so is it possible to place "here' in her sentences the same way an adverb can be placed in a sentence?

I think her way just feels awkward, but I also see her point. I don't know.

Thanks.

[spliff]

[Bibbitybop]

Many people say "Here the teacher comes" when the a teacher is arriving. Grammatically correct? I dunno. Used a lot in the USA? For sure.

You can also think about different situations where this is correct and the meaning of "comes" is changed, but hopefully you are using these with attractive, adult students.

[wylies99]

[Bibbitybop]

Student: "Hide the dope, man, here the teacher comes!"

It probably differs from region to region, but I heard it quite a bit.

[wylies99]

I'm surprised the OP even has to ask.

[blackjack]

maybe when explaining a book, play or prank . (look) here, the teacher comes in and ...

[wylies99]

[supernaut]

[Bibbitybop]

[Jizzo T. Clown]

"Here he comes" doesn't seem grammatically correct anyway because we don't use the simple present to talk about things that are happening now (or do we?)... If we changed the word order to "He comes here" (same sentence pattern: subject-intransitive verb), we would assume that the teacher frequents this place.

"The teacher is coming!" sounds much more appropriate. When I encounter a situation like this, I just say that it's an "idiomatic expression" or chalk it up to "usage."

[Woland]

Labor in the grammar fields of Dave's is never done. 'Here the teacher comes' is grammatical. It involves a complex and interesting form of inversion, as well as topicalization, which means the occurrence of this form is going to be restricted in discourse. But, yeah, it is possible, and thus, grammatical. It may even be that sometimes it's the only thing to say.

Okay, let's start out with the nature of the 'Here comes...' construction.

Although 'here' can only occur initially with a limited set of verbs in constructions like this (be, come, go, lie, rest), all of which by their semantics suggest that it is a locative, other evidence suggests that it may be more like an existential, like the empty subject marker 'there' (which also has the appearance of a locative).

First, there are sentences like 'Here's the way to do it' which clearly don't point to 'here' as representing a location, but instead a process.

Second, there are also sentences like "Here's a mop; get cleaning" and "Here's your supper" where again 'here' doesn't represent location, but acts as some kind of pointer, directing the attention of the listener to something. This is moving use of 'here' closer to existential 'there' (I will discuss some other similarities not relevant to this case at the end of this below.) I think you could argue that these sentences represent the use of 'here' as a kind of discourse marker, and that we can't discuss the grammar of these sentences outside of discourse.

If we accept 'here' as a discourse marker (I'm not sure what its grammatical category would be, but I don't think that's actually important.), and I think we should in this sentence, then the analysis becomes simpler, yet still interesting. 'Here' in these sentences is functioning as a discourse marker which obligatorily causes inversion in the sentence it highlights. In this case, the sentence would be 'The teacher comes' (I'll deal with the verb tense later). With obligatory subject-verb inversion, we get, 'here comes the teacher'. (See this website for a very simple discussion of inversion in English: http://www.testmagic.com/grammar/explanations/inversion.htm)

And that would seem to be the end of it. Except that English also permits the fronting of elements in sentences to mark them as topic in discourse (topicalization; the Korean equivalent is the use of the -eun/-neun ending). For example:

A: Do you like hamburgers?

B: No, but hot dogs I like.

Here, 'hot dogs' has been indicated as a topic by its fronting in B's utterance. Notice, too, that topicalization in speech will be accompanied by a marked intonation and sentential stress pattern.

I would like to suggest that it is possible to imagine a discourse in which 'the teacher' is topicalized, and thus moved again in front of the verb 'comes' to produce 'here the teacher comes'. This sentence will have to have the marked intonation and sentential stress pattern that is associated with topicalization. I'm not good at making up discourse examples, but this one might be something like this (I'm sure that someone can do better):

A: Let me copy your homework.

B: No, we'll get in trouble.

A: No one's looking!

B: Oh, yeah? Here the teacher comes now.

'The teacher' is topicalized here in the discourse in response to 'no one'. And thus, we get the form in question. I wish I could pull up a real example, but a corpus search at www.lextutor.ca didn't produce one. As I suggested earlier, I think these forms would be exceedingly rare.

A few more notes:

This may not be permissible in all dialects of English, but it is in mine. I suspect that it generally is because the non-locative uses of 'here' are widespread. But I could be wrong about this.

'Here' as this discourse marker resembles existential 'there' in a number of ways. One is that when occurring with a contracted singular verb, the following logical subject may be plural, e.g.,:

There's flowers on the table

Here's the flowers you ordered.

Note that the verb must be contracted (effectively, becoming a clitic and losing it's status as a phonological word) for this phenomenon to happen. The following sentences are not grammatical:

*There is flowers on the table

*Here is the flowers you ordered.

What is interesting is that one example I found at The Compleat Lexical Tutor site show this non-agreement extending to the use of non-cliticized 'comes':

6 igade? Yes it is. My God Almighty! Here comes the boys. Where are you from, from Mould

I recognize that some people would reject this sentence completely. I'm not so sure I like it. But it did really occur, and I don't think it is too horrible.

Last bit: The verb tense. Why is it present simple, and not present progressive. I would suggest that this is again an effect of this particular use of 'here'. Just as existential 'there' only allows simple aspect, I suspect the same is the case here. I could be wrong be wrong about this.

This is a rough analysis. As I said, I'm not sure of the actual grammatical status of what I am pointing to. But this seems to be an area of flux, so it may not be clear to anyone else either. I am certain about the role of topicalization here, and about the need to see this as a discourse phenomenon.

Edit: Fixed typo

[wylies99]

Okay, but what about "Hey they COME, walking down the street, they get the funniest looks from everyone they meet"


Just kidding. I understand. Thanks for elevating the discussion.

[OculisOrbis]

Woland, that was far and away the best explanation I have ever read on this site.

Thanks. My head hurts. I'm going to bed.

[Jizzo T. Clown]

Yeah Woland, good job, but I don't think your explanation would be understood by 99.9% of EFL students!