1. Passives – creating new subjects

The original version used by the author is

Your Grandfather Thror was killed by Azog the Goblin.

In this way the author focuses our attention on the appallingly wicked Azog the Goblin, this constituent appears in the end position, appropriate to its new information status.

Soon afterwards the other dwarves were brought into the town amid scenes of astonishing enthusiasm. They were all doctored and fed and housed and pampered in the most delightful and satisfactory fashion. A large house was given up to Thorin and his company; boats and rowers were put at their service; and crowds sat outside and sang songs all day.

Here the agent (hospitable townsfolk) gets left out totally and the focus shifts to the patient of the action, because the agent is irrelevant information.

2. Different semantic types as subjects

English shows considerably more diversity than other languages as to what can appear as a subject.

Straight through the forest is your way now. = location

The wall opened. =patient

Gandalf’s potion book has added 30 more recipes. = recipient

The pan will easily fry one small hobbit. = instrument

Tomorrow promises a much more sumptuous repast. = time

3. “Tough” movement

The semantic diversity of our subjects is also illustrated by something

known as “tough”-movement. This is another strategy for creating new subjects. The procedure works just as well with a range of other adjectives like tough, interesting, difficult etc. For example,

It was not so easy to find that Last Homely House west of the Mountains.

4. Existentials

Sometimes the subject is completely new information that we want to reserve for the end of the sentence. We can do this by creating a dummy subject using the pronoun there, which then appears in the position normally occupied by the subject NP. Then this allows the logical subject with all its new information to appear later, giving it much greater prominence. There has no meaning. Its purpose is purely grammatical – to hold the place of the understood subject.

There are moon-letters here, beside the plain runes.

The reason we call the sentence an existential sentence is because it expresses the existence of something, and this is often how new topics are introduced. It’s the standard fairy-tale opener.

Sometimes a writer may choose not to use the existential construction. In the right context it can be effective too:

Bones were on the floor and a nasty smell in the air.

However, there are occasions when existential there is compulsory, namely, when the clause contains only the subject and verb and no adverbial constituent:

There was a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm called Smaug.

It is possible to use other (generally of movement or location) intransitive verbs, not only be, in existential constructions, although they tend to make for a more dramatic effect and have a high literary flavor:

There rose across the valley a deep-throated roar. - A deep-throated roar rose across the valley.

Out f a dark opening in the wall there issued a boiling water, and it flowed swirling in a narrow channel. - A boiling water issued out f a dark opening in the wall, and it flowed swirling in a narrow channel.