As used in this sentence, that is:
Is there a doctor in the house?
As opposed to:
Is a doctor in the house?
Both mean the same thing but I’d wager you’d hear the former a lot more than the latter. What function does the “there” serve in the first sentence and what grammatical term is it called by?
Or, perhaps, it just a colloquialism and not proper grammar at all?
“What grammatical term is it called [by]?” It’s called a superfluous word, much like the word “by” in your sentence. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
It’s called “existential there,” and if you’re looking for a “part of speech label” to put on it, I guess you can call it a “pronoun.” However, it doesn’t have an antecedent, so such a label is pointless. It makes more sense to call it a “subject placeholder.”
[QUOTE=DesertDog]
Both mean the same thing…
[/quote]
Perhaps, but the two sentences in your OP serve different pragmatic functions. There is not “superfluous”; it has a discursive purpose.
Think of it this way:
*
Is a doctor in the house?
Is there a doctor?
Is there a doctor in the house?
I do say, the Daleks seem to be attacking. Is The Doctor in the house?*
Ignoring the last example, all of the first three are basically asking the same question, but I guess you could say they’re asking it form slightly different angles. The first one asks if one happens to be inside the house, while the second asks about the existence of a doctor (strictly speaking, the second one is rather broad, though context would probably narrow responses down mostly to only ones who are within a relevant proximity.)
The last question is simply being more specific. Is there a doctor? Are they in the house? You could just skip the broader question and shoot straight for “Is a doctor in the house?”, but colloquially, that sounds a bit weird, at least in American English.
“There”, and occasionally “it”, are sometimes used with an existential, as opposed to referential, function. (This has nothing to do with Existentialism; the terms happen to converge.) “Is there a doctor in the house?” means, roughly, “Among the audience which comprises the ‘house’, is a doctor present?”; “Is a doctor in the house?” seems to have a more ‘precious’ styling, or to imply it is unlikely that there is one. “There is a tavern in the town” is not suggesting its location so much as it is its existence. Similarly, the “it” of “it’s raining/snowing/cloudy” is not a reference to the sky so much as it is a statement that “Rainfall/snowfall/cloudiness is currently occurring.”
Thank you all. “Existential function” would seem to sum it up. And, yes, Raguleader, with no “there” there it sounds odd. What triggered the inquiry was this afternoon I went to the bank to get something notarized. Walking up to the customer service counter I asked, “Is there a notary in today?” thinking one might be only available M - F. There was and while I waited for him to get done with whatever he was doing I got to mulling over why I said “there” other than it sounds odd without it. My mind wanders sometimes, if I don’t keep an eye on it.
Funny story:
7th grade English class, teacher gives this sentence:
“There is a house on a hill”
Then she asks, “What is the subject in that sentence?”
Several people reply “There.”
Teacher then vouchsafes, “No! ‘There’ can never be a subject.”
I thought to myself, “Of all the ironies, that has to be on of the ironest.”
OK, so the story wasn’t so funny. . . .
“Is there?” is not a colloquialism; it is the inversion (to form a question) of “there is” which is the standard way in English of stating that something exists. This is quite different grammatically from the question of whether a doctor is in a certain location.
Other languages have variously idiosyncratic ways of dealing with this. Spanish uses “hay”, which is an impersonal form of the verb “haber”; French has “il y a” (“it there has”); a German says “it gives”; a Lithuanian just says “is”; Japanese has verbs of existence “imasu” and “arimasu”.