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I would like to understand why this question was classified as a duplicate. Is it not a bit stretched? I can see the similarity, but the structures present in the body of each question are in fact different:

on which grazed a few cattle and sheep (where the predicate graze precedes the subject without the dummy preliminary subject "there")

and

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit (where the structure is there + verb + subject).

It is true that the first structure does get attention in the other question later in the answers and comments, but still, I don't see why two questions about different structures were treated as duplicates. What am I missing, can someone help me understand the principle?

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  • The question should probably be closed for other reasons, such as lack of research or moved to ELL. – user 66974 Jan 4 at 7:06
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Because I believe that fixating on the expletive there mistakes the forest for the trees. Pretending that 1 and 2 are fundamentally different seems unproductive:

  1. From the door came a cry for help.
  2. From the door there came a cry for help.
  3. This is the door from which came a cry for help.

Because of case 3 I’ve reopened it, but the existing answers don’t seem to hit the nail on the head. Too many words, too little meat.

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  • Thank you for reopening. Hopefully some better answers will give us more meat. I am also hungry to learn. – fev Jan 3 at 20:47

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