So-called Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language also builds sentences around a subject-object-verb construction. “Consistent word order appears early in a new sign language,” she says.

A Word, Please: If you’re an object in a sentence, use ‘me’ Grammar expert June Casagrande delves into whether to choose “me” or “I” when the pronoun is an object.

In the original sentence, the subject was the pronoun “there.” Technically, this is called the “existential there,” which is just a structure we use to say something exists.