On the subject of "there"
There is actually another meaning of this word. In the phrase "there is". It doesn't refer to positions at all, otherwise the sentence "There is a man here" wouldn't make sense, although it probably derives from the same meaning of the positional word.

The reason I think many people make grammatical mistakes, particularly with "there" and its homophones and "should/could/would have/of", is because a lot of sentences aren't constructed of words as such, but little phrases like "there is". People latch on to the meanings of those phrases rather than the individual words. That's probably why it may seem nonsensical to "grammer nazis" for someone to use the phrase "should of" bearing in mind the meaning of "of", but it makes sense when you consider how people learn phrases in which the meaning of the individual words is unimportant.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Wed 2 Apr 2008, 16:04, Reply)