student asking question

"He is there" and "there he is", what's different between these two? 

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"There he is" and "he is there" mean pretty much the same thing, but have different emphasis. "He is there" puts the location "there" at the end of the sentence and therefore emphasizes this location. In the phrase "there he is", "he is" is stressed since it is at the end of the sentence, and so the fact that they found him is emphasized more. So in this context, "there he is" is more natural to use since they are looking for him and not specifically for the location at which he is in.

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