Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-tnzcf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T04:24:33.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subject Canonicality and Definiteness Effects in Romance There-Sentences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Delia Bentley
Delia Bentley*
Affiliation:
The University of Manchester
*
Department of Linguistics and English Language, School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M13 9PL Manchester, Great Britain [delia.bentley@manchester.ac.uk]
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Evidence from main and lesser-known Romance languages indicates that the morphosyntactic properties of existential pivots correlate with semantic and pragmatic properties of noun phrases that count toward subjecthood to different degrees crosslinguistically. While fully supporting Beaver and colleagues’ (2005) theory of the definiteness effects, the findings of this research also suggest that the effects cannot be fully explained in a nonconstructional way.

Keywords

there-sentencesexistential constructionsexistential pivotsubjectdefinitenessRomance

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 89 , Issue 4 , December 2013, pp. 675 - 712
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

The author gratefully acknowledges the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the sponsor of the research projects AH/E506011/1 and AH/H032509/1, which hosted the research expounded in this article. She is extremely grateful to Gregory Carlson for copious and invaluable comments that vastly improved the quality of the article. This also benefited from the comments of Sali Tagliamonte and two anonymous referees, as well as conversations with Francesco Maria Ciconte, Silvio Cruschina, Itamar Francez, Adam Ledgeway, and Nigel Vincent. The author wishes to thank Barry Blake for providing the Kalkatungu data, Martin Maiden for help with the Romanian data, and her native-speaker informants (see n. 4). She dedicates this article to Enrico Bentley, who died while this research was still in the making.

References

Abbott, Barbara. 1992. Definiteness, existentials, and the ‘list’ interpretation. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 2. 1–16.10.3765/salt.v2i0.3028CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abbott, Barbara. 1993. A pragmatic account of the definiteness effect in existential sentences. Journal of Pragmatics 19. 39–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aissen, Judith. 1999. Markedness and subject choice in optimality theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17. 673–711.10.1023/A:1006335629372CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21. 435–83.10.1023/A:1024109008573CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaver, David, Francez, Itamar; and Levinson, Dmitry. 2005. Bad subject: (Non-) canonicality and NP distribution in existentials. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 15. 19–43. Online: http://elanguage.net/journals/salt/article/view/15.19.10.3765/salt.v15i0.2920CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benincà, Paola, and Poletto, Cecilia. 2004. Topic, focus and V2: Defining the CP sublayers. The structure of IP and CP: The cartography of syntactic structures, vol. 2, ed. by Rizzi, Luigi, 52–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bentley, Delia. 2006. Split intransitivity in Italian. (Empirical approaches to language typology 30.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110896053CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentley, Delia. 2011. Sui costrutti esistenziali sardi: Effetti di definitezza, deissi, evidenzialità. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 127. 1. 111–40.10.1515/zrph.2011.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentley, Delia, Ciconte, Francesco Maria; and Cruschina, Silvio. 2013. Microvariation in subject agreement: The case of existential pivots with split focus in Italo-Romance. Italian Journal of Linguistics 25. 1. 15–43.Google Scholar
Bentley, Delia, Ciconte, Francesco Maria, Cruschina, Silvio; and Ramsammy, Michael. 2012. Microvariation in information structure: Existential constructions in Italo-Romance. Microvariation in information structure: Existential constructions in Italo-Romance: University of Manchester, ms.Google Scholar
Benveniste, Émile. 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Blake, Barry J. 1979. A Kalkatungu grammar. (Pacific linguistics B-57.) Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H.. 2002. The Russian genitive of negation in existential sentences: The role of theme-rheme structure reconsidered. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague N.S., vol. 4, ed. by Hajicová, Eva, Sgall, Petr, Hana, Jirì, and Hoskovec, Thomas, 185–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/plcp.4.11borCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bossong, Georg. 1991. Differential object marking in Romance and beyond. New analyses in Romance linguistics (Current issues in linguistic theory 69), ed. by Wanner, Dieter and Kibbee, Douglas A., 143–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1987. Cognitive constraints on information flow. Coherence and grounding in discourse (Typological studies in language 11), ed. by Tomlin, Russell S., 21–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.11.03chaCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve. 1978. Locationals: Existential, locative, and possessive constructions. Universals of human language, vol. 4: Syntax, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 85–121. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cooreman, Ann. 1988. Ergativity in Dyirbal discourse. Linguistics 26. 717–46.10.1515/ling.1988.26.5.717CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, Greville G. 2006. Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2009. Restructuring strategies of the Romanian verb fi ‘be’ and the analysis of existential sentences. In Kaiser & Remberger, 199–230.Google Scholar
Creissels, Denis. 2010. Fluid intransitivity in Romance languages: A typological approach. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 95. 2. 117–51.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 1990. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio. 2012a. Focus in existential sentences. Enjoy linguistics! Papers offered to Luigi Rizzi on the occasion of his 60th birthday, ed. by Bianchi, Valentina and Chesi, Cristiano, 77–107. Siena: CISCL Press.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio. 2012b. Discourse-related features and functional projections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199759613.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culbertson, Jennifer. 2010. Convergent evidence for categorical change in French: From subject clitic to agreement marker. Language 86. 85–132.10.1353/lan.0.0183CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55. 1. 59–138.10.2307/412519CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David R. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67. 547619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 2007. Clause types. Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 1: Clause structure, 2nd edn., ed. by Shopen, Timothy, 224–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Enç, MÜrvet. 1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22. 1–25.Google Scholar
Farrell, Patrick. 2005. Grammatical relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199264018.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francez, Itamar. 2007. Existential propositions. Stanford, CA: Stanford University dissertation.Google Scholar
Francez, Itamar. 2010. Context dependence and implicit arguments in existentials. Linguistics and Philosophy 33. 11–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1976. Topic, pronoun, and grammatical agreement. Subject and topic, ed. by Li, Charles N., 149–88. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Jane, and Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. 1998. Optimal subjects and subject universals. Is the best good enough? Optimality and competition in syntax, ed. by Barbosa, Pilar, Fox, Danny, Hagstrom, Paul, McGinnis, Martha, and Pesetsky, David, 193–219. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1987. Where does the definiteness restriction apply? Evidence from the definiteness of variables. In Reuland & ter Meulen, 21–42.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Georg, and Remberger, Eva-Maria (eds.) 2009. Proceedings of the workshop ‘Null-subjects, expletives, and locatives in Romance ’. Konstanz: Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Konstanz.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1987. A semantic definition of indefinite NP. In Reuland & ter Meulen, 286–317.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 2003. The definiteness effects: Semantics or pragmatics? Natural Language Semantics 11. 187–216.10.1023/A:1024400425028CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 2008. Universals constrain change; change results in typological generalizations. Linguistic universals and language change, ed. by Good, Jeff, 23–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199298495.003.0002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koch, Peter. 2012. Location, existence, and possession: A constructional-typological exploration. Linguistics 50. 3. 533–603.10.1515/ling-2012-0018CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Fauci, Nunzio. 1984. Sulla natura assolutiva del controllore dell'accordo del participio passato in italiano. La Memoria, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Palermo 3. 187–253.Google Scholar
La Fauci, Nunzio, and Loporcaro, Michele. 1993. Grammatical relations and syntactic levels in Bonorvese morphosyntax. Syntactic theory and the dialects of Italy, ed. by Belletti, Adriana, 155–203. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.Google Scholar
La Fauci, Nunzio, and Loporcaro, Michele. 1997. Outline of a theory of existentials on evidence from Romance. Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata 26. 5–55.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1996. Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 2000. When subjects behave like objects: A markedness analysis of sentence-focus constructions across languages. Studies in Language 24. 611–82.10.1075/sl.24.3.06lamCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legendre, Géraldine. 1990. French impersonal constructions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8. 81–128.10.1007/BF00205532CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonetti, Manuel. 2008. Definiteness effects and the role of the coda in existential constructions. Essays on nominal determination: From morphology to discourse management, ed. by Klinge, Alex and Muller, Henrik Høeg, 131–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. H. P. Grice on location in Rossel Island. Berkeley Linguistics Society 25. 210–24.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2006. The language of space in Yélî Dnye. Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity, ed. by Levinson, Stephen C. and Wilkins, David P., 157–203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486753.006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loporcaro, Michele. 1998. Sintassi comparata dell'accordo participiale romanzo. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.Google Scholar
Lumsden, Michael. 1988. Existential sentences: Their structure and meaning. New York: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511605789CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manzini, Maria R., and Savoia, Leonardo. 2005. I dialetti italiani e romanci: Morfosin-tassigenerativa, vol. 3. Alessandria: Dell’Orso.Google Scholar
McNally, Louise. 1992. An interpretation for the English existential construction. Santa Cruz: University of California, Santa Cruz dissertation. [Published, New York: Garland, 1997.].Google Scholar
McNally, Louise. 2011. Existential sentences. Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning, vol. 2, ed. by Maienborn, Claudia, Heusinger, Klaus von, and Portner, Paul, 1829–48. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, Line. 2002. Reanalysing the definiteness effect: Evidence from Danish. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 69. 1–75.Google Scholar
Milsark, Gary L. 1974. Existential sentences in English. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Milsark, Gary L. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis 3. 1–29.Google Scholar
Molnár, Valeria. 2002. Contrast in a contrastive perspective. Information structure in a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Hasselgård, Hilde, Johansson, Stig K. A., Behrens, Bergljot, and Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine, 147–61. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Moro, Andrea. 1997. The raising of predicates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parry, Mair. 2010. Non-canonical subjects in the early Italian vernaculars. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 95. 2. 190–226.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David. 1970. On the article in English. Progress in linguistics, ed. by Bierwisch, Manfred and Heidolph, Karl E., 233–48. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 1987. Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding. In Reuland & ter Meulen, 98–129.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan, and Smolensky, Paul. 1993. Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar: Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science.Google Scholar
Remberger, Eva-Maria. 2009. Null subjects, expletives and locatives in Sardinian. In Kaiser & Remberger, 231–61.Google Scholar
Renzi, Lorenzo, and Vanelli, Laura. 1983. I pronomi soggetto in alcune varietà romanze. Scritti linguistici in onore di Giovan Battista Pellegrini, ed. by Benincà, Paola, Cortelazzo, Manlio, Prosdocimi, Aldo, Vanelli, Laura, and Zamboni, Alberto, 121–45. Pisa: Pacini.Google Scholar
Reuland, Eric J., and ter Meulen, Alice G. B. (eds.) 1987. The representation of (in)definiteness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. Elements of grammar, ed. by Haegeman, Liliane, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-011-5420-8_7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. 2002. Agreement impoverishment under subject inversion: A crosslinguistic analysis. Resolving conflicts in grammar (Linguistiche Berichte Sonderheft 11), ed. by Gisbert, Fanselow and Féry, Caroline, 49–82. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. Grammatical categories in Australian languages, ed. by Dixon, R. M. W., 112–71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Sornicola, Rosanna. 1997. L'oggetto preposizionale in siciliano antico e in napoletano antico: Considerazioni su un problema di tipologia diacronica. Italienische Studien 18. 66–80.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects ofsemantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620904CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tortora, Christina. 1997. The syntax and semantics of the weak locative. Newark: University of Delaware dissertation.Google Scholar
Vallduví, Enric. 1991. The role of plasticity in the association of focus and prominence. Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (ESCOL ’90) 7. 295–306.Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert d. Jr. 1999. A typology of the interaction of focus structure and syntax. Typologija i teorija jazyka: Ot opisanija k objasneniju: K 60-letiju Aleksandra Evgen 'evicha Kibrika [Typology and linguistic theory: From description to explanation: For the 60th birthday of Aleksandr E. Kibrik], ed. by Ekaterina V. Rakhilina and Yakov G. Testelets, 511–24. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture.Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert d. Jr. 2005. Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511610578CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Valin, Robert d Jr., and LaPolla, Randy J.. 1997. Syntax: Structure, meaning and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139166799CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Italian Journal of Linguistics 25. 1. 107–45.Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory, and Birner, Betty. 1995. Definiteness and the English existential. Language 71. 722–42.10.2307/415742CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1981. Case marking and human nature. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1. 43–80.10.1080/07268608108599266CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zamparelli, Roberto. 2000. Layers in the determiner phrase. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Zucchi, Alessandro. 1995. The ingredients of definiteness and the definiteness effect. Natural Language Semantics 3. 33–78.10.1007/BF01252884CrossRefGoogle Scholar