Existential Sentences in English
G. Milsark, 1974
This thesis is an investigation of certain syntactic and semantic characteristics of English sentences containing existential there. In Part I, the there-insertion analysis of the syntax of such sentences is examined and compared with a cariety of alternative analyses which have appeared in the literature, including the FS Hypothesis and the Cleft Reduction Hypothesis of Jenkins, the analysis of Kuno, in which existential sentences are derived from underlying structures with subject position locatives, and the reanalysis of the there-insertion hypothesis by Emonds. It is concluded that only a movement analysis similar to there-insertion offers an appropriate analysis of the form of existential sentences on which to build an explanatory theory of their syntactic and semantic properties. In Part II, a semantic analysis of there sentences is developed, culminating in the statement of a rule of derived structure interpretation for there structures which yields an incomplete, but intuitively satisfying characterization of their meaning. It is then shown that this characterization provides an explanatory account of the Definiteness Restriction and the Predicate Restriction on there sentences. The system developed is then extended to some of the less central syntactic and semantic problems associated with the analysis of existential sentences, and shown to provide solutions to many of them which avoid the addition of unprincipled restrictions to the syntactic and semantic rules involved.
Thesis supervisor: Noam A. Chomsky
Title: Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics
Table of Contents
Preliminaries 9
Part I Do we have to have a there-insertion rule? 12
Chapter 1 ES and the there-insertion analysis 13
1.1 Some facts 13
1.2 An analysis: there-insertion 21
1.2.1 Synopsis of the analysis 21
1.2.2 Claims and advantages 24
1.2.3 Inadequacies of the there-insertion analysis 37
Footnotes to Chapter 1 44
Chapter 2 Emonds’ analysis 48
2.1 On the cases supporting the analysis 49
2.1.1 The semi-modal restriction 50
2.1.2 The predicate restriction 52
2.2 The passive/progressive problem 55
2.3 Conclusion 60
Chapter 3 The PS hypothesis 62
3.1 Summary of the analysis 62
3.2 However… 66
3.2.1 The arguments from extraction 68
3.2.2 Arguments from non-existent NP 72
3.2.3 Other arguments concerning passives and progressives 75
Footnotes to Chapter 3 86
Chapter 4 The cleft reduction hypothesis 90
4.1 Summary of the analysis 90
4.2 The relationship of clefts to ES 95
4.3 The relationship of perception verb sentences to ES 101
4.4 The range of alternatives for the structure of the coda 110
Footnotes to Chapter 4 114
Chapter 5 The loc-front proposal 116
5.1 Summary of the proposal 117
5.2 Evaluation of the arguments 118
5.3 Counterarguments 136
5.4 Conclusion 147
Footnotes to Chapter 5 149
Part II What can be done about it? 152
Preliminaries 153
Chapter 6 Ontological, locational, and periphrastic ES 164
6.1 What do existential sentences mean? 164
6.1.1 The nature of the question 164
6.1.1.1 The extension problem 166
6.1.1.2 The intension problem 170
6.1.1.3 Summary of the problem 172
6.1.2 “Exist” as a characteristic reading of ES 173
6.1.3 The meaning of “exist” 180
6.1.4 Summary of 6.1 186
6.2 Solutions to things 189
6.2.1 Approach 189
6.2.2 The definiteness restriction 194
6.2.3 The predicate restriction 210
6.2.4 Additional matters concerning the quantification restriction
and the predicate restriction 216
6.2.5 The syntax of locational ES 220
6.2.6 The problem of ungrammatical sources for ontologicals 228
6.2.7 The leftmost Be condition 229
6.2.8 The semi-modal restriction 232
6.3 Conclusion to Chapter 6 234
Footnotes to Chapter 6 235
Chapter 7 Verbal ES 242
7.1 Difference between inside and outside verbal ES 243
7.1.1 Inside verbals 244
7.1.2 Outside verbals 245
7.2 On the nature of the verbs in IV ES 249
7.3 Conclusion 253
Footnotes to Chapter 7 254