The (information) structure of existentials

Abstract

A sentence of this type is used to assert the existence of the referent denoted by the post-copular phrase (a man in our example) in the location connected with the (optional) final PP (in the garden), or else – if the latter is missing – in a location given in the universe of discourse. The paper is organized as follows. The introductory section is dedicated to an overview of the literature concerned with copular constructions and information-structurally marked structures. Section 2 deals with existential sentences, presenting first some of the most influential works dedicated to this topic, so as to propose an interface analysis which takes into account the formal, semantic and discourse properties of the relevant constructions. Section 3 is concerned with a well-known phenomenon associated to existential sentences in many languages, namely the Definiteness Effect (henceforth, DE). Comparing data from languages showing DE (like English) with languages which apparently do not (like Italian), the present approach reveals that there-sentences with a definite post-copular phrase do not qualify as existential constructions