Abstract:
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Though the term “existential sentence” goes back at least as far as Jespersen (1924, 155) and is used
in descriptions of many languages to refer to a designated construction, it is difficult to identify exactly
what these constructions have in common cross-linguistically. Following McNally (2011), the
term is used here to refer to sentence types that are “non-canonical,” whether due to some aspect
of their syntax or the presence of a distinguished lexical item (e.g. Spanish hay). A representative
sample is presented of the different structural resources used to build existential sentences:
distinguished existential predicates, on the one hand, and copular, possessive, and expletive or impersonal
constructions, on the other. The corresponding variation in the compositional semantics
of existentials is then addressed, as is pragmatic or discourse functional variation. The variationist
perspective is contrasted with universalist approaches to existentials such as that in Freeze (2001). |