Existential sentences crosslinguistically: variations in form and meaning

Abstract

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).