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Revisiting the canonical existential clause in English
Kristin Davidse
KU Leuven
Abstract1
This article challenges the locative interpretation of English canonical existentials, according to which
existential there is analysed as an adverb designating an abstract location, which is often further
specified by an adjunct predicating a specific location of the Existent NP, as in Lyons (1975). It further
elaborates the grammatical semantics proposed in Davidse (1999), also nuancing and correcting some
aspects of that earlier account relating to: (i) the quantification restriction proposed by Milsark (1976,
1977), (ii) the grammatical class and semantics of existential there, and (iii) the grammatical functions
that may be fulfilled by adjuncts. I propose that the clause nucleus of canonical existentials expresses
quantification of the newly introduced instantiaton of the type specifications conveyed by the Existent
NP. This semantic target is restricted by the specifications of the search domain provided by the VP,
any sentence adjuncts that may be present and relevant elements from the co-text or context.
1. Introduction
This article will focus on the English existential construction that is generally viewed as the unmarked
or canonical type. This type contains the verb be and one obligatory participant, the Existent. In Present-
day English, it typically features existential there and it often contains an adjunct, which may specify
place (1) or time (2) as well as other notions, such as matter (3) or purpose (4).
(1) There were two usherettes in the foyer. (LDC)2
(2) Over the years there had been many notes. (WB)
(3) There are no smiles about this bill. (WB)
(4) For good results, there are some guidelines you should follow.
(http://www.worldpainter.net/trac/search?q=for+good+results)
Most accounts of the representational semantics of this construction have interpreted it as basically
locative (e.g. Anderson 1971, Fillmore 1968, Lyons 1975, Bolinger 1977, Kirsner 1979, Fawcett 1987,
1 The research reported on in this article was made possible by the research project G.0560.11, awarded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). I thank Tine Breban, Gerard O’Grady, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende, Lobke Ghesquière and An Van linden for discussion and joint research projects relevant to this study. 2 Following each attested example its source is indicated between brackets: Internet url, reference to the literature, or corpus. The following abbreviations are used for corpora: WordbanksOnline (WB), Leuven Drama Corpus (LDC), Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT), Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
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2011, 2012). One of the best known versions is Lyons’, which holds that “the predication of existence
involve[s] the extraction from the locative phrase of only the deictically neutral locative component and
the copying […] of this in the pre-posed there” (Lyons 1975: 73). In other words, in an example like
(1), there is analysed as an adverb designating an abstract location, while the locative phrase “makes a
predication” (1975: 73) about the central NP.
In earlier work (1992, 1999) I have challenged this specific locative interpretation and advocated
an alternative account of the grammatical semantics of English canonical existentials. I proposed that
they represent the quantified instantiation of a type of entity within a spatio-temporal domain of
instantiation. For instance, (1) states that, of the type ‘usherette’, two instances occurred at that particular
time in the past in that foyer. This semantic account, I argued, covers the whole range of examples of
canonical existentials, including ones like (2)–(3), in which the Existent NP is a nominalization, which
designates reified events, which are instantiated in a specific temporal domain indicated by such
linguistic means as the tense of the VP and adjuncts of temporal extent like over the years in (2).
Existentials with negative quantifiers like (3) are particularly problematic for the locative analysis, as
‘no’ things cannot be located anywhere, but they are naturally covered by my analysis: they express that
there is no instantiation of a specific type in the spatio-temporal domain in question. I linked these
semantics to grammatical characteristics of the canonical existential in the following way:
(i) the Existent NP has obligatory absolute quantification, which measures the instantiation
of the relevant type;
(ii) this quantified instantiation is anticipated by existential there, which is a cataphoric
indefinite enclitic pronoun;
(iii) the adjunct, if present, typically functions not as a predicative complement but as a
modifier of the whole clause nucleus, which in addition with the tense of the VP,
delineates the domain of instantiation;
(iv) as a result, the meaning of existential be is construed as ‘there ‘occurring’ a quantified
instantiation of a type in a domain’, not as ‘predicating location at a specific place of an
entity’.
In this article, I will revisit this functional-grammatical analysis. While maintaining the basics of the
earlier account, I will nuance and correct some points of it, arguing that
(i) Milsark’s (1976, 1977) formulation of the absolute quantification restriction on the
Existent NP needs to be modified;
(ii) existential there is more plausibly viewed as a definite enclitic pronoun;
(iii) besides functioning as sentential adjunct, prepositional phrases or adverbs can function
in secondary predication or specification relations.
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The discussion of these three issues will be dealt with in this order in the following sections. In the
conclusion, I will incorporate the proposed modifications in the revised semantic description.
2. Quantification of the Existent NP
In the literature, it has often been observed (Jespersen 1924, Quirk et al. 1985, Lyons 1975, López-
Couso 2011) that an indefiniteness restriction applies to the Existent NP in canonical existentials, as
illustrated by (5)–(6).
(5) There’s a lady/someone in the house.
(6) There are Ø/some people in the house.
If the Existent NP in these examples is replaced by a definite NP, as in (7)–(8), the resulting clauses are
ungrammatical on the canonical, non-enumerative reading.
(7) There’s the/that/his/John’s landlady in the house.
(8) There’s John/him/John and Paul/them in the house.
Examples (7) and (8) can be contextualized, but only as enumerative existentials, i.e. as utterances with
specificational meaning, which list one or more values corresponding to the presupposed variable. Thus,
(7) and (8) could be used in reply to a question such as Who’s there (that’s present) in the house? We
will return to the possibility of the adjunct describing a variable in Section 4.
Milsark (1976, 1977) proposed that, in addition to the indefiniteness restriction, there is a
quantificational selection restriction on the Existent NP in canonical existentials. In his view, the
determiners of Existent NPs must either express or imply absolute quantification of the instances
designated by the Existent NP. Absolute quantifiers indicate the “size of the set of entities” (Milsark
1977: 23), or in Langacker’s (1991: 83) convergent definition, they provide a “direct description of
magnitude”. Langacker (2016: 9) specifies that absolute quantifiers measure a set or mass against a
scale, which may have discrete values, e.g. two in (1) above, or which may be continuous, e.g. many in
(2). Absolute quantification is conveyed implicitly by the indefinite article, e.g. (5), which denotes one
instance of a type, or the zero-article with plural count or uncount nouns, e.g. (6), which in the paradigm
of indefinite articles has the value of indicating a set or mass of ‘some’ non-specific magnitude. The
absolute quantification restriction as formulated by Milsark entails that relative quantifiers, such as all
or most, cannot occur in canonical existentials, as illustrated by (9’), in which the cardinal number five
of the original is replaced by all/most. Relative quantifiers such as all or most “must always be
understood with reference to [italics K.D.] a set of some cardinality” (Milsark 1977: 23). That is, they
make a quantitative assessment relative to an identifiable reference set (Langacker 1991: 83), which
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comparative relation may be explicitly expressed by inserting of the between quantifier and noun, as
illustrated in (19).
(9) There are five weak spots in the human body. (LDC)
(9’) *There are most/all (of the) weak spots in the human body.
In earlier work (Davidse 1992, 1999) I subscribed to Milsark’s absolute quantification restriction on the
Existent NPs in canonical existentials. However, close investigation of attested data shows that this
restriction has to be reformulated in two ways.
Firstly, Njende, Davidse & Ghesquière (2016) checked with focused querying of Wordbanks
data whether the core relative quantifiers, none/some/most/all (of the) (Langacker 2016: 6) are really not
attested in canonical existentials. It was found that the relative quantifier most does occur in existentials
such as (10), even though highly infrequently. Likewise, we find the relative use of some in (11), which
designates “no particular proportion” (Langacker 2016: 7) of the reference set, and the relative use of
none in (12), which indicates a “zero proportion” (Langacker 2016: 7) of the reference set.
(10) The Queen, in a simple yellow outfit contrasting with her 1953 regalia, and arriving by
car instead of carriage, entered Westminster Abbey to the sound of trumpets and a
rousing hymn. The church has been used for coronations for 900 years. Also there were
most of the royal family – and 1,000 members of the public who won tickets to the
service.
(11) Yeah, we had to watch videos <F0X/> Videos. <F0X/> Yeah, and she had loads of these
little parties and like sort of like there were some of the boys who weren’t popular (WB)
(12) I know the window. There were none of the servants about to delay me. (WB)
The one quantificational restriction that Njende, Davidse & Ghesquière (2016) found has to be
maintained after focused corpus searches3 involves the universal relative quantifier all. The data
containing existential there + be + all that we inspected only contained NPs with uses such as all sorts
of + noun, in which the whole expression is used as a hyperbolic absolute quantifier, meaning ‘very
many’(Brems & Davidse 2010: 188)4, as in (15).
(13) *There were all of the royal family.
(14) *There were all of the boys who weren’t popular.
3 The data yielded by the following extractions were vetted: EX’s all (481), EX is all (89), EX are all (603), EX were all (330), i.e. a total of 1503 tokens. 4 In the quantifier uses of all sorts of, the meaning component ‘subtypes, varieties’ may be present to different degrees, but the overall meaning remains ‘many, and of many sorts’, i.e. absolute, not relative, universal quantification.
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(15) you only got given one meal a day and there were all sorts of maggots crawling in your
food (WB)
Secondly, Milsark also subsumes partitive uses of absolute quantifiers under his broad definition of
relative quantification, i.e. non-specific quantifiers such as MANY/FEW (of the) and cardinal numbers
such as TWO (of the). If these are used relatively, i.e. to compare the actually designated subset with a
reference set, then they need to be stressed and it should be possible to make the relation to the reference
set explicit by a periphrastic postmodifier with of the (Milsark 1977: 22–23). On this definition, the
Existent NP does take such relative uses of absolute quantifiers, although, once again, they are much
less frequent than absolute quantifiers proper. In (16) the Existent NP designates a subset of two of the
reference set ‘the biggest names in Berlin’. In (17), the relevant reference set is given in the preceding
discourse, ‘of the sixty men I had started out to war from Harwich with’ and the Existent NP measures
the subset of those left as numbering three.
(16) The cast was first-rate. Along with Helene Weige, there were two of the biggest names
in Berlin, Ernst Busch and Alexander Granach. (WB)
(17) Of the sixty men I had started out to war from Harwich with, there were only three left
(A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War, edited by Sebastian
Faulks & Hope Wolf, Vintage, 267).
It follows that Milsark’s hypothesized ban on relative quantifiers in non-enumerating existentials has to
be reformulated as pertaining to universal relative quantification only, which may be conveyed by all,
e.g. (13)–(14), or which may be implied by definite determiners, as in (7). Milsark (1977: 9) suggested
that the functions as a universal quantifier, which in Davidse (2004: 516) was related to the ‘inclusive’
(Hawkins 1978) implicature of NPs with the. They imply a comparison between the actually designated
instances and the contextually relevant reference set, with the two coinciding (see also Langacker 1991:
98; Gisborne 2012). Demonstrative and possessive determiners, and the genitive may likewise refer to
the unique instance or the maximal instantiation of the type in the context (Langacker 1991: 110), thus
implying universal quantification. The impossibility of these definite determiners in canonical
existentials is illustrated in (7).
What conclusions can we draw, then, about the semantics of canonical existentials from the
distribution of quantification types in the Existent NP? The first and most important point is that these
existentials are always concerned with quantification of the instantiation designated by the Existent NP,
which is mostly expressed explicitly, e.g. there were two usherettes in the foyer (1), there were most of
the royal family (10), but may also be implied by the indefinite article, as in (5)–(6). Crucially,
quantification may also take the form of stating that there is no instantiation of the relevant type, as in
(3) above.
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But why the ban on universal relative quantification? This has, in my view, to be explained by
the interaction between the quantification and the indefiniteness restriction. The latter is motivated by
the fact that canonical existentials always introduce new instances of the relevant type specifications.
They are presentational constructions, as has often been noted (e.g. Breivik 1981, 1989). Existent NPs
with a definite determiner are banned because their referents are presupposed identifiable. I propose that
Existent NPs with the universal relative quantifier all are also banned because they involve a pragmatic
form of identifiability (Davidse 2004: 522). Knowing that all the instances in the current discourse
context are referred to comes down to having mental contact with that instantial set.
In conclusion, in this section we have seen that the quantification conveyed by the Existent NP
is an essential semantic component of canonical existentials. These quantifiers are mostly absolute, in
which case they measure the instantiation of the relevant type specifications directly against an implied
scale. They may also be non-universal relative quantifiers, in which case they quantify a subset of a
reference set.
3. Existential there
3.1. Introduction
It is generally accepted that existential there derives in some way from the demonstrative locative adverb
there (OED XVII, 905). Beyond this, there is fundamental disagreement. On the one hand, there are
authors who maintain that existential there has a locative meaning (e.g. Bolinger 1977: 91–92), and
some even hold that as subject of existential clauses it is still an adverb (e.g. Lyons 1975), as discussed
in the Introduction. On the other hand, there are authors, including myself, who hold that existential
there does not have a locative meaning and that it is a nominal (e.g. Breivik 1981, 1983, 1989). In earlier
work (Davidse 1999: 247–248), I suggested that the meaning of existential there has some relation to
the pointing sense of there found with prepositions as in (18), where there points at entities designated
by an indefinite NP, trees. I argued that existential there similarly points at the entities designated by
the indefinite Existent NP; it does not have any locative meaning and does not point at locations
designated by adjuncts. I proposed that existential there was an indefinite enclitic pronoun, but, in doing
so, I confused the definiteness status of the phoric item (there) with that of the NP pointed at, a confusion
cautioned against by Bech (1952: 7).
(18) He runneth up trees and his desire is to sit there on the tops thereof. (Cockeram III
Ignavus 1623, OED)
In this section, I will revisit the issue of existential there more systematically, now arguing that an
analysis of the adverbial and pronominal paradigms in which there participates show existential there
to be a definite pronoun. The argument will develop two lines. First, I will present a synchronic account
of Dutch existential er. Dutch is unique among Germanic languages in having morphologized the
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phonological reduction of daar, its source (Bech 1952). This makes existential er more immediately
recognizable than the merely phonologically reduced existential there in English, even though careful
distributional analysis is still necessary to distinguish existential, pronominal, er from the other
prononominal and the adverbial uses of er. Secondly, I will show how the paradigms in which er
participates in Dutch are parallel to those in which reduced there ([ðə]) participates in English. The focus
will be mainly on historical data, which show that existential there and the pronominal uses of there
found with prepositions merged at around the same time in Old English.
The structure of this section is as follows. First, we will look at the development of existential
clauses in Old English, when the earliest form, which had the Existent NP as subject, gradually came to
be replaced by variants with existential there and it as subject (Section 3.2). Secondly, I will turn to
Dutch and give a synchronic analysis of the adverbial paradigm containing hier (‘here’), daar (‘there’)
and er (reduced ‘there’), and the pronominal paradigm containing hier (‘here’), daar (‘there’) and er
(reduced ‘there’) with meanings proportional with deze (‘this’), die (‘that’) and het (‘it’). From the whole
system I will derive the grammatical and semantic value of existential er and het, for as in English, some
varieties of Dutch have existential het (Section 3.3). Thirdly, I will set out the parallel pronominal
systems in English and their emergence in Old English. This will allow me to situate the emergence of
existential there and it discussed in Section 3.2 in its broader systemic context, which motivates my
proposal to view existential there and it as realizing weak entity deixis, pointing to the instances of the
relevant entity-type being introduced and quantified in canonical existentials.
3.2. The emergence of existential clauses with there and it
As convincingly argued by a number of authors, all grammatical tests for identifying the subject of
English clauses single out there in existentials, such as tags (e.g. Halliday 1985: 73, 130), subject-finite
inversion (Breivik 1981: 5), and raising (Lakoff 1987: 546–549), as illustrated by (19).
(19) a. There is a car in the garage, isn’t there?
b. Is there a car in the garage?
c. There is believed to be a car in the garage.
Breivik (1981: 4–8) has further argued that existential there’s subject function makes a strong case for
regarding it as a nominal, rather than an adverbial. He notes that existential there, which is
phonologically reduced and enclitic to the VP, is excluded from precisely those adjunct positions in
which we find the demonstrative adverbs here and there, as shown by (20) and (21).
(20) Your car is there/here. / There/Here is your car, isn’t it?
(21) *A car is there. / There is a car, isn’t it?
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Breivik holds that existential there was a nominal element already in Old English but that it first
functioned as an empty topic (Breivik & Swan 2000: 22), which was re-analysed as an empty subject
with the change from Old English (henceforth OE), as a verb-second language into a subject-verb
language in Middle English (henceforth ME). Syntax-wise, Breivik stresses, with Quirk & Wren (1957:
94) and Traugott (1992: 218), and contra Mitchell (1985: 625), the non-adverbial nature of existential
there from its earliest appearance in the written records of English, locating its split from spatial
demonstrative there in earlier times. Breivik & Swan (2000: 21–22) thus do not follow Mitchell &
Lopéz-Cousu (2011) in their claim that existential there in an OE example like (22) still had greater
demonstrative force such that the adjunct betweonan him could be viewed as further specifying the
location pointed at by þær.
(22) þær bith swythe mycel gewinn betweonan him (Visser 1970: 52–53 §66)
‘there was so much conflict between them’
As documented by Breivik (1989), the transition from OE to ME (1070–1225) presents us with three
main types of existential clauses: the first, and by far the predominant, type in OE features only the
Existent NP, as in (23)–(24); the second type has existential there (25)–(26), and the third type has
existential it (27)–(28). All three types manifested the two main verb-second orders of OE: either subject
– verb, as in (23), (25) and (27), or X – verb – subject, which occurred in yes/no-questions as well as in
clauses with fronted adjuncts or particles, as in (24), (26) and (28).
(23) Two kinne festing beð
‘Two kinds of fasting are’ (1070–1225) (Breivik 1989: 46)
(24) on þis niht beð fowuer niht wecches
‘In this night are four night-watches’ (1070–1225) (Breivik 1989: 46)
(25) If ðar cumþ ani þoht oðer ani word a godes half
‘if there comes any thought or any word on behalf of God’ (1070–1225) (Breivik 1989:
47)
(26) for nis þær na steuene bituhhe þe fordemde bute wumme
‘For there is no voice between the damned but woe me’ (1070–1225) (Breivik 1989:
47)
(27) Ac hit bieð sume ðe to michel þar of þenceð
‘But it are some who think too much of them’ (1070–1225) (Breivik 1989: 47)
(28) Is hit lytel tweo þæt
‘is it little doubt that’ (late 9th cent, King Ælfred tr. Gregory Pastoral Care, Epil. 467)
(Mitchell 1985: I, 625)
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To get an idea of the quantitative distribution of the three types of existential in OE, Van linden &
Davidse (2014) carried out a pilot study of constructions with existential matrices expressing the
presence or absence of modal notions such as doubt, need and chance with regard to the proposition
expressed in the complement clause. Even though examples of this type are frequently cited in historical
accounts of the grammar of existentials (e.g. Visser 1970, Mitchell 1985), they have so far been
neglected in corpus-based work on existentials. The three types, (i) there-/it-less, (ii) with there, and
(iii) with it, are illustrated in (29)–(31). Exhaustive extractions were made from the York-Toronto-
Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) on tweo (‘doubt’), wen (‘chance’), thearf (‘need’)
and neod (‘need’). The distribution of the three types over the periods of OE is given in Table 1.
(29) Wen is þæt þu gemete sumne þe þe gemiltsige.
‘A chance is that you meet someone who will show mercy to you.’ (YCOE, 950–1050)
(30) þa næs þær nænig tweo, þæt hit nealæhte þara forðfore, þe þær gecigde wæron.
‘then there was no doubt that it drew near to the death of them who were named there.’
(YCOE, 1050–1150)
(31) ða cwæð he: For ðæm hit is nan tweo þæt ða goodan beoð symle waldende, & þa yflan
nabbað nænne anwald.
‘Then he said: Therefore it is no doubt that the good ones are always powerful, and the
evil ones do not have any power.’ (YCOE, 850–950)
Ø be N hit be N Þær be N TOT
OE2
850-950
70 90.91 7 9.09 0 0 77 100
OE3
950-1050
59 93.65 4 6.35 0 0 63 100
OE4
1050-1150
48 73.85 15 23.07 2 3.08 65 100
TOT 177 86.34 26 12.68 2 0.98 205 100
Table 1: Distribution of the three existential types over stages of OE.
These results confirm the findings of studies such as Breivik (1989) and (Traugott 1992: 217–219):
there- and it-less existentials formed by far the majority in OE, particularly in the earlier stages, and the
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variants with there and it were minor, but gained ground towards the end of OE5. This distribution
strongly suggests that existential there must share crucial features with existential it as in OE it and there
emerged more or less at the same time as grammatical subjects of existential be.
Besides this historical evidence, there is synchronic evidence of the functional equivalence of
existential it and there, and their counterparts in other Germanic languages. Existential it is still featured
in certain varieties of English, such as U.S. south and south Midland (OED, it), as in (31).
(32) It ain’t nobody here... It ain’t nobody in the shop. (2004) (Buford Shadows of Legion vi.
121, OED)
In Dutch, the standard existential subject is er but some Dutch dialects such as West-Flemish have
existential het/’ t reduced it) (Haegeman & Weir 2015), as in (33).
(33) ‘t Is veel volk geweest. – Ja-t.
it’s many people been – yeah-t.
(‘There was a great crowd. Yes, there was.’) (Haegeman & Weir 2015: 182)
It has also been noted that in Dutch daar appears – marginally – in existentials (Geerts et al. 1984: 395–
398), as in (34).
(34) Daar was ooit een dame die tegen me zei dat ik de meest aantrekkelijke man was die ze
ooit had ontmoet. ‘(www.hpdetijd.nl/2009-10-09/ik-dacht-dat-ik-alleenheerser-was/)
‘there was once a lady who told me that I was the most attractive man she had ever met’
A comparable situation is posited for spoken German by Weinert (2013), in which existentials may,
besides es gibt, have es ist/sind as in (35) and da ist/sind in (36) (Weinert 2013).
(35) Es ist ein Gewitter im Anmarsch.
‘There’s a thunderstorm on the way.’ (Weinert 2013: 71)
(36) ach da ist ah moment da ist noch n anderer aussichtspunkt
‘ah there is ah hang on there is another viewpoint’ (Weinert 2013: 65)
5 The fact that in our pilot study the type with subject it was more common than that with there may be due to the frequency of negative existentials in our data, as in (29), which according to Breivik (1983) and López-Couso (2006) lagged behind their affirmative counterparts in adopting existential there.
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3.3. The adverbial and pronominal paradigms in which er participates in Dutch: synchronic
description
Any description of the different kinds of er6 in Dutch has to refer to Bech’s (1952) account, whose
influence can be traced on the treatment of er in the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst, ‘General Dutch
Grammar’ (Geerts et al. 1984: 382–398). Bech contrasts the “representational” with the “non-
representational” uses of er. Er’s main representational functions are the locative use (37) and the use
found with prepositions (38)–(40). In these two functions, er contrasts with hier and daar, the three of
which Bech refers to as “adverbial pronouns”. In their locative uses (37), they designate locations: hier
points to a definite near location, daar to a definite remote location, and er to a definite location (Bech
1952: 13). Examples (38)–(40) illustrate the use of hier, daar and er with prepositions, in which they
refer to entities and are proportional with demonstratives and de (‘the’) / het (‘it’). That is, they are
themselves definite and can have either definite or indefinite antecedents. In (38) hiervoor means ‘for
these twenty-five guilders’, in (39) daar … mee means ‘with that chisel’, and in (40) er … van means
‘of the first sunrays’ (Bech 1952: 9).
(37) Ik ging de kamer binnen en hij stond hier/daar/er.
‘I went into the room and he stood here/there.’
(38) De vader geeft hem vijf en twintig gulden als beloning. Hiervoor koopt hij boeken.
(Bech 1952: 9)
‘The father gives him five and twenty guilders as a reward. For this he buys books.’
(39) Hij heeft een steekbeitel geleend. Daar zal hij de deur eenvoudig mee openbreken.
(Bech 1952: 9)
‘He has borrowed a chisel. With that he will simply jam the door open.’
(40) De ontwaakte aarde had de eerste zonnestralen vastgehouden en maakte er een gouden
siersel van. (Bech 1952: 9)
‘The woken up earth had absorbed the first sunrays and made of them a golden
decoration.’
According to Bech (1952: 13), existential er serves no representational function but only fills the subject
position in the clausal schema, that is, it is a “repletive”. It does not form a paradigm with hier or daar
but with repletive het (‘it’). Bech agrees with Jespersen (1924: 154f.) that the use of er/there as subject
6 I will not deal with the distinct case of quantitative er because it functions at the level of the NP and is assumed to be derived from a different source. It has no counterpart in English. As analysed by Bech (1952: 26–30), quantitative er can point either to the set from which a quantity is expressed, as in (i), or to the type specifications of which a quantity is indicated, as in (ii).
(i) Er waren er nog drie levend van de zestig die vertrokken waren. ‘There were [‘er’] three still alive of the sixty that had left.’
(ii) Wat weten ze hier van een kameel, ik heb er zelf nooit een gezien. ‘What do they know here of camels, I myself have never seen [‘er’] one.’ (Bech 1952: 27).
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and the demotion to complement of the indefinite semantic subject, tranen (‘tears’) in (41), are
motivated by the fact that Dutch, like English, disfavours initial indefinite subjects. But, against
Jespersen, he stresses (1952: 14) that repletive er/there is definite. The only argument he gives for this
is that it would be paradoxical to explain er/there as a remedy for the indefiniteness of the semantic
subject but to view er itself as indefinite.
(41) Er waren tranen in zijn ogen.
‘There were tears in his eyes.’
Whilst Bech’s (1952) analysis of the different types of Dutch er is very insightful, I also find some
problems with it. Firstly, the hybrid grammatical class of ‘adverbial pronouns’ does not do justice to the
different elements of structure realized by hier, daar and er in (37) versus (38)–(40), which lead me to
view the former as adverbs and the latter as pronouns. Secondly, I will give formal and semantic
arguments for not setting existential er apart from the pronominal uses. Bech draws the main
grammatico-semantic distinction between the representational adverbial pronouns hier, daar and er, and
the repletives er and het. Against this, I take the two main paradigms to be the adverbs hier, daar and
er, which express locative deixis, and the pronouns hier, daar and er together with their counterparts
dit, dat and het, which convey entity-deixis. This allows me to explain the occurrence of er and het not
only as subject of existentials, but also in other constructions, viz. as complement in ‘complement
extraposition’, where, marginally, the stronger pronouns daar/hier and dit/dat are also found. In
constructions such as the existential and extraposition constructions, these pronouns, I will argue, have
weak cataphoric entity-deixis.
Let us first consider the adverbial paradigm, illustrated by (42)–(44), for which Bech’s term
“adverbial pronouns” is confusing. These uses of hier – daar – er / here – there [ðɛə] – there [ðə] cannot
be substituted for by pronouns, or other nominals, which designate entities, but only by grammatical
classes capable of designating locations, i.e. adverbs or prepositional phrases. The locative adverbs hier
– daar – er are used by the speaker to identify locations, they do not have entity-deixis. It is generally
accepted that the primary meaning of proximal – non-proximal hier – daar is that of pointing
exophorically to a place (Lyons 1975), a use marginally possible with er, as in (42). All three adverbs
can be used endophorically, referring to a location already given in the discourse, as in (43)–(45).
(42) Zie je hem? Ja, hij staat hier/daar/er.
‘Do you see him? Yes, he’s standing here/there.’
(43) In de Franse Ardennen dus. … Hier heeft de tijd stilgestaan.
(blog.seniorennet.be/jelle1954/ archief.php?ID=1659629)
‘So, in the French Ardennes: Here time has stood still.’
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(44) Robbie vloog naar Chicago voor een vrijgezellenfeest, maar stond daar moederziel
alleen. (https://www.hln.be/.../robbie-vloog-naar-chicago-voor-een-vrijgezellenfeest)
‘Robbie flew to Chicago for a bachelor’s party, but he found himself all on his own
there.’
(45) Amir vond echter wel geluk in Amerika, want hij ontmoette er een leuke vrouw, Soraya.
(https://www.scholieren.com/boekverslag/67103)
‘Amir, however, did find happiness in America, because he met there a nice woman,
Soraya.’
However, it is important to point out that, because of its reduced phonological status, the positions of er
‘there [ðə]’ are more restricted than those of hier ‘here’ and daar ’there [ðɛə]’. In an example like (42),
the reduced adverb is used if the verb preceding it carries the information focus, as opposed to contexts
in which the adverb is focal, as shown in (42)’, with bold font used to mark phonological prominence.
The non-salient adverb cannot be fronted either, unlike the salient ones, as illustrated by the fronting
variants in (42)’’.
(42)’ Hij staat hier/daar. vs. Hij staat er.
‘He’s standing here/there.’ [ðɛə] vs. ‘He was standing there [ðə].’
(42)’’ Hier /daar staat hij. vs. *Er staat hij.
‘Here/There he’s standing.’ vs. *‘there [ðə] he’s standing.’
These observations show the non-tenability of a number of positions that have been assumed in the
literature with regard to existential er. One such position is that existential er fulfils the same function
as fronted adverbials like hier and daar, which then entails that the three variants in (46) have the same
clause structure.
(46) Hier/daar/er is een paard.
‘Here/there [ðɛər] / there [ðər] is a horse.’
Kirsner (1979: 3) seems to assume something like this when he ascribes two possible readings to
examples like (47), in which, he claims, locative and existential functions have been conflated in er,
yielding both ‘a dog barks (there)’ and ‘there is a dog barking’,
(47) er blaffen honden.
‘there bark dogs.’ (Kirsner 1979: 3)
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Against this, I hold that er can never function as an initial locative sentence adjunct, not in independent
clauses and not in coordinated ones, as shown by the ungrammaticality of (45)’. As locative adjunct er
is always used postverbally, as in (42) and (45), most typically anaphorically, as in (45). Hence, in (46),
er can only be the existential subject.
(45)’ *want er ontmoette hij een leuke vrouw, Soraya.
*‘for there [ðə] he met a nice woman, Soraya.’
We can now turn to the pronominal paradigm, which subsumes hier – daar – er, which are so closely
proportional with dit – dat – het that the latter can be viewed as members of the same general paradigm
of phoric pronouns with very similar formal and functional properties. Whilst they are themselves
definite, they can express phoric relations to definite or indefinite NPs. I will first consider the uses with
prepositions and then those as subject of existentials.
Examples (38)–(40) above illustrate the pronouns hier – daar – er used with prepositions, which
they can form compounds with (38) or occur separately from (39)–(40). The element of structure they
are used in, the nominal complement of a preposition, and their meaning – reference to entities – show
them to be pronouns. As illustrated above, they can point to singular antecedents, e.g. een steekbeitel ‘a
chisel’ in (39), or plural ones, e.g. de eerste zonnestralen ‘the first sunrays’ in (40). Number is not marked
on the pronouns hier – daar – er themselves. The diachronic development that led from the deictic
adverbials to these pronominal uses involves a shift from locative deixis to entity-deixis: from pointing
to a location to pointing to an entity in a certain location. If I say that these uses are not locative, I do
not mean to say that there are no remnants at all of the deictic meanings of the adverbs, but these have
shifted from pointing through space to identify a location relative to speaker and hearer to indicating a
trajectory to identify an entity. This raises the further question of whether the proximal-/non-proximal
contrast is still strongly present in this paradigm. It seems to me that García’s (1975) distinction between
different degrees of deictic strength, which Kirsner (1979) brought to bear on hier – daar – er7, is more
prominent in the contrasts operating in this paradigm. In particular, er plus preposition has the lowest
degree of deictic force, which is reflected in its strong propensity to being used anaphorically, i.e. to
refer to entities that are given in the preceding text.
As discussed for (38)–(40), the pronouns hier – daar – er can be replaced by the preposition
plus the noun phrase that they refer to: hier by dit/deze (+ noun), daar by dat/die (+ noun), er by de (+
noun). Whilst their close proportionality with just dit – dat – het in prepositional phrases can be pointed
out in a meta-linguistic way, actual use of the preposition followed by dit – dat is rather marked in
Present-day Dutch, as shown by the artificiality of using voor dit in (38) and met dat in (39), and the
7 However, Kirsner (1979: 71–79) applied this distinction to the adverbial uses, rejecting Bech’s (1952) proximal/non-proximal approach to them. Kirsner does not discuss hier – daar – er used with prepositions in any detail.
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preposition followed by non-salient het is ungrammatical, as shown by the impossibility of using *van
het in (40). In Dutch, er is very productive in its use with prepositions, extending its use to refer to
personal antecedents as well (Geerts et al. 1984: 387).
The proportionalities in Dutch between the pronominal uses of hier – daar – er and the ordinary
demonstrative pronouns and determiners used with prepositions can thus be outlined as follows:
hiervoor – daarvoor – ervoor voor die N – voor dat N – voor het N ?voor dit – ?voor dat – * in het
hiermee – daarmee – ermee met die N – met dat N – met het N ?met dit – ?met dat – *met het
hiervan – daarvan – ervan van die N – van dat N – van het N ?van dit – ?van dat – *van het
In examples like (48)–(53), we find the exact same pronominal system of hier – daar – er proportional
with dit – dat – het. However, the ordinary demonstrative pronouns are fully productive in this
construction, whose English variant with it, as in (53), was called “complement extraposition” by
Bolinger (1972: 27). In fact, all examples are instances of an overarching construction, which for lack
of a better term I will refer to as the complement extraposition construction. They have matrices
expressing emotional or cognitive interaction with the proposition contained in the factive that-
complement clause (Gentens & Davidse 2017). The pronouns function as cataphoric pronouns, which
point forward to the following that-clause (Bech 1952: 10). These postcedents are typically singular,
even though there may of course be more than one complement clause. Hier – daar – er are used if the
main clause verb patterns with an oblique, prepositional complement, introduced by prepositions such
as over ‘about’, as in (48)–(50), and dit – dat – het are used if the main clause verb is more transitive
and patterns with a direct participant, as in (51)–(53). The non-salient pronouns er and het are the
unmarked choice in complement extraposition. Most contexts favour their weak cataphoric force; the
more emphatic cataphoric force of daar – dat and particularly hier – dit requires extra contextual
motivation.
(48) Als u dan een asbak ziet, doet het u niets, en u verheugt zich hierover dat u het echt
kunt. (www.50plusser.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?p=37291)
‘If you then see an ashtray, it won’t do anything to you, and you will be pleased about
this that you are really managing.’
(49) Ik verbaas me daarover, dat mensen op internet zo fel en vol haat kunnen zijn.
(https://www.fatsforum.nl/forums/reply/mazelenuitbraak-in-nederlandse-bijbelgordel-
200/)
‘I am surprised about that, that people on the internet are so fierce and full of hate.’
(50) Ze verwondert zich erover dat hij zo onzeker is. (https://www.taaltelefoon.be/erover-
er-over)
‘She is surprised about it that she is so insecure.’
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(51) ik haat dit dat ze mensen zitten lastig te vallen om niets.
(https://www.wieheeftgebeld.nl/nummer/016363808)
‘I hate this that they are annoying people for nothing.’
(52) Ik haat dat, dat hij op mijn gevoelens inspeelt.
(https://forum.scholieren.com/showthread.php?t=248019)
‘I hate that, that he manipulates my feelings.’
(53) Charles … betreurt het dat de kerken leger worden en de cabarets voller.
(https://books.google.be/books?isbn=9021442450)
‘Charles … regrets it that the churches become emptier and the cabarets fuller.’
We are now in a position to look at all the pronouns found in Dutch existential clauses. Instead of relating
existential er exclusively and directly to its ultimate source, the deictic locative adverb daar, I argue that
the existential pronouns relate more directly to the pronouns found in complement extraposition.
Firstly, this view allows to capture the overlap in distribution. Reduced er has become the
default choice in standard Dutch, with d’er and ter as informal variants, while reduced ‘t is found in
some dialect varieties such as West-Flemish (see example 33). The two existential subjects are thus the
same as the two main pronouns in complement extraposition. Daar is recognized as a very marginal
variant of er, as in example (34) above and in the first line of the old song Daar was laatst een meisje
loos (‘There was once a mischievous girl’). By stressing that the existential subjects are a subset of the
larger paradigm of pronouns with entity-deixis, we can explain why daar is marginally possible as
existential subject. I propose that the existential subject daar is the pronoun with greater phonological
salience – and perhaps greater deictic force – which, however, just like er has entity-deixis and points,
for instance, to the instance of ‘meisje’ being introduced in the song, as will be explained in the next
paragraph8.
Indeed, relating existential er and het to other pronominal uses also makes us look differently at
the traditional view of them as utterly semantically empty. The definite meaning of pronominal er and
het in extraposition constructions provides a more substantial argument for viewing existential subject
er, like existential het, as definite than the mere requirement that subjects should be definite, as advanced
by Bech (1952). The comparable uses of er and het in the extraposition also support the idea that they
are pronouns with weak deictic force, able to be used endophorically only. I propose that in canonical
existentials they point to the entity or entities designated by the indefinite Existent NP. The identifiability
status of the Existent NP is always that of instances of a type being newly introduced into the discourse.
Pointing to newly introduced entities, either count or uncount, singular or plural is part of the functional
range of reduced er and it, as has been shown in the above paragraphs. Typically, the phoric direction
8 The subjects found in existential clauses with sein in German, as illustrated in (35)–(36), can probably be accounted for along similar lines.
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will be cataphoric, as existential er and het mostly precede the Existent VP, but in the case where the
Complement NP is fronted, er points back anaphorically to the Existent NP, as in (54).
(54) Slechts één man was er in Engeland, één enkele die te midden van de algemeene
radeloosheid een uitweg zag. Die man was Thomas More. (from H. Roland Holst,
Thomas More: Een treurspel in verzen.)
‘Only one man was there in England, only one who amidst general despair saw a way
out. That man was Thomas More.’
Summing up, for Dutch er, which in standard accounts such as Geerts et al. (1984) is said to be part of
three paradigms, adverbial, phoric pronominal and expletive pronominal, I have argued that it is part of
only two basic paradigms: the adverbial, where hier/daar/er point to locations, and the pronominal,
where hier/daar/er, like die/dat/het, point to entities. In the latter, er/het have low deictic and endophoric
only force. In specific grammatical contexts such as the complement in complement extraposition, and
the subject in existential clauses, we typically find the phonologically reduced and weakly phoric er/het,
even though the more prominent forms with stronger deictic force like daar/dat tend to be marginally
possible. In these contexts they are typically used cataphorically. By not setting apart existential er –
and het – as expletive subject, I arrived at an account which I would argue is both simpler and more
comprehensive.
3.4. The pronominal paradigm in which there participates in English: a diachronic-synchronic
perspective
In this section I will argue that the pronominal uses of Dutch er and het found with prepositions, in
complement extraposition constructions and in existential clauses are fully paralleled by the English
system of there [ðər] and it, which emerged in Old English.
As we saw in Section 3.2, existential it was attested in the corpus study of Van linden & Davidse
(2014) from the period 850–950 on. In the OED, which generally gives a good idea of the earliest
attestations, the first quote of existential there is c 893. The pronominal uses of there with prepositions
emerged very much in the same period. In the OED, we find the earliest cited example of thereafter
dating from c 897, thereinne c 897, theremid c 888, thereof c 1000, thereon c 897, thereout c 893,
therewith c 1000. Of all these, it is noted that initially they tended to be written as two words, e.g. ter of
in (57), which clearly reveals their being composed of there and preposition. If combined into one word,
the resulting compounds have adverbial status. The semantic glosses in the OED systematically include
the preposition followed by ‘that’ or ‘it’, thus signaling that there has entity-deixis. The element of
structure there is used in, the nominal complement of a preposition, and its meaning, reference to
entities, show it to be a pronoun. We thus see that in the early stages of OE, the deictic adverbial there
had developed a pronominal use. This grammatical change was motivated by a semantic shift from
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locative deixis to entity-deixis: from pointing to a location to pointing to an entity in a certain location.
As the pronominal uses are overwhelmingly endophoric, the change was from pointing through space
to identify a location for the hearer (the original exophoric use of the locative deictic) to indicating a
trajectory along which the reader can identify an entity in the unfolding discourse. There is an
identifying, definite pronoun, which may point to either definite (55)–(56) or indefinite (58), singular
(56), (58) or plural (55) antecedents. On the pronoun there itself there is no number marking.
(55) Wealdend..heofones & eorðan....& ealra ðara þe ðærin wuniað. (a1000 Boeth. Metr. xi.
4, OED)
‘the Ruler of heaven and earth, and all of them that live theerin.’
(56) The compasse of the worlde, and all yt dwell therin (1535 Bible (Coverdale) Psalms
xxiv. 2, OED)
‘The compass of the world and that dwell therein’
(57) Al þat muchele lure þat ter of ariseð. (c1230 Hali Meid. 5, OED)
‘All that great destruction that thereof arises.’
(58) If Lazarus had carried to him a pitcher of fresh water, hee should haue taken great
refreshment thereof. (1594 R. Carew tr. J. Huarte, Exam. Mens Wits vii. 99, OED)
In English, the phonological reduction of there is, unlike in Dutch, not marked morphologically for
existential there. Importantly, for there’s uses with prepositions, the OED explicitly notes in a number
of cases, e.g. therefor(e), therewith, thereof, the possibility of “shifting stress”, i.e. putting stress on
either there or the preposition. For many, alternative spellings suggestive of stress on the preposition are
included, e.g. throf, thrynne, throut(e). From this we can conclude that wholly parallel to the pronominal
uses of daar and er with prepositions, English developed a system with pronominal uses of there [ðɛər]
and there [ðər].
The first cited examples of pronominal uses of here with prepositions are generally a few
centuries later in the OED, e.g. hereby c 1250, herefor 1300, herein c 1000, hereof c 1050, hereon c
1000, hereout 1225. Thus, from Middle English on, a system was in place that was wholly parallel with
the one that is still in vogue in Dutch, in which the pronominal uses of here – there [ðɛər] – there [ðər]
aligned with the pronouns this – that – it, referring to entities – not locations. In English, the former
system became archaic or obsolete, and the latter became the unmarked means of expression.
herein – therein – thrin in this N – in that N – in the N in this – in that – in it
herewith – therewith – therewith with this N – with that N – with the N with this – with that – with it
hereof – thereof – throf of this N – of that N – of the N of this – of that – of it
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The semantic contrasts within these paradigms of demonstrative pronouns and determiners seem mainly
to do with the different degrees of deictic strength, which Kirsner (1979) brought to bear on hier – daar
– er. If we correlate high degree of deictic force to low accessibility of the antecedent (Ariel 2001), then
the pronominal uses of here refer to lowly activated antecedents, those of there [ðɛər] to antecedents
with medium accessibility, and those of there [ðər] to highly activated antecedents.
The core pronouns of the system, there and it, were, as in Dutch, the unmarked choices in
extraposition constructions in earlier stages of English. There was used in oblique complements with
preposition, as in (59) and it in direct object complements, as in (60). They function as weakly cataphoric
pronouns, which point forward to the following that-clause. In accordance with the process of
obsolescence that affected the pronominal use of there in compounds like (59), examples such as (61)
are now restricted to archaic registers like legal texts. The construction with it, as in (62), is still fully
productive (Gentens 2016).
(59) Then murmured the Iewes ther ouer, that he sayde; I am yt bred which is come down
from heauen. (1535, Bible (Coverdale) John vi. 41, OED)
‘Then murmured the Jews thereover, that he said: I am the bread that is come down
from heaven.’
(60) Whenne god hit wol..þat monnes flesshe to molde fal. (a1400 (▸a1325) Cursor Mundi
(Trin. Cambr.) l. 22798, OED)
‘When God wants it that man’s flesh to dust falls.”
(61) The appellant has moved an Interlocutory Application and complained thereof that in
spite of the order of stay of this Court, the respondents have been making construction
in the suit property and have violated the order passed by this Court
(https://indiankanoon.org/doc/61219119/?type=print)
(62) Do they really want it that clubs can terminate contracts? (WB)
The core pronouns found in extraposition constructions are the same ones as the non-salient pronouns
there and it found as subject in existential clauses. This casts an interesting light on the existential
pronouns, given that in the literature there has been either the tendency to perceive existential there as
still in some sense a locative adverb (e.g. Lyons 1975) or the opposite tendency to view there not only
as non-locative but also as semantically empty (e.g. Breivik 1989). In extraposition constructions there
is not perceived as being adverbial and having locative meaning but it is not viewed either as having no
referring meaning. In extraposition examples like (59) and (61) there, like it, is clearly a pronoun,
pointing to entities in the discourse, not locations, and it has weak cataphoric force.
I propose that the grammatical class and meaning of there and it as subject of English existential
clauses is in many ways similar. They are pronouns with weak deictic force, able to be used
endophorically only. They point to the entity or entities designated by the indefinite Existent NP, which
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mark instances of a type being newly introduced into the discourse. Pointing to newly introduced
entities, either count or uncount, singular or plural is part of the functional range of the pronouns there
[ðər] and it. The proposed functional value of existential it and there is coherent with their syntactic
function – they are definite, which is the preferred value of subjects – and with the other component
functions of existentials – they point to the entities designated by the obligatory Existent NP, not to the
locative adjunct which may be, but often is not, present in existentials. As existential there and it mostly
precede the VP, their phoric direction is typically cataphoric, as in complement extraposition. As such,
they function as a presentative signal, announcing their upcoming postcedent. I submit that this account,
supported by the parallel analysis of the pronominal system in Dutch, makes more comprehensive
generalizations and has more explanatory power than the traditional analyses of expletive there viewed
as a phenomenon sui generis in existential clauses.
4. The semantic functions of the adjunct in canonical existentials
As was noted in the Introduction, in locative interpretations of the existential, locative adjuncts in
examples such as (1), There were two usherettes in the foyer, are analysed as falling within the scope of
the VP and as making a predication of the Existent NP (Lyons 1975). In Davidse (1999), I followed
Kuno (1971), who argued that a predicative reading is impossible for many adjuncts in existentials,
which, as noted with regard to examples (2)–(4), may specify other circumstances than location, such
as duration, over the years (2), matter, about this bill (3) and purpose, for these results (3). If a
predication-type reading of the adjunct in existentials is possible, this is the marked option according to
Kuno (1971).
Kuno’s (1971) argumentation hinges on examples like (63), in which both the Existent and the
adjunct contain quantifiers, symbolized as Q2 and Q1 respectively. If such examples, the unmarked
reading is based on Q1 – Q2 order. An example like (63) is normally interpreted as ‘in all the courses,
there are many students’ (Q1 – Q2) – and not as ‘it is true of many students that they are in all the courses’
(Q2 – Q1). The latter reading is marginally possible for (63) but excluded with other examples such as
(64), which can only mean ‘of all transactions, many records are kept’ (Q1 – Q2), not ‘it is true of many
records that they are kept of all transactions’ (Q2 – Q1). In the structural representation corresponding to
this unmarked reading of adjuncts in existentials, the adjunct is not a part of the VP. Rather, it is outside
of the S-node (Kuno 1971: 363–369). On the marked reading of (63), in all the courses is predicated in
some way of many students, just as ill is predicated of many students in There were many students ill
(Kuno 1971: 368). We will return to the marked reading of (63) later in this section.
(63) There are many (Q2) students in all (Q1) the courses. (Kuno 1971: 361)
(64) There are many (Q2) records kept of all (Q1) transactions. (Kuno 1971: 368)
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In Quirk et al.’s (1985) terms, the adjunct in existentials is typically a sentence adjunct, i.e. a modifier
of the process-participant nucleus (McGregor 1997), which consists of there, be and the Existent NP.
Sentence adjuncts occur naturally in end and initial position without affecting the representational
semantics. This is borne out by existentials, whose sentence adjuncts naturally alternate between end
and initial position, as shown by (63)’ and (64)’, and by the alternates of examples (3)–(4).
(63)’ In all the courses, there are many students.
(64)’ Of all transactions, many records are kept.
(3) There are no smiles about this bill. (WB)
(3)’ About this bill there are no smiles.
(4) For good results, there are some guidelines you should follow. (Google)
(4)’ There are some guidelines you should follow for good results.
I have proposed to characterize the semantic contribution made to the sentence adjuncts of the canonical
existential in terms of Langacker’s (1991: 177) notion of search domain. A search domain specifies the
region to which the semantic target of a construal is confined, by providing specifications that have to
be satisfied (Langacker 1999: 53). The notion of search domain allows us to include all the specifications
that restrict the semantic target of canonical existentials. Their spatio-temporal domain is delineated by
the tense of the VP, spatial or temporal specifications provided by the sentence adjuncts, and contextual
clues from the preceding discourse. Other types of adjuncts, specifying e.g. matter (3) or purpose (4),
add further conditions to the search domain within which the semantic target of the existential applies.
This semantic target is, as argued in Section 2, the quantification of the instantiation of the relevant type
specifications. For instance, (63) quantifies the instances of ‘students’ within the search domain of ‘all
the courses’ taught at the time the utterance is made, by the people and within the institution for which
further contextual clues are needed. In (4), the search domain is defined by the modal should as a deontic
domain assessing the desirability of future actions, with for some good results (and all its contextual
specifications) indicating further conditions on the ‘guidelines to be followed’ that the existential seeks
to quantify.
Let us now turn to the other possible readings of prepositional phrases and adjuncts used as
separate constituents9 in existentials, as in (65) and (66). These examples differ from existentials with
sentence adjuncts in terms of their alternates. Whereas sentence adjuncts in final position can of their
nature systematically be put in initial position, (65) and (66) can’t, as shown in (65)’–(66)’. This shows
that on the dole and over something else do not modify the whole clause nucleus. Conversely, sentence
9 We are not concerned with preposition phrases functioning as NP-internal constituent in the Existent NP, as in There are criminals and there are people who commit crimes out of acts of desperation. (WB)
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adjuncts do not systematically alternate with forms with relative clauses, as shown in (3)’’ and (4)’’,
whereas (65) and (66) do, as shown in (65)’’–(66)’’, where the example in question is actually preceded
by an existential containing a full relative clause.
(65) I’d just like to ask Mr Dawson if he’s listens to your show how people like pricks like
him I should say get top jobs when there’s you know there’s obviously cleverer people
on the dole. (WB)
(65)’ *on the dole, there’s obviously cleverer people.
(65)’’ there’s obviously cleverer people who are on the dole.
(65)’’’ there’s obviously cleverer people Ø are on the dole.
(66) they developed the administration not just the registry so that there were five or six I
think it is main heads of the various sections of it. I mean there was MX who was over
er all the registry and then there was somebody over something else and so on. (WB)
(66)’ … *then over something else there was somebody.
(66)’’ … there was somebody who was over something else.
(66) ’’’ … there was MX Ø was over all the registry and then there was somebody Ø was over
something else.
(3)’’ *There are no smiles that are about this bill.
(4)’’ *There are some good guidelines that you should follow that are for good results.
The crucial point about alternates (65)’’ and (66)” is that they are there-clefts. They are not existential
clauses whose complement NP contains a NP-internal restrictive relative clause. This is shown by the
fact that they allow omission of the relative anaphor with subjects, as in (65)’’–(65)’’’ and (66)’’–(66)’’’,
which is characteristic of clefts and which is not possible in ordinary restrictive relative clauses (Collins
1991: 52). The possibility of zero subject relative marker is one important argument for (65)’’ and (66)’’
being there-clefts, as also pointed out by Huddleston (1971: 325) with regard to there-clefts. Further
arguments are provided by the semantics coded by (65)’’ and (66)’’ respectively. They represent two
types of there-clefts, presentational-eventive (65)’’ and specificational (66)’’ there-clefts, whose
semantics are discussed in Lambrecht (2001), Davidse (2000), and Davidse & Kimps (2015). (65)’’’ is
a presentational-eventive there-cleft, in which all the material obviously cleverer people Ø are on the
dole forms “a single canonical clause whose proposition is pragmatically asserted” (Lambrecht 2001:
507), while initial there are functions as a signal that the whole state-of-affairs is being introduced
(Huddleston 1984: 469f.). As suggested by Lambrecht (2002), constructionally, the relative clause
predicates on the complement NP obviously cleverer people in the existential matrix, which entails that
the whole construction is a secondary predication construction.
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(66)’’ is a specificational there-cleft, in which a value is listed, i.e. non-exhaustively specified
for a variable (Lambrecht 2001). On my analysis (Davidse 2000: 1102), a there-cleft, like an it-cleft,
expresses the value-variable relation two times. In (66), for instance, the value-variable relation is
conveyed a first time by the specificational existential matrix, which lists somebody as a value of the
general variable given in the preceding discourse, viz. main heads of the various sections of it [the
registry]. The value-variable relation is expressed a second time by the relation between the antecedent
and the cleft relative clause, which relates somebody as a value to the more specific variable who was
over something else. In the preceding listing there-cleft in (66) the specificational matrix likewise lists
MX (anonymized proper name of male) as value of the discourse-given general variable main heads of
the various sections of it [the registry], and the antecedent – cleft relative clause relation then replays
the specificational relation for the more specific variable who was over all the registry. The whole
construction has, at a schematic level, the same structural assembly as presentational-eventive there-
clefts, with a specificational matrix and a ‘secondary’ relation between the complement NP and the
anaphor in the relative clause. Because this secondary relation is specificational, the whole construction,
it is proposed in Davidse & Kimps (2016), is a secondary specification construction.
The analysis I propose, then, for the original examples is that (65), there’s obviously cleverer
people on the dole, is a secondary predication construction, and (66), then there was somebody over
something else, is a secondary specification construction. Constructions involving ‘secondary relations’
were first posited by Nichols (1978) to capture the structural assembly of examples such as (67) where
the secondary predicate is a NP, as a forgery, and was then extended by König & Lambrecht (1999) to
examples where the secondary predicate is a relative clause.
(67) We interpret this text as a forgery. (McGregor 1997: 172).
I hence propose to analyse the prepositional phrase on the dole in (65) as a secondary predicate and over
something else as the variable in a secondary specification relation.
5. Concluding discussion
In this article I have revisited my earlier account (Davidse 1992, 1999) of the grammatical semantics of
canonical existentials. I hold on to the basic idea that they construe the quantified instantiation of the
relevant type specifications conveyed by the Existent NP in a search domain specified by the tense of
the VP, and by any other sentence adjuncts that may be present. However, I have corrected and further
elaborated some aspects of the earlier proposals.
Firstly, with regard to the restrictions on the determiners of the Existent NP, I have reformulated
the way the indefiniteness restriction interacts with the quantification restriction. The ban on definite
determiners is paralleled by the ban on universal relative quantifiers, not on all relative quantifiers, as
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following Milsark (1976, 1977), I had claimed. In other words, the instantiation of the type specifications
that is quantified cannot be construed as coinciding with an identifiable reference set or mass.
Secondly, I reformulated and developed my earlier hunch that existential there has some relation
to pronominal there found in compounds with prepositions such as thereof and therewith. To get a
handle on the English system, I first charted the synchronic system of adverbial and pronominal er in
Dutch, the only Germanic language to have morphologized the phonological reduction of the non-
proximal spatial deictic. I argued that Dutch er is a member of two basic paradigms: the adverbial, where
hier/daar/er point to locations, and the pronominal, where hier/daar/er, like die/dat/het, point to entities.
In the pronominal paradigm, er and het have low deictic and typically endophoric force. In specific
grammatical contexts such as complement extraposition and existential clauses, we typically find the
phonologically reduced and weakly phoric er and het, even though some of the more salient forms with
stronger deictic force are marginally attested as well10. I then argued that, from the late stages of Old
English on, we see precisely the same paradigms developing, with pronominal uses of there, both [ðɛər]
and reduced [ðər], and here, which are proportionate with that, its reduced form it, and this. Reduced
there and it became the unmarked choice in complement extraposition, while there [ðər] became the
default choice for the subject in existentials, but with it surviving in regional varieties. In existentials,
they point, mostly cataphorically, to the entity or entities designated by the indefinite Existent NP, which
designate instances of a type being newly introduced into the discourse. As such, existential there and
it function as a presentative signal, announcing their upcoming postcedent.
Thirdly, I revisited the question of the grammatical functions of prepositional phrases and
adjuncts in existentials. I firstly recapped the arguments for viewing the prepositional phrase in examples
such as (3) There are no smiles about this bill as sentence adjuncts. I then proposed to analyse the
prepositional phrases in examples such as (65), there’s obviously cleverer people on the dole, and (66),
then there was somebody over something else, as secondary predication and specification respectively.
By way of conclusion, I put forth the following grammatical semantics of English canonical
existentials, as distinguished from existential constructions involving secondary predication or
secondary specification. The clause nucleus of canonical existentials expresses quantification of the
newly introduced instantiation of the type specifications conveyed by the Existent NP. This semantic
target is restricted by the specifications of the search domain. The VP provides temporal (or epistemic
modal) restrictions. Any sentence adjuncts that may be present add further conditions to the search
domain in accordance with their semantics such as place, as in (1) in the foyer, time, as in (2) over the
years, matter, as (3) about this bill, or purpose (4) for good results. Finally, elements from the co-text
or context may further restrict the search domain within which the quantification of the newly introduced
instantiation applies.
10 They are attested with different distributions in these two grammatical environments: hier/daar and die/dat are all found in complement extraposition, but only daar in existentials.
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