Expletives as Arguments : Germanic Existential Sentences Revisited *

We propose an analysis for expletive-associate constructions within the minimalist framework outlined by Chomsky (1991, and later). Specifically, we argue that the expletive is an argument expression that must raise to the (most) external subject position in order to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle and check nominative case, while number agreement is checked by the associate. We present evidence against the assumption that the associate is assigned inherent or structural partitive by the verb, and instead suggest that it receives default case. In conjunction with the Kratzer/Diesing theory of indefinites, our analysis is shown to account for some well-known semantic restrictions on existential sentences, as well as for the relatively weaker definiteness effects observed in transitive expletive constructions. 1 Expletive-associate constructions: the problems With the development of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1991, and later), sentences containing overt subject expletives (henceforth, Exp) such as English there, German es, Dutch er, or Icelandic það have become the focus of much theoretical debate (see Chomsky 1995, 1998; Groat 1995; Jang 1997; Lasnik 1992, 1995; among others). Most of these studies assume that the expletive is a pure syntactic dummy, devoid of meaning and with a defective set of grammatical features, whose presence is motivated by the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) (Chomsky 1982: 10, 1995: 199, 284). The present article attempts to challenge this view, and reconsiders the syntactic status of the * For constructive criticism and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article, we are indebted to Martin Atkinson, Harald Clahsen, Jenny Dalalakis, Mike Jones, Roger Hawkins, Joan Maling, Andrew Radford, and several anonymous reviewers. 2 Claudia Felser & Laura Rupp expletive by comparing expletive-associate constructions of different types and from several languages, taking into account the effect that the presence of the expletive has on sentence interpretation. Given that morphosyntactically, expletives are pronouns, they are commonly categorised as (intransitive) determiners (see e.g. Radford 1997). The following examples (from Jenkins 1975: 11) show that expletive there occurs in positions typically occupied by argumental DPs or pronouns, rather than by the homophonous locative adverb (from which it is diachronically derived):1 (1) a. Is there any hope? (INTERROGATIVE) b. There’s no hope, is there? (TAG QUESTION) c. There is believed to have been a revolution. (PASSIVE) d. There seems to be something brewing. (RAISING) "True" expletives such as English there are generally assumed to lack a θ-role. The following data confirm that there is excluded from positions associated with standard thematic roles such as AGENT or THEME, as well as from the subject position of those intransitive verbs that otherwise admit a quasi-argument such as weather-it (compare [2a-d]). (2) a. *There ate a biscuit. b. *We saw there. c. *She persuaded there to fund the party. d. It/*There rained. True expletives usually occur with verbs that fail to assign an external θ-role such as existential be, unaccusative or raising verbs, and they always require the presence of a thematic associate (the logical subject). Expletive-associate constructions of the type exemplified by the (a) examples in (3)-(7) below are also known as existential sentences (henceforth, ES). As noted by Milsark (1974), they generally invoke an interpretation in which existence is predicated of the entity denoted by the associate, which must normally be a non-specific indefinite. This restriction on the semantic type of the associate is known as the definiteness effect, or definiteness restriction (DR) on the associate.2 1 See Breivik (1981) for further arguments that expletive there is grammatically distinct from the corresponding locative adverb. 2 The DR has been extensively discussed in the literature (see e.g. Reuland & ter Meulen 1987), and has alternately been described as a syntactic, semantic, or pragmatically motivated restriction. Observe, however, that definite DPs are not universally excluded from existential sentences (examples from Lumsden 1988): (i) There were the usual books outside the gates for sale. (ii) There was the top of a bottle on the table. (iii) There is the most remarkable woman in the room. According to Comorovski (1991), there sentences containing a definite associate illustrate the "presentative" use of ES: they serve the pragmatic function of introducing a new discourse referent Expletives as Arguments: Germanic Existential Sentences Revisited 3 (3) a. There suddenly broke out a fight. b. *There suddenly broke out the fight. (4) a. There arrived three new lecturers today. b. *There arrived every new lecturer today. (5) a. There are many students waiting outside. b. *There are Mary’s students waiting outside. (6) a. There appeared a ghost in the attic. b. *There appeared Elvis in the attic. (7) a. There seemed to be someone in the room. b. *There seemed to be she/her in the room. Definite descriptions, proper names or pronouns are usually excluded from existential sentences, as well as quantified noun phrases introduced by a universal quantifier such as every or most (Milsark 1974, 1977).3 DPs that are excluded from the coda of existential sentences are referred to by Milsark as "strong", whereas those which may serve as an associate of an expletive have been labelled "weak" DPs. Observe that the QP associate of expletive there in (8) has narrow scope only, as can be seen from the fact that it cannot take scope over the negation. (8) There are not many students in this class. i. 'It is not the case that many students are in this class.' ii. ≠ 'Many students are such that they are not in this class.' rather than asserting existence. She further argues that presentative ES differ semantically from ordinary existentials in that the presence versus absence of the expletive does not affect the meaning of the sentence (compare section 4 below). The same appears to be true for the German example (iv), which has been suggested by a reviewer: (iv) Es war der Geist von Elvis im Schloss. there was the ghost of Elvis in.the castle The present article focuses on unequivocally "existential" ES though. 3 In view of the fact that the indefinite associate tends to favour a non-specific interpretation, Enç (1991) has suggested that the term "definiteness effect" should be replaced by the term "specificity effect". The following counterexamples (from Comorovski 1991 and Abbott 1994, 1995), however, show that certain types of specifics, including partitives, can also occur quite naturally in existential environments: (i) There is a certain young man at the door. (ii) Remember those bats that got loose last night? There was one of them in the fridge this morning! (iii) There are most/all/several of yesterday’s exams left to correct. Abbott (1995) concludes that specificity (at least in the "partitive" sense of Enç 1991) cannot be the relevant factor triggering the DR either. According to Comorovski (1991), sentences like those above are not interpreted as genuine existentials, but again illustrate the presentative use of there (compare note 2). As a comprehensive discussion of all real or apparent exceptions to the DR is beyond the scope of the present study, we will leave this as a matter for future investigation. 4 Claudia Felser & Laura Rupp Moreover, the predicate of existential sentences must have stage-level properties in the sense described by Carlson (1980), a fact previously noted by Milsark (1974). Predicates that strongly favour an individual-level reading such as be dead or be intelligent, on the other hand, are normally disallowed. (9) a. There was a fly in my soup. b. *There was a fly dead. (10) a. There were many people dancing. b. *There were many people intelligent. Expletive-associate constructions involving true expletives are further characterised by the fact that the predicate shows overt number agreement with the associate rather than with the expletive:4 (11) There were/*was five students missing. On the assumption that predicate-internal argument slots are reserved for θmarked expressions (compare Chomsky 1995: 312-316), it would seem that expletives must necessarily originate in a predicate-external position (see also Safir 1993). Chomsky (1995) proposes that in languages where T contains a strong [D] feature which forces overt substitution in its specifier, expletives are base-generated in (Spec,TP). In Chomsky (1998), the strength metaphor is abandoned, and the specifier of T is instead assumed to be licensed by an (uninterpretable) EPP feature. The associate itself remains in its base position, an option that is naturally available under the predicate-internal subject hypothesis (Koopman & Sportiche 1991, among others). True expletives are assumed to bear a defective set of φ-features. While according to Chomsky (1995), true expletives consist merely of the categorial feature [D], Chomsky (1998) suggests that their φ-set contains an uninterpretable [person] feature only. Their sole syntactic function is that of checking the EPP feature of T prior to Spell-Out, as required by the principle of Full Interpretation (FI). An existential sentence such as There were many people present can therefore be assigned the (simplified) representation in (12).5 4 In some languages, agreement on the verb is triggered by the expletive (e.g. French il; see Cardinaletti 1997 for a cross-linguistic comparison). Many speakers of English also permit a (colloquial) variant of (11), There's five students missing, in which the copula agrees with the expletive (for some relevant discussion, see Schütze 1999, and references cited there). The present study, however, focuses on "true" expletives that fail to trigger verbal agreement. 5 The label Pred(icate) P(hrase) has been chosen to remain neutral with respect to the precise categorial status of the "small clause" complement of T, which presumably is headed either by a lexical category (along the lines of Stowell’s 1983 analysis of small clauses), by a functional head of the kind postulated by Bowers (1993), or by some light verb v that forms part of an extended verb phrase in the spirit of Larson (1988) and Chomsky (1995). Expletives as Arguments: Germanic Existential Sentences Revisited 5 (12) TP ti Spec T’ g to there T[EPP] PredP g ep were many people present This of course raises the question of how the associate checks case and agreement, given that the thematic subject is not in the checking domain of T at Spell-Out, and the external subject position is already occupied by the expletive. We shall discuss possible answers to this question in section 2 below. Full Interpretation requires that PF and LF, the only two levels of representation recognised within Minimalism, contain only legitimate objects. LF and PF objects are deemed legitimate only if they can be interpreted by the conceptual-intentional and articulatory-perceptual system respectively. Since true expletives do not seem to bear a thematic role or carry any interpretable φfeatures, their status at LF remains rather dubious. A successful analysis of expletive-associate constructions will have to provide answers to at least the following questions: i. How is agreement triggered given that the associate is not in a checking configuration with the verb or auxiliary in T? ii. How does the associate check its case? iii. How can we account for the definiteness restriction, and for the fact that the predicate must have stage-level properties? iv. What is the syntactic status of the expletive, and what (if any) is its contribution to semantic interpretation? In what follows, we provide an analysis of expletive-associate constructions within the framework outlined by Chomsky (1991, and later) that attempts to answer the above questions, and further shows how the syntactic and semantic properties of ES are interrelated. The remainder of this article is structured as follows. Section 2 offers a brief critical overview of previous approaches to expletive-associate constructions within the principles-and-parameters/minimalist framework. In section 3, we provide arguments against the partitive case hypothesis initially put forward by Belletti (1988) and developed further by Lasnik (1992, 1995). Instead, it is argued that the associate, by virtue of being barred from checking either structural or inherent case, receives morphological default case. In section 4, we challenge the widely held assumption that true expletives lack a thematic role. Extending a suggestion made by Ramchand (1996), we propose that expletives are overt instantiations of the event or spatiotemporal argument postulated by Kratzer (1995). It is shown that a minimalist analysis of ES in the spirit of Chomsky (1995, 1998), combined with a 6 Claudia Felser & Laura Rupp Kratzer/Diesing-style approach to the syntax of DPs, successfully accounts for the characteristic properties of existential sentences. Finally, in section 5, we examine transitive expletive constructions (TECs) which have been argued to be potentially problematic for Diesing’s (1992) theory of indefinites. It is shown that to the extent that these problems are real, they are not in fact incompatible with Diesing’s mapping hypothesis.