David Beaver, Itamar Francez and Dmitry Levinson: “Bad subject: (non-)canonicality and NP distribution in existentials”, SALT 15.

Constructions of the type exemplified by (1) have been extensively studied in linguistics and philosophy. In the generative literature they are generally referred to as “existentials”.

(1) There is a problem with this mobile phone.

One of the most extensively studied aspects of these constructions is the distribution of NP/DP1 types that occur in the role or position of a problem in (1). Following common practice, we refer to the NP occurring in this role/position as pivot. Despite extensive study, there is no consensus as to what kinds of NPs occur as pivots, and why. In this paper, we argue:

a. That the distribution of NP types in pivot role is more complex than has been acknowledged in the literature.

b. That definiteness effects should be accounted for not by construction-specific constraints, but by general markedness constraints, in particular markedness constraints on grammatical subjects.

c. That definiteness effects of the kind exhibited by existentials vary systematically across languages, and that understanding the nature of this variation allows us to identify a natural class of constructions cross-linguistically.