Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

which refer to permanent properties of the referent, are excluded as modifiers of the noun
under the definiteness effect (see below, section 3.5, for a discussion of stage- and
individual-level predicates, topicality and the opposition between adjectival and verbal
small clauses in recent work by Basilico [2003]). Later authors have also identified
definiteness effects in relational “have” sentences and, as noted above, head-internal
relative clauses (see, among numerous other available references, in particular, Davidson
1967; Stowell 1981, 1983; Safir 1985; Reuland and Meulen 1987; Diesing 1992;
Herburger 2000; Jäger 2001, passim non vidi; on the role of indefinites in certain kinds of
complex verb formation, strongly resembling the Sumerian verbal complex, see Szabolcsi
1986; Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000: 32, 222, fn. 2).
Before turning to the exceptions to the definiteness effect, which are really the most
interesting part about it, the precise definition of what an existential “there” sentence in
English is, is in need of some clarification. The most important detail is that it must be
kept separate from presentational “there” sentences.
(42) There is a post office next to the library.
In (42), we have a standard existential “there” sentence: note the indefinite article on the
noun that immediately follows the copula. If the immediately post-copular noun is
definite, “there” and the post-copular noun can alternate on either side of the “to be” verb
without affecting the meaning much at all as in (43) below.
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