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Irish Existentials in Context
Author(s) -
McCloskey James
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
syntax
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9612
pISSN - 1368-0005
DOI - 10.1111/synt.12020
Subject(s) - lexicalization , existentialism , linguistics , typology , predicate (mathematical logic) , definiteness , irish , context (archaeology) , computer science , philosophy , sociology , epistemology , history , programming language , archaeology , anthropology
Abstract This paper aims to contribute to the comparative typology of existential constructions by examining Irish existentials in detail. It goes on to engage some of the central theoretical issues raised in that investigation and provides support for the bifurcated analysis of the definiteness restriction proposed by McNally (1992). It identifies what is argued to be a true existential predicate and argues that there is no common syntactic form for existentials crosslinguistically; rather, the observed commonalities among existentials across languages reflect semantic primitives out of which they are constructed. Diversity in the expression of existential propositions principally reflects different patterns of lexicalization.