Definiteness and the English Existential

Numerous attempts have been made to place restrictions on the occurrence of formally definite NPs in English existential there- sentences. The wide range of definite NPs found in this construction, however, precludes any (noncircular) characterization of such a definiteness effect based on linguistic form alone. Nonetheless, previous functional analyses of definites in there -sentences have also failed to account for all of the problematic data in a unified way. We present an account of existential there -sentences in which the postverbal NP is required to represent a hearer-new entity; based on a large corpus of naturally occurring data, we identify five types of formally definite yet hearer-new NPs that may felicitously occur in there -sentences. The alleged restriction against definite NPs in there -sentences is shown to be the result of a mismatch between the cognitive status to which definiteness is sensitive and that to which the postverbal position in there -sentences is sensitive.