On the Definiteness Effect in There Constructions

On the Definiteness Effect in There Constructions

To explain the Definiteness Effect (DE) in Enghsh there constructions, I assumed, following Yang's (1999) Set Linearization Condition (SLC), that the D of of DP must raise to v in transitive vP constructions and the N of a post-verbal subject DP must move to the D in unaccusative VP constructions for linearization. The DE in Enghsh there constructions straightforwardly follows from the impossibility of the N-to-D raising in the unaccusative DP, which entails failure of the DP linearization at PF. However, Yang's approach cannot provide a way for establishing the expletive-argument link in there constructions and fails to provide an account for lack of the Transitive Expletive Constructions (TEC) in English. In order to compensate for Yang's problems, I argued for a syntactic device such as AGREE (Chomsky 1998, 1999, 2001) and for the hypothesis that an expletive there originates from a vP-internal position like an external argument, following Radford (1997, 2004), Bowers (2002), and Kim and Lee (2004)