『There』문에서 한정사의 용인성 문제

Definiteness of the Postverbal Noun Phrase in "There" Constructions

&nbsp;&nbsp;The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of the postverbal definite noun phrase of both the existential there-sentence and the presentational there-sentence, explore the cause of the difference of its acceptability, and point out some problems related to the analysis of the two constructions.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;It has been claimed that the there-sentence does not allow the postverbal definite noun phrase to occur in these constructions, but this turns out to be false. Particularly, Birner and Ward (1998) observe that lots of postverbal definite noun phrases occur in these constructions, and that they are sensitive to the contextual restriction. According to them, the postverbal noun phrase in the existential there-sentence must represent an entity which is hearer-new, while the postverbal noun phrase in the presentational there-sentence must represent an entity which is discourse-new. They, thus, insist that these constructions should be pragmatically accounted for.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Besides, they argue that the infelicity in the use of such sentences arises from a close but imperfect correlation between the cognitive status to which definiteness is sensitive and that to which postverbal position in there-sentences is sensitive.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;At any rate, their analysis fails to clearly account for the characteristics of the postverbal definite noun phrases that may occur in these constructions, since it is sometimes apt to make people learning English as a second language confused as to whether some definite postverbal noun phrases represent hearer-new entities or not in some existential there-sentences. Likewise, it is not easy to tell whether some postverbal noun phrases represent discourse-new entities or not in some presentational there-sentences.