To Locate is Not to Predicate: On the Different Role of Location in Existential‑There and Locative Copular Sentences
p. 43-51
Résumés
The observed commonalities between existential‑there and locative copular sentences in English and other languages have been frequently cited, and these sentence types are often held to stand in a transformational relationship of some kind. This paper focuses on important contrasts between the two sentence types in English, casting doubt on the notion that they share an underlying form. I conclude that whereas location is a crucial component of the existential there‑sentence, it does not play this special role in the copular form.
Following a suggestion in Strawson (1964), I propose that the existential‑there sentence is not subject predicate in form, whereas the locative copular sentence is. Location is invariably crucial to the truth of a there‑sentence, but not the locative copular sentence, where the crucial thing for truth is whether an item has the property it is said to have (whether or not it is locative). Further, the there‑sentence cannot be used to predicate anything of any other thing, unlike the copular sentence. A number of well‑known grammatical properties distinguishing the there‑sentence from the locative copular sentence can be seen to fall out from this analysis: the presence of an expletive (signals lack of subject/predication), definiteness effects (the construction contains no expressions referring to or quantifying over individuals), and the stage/individual‑level distinction (a restriction against properties that do not change on the basis of the entity that has them).
Les points communs observés en anglais et dans d’autres langues entre les phrases existentielles there-proposition et les phrases locatives à copule ont été fréquemment mentionnés. Ces propositions sont souvent envisagées comme s’inscrivant dans une sorte de relation transformationnelle. Dans ce chapitre, sont soulignés les contrastes importants qui existent entre ces deux types de phrases en anglais, l’idée de l’existence d’une forme commune sous-jacente y est mise en doute. Je conclus que si dans une phrase existentielle, le lieu est un élément crucial, il ne l’est pas dans une structure à copule.
Suite à l’idée suggérée dans Strawson (1964), je considère que dans la phrase existentielle le sujet n’est formellement pas exprimé, alors qu’il l’est dans la phrase locative à copule. La localisation joue toujours un rôle crucial portant sur la vériconditionnalité de there-proposition, mais ce n’est pas le cas de la proposition locative à copule où le point le plus important est l’expression de l’adéquation du propos à la vérité et l’affirmation qu’un élément possède la propriété dénotée (si oui ou non la proposition est locative). En outre, contrairement à la proposition attributive, there‑proposition ne peut pas être utilisée pour prédiquer autre chose. Un certain nombre de propriétés grammaticales bien connues, qui distinguent there-proposition des propositions attributives locatives, sont susceptibles d’être envisagées comme ne faisant pas partie de cette analyse : présence d’une explétive (signal de l’absence de sujet/prédicat), procédés de détermination (construction ne comportant pas d’expressions qui se réfèrent aux individus ou qui les qualifient), distinction entre stage level, qui concernent des tranches spatio-temporellement délimitées de l’individu, et individual level, qui se rapportent à l’individu en tant que tel (restriction opposant les propriétés intrinsèques de l’entité qui en est dotée.)
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : proposition existentielle there‐sentence, proposition locative à copule, prédication locative, prédication existentielle
Keywords : existential there‑sentence, locative copular sentence, locative predication, existential predication
Texte intégral
1. Overview
1The topic of this paper is sentences such as those in (1‑4), sentences that participate in what has sometimes been called “the locative paradigm.” These sentence types have been argued, on the basis of data from a large number of typologically diverse languages, to derive from a single underlying predication structure.1 Sentence types in the locative paradigm include existential sentences, as in (1), locative copular sentences, as in (2), as well as possessives with have and be as exemplified in (3) and (4). Here I will focus on the sentence types in (1) and (2), the existential and the locative copular sentence.
“The locative paradigm” | ||
(1) | There is a book on the table. | Existential |
(2) | The book is on the table. | Predicate locative/locative copular |
(3) | Tom has a book. | Have‑possessive |
(4) | The book is Tom’s. | Be‑possessive |
2One goal of this paper is to present some evidence against this idea that the existential sentence and the locative copular sentence, as in (1) and (2), should be derived from the same underlying predication structure. The evidence I will present shows that location plays a different role in the two sentence types. My second aim is to use this evidence to motivate an alternative analysis of existential and copular sentences, in which location is crucial to the truth of the existential sentence, but it does not play this special role in the locative copular sentence.
2. On the role of location in conceptual structure
3I must begin by introducing the philosophical framework that underlies my analysis. In his book Individuals,2 Strawson argues that our knowledge about individuals is founded on a conceptual structure that organizes entities by their spatiotemporal location relative to us. In the context of this framework, Strawson asks whether it is possible to introduce an entity, not by predicating a property of it, but simply by indicating that a property or feature, in his terminology, is at a location, and without predicating anything of any other thing. Strawson suggests that this is in fact possible, and calls this special sentence form feature‑placing, to distinguish it from the canonical subject‑predicate form.
4Strawson doesn’t elaborate on this suggestion or provide an analysis of this sentence type, but I will assume this framework and attempt to fill in some of the blanks to show how his suggestion might illuminate the role of location in the two sentence types under consideration—the existential and the locative copular sentence. I propose the statements of the truth conditions of the two sentence types in (5) and (6):
(5) | A subject‑predicate sentence is true if an item has the property that it is said to have. |
(6) | A feature‑placing sentence is true if there is an entity with the required features where it is said to be. |
5In a feature‑placing sentence, a property is not predicated of an object; rather, a feature is placed at a location. To illustrate this difference between placing and predication, consider the sentence below in (7). This sentence does not mean the entire wall is dirty, but only that it has dirt on it somewhere. That is, one does not predicate dirtiness of the wall by saying There is dirt on the wall, and one also does not predicate on‑the‑wall‑ness of dirt. This is illustrated by sentence (8), which is degraded. Rather than predicating “dirt” of “the wall,” when one says, There is dirt on the wall, one locates (or places, in Strawson’s terminology) dirtiness; the result is an assertion that there is a dirty patch or area of the wall at that location. I argue elsewhere that facts such as these also argue against taking the postverbal nominal expression and locative to be in a predication relationship, as they are in the locative copular sentence.3
(7) | There is dirt on the wall. |
(8) | #Dirt is on the wall. |
6In what follows I will provide some evidence in favor of this general picture by focusing on the different role played by location in the two constructions.
3. Bare existentials
7Examples such as (9) and (10) invite an analysis on which locative copular and existential sentences share an underlying structure—they may appear to be no more than stylistic variations. Remember, however, that whereas the subject position of the copular sentence may be either definite or indefinite, the postverbal position of the existential sentence does not allow definite or strong quantificational noun phrases. These are the well‑known definiteness effects, illustrated in (11) and (12).
(9) | A man is in the garden. | |
(10) | There is a man in the garden. | |
(11) | The man is in the garden. | |
(12) | *There is the/every man in the garden. | Definiteness effects |
8Furthermore, although (9) and (10) are synonymous, inviting an analysis on which they share an underlying structure, it is not difficult to find examples that do not share this easy relationship. Milsark (1974) already observes that there are there‑sentences with no copular counterpart, as in (13‑14), the so‑called bare existentials.
(13) | There is a Santa Claus. | Bare existential with no copular counterpart |
(14) | *(A) Santa Claus is. |
9This restriction is quite general. No “bare” existential sentence (there‑sentence without anything following the noun) has a copular counterpart. This fact has implications for one’s view of the role of location in the two constructions. Many accounts of the existential sentence, for example, assume that some location must be interpreted for truth in this sentence type, whether or not a locative expression is linguistically present.4 So, in the utterance of a sentence such as (15), where the existence of the entity denoted by the postverbal NP is not in question, the local context of utterance is likely to be taken as the location, roughly, here. In uttering (16), by contrast, where the existence of the denotation of the nominal is in question, context is likely to supply the entire world or domain as the relevant location with respect to which the truth of the utterance is evaluated. In the case of local existence, as in (15), where the absolute existence of coffee is not at issue, truth requires an instance of coffee to be produced in the local context; in the case where absolute existence is in question, as in (16), truth requires an instance of a god to be produced anywhere at all.
(15) | There’s coffee (here). |
(16) | There is a god (anywhere). |
10Importantly, unlike the bare existentials in (15) and (16), it is not possible to recover a location from context in the locative copular sentence in (14). This fact constitutes one piece of evidence in favor of the view that location doesn’t play the same role in the two structures.
4. Ontological dependence
11There is a class of nouns that can appear postverbally in the there‑sentence but not as subjects of the locative copular sentence, illustrated in (17‑24). These nouns include color terms such as red, in (17) and (18), property nominalizations like truth, in (19) and (20), mass nouns, such as water, in (21) and (22), and expressions picking out entities that are what I will call existentially dependent, such as hole, exemplified in (23) and (24).5
(17) | There is red on the wall. | Color terms |
(18) | #Red is on the wall. | |
(19) | There is truth in what he says. | Property nominalizations |
(20) | #Truth is in what he says. | |
(21) | There is water on the floor. | Mass nouns |
(22) | #Water is on the floor. | |
(23) | There is a hole in the bucket. | Existentially dependent entities |
(24) | #A hole is in the bucket. |
12This class of nouns shares the following property: their denotations are ontologically dependent: ontologically dependent entities are realized as entities only insofar as they are manifest in the objects that have them.6 The infelicity of (18), (20), (22) and (24) can be traced to this dependence relation. Because the denotations of these nouns stand in this dependence relation, expressions denoting them cannot felicitously stand as the subject of a locative predication. This is because the location of the things they pick out is entirely dependent on another entity; predicating a location of these entities suggests they might have location independently, contrary to fact.
13This contrast is also visible with expressions picking out entities that may or may not be dependent in this way. Take windows, for example. When windows are installed in the normal way, they are dependent. But windows may also be independent, for example, before they are installed. Consider examples (25) and (26):
(25) | Four windows are in this house. |
(26) | There are four windows in this house. |
14The only felicitous interpretation for (25), a locative copular sentence, is that the windows are not installed in the normal way. They might be piled up on the floor, ready to be installed, but they are not hung. It is not possible to use (25) to mean that the house has four windows. Sentence (26), an existential sentence, by contrast, can have both the dependent and independent interpretations: the windows might be installed or not.
15Examples such as the ones that I have presented in this section7 show that the underlying structure for existential sentences must support both dependent and independent interpretations, and that the locative copular sentence must not—it allows only the interpretation on which the entity is independent. If we suppose that existential sentences ending in a locative expression state only that a particular property/feature is placed there, this statement then includes the case in which the location is a host to a dependent entity. It also distinguishes existential sentences from copular sentences ending in a locative. As we saw in (5), locative copular sentences state that an entity is in a particular location. So, the entity in a copular sentence is depicted as independent, the location being its current one.
5. Ambiguous in
16In the previous section we saw some reasons to believe that location functions differently in the existential and the copular sentence. I will now focus on the locative preposition that appears in both these sentence types, in, and will make the case that while the in that appears in the locative copular sentence is the typical locative preposition, that the in that appears in the existential sentence is not; rather, it is a functional morpheme that signals the dependence relation between the property/feature and the location in which it is placed.
17The preposition in is typically taken to signify enclosure or containment, and its meaning has traditionally been represented by a semantics of inclusion or a subset relation, similar to that used for part‑whole relations: for instance, if a ball is in a box, the ball is within the set of things in the region occupied by the box, etc.
18It has been pointed out, however, that the use of in to relate objects is constrained by our conceptual representation of spatial relations. For example, if the relationship between the entities being talked about is asymmetrical, such that one of them is conventionally taken to host or ground the other, a relation of inclusion is not sufficient to license in. In these cases, when the conventional roles are reversed, we get infelicity. Vandeloise,8 for example, notes contrasts such as the following, in (27) and (28):
(27) | The cap is on the bottle. |
(28) | #The bottle is in the cap. |
19In (28), although the spatial relation of the two objects is identical to that in (27), the dependency relation is reversed, and the bottle is located by the dependent entity, the cap. To speak of the configuration this way is infelicitous.
20This contrast, like the ones we saw in the previous section, suggests that, alongside spatial configuration, dependency relations between entities are relevant to the meaning and use of locative expressions such as in. Specifically, we use different structures to express dependency relations and relations of inclusion. This suggestion is confirmed by the pattern of inferences across sentences where in relates a dependent entity to a prior one compared to those relating objects that stand in an ordinary locative relation. Specifically, transitivity holds between sentences that include the relation of containment or inclusion, as we see in (29). Compare this to (30), where the relation of containment is mixed with one of dependency. Here, transitivity fails:
(29) | There is a ball in the box. | |
The box is in the closet. | ||
= | The ball is in the closet. | Transitivity holds |
(30) | There is a hole in the bucket. | |
The bucket is in the closet. | ||
= ∕ | There is a hole in the closet. | Transitivity fails |
21The contrast between (29) and (30) provides further support for the idea that the locative expressions in the two constructions are not the same. The existential sentence, but not the copular one, allows in to mediate the relation between dependent entities.
6. The stage/individual level distinction
22Let us turn now to the contrast in (31) and (32). The restrictions on the adjectival expressions that may appear after the noun in the existential sentence are commonly known as the stage/individual level distinction or the predicate restriction:
(31) | There is a cat asleep on the porch. | |
(32) | *There is a cat adorable on the porch. | SL/IL or predicate restriction |
23The stage/individual level analysis of this contrast says that it derives from the requirement on the part of certain adjectives, the so‑called IL adjectives, to take individuals as their arguments, rather than stages of individuals. In other words, IL adjectives denote permanent properties (properties of individuals) rather than transitory ones (properties of stages). One problem for that explanation, in this context, acknowledged already by Carlson,9 who originally proposed the account, is that there are properties that hold of an individual over a long time, and are permanent properties, and so qualify as IL, that may nonetheless appear in this environment. Sentence (33) contains one such adjective, dead.
(33) | There is a cat dead on the porch. |
24To explain (33), I suggest restating the restriction against IL properties in a way that is compatible with placing. Rather than disallowing permanent properties, the adjectives licensed in this environment are those that can change on the basis of the location in time or space of the individual that has them. Only such properties are compatible with placing. This is because properties that an object invariably has are not informative in the context of placing—but those that can locate the object in time or space, are. So although once one is dead, it is certainly a permanent state, it is not a property that the entity invariably has—one must have been alive in the past to be dead now; therefore, the adjective dead denotes a property that is compatible with placing. We do not use the property of being adorable in this way, although we may imagine situations in which a cat that was once adorable becomes less so.
7. Summary and conclusion
25In this paper I have provided evidence that shows the role of location in the locative copular and existential sentences are different, and have cast doubt on the idea that the two sentence types share the same underlying predication structure. I have also introduced an alternative way to analyze the existential sentence, which distinguishes it from the locative copular sentence. On this analysis the existential is not an instance of predication but rather of placing. On the other hand, the locative copular sentence participates in predication, and can be used to state the location of an entity, among other things, which the existential sentence cannot. It can be used to place a feature, but not to predicate anything of any other thing.
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
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Carlson Gregory Norman, 1977, Reference to Kinds in English , Dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, 311 p.
Clark Eve, 1978, “Existential, Locative, and Possessive Constructions” in Greenberg Joseph H., Ferguson Charles A. & Moravcsik Edith A. (eds.), Universals of Human Language, vol. 4 - Syntax, Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp. 85‑126.
Francez Itamar, 2010, “Context Dependence and Implicit Arguments in Existentials” in Linguistics and Philosophy, no 1, vol. 33, pp. 11‑30, DOI : 10.1007/s10988-010-9073-2.
10.1007/s10988-010010-90739073-2 :Freeze Ray, 1992, “Existentials and Other Locatives” in Language, no 3, vol. 68, pp. 553‑595, DOI : 10.2307/415794.
10.2307/415794 :Hornstein Norbert, Rozen Sara & Uriagereka Juan, 1994, “Integrals” in University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 2, pp. 70‑90.
Koslicki Katherin, 2012, “Varieties of Ontological Dependence” in Correia Fabrice & Schnieder Benjamin (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 186‑213.
Lyons John, 1967, “A Note on Possessive, Existential and Locative Sentences” in Foundations of Language, no 4, vol. 3, pp. 390‑396.
Milsark Gary Lee, 1974, Existential Sentences in English, Thesis, MIT, Cambridge, 260 p.
Strawson Peter Frederick, 1964 [1959], Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Routledge, London, 260 p.
10.4324/9780203221303 :Szekely Rachel, 2015a, Truth Without Predication: the Role of Placing in the Existential There-Sentence, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke & New York, 169 p.
Szekely Rachel, 2015b, “The Linguistic Reflexes of Ontological Dependence” in International Review of Pragmatics, no 1, vol. 7, pp. 1‑21, DOI : 10.1163/18773109-00701001.
10.1163/18773109-00701001 :Notes de bas de page
Auteur
Long Island University/New York

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