A New Analysis Of There Sentences-from The Perspective Of Copy Movement

There-existential construction is one of hot topics for syntactic studies. Its syntactic features are:expletive there stands at the initial position, but the verb agrees with the post-verb NP. The problems thisconstruction poses are:What is the status of there?How is the Case feature of the post-verb NP valued?How is the agreement relation between the verb and the post-verb NP established?This thesis, on the basis of the Copy Theory of Movement and the Split Projection Hypothesis, makesa new effort in explaining the derivation of this construction around the three questions above.To address the three questions above, this thesis posits that there is an LF Existential Marker situatedat Spec of TP, rather than an LF Affix as proposed by Chomsky (1995). The reason for such a position is asfollows: Since the lack of external argument and the indefiniteness of the post-verb NP characterizethere-existential construction, existential should be compositional, not lexical. So, there as a marker ofexistence, should be a propositional rather than a lexical marker.In the spirit of the Minimalist Program, νP is a full thematic structure. Why there as a propositionalmarker is not situated at the Spec of νP then? This is because νP is a defective projection, whose Spec foragent is null. In accordance with Burzio’s Generalization, the Spec for checking the Case feature of thetheme/patient in νP must be empty when the Spec for agent is not occupied. Otherwise, if the Spec foragent is filled, the Spec for feature-checking will be in work. So, if we insert there at the Spec of νP, thederivation will crash.In addition to the LF Existential Marker Assumption, this thesis proposes three conditions forlinearization of there. They are: the external argument condition, the indefinite NP condition, T-F raisingcondition. The external argument condition requires that the verb in there-sentence must lack externalargument. This assures that the valuation of the Case feature of the theme/patient NP is at the Spec of TP.The indefinite NP condition requires that there can be only adjoined to by an indefinite NP at Spec of TP.The T-F raising condition explains the agreement between the verb and post-verb NP. According to the Split Projection Hypothesis, traditional CP is split into ForceP, TopP, and FocusP. In the derivation of canonicalstatement, the verb does not need to raise from Tense to Focus. The subject NP will move directly from theSpec of TP to the external position of F(orce)P. When T-F raising happens, a kind of inversion will occur, asin the case of interrogative sentences or of focalization like Never again would I see him! In the derivationof there existential sentences, there will copy-move to the Spec of FP when T-F raising happens, where theupper copy of there will be phonetically realized, and the lower copy at the Spec of TP will be deleted.The T-F raising condition not only answers the question of why the verb in there-existentialconstruction agrees with the associate NP, but also explains why the existential statement has two forms.For instance: Some linguists are in the room/There are some linguists in the room.