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.*