The syntax and argument structure of existentials

This paper investigates the syntactic and argument structure of existentials by cross-linguistically comparing these constructions to other types of nominal predicates. The predicative nature of the nominal constituents in existentials, as well as in locative clauses, has been questioned and refuted on the basis of various cliticization phenomena which apply to Italian. Existentials are thus seen as Pred + NP + (PP) syntactic structures in which the post-verbal NP is the subject and the PP is a locative or other kind of oblique. Semantically the oblique is a semi-argument or argument-adjunct, not a circumstantial, in that it is required by the construction although it can be omitted.