Information Articulation and Truth Conditions of Existential Sentences

This paper investigates the semantics of English there existential sentences. By examining discourse functions and pragmatic facts, it accounts for semantic facts which have not been discussed elsewhere. Further, it is a new attempt to incorporate information-theoretic notions into formal semantics. I propose that existential statements as expressing Austinian propositions. The proposed meanings account for the fact that post-copular NPs cannot constitute the restruction of an adverb of quantification nor admit a partitive reading.