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1 results

  • Existential indefinite constructions, in the world and in Mainland Southeast Asia

  • JOHAN VAN DER AUWERA, QUAN NGUYEN HAI, VIPAS POTHIPATH, STEFANIE SIEBENHÜTTER
  • Journal:
    Journal of Linguistics / Volume 59 / Issue 4 / November 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 May 2022, pp. 881-914
    Print publication:
    November 2023
    • Article
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  • In some languages assertions about ‘somebody’ or ‘nobody’ are existential in a strong sense, i.e. they need or prominently allow an explicit syntactic marker of existence (‘there is’, ‘exist’). This paper presents a state-of-the-art typology of existential indefinite constructions and finds the typological understanding to be inconclusive in many respects. The paper responds to this inconclusiveness with a study of the existential indefinite constructions in four mainland Southeast Asian languages, namely Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and Khmer. These are languages in which existential indefinite constructions take pride of place, although the typological literature has not acknowledged this. The paper then sketches the implications of the study of the aforementioned languages for typology.