Publications

Publication details [#64208]

Vecsey, Zoltán. 2018. Negative existentials. A problem still unsolved. Pragmatics 28 (4) : 599–616.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/prag

Annotation

Negative existentials containing empty NPs are understood colloquially as representing how things stand in the world. Moreover, utterances of such sentences seem to express propositions or thoughts that are informative and true. Standard static semantic theories cannot provide a straightforward account of these intuitive phenomena. In such frameworks, sentences with empty NPs are considered as being unable to express truth-evaluable contents. This paper investigates two alternative theories of negative existentials. A common feature of these theories is that they adopt a dynamic approach to meaning. The paper will argue that neither of these alternatives provides a reassuring solution to the apparent truth-conditional problem generated by the utterances of negative existentials.