Clause structure, case and agreement in Polish existential, possessive and locative sentences: A phase-based account

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Though there are certainly similarities between locatives, existentials and possessives, the idea that they all derive from the same underlying small clause structure seems to be too simple to account for all the different properties of the respective constructions. Such a uniform analysis would require assuming that there are two different BEs: BE incorporating the P-head (thus accounting for the change from BE to HAVE) and BE not incorporating the P-head (thus not changing to HAVE). But even if one made such an assumption, it would still not be clear what accounts for the use of a HAVE form in (some) existential sentences. Similarly, it is not clear what accounts for different interpretations given that locatives, existentials and possessives have underlyingly the same argument structure. What decides which element (NP-THEME or PP-LOCATION) has to move? If BE is not a lexical item with its own meaning but just a spell-out of functional heads in syntax, how do the different interpretations (existence vs. location etc.) arise? It seems to me that the analysis advocated in this work that differentiated between different verbs BE (with different argument structures) not only avoids the technical and theoretical problems of a uniform analysis but also provides an explanation for the differences between various BE-sentences, and more importantly, has a solution to the otherwise puzzling GEN problem. As argued in the paper, the difference between existential and locative sentences is syntactically encoded in terms of what (LOC or THING) is the subject of inner predication (at the vP/VP level). Also the case marking of the nominal argument has been claimed to be a matter of syntax. The actual word order in existential and locative sentences is pragmatically determined. However, this analysis also has a price to pay, namely it forces us to assume different verbs BE; each BE has its own selectional properties: (i) existential BE, (ii) possessive BE / HAVE (iii) locative BE (agentive reading), and (iv) locative BE (simple position meaning. Interestingly, as has been pointed out to me by Juan Romero (p.c.), in Spanish there are four different verbs: ser, estar, haber, and tener, which roughly (but not exactly) correspond to the verbs analyzed (proposed) in the present paper. This might indicate that such a costly differentiated analysis could be on the right track. But definitely more research is needed to decide whether the price we have to pay for a nonuniform analysis is fair enough.

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