Definiteness restriction is the restriction that the subject of a sentence beginning with expletive there, must be an indefinite noun phrase, or in Milsark's (1977) terms, a weak noun phrase. The definiteness restriction is shown by the contrast between (i) and (ii): the strong noun phrases in (i) are not compatible with expletive there.
(i) a *There is John/the man/every man in the room b *There are they/the people/most people in the room (ii) a There is a man/one man in the room b There are men/two men/many men in the room
- Milsark, G.L. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English, Linguistic Analysis 3, pp.1-29
- Milsark, G.L. 1974. Existential sentences in English, diss. MIT.
- Reuland, E. and A. ter Meulen (eds.) 1987. The representation of (in)definiteness, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
- Safir, K. 1982. Syntactic chains and the definiteness effect, diss. MIT.