A Typological Study of the Existential Clause

This book investigates the existential clause (EC) from a cross-linguistic perspective and within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics.

WANG Yong is Professor of Linguistics at Sun Yat-sen University, China. His research interests include functional linguistics, linguistic typology, discourse analysis, and Chinese grammar.

1. Introduction 2. Theoretical preliminaries 3. Towards a typology of the existential clause: Morpho-syntax 4. The subject of the EC 5. The definiteness effect 6. Entity- vs. event-existentials: A new typology 7. Event-existentials in Chinese 8. ECs as impersonals: A cross-linguistic perspective 9. Impersonal clauses as event-existentials in Chinese 10. Existential and possessive clauses 11. Conclusions