It is well known that existential sentences in many languages exhibit the Definiteness Effect, a manifestation of the requirement that the NP whose existence is being asserted must be indefinite, as illustrated in the following examples from languages like English, Chinese, and Chamorro:

(1)	a.	*There is the book on the table.	(Chinese, from Huang 1987)
	b.	*You neiben shu zhai zhuo-shang. have that book at table-top 'There is that book on the table.'
	c.	*Guaha i katni gi halum kahun ais. Infl(s)-exist the meat inside box ice 'There's the meat in the box.'	(Chamorro, from Chung 1987)

EnC (1991), however, points out that the Definiteness Effect is actually not restrictive enough since specific indefinites are also incompatible with the existential constructions, as evidenced by the following examples from English:

(2)	a.	*There are some of the books on the table.
	b.	*There is a certain/specific/particular document in the drawer.

As specific indefinite NPs as well as definite NPs (which are always specific) are not allowed in existential sentences, EnC suggests that the Definiteness Effect be abandoned in favor of the the Specificity Effect.

Existential sentences in Indonesian, i.e., those characterized by the presence of the verb ada 'exist', however, give the appearance of not being subject to the Specificity Effect in allowing both nonspecific indefinite, specific indefinite, and definite NPs as illustrated in (3).

(3)	a.	Tidak ada [ mayat ] di kuburan tersebut. not exist corpse in bury-AN TER-mention 'There is not a dead body in the grave.'
	b.	Tidak ada [ dua dari lima mayat itu ] di kuburan tersebut. not exist two of five corpse that in bury-AN TER-mention 'There are not two of the five dead bodies in the grave./Two of the five dead bodies are not in the grave.'
	c.	Tidak ada [mayat itu] di kuburan tersebut not exist corpse that in bury-AN TER-mention 'There isn't the dead body in the grave./The dead body isn't in the grave.'

Despite their initial appearances, I would like to show in this paper that like those in many other languages, existential sentences in Indonesian also exhibit the Specificity Effect. Specifically, I would like to demonstrate that existential sentences in Indonesian arise out of a constraint in Indonesian which requires that the surface subject must be either definite/specific or generic (Macdonald 1976, Chung 2000). A nonspecific indefinite NP cannot surface in subject position; it can occur only in an existential construction immediately following the verb ada. I will thus argue in this paper that unlike the nonspecific indefinite NP, mayat, in (3a), which remains within VP, the specific indefinite NP, dua dari lima mayat itu, in (3b), and the definite NP, mayat itu, in (3c), despite initial appearances, are in subject position. The predicate-initial word order (3b) and (3c) will be argued to be due to the application of a syntactic operation called predicate movement in Indonesian. This account is in line with Diesing's (1992) Mapping Hypothesis which states that by LF an NP that remains within VP is subject to the indefiniteness/nonspecificity restriction, but an NP that raises out of VP and occupies subject position is not. I shall also adopt Freeze's (1992) proposal which argues for sentences like (3b) and (3c), which he refers to as the predicate locative, and sentences like (3a), which he terms the existential, as belonging to the 'locative paradigm'. That is to say, all the sentences in (3) are derived from a single underlying structure in which the thematic arguments are Location and Theme.

References

Diesing, M. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

EnC. 1991. "The Semantics of Specificity." Linguistic Inquiry 22:1-25.

Freeze, Ray. 1992. "Existentials and Other Locatives." Language 68: 553-595.

Huang, C.-T. James. 1987. "Existential Sentences in Chinese and (In)definiteness." In Eric J. Reuland and Alice G.B. ter Meulen (eds.), The Representation of Indefiniteness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Chung, Sandra. 1987. "The Syntax of Chamorro Existential Sentences." In Eric J. Reuland and Alice G.B. ter Meulen (eds.), The Representation of Indefiniteness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Chung, Sandra. 2000. "On Reference to Kind in Indonesian." Natural Language Semantics 8:157-171. Macdonald, R. Ross. 1976. Indonesian Reference Grammar. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press: