Definiteness restriction

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

Link
Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics