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expl: expletive

This relation captures expletive or pleonastic nominals. These are nominals that appear in an argument position of a predicate but which do not themselves satisfy any of the semantic roles of the predicate. There is further discussion and examples on the universal dependency page (u-dep/expl).

C' est la seule manière de réussir \n It' s the only way to succeed
expl(manière, C')

In Romance languages, pronouns in prominal verbs which do not have a semantic role are marked as expl such as se in se douter. In French the expl relation is also used for euphonic elements, such as l’ in e.g. et que l’on retrouve or t in a-t-il reçu mon email?

Note that currenlty expletives are not annotated consistently in the French treebank.


Treebank Statistics (UD_French)

This relation is universal.

865 nodes (0%) are attached to their parents as expl.

626 instances of expl (72%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 1.32485549132948.

The following 27 pairs of parts of speech are connected with expl: fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/PRON (263; 30% instances), fr-pos/NUM-fr-pos/ADP (141; 16% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/DET (141; 16% instances), fr-pos/NOUN-fr-pos/ADP (87; 10% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/PRON (54; 6% instances), fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/SCONJ (46; 5% instances), fr-pos/PROPN-fr-pos/ADP (37; 4% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/INTJ (20; 2% instances), fr-pos/NOUN-fr-pos/PRON (19; 2% instances), fr-pos/ADJ-fr-pos/ADP (11; 1% instances), fr-pos/ADJ-fr-pos/PRON (8; 1% instances), fr-pos/NOUN-fr-pos/SCONJ (7; 1% instances), fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/PART (5; 1% instances), fr-pos/ADJ-fr-pos/SCONJ (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/ADV-fr-pos/PRON (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/SYM-fr-pos/ADP (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/ADP (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/ADV (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/PROPN-fr-pos/PRON (2; 0% instances), fr-pos/X-fr-pos/ADP (2; 0% instances), fr-pos/ADV-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/ADV-fr-pos/SCONJ (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/DET-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/DET-fr-pos/DET (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/PART (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/SCONJ-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances).

# visual-style 9	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 9	fgColor:white
# visual-style 10	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 10	fgColor:white
# visual-style 10 9 expl	color:blue
1	Il	_	PRON	_	_	6	nsubj	_	_
2	n'	_	PART	_	_	6	neg	_	_
3	est	_	VERB	_	_	6	cop	_	_
4	pas	_	ADV	_	_	6	neg	_	_
5	aussi	_	ADV	_	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	anxieux	_	ADJ	_	_	0	root	_	_
7	qu'	_	SCONJ	_	_	10	mark	_	_
8	il	_	PRON	_	_	10	nsubj	_	_
9	y	_	PRON	_	_	10	expl	_	_
10	paraît	_	VERB	_	_	6	advcl	_	_
11	.	_	PUNCT	_	_	6	punct	_	_

# visual-style 3	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 3	fgColor:white
# visual-style 4	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 4	fgColor:white
# visual-style 4 3 expl	color:blue
1	C'	_	PRON	_	_	4	nsubj	_	_
2	est	_	VERB	_	_	4	cop	_	_
3	l'	_	DET	_	_	4	expl	_	_
4	une	_	PRON	_	_	0	root	_	_
5	de	_	ADP	_	_	8	case	_	_
6	les	_	DET	_	_	8	det	_	_
7	trois	_	NUM	_	_	8	nummod	_	_
8	banlieues	_	NOUN	_	_	4	nmod	_	_
9	où	_	PRON	_	_	12	nmod	_	_
10	ce	_	DET	_	_	11	det	_	_
11	trafic	_	NOUN	_	_	12	nsubj	_	_
12	domine	_	VERB	_	_	8	acl:relcl	_	_
13	.	_	PUNCT	_	_	4	punct	_	_

# visual-style 11	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 11	fgColor:white
# visual-style 10	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 10	fgColor:white
# visual-style 10 11 expl	color:blue
1	Le	_	DET	_	_	2	det	_	_
2	budget	_	NOUN	_	_	12	nsubj	_	_
3	de	_	ADP	_	_	5	case	_	_
4	l'	_	DET	_	_	5	det	_	_
5	édition	_	NOUN	_	_	2	nmod	_	_
6	2012	_	NUM	_	_	5	nmod	_	_
7	est	_	VERB	_	_	12	cop	_	_
8	de	_	ADP	_	_	12	case	_	_
9	25,6	_	NUM	_	_	10	nummod	_	_
10	millions	_	NUM	_	_	12	nummod	_	_
11	d'	_	ADP	_	_	10	expl	_	_
12	euros	_	NOUN	_	_	0	root	_	_
13	;	_	PUNCT	_	_	12	punct	_	_


expl in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]