This is part of archived UD v1 documentation. See http://universaldependencies.org/ for the current version.
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expl:impers: expletive impersonal

The relation expl:impers is a sub-class of expl, specific for the impersonal use of the clitic pronoun si. We can have an impersonal construction for every verb (transitive or intransitive) when the role of subject is played by the clitic itself, as an undefined subject.

If there’s a clitic in a construction with a modal or an auxiliary verb, than generally it is an impersonal construction.

In the construction with both ci and si (construction of the impersonal ci), the first clitic is marked as expl, while si as expl:impers, as follows.


Treebank Statistics (UD_Italian)

This relation is a language-specific subtype of expl. There are also 1 other language-specific subtypes of expl: expl:pass.

420 nodes (0%) are attached to their parents as expl:impers.

395 instances of expl:impers (94%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 1.4547619047619.

The following 4 pairs of parts of speech are connected with expl:impers: VERB-PRON (413; 98% instances), AUX-PRON (5; 1% instances), ADJ-PRON (1; 0% instances), ADP-PRON (1; 0% instances).


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