This is part of archived UD v1 documentation. See http://universaldependencies.org/ for the current version.
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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. The main predicate of the clause (the verb or predicate adjective) is the governor. In Italian, this relation is used only with clitic pronouns in the following cases:

Allora mi sono innervosita .
expl(innervosita, mi)
Dove si trova Hebron ?
expl(trova, si)
E si massacrano ancora .
expl(massacrano, si)
Si erano slegati tra loro .
expl(slegati, Si)
In armeria ci sono 300 armature .
expl(sono, ci)
C'è gente nuova da ieri in pista .
expl(è, C')

NB Whenever possible, clitic pronouns are assigned a label that reflect their grammatical function. For this reason, if the pronoun appears in a reflexive construction of a transitive or intransitive active verb, than it’s treated as dobj or iobj. In Italian clitics also appears in passive and impersonal constructions. For that, see the subclasses expl:pass and expl:impers.


Treebank Statistics (UD_Italian)

This relation is universal. There are 2 language-specific subtypes of expl: expl:impers, expl:pass.

2098 nodes (1%) are attached to their parents as expl.

1688 instances of expl (80%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 1.21830314585319.

The following 7 pairs of parts of speech are connected with expl: it-pos/VERB-it-pos/PRON (2083; 99% instances), it-pos/AUX-it-pos/PRON (6; 0% instances), it-pos/ADV-it-pos/PRON (4; 0% instances), it-pos/NOUN-it-pos/PRON (2; 0% instances), it-pos/ADJ-it-pos/PRON (1; 0% instances), it-pos/PRON-it-pos/PRON (1; 0% instances), it-pos/VERB-it-pos/SCONJ (1; 0% instances).

# visual-style 1	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 1	fgColor:white
# visual-style 2	bgColor:blue
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# visual-style 2 1 expl	color:blue
1	Vi	vi	PRON	PC	PronType=Clit	2	expl	_	_
2	sono	essere	VERB	V	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	migliaia	migliaio	NOUN	S	Gender=Fem|Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
4	di	di	ADP	E	_	5	case	_	_
5	casi	caso	NOUN	S	Gender=Masc|Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
6	di	di	ADP	E	_	8	case	_	_
7	questo	questo	DET	DD	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	genere	genere	NOUN	S	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	FS	_	2	punct	_	_

# visual-style 8	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 8	fgColor:white
# visual-style 9	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 9	fgColor:white
# visual-style 9 8 expl	color:blue
1	non	non	ADV	BN	PronType=Neg	2	neg	_	_
2	esistono	esistere	VERB	V	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	vie	via	NOUN	S	Gender=Fem|Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
4	di	di	ADP	E	_	5	case	_	_
5	mezzo	mezzo	NOUN	S	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	FF	_	2	punct	_	_
7	non	non	ADV	BN	PronType=Neg	10	neg	_	_
8	si	si	PRON	PC	Person=3|PronType=Clit	9	expl	_	_
9	può	potere	AUX	VM	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	tener	tenere	VERB	V	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
11	lo	lo	PRON	PC	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Clit	10	dobj	_	_
12	sotto	sotto	ADP	E	_	13	case	_	_
13	tutela	tutela	NOUN	S	Gender=Fem|Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	FS	_	2	punct	_	_

# visual-style 3	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 3	fgColor:white
# visual-style 2	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 2	fgColor:white
# visual-style 2 3 expl	color:blue
1	Ed	e	CONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	ecco	ecco	ADV	B	_	5	advmod	_	_
3	lo	lo	PRON	PC	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Clit	2	expl	_	_
4	l'	il	DET	RD	Definite=Def|Number=Sing|PronType=Art	5	det	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	esercito	esercito	NOUN	S	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	FS	_	5	punct	_	_


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