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:
Pronouns in pronominal verbs which do not have a semantic role, such as si in vergognarsi.
Existential construction with verb to be (c’è, ci sono).
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: VERB-PRON (2083; 99% instances), AUX-PRON (6; 0% instances), ADV-PRON (4; 0% instances), NOUN-PRON (2; 0% instances), ADJ-PRON (1; 0% instances), PRON-PRON (1; 0% instances), VERB-SCONJ (1; 0% instances).
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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 _ _
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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 _ _
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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 _ _