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:
- Pronouns in pronominal verbs which do not have a semantic role, such as si in vergognarsi.
Allora mi sono innervosita .
expl(innervosita, mi)
Dove si trova Hebron ?
expl(trova, si)
- For verbs which are true reflexives.
E si massacrano ancora .
expl(massacrano, si)
Si erano slegati tra loro .
expl(slegati, Si)
- 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.
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.
Si prevede che viaggerà .
expl:impers(prevede, Si)
If there’s a clitic in a construction with a modal or an auxiliary verb, than generally it is an impersonal construction.
Si può procedere a sequestro .
expl:impers(procedere, Si)
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.
E' stata quello che ci si attendeva .
expl:impers(attendeva, si)
expl(attendeva, ci)
The relation expl:pass is a sub-class of expl, specific for the passivizing use of the clitic si. We can have this construction only for transitive verbs at the 3° singular or plural person form. The verb comes with the clitic pronoun, which does not cover any syntactic or semantic role of the verb. The role of subject is played by the syntactic object, which becomes a passive subject (nsubjpass).
Fra quattro giorni si aprirà il Salone internazionale di l' automobile
expl:pass(aprirà, si)
nsubj:pass(aprirà, Salone)
Si puniscano i praticanti stregnoni .
expl:pass(puniscano, Si)
nsubj:pass(puniscano, praticanti)
expl in other languages: [bg] [de] [el] [en] [fr] [fro] [gsw] [hbo] [it] [naq] [no] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [sv] [u] [yue]