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 obj or iobj.
In Italian clitics also appears in passive and impersonal constructions. For that, see the subclasses expl:pass and expl:impers.
expl in other languages: [bg] [de] [el] [en] [fr] [fro] [gsw] [it] [no] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [sv] [u] [yue]