Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and consequences existence such has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations subjects impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers plural in various natural languages, we reach following generalizations: (i) are deficient functional elements interpreted as introducing an identity function at level semantic representation, (ii) they can be divided syntactic expletives, that occur satisfy some relationship with another item clause, stand a dependency c-commanding category, (iii) tend develop additional meaning components computed beyond core grammar, where speech act-related information is encoded. Our discussion reveals all have been traditionally considered linguistic literature interpretable grammar or and, thus, do not violate Chomsky’s Full Interpretation Principle. We conclude there no languages expletiveness grammatically relevant concept.