The existential sentence is a noncanonical type that used crosslinguistically to assert the (non)existence of one or more entities. It consists set syntactic items includes an expletive, pivot, and coda. Two different analyses have been identified in literature for construction. first analysis, standard treats as nonraising counterpart copular sentences. In this both sentences are derived from ...

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 id...

The aim of this paper is to explore some aspects of the syntax-semantics interface representations which correspond to expletive negation (EN) and negative concord (NC). I shall postulate that a syntactic operation of logical absorption, conceived as feature checking, is needed in the theory of grammar in order to account for both phenomena. EN instantiates a nonnegative context; it will be cha...

Lexical expletives can be divided into two main classes: (i) CP required by the V2 constraint and, hence, necessity to lexicalize position on left of inflected verb and (ii) TP connected with negative value pro-drop parameter therefore, ’structural‘ subject position, specifically, [Spec, TP]. The latter can, in turn, subclasses: impersonal subjects positional expletives, which occur postverbal/...

Recent research on the element se in Haitian Creole predicative constructions seem to have reached opposite conclusions. On the one hand, se has been argued to be a functional head in the verbal functional structure of HC. On the other hand, it has been argued to be a nominal resumptive pro-form of the subject of predication. The paper evaluates the arguments for both positions in regards to th...

According to the Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981), expletives have no semantic content and thus cannot occur in theta-marked positions. However, there are many examples where expletive it appears as a direct object, in violation of the Projection Principle. The various attempts that have been made to account for such cases (e.g. the case-based analysis of Authier (1991), the predication anal...

This paper focusses on the theory of clause structure in Icelandic, contrasting it along the way with that of another Scandinavian language, Swedish. I argue that LFG provides a very simple and appealing account of two distinguishing properties of Icelandic: (i) the presence of two apparent subject positions in the `Transitive Expletive' construction, and (ii) the phenomenon of `Object Shift', ...