Syntactic expletive

A syntactic expletive (abbreviated ) is a form of expletive: a word that in itself contributes nothing to the semantic meaning of a sentence, yet does perform a syntactic role. Expletive subjects in the form of dummy pronouns are part of the grammar of many non-pro-drop languages such as English, whose clauses normally require overt provision of subject even when the subject can be pragmatically inferred. Since English is a no pro-drop language, meaning it does not allow for subjectless sentences, syntactic expletives are obligatory and require a phonologically expressed subject to be considered grammatical. (For an alternative theory considering expletives like there as a dummy predicate rather than a dummy subject based on the analysis of the copula see Moro 1997). Consider (1).
(1)"It is important that you work hard for the exam."
Following the eighteenth-century conception of pronoun, Bishop Robert Lowth objected that since is a pronoun, it should have an antecedent. Since it cannot function without an antecedent in Latin, Lowth declared the usage to be incorrect in English. It is possible to rephrase such sentences omitting the syntactic expletive "it," which is shown in (2).
(2)"That you work hard for the exam is important," or
"To work hard for the exam is important."
Since subject pronouns are not used in Latin except for emphasis, neither are expletive pronouns and the problem does not arise. For example, the Latin equivalent of it is necessary that you , , translates to 'necessitates to you'.
Since English syntax and Latin syntax are not the same, the sentence was and is fully acceptable to native speakers of English and thus was and is widely considered to be proper grammar. It has no meaning here; it merely serves as a dummy subject. (It is sometimes called preparatory it or prep it, or a dummy pronoun.)
Bishop Lowth did not condemn sentences that use there as an expletive, for example in (3):
(3)"There are ten desks here."
The nomenclature used for the constituents of sentences such as this is still a matter of some dispute, but there might be the subject, are the copula, and ten desks a predicate nominal.
Theoretical Development
There
One of Chomsky's early theoretical development for the expletive, there, is his 1981 analysis where the insertion of there is free in noun-phrase positions. The ungrammatical sentences generated by such are eliminated based on other syntactical principles.
In contrast to this theory, Chomsky later proposed a widely accepted analysis called the Expletive Replacement Hypothesis. In this analysis, the DP (there is coindexed with) substitutes it at the (LF) because elements that are null semantically are not considered legitimate at LF. This hypothesis elicits three major outcomes . The first consequence is that existential sentences undergo chain reactions when the associated DP substitutes there. These sentences are labelled as ungrammatical when locality is not followed at each chain reaction. The second outcome of the hypothesis is that when expletives are replaced by the associated DP, expletives act as an anaphor. This automatically solves the issue of there-insertion violating Condition C in theory because instead of an antecedent c-commanding an R-expression, it is an anaphor. Thirdly, it is in support of the minimalist program because it demonstrates the Principle of Greed which states that all movements must be "greedy" and if they are not considered "greedy," they are not considered to be movements . Thus, all movements of the associated DP to replace the expletive are "greedy."
In response to an issue William (1984) brought up that there could not be taken out at LF , Chomsky proposed the solution to minimize replacing there with the associated DP and instead, follow the process of there-affixation.
Extended Projection Principle
Syntacticians investigate the expletive position by looking at the Extended Projection Principle(EPP) features in their data such that it will satisfy the requirements that every clause must contain a subject. Despite the lack of semantic content, There satisfies EPP in that it occupies the subject position which is the specifier TP position because EPP also requires for TP to contain a specifier. Thus, it was coined the term "subject expletive".
Examples
Swedish
In Swedish, the use of expletive subjects is a recent development. Research has found that almost all sentences analyzed from Early Old Swedish lacked an expletive pronoun. In the Late Old Swedish, the use of expletive pronouns increased, mostly seen in religious texts, although it was still relatively uncommon. Today, the use of overt expletive pronouns continue to increase with several types of clauses in which expletives appear in. There is a general consensus among researchers in that finite clauses in this language must have an overt subject present. This phenomenon is referred to as the subject requirement. When a clause has no subject present, the expletive subject det 'it' is used. However, under certain conditions, there are clauses in which det is omitted.
Occurences of Det in Swedish
Below is a list of the types of sentences in which det occurs in Swedish.
Topic Drop: Initial Expletives
In Swedish, there are some cases where the initial expletives go through topic drop (i.e. unpronounced topic in a clause where the referent is highly accessible). While this phenomenon occurs in other areas apart from a subject position, it is limited to the initial position as seen in (4). The first lexical item is omitted in the sentence below.
(4) ∅ Var soligt och varmt.
was sunny and hot.
‘(It) was sunny and hot.’
Cleft Constructions
The Swedish word det ‘it’ is also used when forming cleft constructions as seen in (5A). This construction is more common than it is in English, especially when forming questions in Swedish (5B).
(5)A. (Det) var längesen jag såg dig.
it was long.ago I saw you.ACC
‘It is a long time ago since I saw you.’
(5) B. Var *(det) längesen jag såg dig?
was it long.ago I saw you?
'Is it a long time since I saw you?
See Syntactic Analysis of 'Det' for an explanation on the ungrammaticality (denoted by the asterisk) if det is omitted from the sentence.
Extraposed Clauses (Infinitival clauses or Finite clauses)
Extraposition occurs when a clause that acts as a subject is moved to the rightmost position of a sentence and replaced by the lexical item det it in the initial position . In Swedish, det occurs in these types of clauses. In Falk’s (1993) work , this occurrence is known as the clause-anticipating det as shown in (6).
(6) (Det) var trevligt att träffa dig/ att du kunde komma.
it was nice.NEUT to meet you that you could come
‘It is nice to meet you/that you could come.’

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