<commit_before>---
layout: relation
title: 'expl'
shortdef: '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 or noun) is the governor. In English, this is the case for some uses of *it* and *there*: the existential *there*, and *it* when used in extraposition constructions.  (Note that both *it* and *there* also have non-expletive uses.) 

~~~ sdparse
There is a ghost in the room
expl(is, There)
~~~

~~~ sdparse
It is clear that we should decline .
expl(clear, It)
~~~

Some languages do not have expletives of the English sort, including most languages with free pro-drop (the ability to use zero anaphora rather than over pronouns). In languages with expletives of this sort, they can be positioned where normally a core argument appears: the subject and direct object slots, as in the examples below. Note that in the analysis of these examples, we treat the postposed subject or clausal argument as a regular core argument, and mark the expletive with `expl`.

~~~ sdparse
There is a ghost in the room
expl(is, There)
nsubj(is, ghost)
nmod(is, room)
~~~

~~~ sdparse
I believe there to be a ghost in the room
nsubj(believe, I)
expl(believe, there)
xcomp(believe, be)
nsubj(be, ghost)
nmod(be, room)
~~~

~~~ sdparse<commit_msg>Update expl.md<commit_after>---
layout: relation
title: 'expl'
shortdef: '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 or noun) is the governor. In English, this is the case for some uses of *it* and *there*: the existential *there*, and *it* when used in extraposition constructions.  (Note that both *it* and *there* also have non-expletive uses.) 

~~~ sdparse
There is a ghost in the room
expl(is, There)
~~~

~~~ sdparse
It is clear that we should decline .
expl(clear, It)
~~~

Some languages do not have expletives of the English sort, including most languages with free pro-drop (the ability to use zero anaphora rather than over pronouns). In languages with expletives of this sort, they can be positioned where normally a core argument appears: the subject and direct object (and even indirect object) slots, as in the examples below. Note that in the analysis of these examples, we treat the postposed subject or clausal argument as a regular core argument, and mark the expletive with `expl`.

~~~ sdparse
There is a ghost in the room
expl(is, There)
nsubj(is, ghost)
nmod(is, room)
~~~

~~~ sdparse
I believe there to be a ghost in the room
nsubj(believe, I)
expl(believe, there)
xcomp(believe, be)
nsubj(be, ghost)
nmod(be, room)
~~~

~~~ sdparse
{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.07684563758389262, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.613935969868173, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 3, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 3, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
{'dir': 'git-commits-cleaned', 'id': '1593792', 'n_tokens_mistral': 868, 'n_tokens_neox': 815, 'n_words': 456}