User:Livjo/sandbox

Syntactic expletives are identified by their lack of semantic content but are crucial syntactically; they are expected to be used in all clauses which lack a referential subject. English is a no pronoun-drop language, meaning pronouns cannot be omitted even when they are pragmatically or grammatically inferable. This means that English does not allow subjectless sentences. Therefore, the existence of an expletive pronoun in extraposition construction is obligatory to be considered grammatical as they act as a placeholder in the subject position. There are three types of expletive subjects in English traditional grammar: Extraposition it It pleased the dog that the squirrels ran away from him.

The use of it is considered an expletive when it is non-referential. When it is used to refer to an already mentioned item or state of affairs, it is considered a referential pronoun, and not an extraposition it expletive

Weather it It is cold and wet.

However, Chomsky argues that the weather it is a quasi argument, as it can bind PRO in an adjunct which differs from the true expletive there.

Impersonal there (distinct from locative there) There are no employees left.

The impersonal there is usually followed by some form of the verb to be compared to the locative there, which is used as a place adverb.